What Does it Mean: Faith & Work for Christian Leaders

When you hear the word righteous, what comes to mind?

Perhaps it’s the slang term that was in vogue in the 60’s to 80s.

Or, in the context of church, maybe it conjures up images of biblical greats, untouchable in their moral excellence – if that’s the case, you’re not alone.

Most Christians think of being righteous as being holy, pure, or blameless.

While this somewhat captures the ancient Greek worldview, which considered righteousness to be an ideal against which people can be measured.

But the word has even older, deeper roots in Hebrew thought.

Understanding “doing righteousness” as a verb The Hebrew word for righteousness is tsaddiq , and it appears roughly 200 times in the Old Testament – especially in the Psalms and Proverbs.

Translations try to describe this as the justice underlying a person’s conduct, character , or cause.

Wright sums it up by saying: The basic meaning of “righteousness” . . . denotes not so much the abstract idea of justice or virtue, as right standing and consequent right behaviour, within a community.

At its deepest roots, righteousness is really more of a relational concept, fulfilling your obligations to others as part of the relationship you have.

This provides a little more perspective on a verse like Isaiah 56:1, “Keep justice, and do righteousness.” Most of us have probably glossed over the “do righteousness” part, writing it off as some linguistic idiosyncrasy carried over from older English translations.

But the phrasing as righteousness as a verb is very intentional.

It leaves no room for doubt that righteousness is an action we can carry out.* The three dimensions of righteousness In Kingdom Calling , Amy L.

Sherman offers a three-dimensional perspective on righteousness: Upward: The “vertical” dimension of righteousness that involves reverent worship and humble dependence on God.

This involves acknowledging that God has made all our successes possible, and success isn’t made on our own steam.

As Douglas Sherman notes, work is not about self-fulfilment ; it’s about “serving God through serving the neighbor.” Vertical uprightness gives us an eternal perspective, not only viewing things through a temporal lens but seeing things as they could be in terms of God’s promised restoration.

Inward: The state of our hearts and internal purity.

While Pharisees appeared righteous in word and practice, Jesus found their hearts cold toward others.

Like Jesus, we should be motivated by compassion towards those less fortunate – not in a sympathetic way, but a much deeper way.

The Greek word for “felt compassion” is splagchnizomai and refers to the body’s innards.

Jesus saw the hungry crowds with gut-wrenching compassion, and the righteous today are motivated by that same inward stirring toward the oppressed and marginalized.

Outward: The social dimensions of righteousness, involving actions toward our local and global neighbors.

Tim Keller offers this: Biblical righteousness is inevitably social, because it is about relationships.

When most modern people see the word “righteousness” in the Bible, they tend to think of it in terms of private morality, such as sexual chastity or diligence in prayer and Bible study.

But in the Bible tzadeqah refers to day to-day living in which a person conducts all relationships in family and society with fairness, generosity, and equity Vertical love toward God is expressed in horizontal love toward the world and the people he has created.

When these three dimensions of righteousness come together in people’s actions, they might be described as tsaddiqim .

What does “doing righteousness” look like?

Let’s focus on the third dimension of righteousness – outward, or social – and talk about this in a context that we spend a lot of time in but many Christians view as separate from their faith lives : work.

Our faith is meant to infuse all areas of life , and there are abundant opportunities to live out our faith in the workplace without even bringing up the gospel explicitly.

Here’s what righteousness could look like: A restaurant manager is under pressure to cover up some unsanitary practices she knows are present when a health inspector comes around; however, out of her obligation to be in right standing with her fellow neighbor (the patrons), she does not mislead the health inspector.

She is practicing righteousness by caring for the health and safety of others above being loyal to the restaurant’s bottom line.

An accountant is asked to inflate financial statement numbers in order to look more appealing to investors.