Read the gospels and you will witness the tenderness of Jesus toward a woman caught in adultery, the healing of a man covered with leprosy, the willingness to engage in a deep spiritual conversation with a woman who had been divorced five times, and the genuine joy when He was around children. The chief complaint, by those considered religious, was that Jesus liked to hang around with tax collectors and sinners. Read Matthew 9:9-11 and you see Jesus willing to be a first-century “party-animal” in order to help the estranged in society.
Jesus had more problems with religious people! He had problems when they used God-talk to justify their own selfish motives. He had problems when the religious people judged other people without knowing all the facts, often neglecting to look within their own hypocritical lives. He had problems with the smug, the know-it-alls, the God-talkers, the blamers, the verbal snipers, the haters, and the power hungry. Simply stated, Jesus struggled with the self-righteous!
But here was the problem: the self-righteous never saw themselves as self-righteous! They denied that they hated and judged. They rationalized their smugness, justified their God-talk, and ignored their grudges. They proclaimed themselves seekers of the truth, yet lived as if their opinion was the truth. They smiled on the outside, but hated on the inside.
It wasn’t reserved to the first century. In the course of my life, I have seen more cruelty inflicted by religious people to others within the church and outside the walls of the church than I care to share. Their lips say one thing but their lives say another. Here are some clues for those that have been hurt by the daggers of the self-righteousness:
Firstly: Self-Righteous people sound Righteous (but they are not!)
At times, they will tell you their thoughts come after much prayer. They did not. Some will claim to have a gift of prophecy when they tell you what your problem is – they do not! Some may speak in a quiet voice as they slip a knife in your back. Soft voices do not mean gentle hearts! Some may even say they are simply following Jesus. Unfortunately, their words betray them as they fail to imitate Jesus.
Secondly: Self-Righteous people speak with Selfish Motives!
They project their own inadequacies, biases, and hatreds upon you. They spin the story for their own ends and then reverse the truth so they act as the victims. Jesus encountered that several times in his public ministry. In Matthew 11, he was called a “glutton and a drunkard” by religious people. In Luke 11, his ministry of healing was called demonic by the self-righteous. The self-righteous destroy lives for their gain and are master manipulators of spinning the truth.
Thirdly: Self-Righteous people do enough to look good before others!
They spend an enormous amount of time trying to look good before others. And of course, the people that see these acts are fooled, over and over again. But their family knows about their hatreds, their lusts, their inconsistencies, their hypocrisies, and their gossips. Sometimes their family members cooperate with the masquerade or sometimes they simply are embarrassingly silent.
Self-righteous people love the institutional church. They love the symbols of leadership and the sounds of their own voices. But don’t be fooled, because this is the truth: there are no righteous people, no not one!
Any righteousness (transformed living in alignment with the way of God) comes from God alone and through God alone. It is his gift and his continuing sustenance of that gift. The one that has experienced and continues to live in the righteousness of God will have these four characteristics always:
1. They will be people of gratitude! They will give thanks for all that they have in Christ Jesus. They know their true condition and are unwilling to put up a false front. They are grateful to God for his love, mercy, grace, and truth. Everyday they know what their lives would be like and how they would act without God’s provision.
2. They will be people of humility! The only humble people I know in life are those who have seen God as He is, not as they want God to be. See Isaiah’s response when He truly saw God for the first time (Isaiah 6) and notice how clearly he saw his own standing before God. View the call of the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts when he sees God for the first time. A self-righteous Pharisee that now sees himself as the “chief of all sinners.” Take Moses in the Old Testament, documented as the most humble of men, living out that humility because he saw God. I could go on and on. Humility only comes to those that see God correctly. It helps them to see themselves accurately.
3. They will be people of loving grace and mercy toward others! They quit labeling, and they start loving. They quit condemning, and they start encouraging. They quit looking at people as insiders and outsiders, and begin to see them as God sees them. They desire to inspire, equip, and encourage all people toward God’s vision for a world that God loves.
4. They will be people of peace, seeking reconciliation instead of retaliation! “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” speaks of a new way of living that reflects a heaven like existence on earth. In other words, they will reflect the Son of God, Jesus. These peaceful people will be marked with earthly patience and heavenly perspective.
Yes, with all the self-righteous people that attend church, I am not surprised that the 21st century equivalent of “tax-collectors and sinners” wants nothing to do with the church. But there is a better way to live.
It is the way of Jesus! A man of loving grace, mercy, humility, and gratitude that died on our behalf and has now been raised from the dead to accept his rightful place as King of kings, and Lord of lords. Following Jesus means to “imitate Jesus.”
Seeking His Way, a life designed for the sake of others,
Tony Baron+