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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Why Christians Must Bear Fruit, continued
Christ does not spring up overnight. It requires a period of time for Christ to be formed in us. It is command upon command, rule upon rule, a little here, a little there. The Holy Spirit creates Christ upon His body and blood within us as we pray, read the Bible, worship with fervent Christians, serve as God enables, and give of our means. We must read the Bible and do what it says. Otherwise Christ will not be formed in us.
As Christ is formed in our personality we are able to behave righteously and to praise God in every circumstance.
The light of our testimony is the good works that proceed from Christ in our personality. When people see these good works they will glorify God.
Peter exhorts us as follows:
Having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:12)
Scholars believe the "day of visitation" to be the time of God's judgment. The idea is that God wants to be proud of His people. When God judges the nations He wants to be able to point to His elect as being examples of what He expects from people. He wants the nations to see the good works of the saints.
We have a destructive bias operating in our Evangelical thinking. It is that the only righteousness there is is that which is imputed. But the nations cannot see imputed, ascribed righteousness and therefore there is no testimony.
If you do not think that bias is strong, let me quote from a popular Evangelical edition of the Old Testament. I am not going to mention the title of the edition because it is not my desire to give a bad name to this translation which in many respects is quite helpful. Nevertheless the particular passage under consideration is very destructive of God's intention.
The quotation is from Isaiah 62:1,2:
. . . until her imputed righteousness and vindication go forth as brightness . . . . And then in verse two: And the nations shall see your righteousness and vindication—your righteousness and justice [not your own, but His ascribed to you] . . . .
To my knowledge there is no basis in the Hebrew text for the insertion of "imputed" or "[not your own, but His ascribed to you]." These insertions are pure bias and the integrity of disciplined scholarship forbids their inclusion.
Also, it is not even logical. How can imputed righteousness go forth as brightness? Do we mean by this that we glorify God by telling unsaved people that God has forgiven us and loves us even though we still do wicked things? Are we not messed up royally?
The insertion of "imputed" in verse one is particularly dangerous because there are no parentheses, italics, or brackets to indicate it is not part of the original text.
I am not one to become incensed over the modern translations. I have been acquainted enough with scholarly research in the university to know that while a professor may have a questionable moral life he will be the soul of integrity when it comes to his discipline.
To be continued.