Righteousness and Life

"As righteousness tendeth to life: so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death." (Prov.11:19)

Here is a statement of principle the correct understanding of which will help anyone to a better understanding of God. All too often are the two ways, the way of good and the way of evil, with their respective climaxes, set forth as something based on the arbitrary decrees of a rather capricious Deity. In the most extreme case, that of believers in predestination, the eternal fate of each individual was unalterably fixed before he came into the world. A rather more modern and somewhat toned down version of this belief insists that whilst acceptance of the Divine call rests with the individual, God calls only a selection from amongst mankind; once called and accepted, the called one must of necessity be ushered into eternal salvation or the will of God has been thwarted, so that in practice it becomes a case of "once saved, always saved." Orthodox Christian theology, whilst allowing the freedom of holding this view to those who are so convinced, does not make it an element of normal faith; nevertheless, the orthodox theology does depict heaven in the guise of a reward for right doing and some state of "conscious misery, eternal in duration" to use the old definition, as punishment for evil doing. The emphasis is rather upon pleasing or displeasing God and reaping commendation or condemnation accordingly, so that good and evil are reduced largely to a question of obeying or disobeying God’s expressed commands.

The Wise Man in the Book of Proverbs knew better than that. Righteousness is a power, a force, which is inherently conducive to life—to continuing life. Evil, on the other hand, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction; it is inherently conducive to death—and death in this connection is the antithesis of life, the complete absence and negation of life. Since all life stems in the first place from God, and moreover can only be sustained by God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, it follows that righteousness is that condition of things which allows the perpetuation of that flow of life from Creator to creature which imparts the quality of everlastingness to the creature. Conversely evil is that opposing force which tends to hinder or destroy the orderly conduct of God’s work, and because it is thus at variance with the laws on which Divine creation is founded and by which it continues, must eventually destroy itself. So, the life which is governed or influenced by evil will become less and less capable of recovery and maintaining that inflow of life from God which alone can guarantee continuance, and will at last end in death. The idea that there can be any kind of life, any kind of conscious state of being, existing eternally in a state of sin or of disharmony with God, is both unscriptural and against all that is revealed concerning the principles of Divine creation. A person to whom God has given life and the power of living must either come, eventually, willingly into alignment with the arrangements God has made for the eternal continuance of Creation—and this implies coming into a state of eternal righteousness—or he must reap the wages of sin in the loss of even that measure of life he possessed for a limited period, and be reduced to what is in effect the condition obtaining before he knew conscious existence.

The channel of that life is Jesus Christ. It is through him, through faith in him and acceptance of him, and ultimately complete dedication to him, that men receive life which is eternal, timeless, everlasting. "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (1 John 5:12; John 3:36)

July / August 1986