There are two types of righteousness in the Christian
faith. Martin Luther labeled these two as passive and
active. Passive is the righteousness that we receive from God. We do
nothing to receive it. Active righteousness is our good works, overflowing
from a thankful heart, a new heart created in us by God through a new will
empowered by God’s Holy Spirit.
Now, I get that good works is a frightening phrase for those of you who have been
beat up by the concept of working your way into God’s favor. But this is not
that. And when you realize that our good works don’t fit into the category of
passive righteousness—the means by which we have once-and-for-all earned God’s
acceptance—then you see you aren’t doing good works as some kind of payment to
God. You are doing them because you belong to God. That new heart and God’s
Spirit within you are working in tandem to make us more like our Father. As
Luther put it, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbors does.”
That
may not be a knowledge explosion for you, it may not set you back on your
heels, but I grew up with a checklist of things I needed to be doing better in
order to appease God.
I’ll be kinder—check.
I’ll give more—check.
I’ll go to
church more often—check.
So, the idea that works aren’t currency is
mind-boggling for me. To think that what we label “good works” is just another
name for responding to the passive love from God we’ve received, letting it
pour over onto the lives of those around us, like a big, beautiful exploding volcano of joy, an ocean of mercy, a world of love, by the power of God’s Spirit within
us, takes the pressure off.
I no
longer feel as though I'd better love or
else, it’s I get to love in my
daily life by taking advantage of opportunities that God set up in advance for
me, and empowers me to do. And by get
to love, I don’t mean that I’ve neurotically convinced myself it’s a great
thing. It means that I’ve been loved so hard that I really, really want to love
others like my God loves me.
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