I wrote the majority of this back on September 25, 2004. I was reminded of this because the sermon today was about church government and the importance of character. A couple of passages were read describing officers:

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty (Acts 6.3).

The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord (Acts 11.22-24).

I can prove anything from this alone, but the description of good does comport with the idea that the ordinary churchman is righteous and those who are to be selected as leaders must stand out as good in some sense.

Because when the righteous are mentioned, the Bible is talking about the ordinary covenant member. Take James for example:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit (James 5.14-18).

I have assumed before that this passage refers to prayer in general, divorcing verses 16b-18 from the rest. However, I can’t help but wonder if the prayer and the rain and the fruit all refer back to praying for healing as you confess your sins. Still, it is interesting that James encourages his readers to pray by comparing them to Elijah.

Frankly, I think many people might think something like, “If only the prayer of a righteous man has great power, then mine must be weak.” We think of “righteous” in terms of moral perfection. It involves a perfect record of moral goodness, or (since we admit that is not possible) something closer to it than our record.

But if James is assuring people that their prayers will be heard, this hardly makes sense. He can’t be telling them that only moral heros have powerful prayers. So what is he telling them? Paul writes a great deal about righteousness in Romans and he informs us that being righteous does not involve superhuman moral effort. In fact, it is second rate to being good:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5.6-8).

Get it? It is thinkable to die for a good person but quite unlikely that anyone would die for a merely righteous person. Paul does point out that God’s righteousness is amazing because God knew he would have to send his Son to die for unrighteous sinners in order to keep his covenant–in order to be faithful to his promise and thus righteous. But, while righteousness can be displayed in moral heroism, it usually doesn’t require it–at least not in the case of sinners in covenant with God. It simply requires that they live as Christians.

Thus, righteousness can be attributed to people who sin, get sick, confess their sin, and pray for forgiveness. In doing this, they are meeting the obligations of their standing before God. To put it another way, while the word righteous has behavioral implications, it also connotes one’s positive status with others. Elijah was God’s prophet, so God heard him and he had access to God. Thus, Elijah was by definition righteous. We too are God’s prophets, priests, and kings. We have throneroom privileges as saints (i.e. those with sanctuary access). We are righteous whether or not we are good [see marriage illustration below].

The behavioral requirements to be righteous do not demand moral perfection. God’s relationship is with sinners, not with morally perfect beings. A believer who sins dreadfully and confesses and forsakes his sin is righteous without any qualification. He has met the obligations of his relationship with God and continues in right standing with him. (Likewise, God’s righteousness does not prevent him from forgiving such a person, but rather demands that he do so. God forgives and cleanses those who confess their sins because he is faithful/righteous–First John 1.9). If Christ died for us while we were unrighteous, how much more will God hear our prayers now that we have been put in right standing with him! God’s own righteousness demands that he listen attentively to our prayers.

And this is the point: You, whoever you are, if you are a believer in relationship with God through Christ: Your prayers are powerful. You should trust God to hear you. Assuming that James is telling you that someone else should pray is a lack of trust in the Gospel.

(Because there is a climate in Reformed pharisaical circles that considers it virtuous to twist people’s words and impute beliefs or denials to them simply because they don’t mention some truth in a specific piece of writing, let me clearly state that, without Christ’s death and resurrection no sin could be forgiven and no one could be counted righteous. Furthermore, we are justified by faith alone. The point here is that faith takes a covenantal shape because the Gospel comes to us in a covenantal shape.)

Here is an example: Right now, marriage is under attack. Divorce is easy and thus marriage is weakened. In that context it is important for us to proclaim that a marriage relationship is unbreakable unless one of the parters is unfaithful. But everytime an ordinary Christian who has been married for a few years attends a wedding and hears the vows again, unless he is made of stone, he feels a great deal of conviction for how he has failed to live up to his vows. This is good and helpful. We should all take the opportunity to “improve on our marriages” when we attend a wedding. But it would be dangerous and irresponsible to refer to the sins that plague spouses as “unfaithfulness.” To say, “I haven’t been faithful to my wife” means the wife has the right to divorce the “unfaithful” husband. Unless the husband has had an affair or committed some other form of gross and relationship-rupturing sin, then that is not the case. To go around using the word “unfaithful” to describe spouses because at some times in some ways they fall short of loving and honoring their partners as much as they should, is simply erroneous. The fact is, to be faithful to one’s husband means to forgive his sins daily. To make those sins count as “unfaithfulness” is itself unfaithful to the marriage vow. God is our husband, sinners though we are. He does not count us as unfaithful simply because we sin because He is a faithful and righteous husband.