Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and
peace kiss each other.... Righteousness goes before him
and prepares the way for his steps.
—PSALM 85:10, 13
Here is a startling thought: all righteousness comes from God. We are surprised by this because we often assume people are naturally good. When we hear of a neighbor who has done a terrible thing, our first reaction is one of complete surprise. Or when a mother hears that her son has been arrested for some crime, we usually hear her say that her boy is really a good kid. Not so. Jesus tells us that “there is only One who is good” (Matthew 19:17).
Despite what men and women may claim for themselves or what others might claim for them, there is no goodness, no righteousness, and no holiness that can be obtained without redemption. We need to drink from the nurturing spring of the source of all life.
Without Christ, the spring will dry up, and we will begin to die through sin because we do not have the Holy Spirit as the source that sustains us. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. . . . Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17–21).
—Eric Kampmann, Signposts