Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

From the Old Testament of the Day: “You shall have no other gods in My face.”  [Exodus 20.3; from the Hebrew]

From the Epistle: Do you not know that  all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. [Romans 6.3-11]

From the Holy Gospel: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  [Matthew 5.17]

For this 6^th Sunday after Trinity, on the historic Western Church’s one-year lectionary, the focus is on righteousness. What is righteousness? The quoted selections just read to you from the lectionary for the day give you a clue. Righteousness is a pervasive state of perfection. Righteousness is a matter of character, a matter of complete and consistent holiness. In short, righteousness is the very character of being of God.

Understood this way, which is the Bible's way, righteousness is what God is, and what human beings are not. And this dichotomy is the cause of the perpetual conflict between what God is and what we are, a perpetual conflict between what God calls upon us to be and what we fail to be and, moreover, what we refuse to be. To help us see the crisis over our lack of righteousness, Jesus' words cause us to consider, “Unless You are Exceedingly Righteousness.”

I.

The first thing that today's three lessons teach you about righteousness is this: God has a specific kind and degree of righteousness in His mind, and you don't possess it. You learn this from the Law of God, the 10 Commandments. What we number as the 1^st Commandment was understood by Old Testament believers as the 2^nd Commandment. They regarded the opening sentence of Exodus 20 as a commandment, which we regard as an introductory statement: “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt.” This statement has hidden within it what the ancient Hebrews rightly understood as a commandment, namely, a state of existence that leaves us with no excuse. If God is the one who saves us, then we belong to Him and solely Him. And attempt to live life apart from God is to live in rebellion against Him. This is why the Hebrews understood God's declaration that He is the God who rescues them as the 1^st Commandment.

And this verse – understood either as declaration or command – leads directly to what we number as the 1^st Commandment: You shall have no other gods before  Me. Our newest edition of Luther's Small Catechism has chosen to omit the last words of the 1^st Commandment, rendering it simply as “You shall have no other gods.”

As far as a sentence goes, this one is true, but it is clearly deficient. The 1^st    commandment is not just speaking about loyalty to God rather than to loyalty some other being.

With this commandment, God open-fires on any other thing or being that might take first place in our lives. It's not just the point of no other possible gods rather than this one. It is open-war on any thing or being that you, or I, or any being on earth might want to have as god That's why the original Hebrew of this commandment is so striking: You shall have no other god in My face! “In my face” is the basic meaning of the English, “before Me,” which invites the popular, notion that you can have some other god AFTER you've given homage to the true God.

And so, righteousness begins and ends with the constant and perpetual recognition that the God who rescued His people from slavery in Egypt is the one and only God that there ever was, is, or will be. This is why righteousness disappears – vanishes  from us – when we do or desire anything that rubs our sinful independence in the face of God. 

II.

Now, you are ready to face the second point that the day's three lessons teach you about righteousness. The point is this: You need this righteousness, or you are dead!

Jesus says, in the Holy Gospel of the Day, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ” Jesus here is teaching you that there are degrees of righteousness. Indeed, it is true that some are more righteous than others.

Now, the Pharisees and the scribes were viewed as the pinnacle of righteousness during Jesus earthly ministry. Some were more righteous than others, and they were more righteous than all the rest. Or so they taught, and so the people believed! But, Jesus changes the perspective of the discussion of righteousness. He announces there is a concept beyond “the best” for His hearers to chew on and digest: Unless your righteousness is greater than what you view as being the best, you are bound for hell!

In our day, and even among many who call themselves Christians, there is this notion, alive and well: Some are better than others; some possess  more righteousness, and by-golly, you better realize than I am among them, too.

But this popular view is sadly mistaken. The “good Christian” (as many label themselves) is an illusion! And there is no righteousness at all for those who hold to the view that “I'm a good, righteous  Christian.” Such righteousness fails the test. On that scale you need to be better-than-the-best.

What is better than the best is a different kind of righteousness. It is the righteousness that Christ bestows. And without this better-than-the-best righteousness, you are lost.

III.

Lastly then, the third thing that you learn about righteousness is, thankfully, this: You have righteousness in Christ, like a covering, like a personal substitute, like an advocate before the Father.

Jesus is your personal substitute because He is, simultaneously, both God and Man. When we confess that Jesus is God the Son, or the Son of the Father, or the many other similar references in the Scriptures, we are confessing that Jesus is, indeed, God – not just god-like, not just godly, not just Junior Grade God. He is One with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the mysterious being that the Scriptures teach us to call the Holy Trinity, the Triune God. Jesus, because He is God, is your substitute who bestows upon you perfect righteousness before the the heavenly Father.

Jesus brings that righteousness to you in Holy Baptism. That, and no other action, makes you a child of the heavenly Father, and brother or sister of Christ Himself.

And when you are so declared and made, He also connects you to His sacrificial death, and to the benefits of that death. Jesus declares to you the inspired and inerrant words that He gives to you through His apostle, St. Paul: “Do you not know that  all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death.”

So it is that you have a covering in the perfect righteousness of Christ, in which and under which you live day-by-day before God. That is the only true righteousness that exists on earth and that avails before God in heaven. It is Christ's righteousness, and His alone! It comes to you as a gift of God, and by it you are covered, every moment and throughout all eternity. By this covering, you are a joy to the heavenly Father, and you are a joy to all who know you as a fellow saint, even to yourself, in Christ!