Tombstones

For he will never be shaken; the righteous will be remembered forever. Psalm 112:6 NASB

Righteous – What do you want on your tombstone? Born: xxxx. Died: xxxx. And then some words about who you were. Hopefully: ṣaddîq, the one word that will be the final marker of your life here. The one word that describes what it meant to faithfully follow your God.

But perhaps what it means hasn’t been so obvious to you. Theologians have taught us that “righteous” means “conformity to an ethical or moral standard.”^[1] That means righteousness is about rules. As Stigers notes, “ṣedeq, then, refers to an ethical, moral standard and of course in the ot that standard is the nature and will of God.”^[2] In the Western world, this sentence should cause enormous concern. The nature and will of God is expressed in the Torah, but apparently the Church decided long ago that it was the expression of the nature and will of God. So Torah was abandoned in favor of creeds and councils and dogma. Think correctly instead of act godly. Theologians can even agree that the nature and will of God is expressed in the “Old Testament” but apparently none of the Hebrew got translated into Greek. Don’t you find this strange?

As if this obvious contradiction isn’t enough, ṣedeq has also been transformed according to Roman thought. If Rome was about anything at all, it was about rules. The Roman Way is not a description of multicultural tolerance and legislative benevolence. It is about power, the power to enforce the rules of Rome. The Church embraced this power and essentially copied Roman administration. Instead of the instructions of Torah, the Church gave us holy Roman rules. But ṣedeq isn’t actually about rules at all. Matthew Wilson’s excellent study demonstrates the ṣedeq as it is used is the description of people who are devoted to God. The lexical definitions don’t matter. What matters is how the term is used, and how it is used shows us that it is a relational term, not a fixed forensic (legal) state. The man who is righteous is the man who is devoted to God regardless of whether or not he is keeping the rules. This explains why David is called a man after God’s own heart despite his obvious sins. David is righteous because he pursues God even when he is disobedient. It’s not the rules that make David ṣedeq. It’s his devotion.

Of course, devotion carries weight. Commitment, care, concern, conscientiousness, consideration, consistency: they are all aspects of devotion. But devotion isn’t measured by some ethical standard. It is measured by the willingness to bend on behalf of another, to place my agendas second or not at all, to do what I do for someone else out of love, not obligation. That’s the man who will be remembered. That’s the man who loved so much his whole life changed.

Topical Index: ṣedeq, righteous, Psalm 112:6

^[1] Stigers, H. G. (1999). 1879 צָדֵק. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 752). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.