“Do Righteousness and Justice!”

Proverbs 21:3 (NAS95)

Today, we are going to walk through the four action steps of a soldier’s training routine to learn the next battle drill – “Do Righteousness and Justice!” This is an essential battle drill because, just as we learned the importance of preventing friendly fire incidents, which demoralize an army and reduce its effectiveness, so, today, we learn that we must avoid war crimes, which tarnish the reputation of the Commander and the nation he represents, as well as jeopardizes the moral high ground and legality of the mission. War crimes happen in every war, and when war criminals are brought to justice, they are tried by military tribunals and civilian courts, alike, to measure their actions according to the laws of land warfare, such as the Geneva Convention, and the specific rules of engagement as established by their Commander.

In the same way, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, when we do things outside the authority God has given us as His agents, actions which are not representative of our Commander nor the kingdom He represents, and are outside of His purposes for His army and His will for His people, we tarnish the reputation of Jesus and His kingdom, as well as jeopardize the moral high ground and legality of God’s rescue mission, as Jesus’ commissioned us in Matthew 28:18-20:

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

War crimes must be avoided if we are to fulfill our mission! Let’s learn how to train today’s battle drill, “Do Righteousness and Justice,” by seeing what the Field Manual has to say about it.

Action Step #1) Know the Field Manual.

Action Step #2) Train together as one unit.

The word selection of “justice and righteousness,” used by Solomon in Proverbs 21:3 is found throughout the Old Testament and it “represents the ideal standards for legal and ethical behavior and an ideal for kingship modeled on the righteousness of Yahweh.”^[1] These words are yoked together as a word pair to signify a larger concept of God’s kingdom and, as such, they cannot be separated in the eyes of God, nor should be in our own. We cannot shirk justice under the guise of “being righteous” and we cannot place justice on a pedestal above righteousness. The two are integral concepts to being loyal citizens of God’s kingdom.

We find this word combination in 1 Chronicles 18:14, to describe David’s kingdom, “So David reigned over all Israel; and he administered justice and righteousness for all his people.” Very interestingly, this idealistic description of David’s kingdom as one of “justice and righteousness” is used in Jeremiah 22:1-5 to establish a standard by which Israel would be judged:

Thus says the Lord, “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this word and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits on David’s throne, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates. ‘Thus says the Lord, “Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place. For if you men will indeed perform this thing, then kings will enter the gates of this house, sitting in David’s place on his throne, riding in chariots and on horses, even the king himself and his servants and his people. But if you will not obey these words, I swear by Myself,” declares the Lord, “that this house will become a desolation.” ’ ”

The word pair of “justice and righteousness” is God’s standard of conduct for His chosen people. When we carry this into the New Covenant, we realize that Jesus not only exemplified “justice and righteousness” in his own life and ministry, but He also fulfilled it on the Cross of Calvary so that we, through faith in Him, may live according to His example as citizens of His kingdom. Jesus commanded His early listeners to the equivalent of the Old Testament’s “justice and righteousness,” by teaching us in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

The kingdom of God that Jesus calls us to prioritize is His fulfillment of what Israel got only a glimpse of with David’s kingdom. As we just saw, David’s kingdom, though not perfectly, was modeled on the righteousness of Yahweh, and, in fulfillment of God’s promises, unified the twelve tribes of Israel and gave them rest from their enemies within the secure boundaries of the Promised Land – a partial and temporary fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12:1-3:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Whereas David’s kingdom saw its fulfillment in Solomon’s Temple and his golden era of prosperity and influence, Jesus’ kingdom will not fall into decay and division, and will have its ultimate fulfillment in the eternal Kingdom of God, called the New Heaven and New Earth, with a New Jerusalem, as described in Revelation 21-22. Until that time, Jesus’ kingdom, in which we, His Church, the living temples of the Holy Spirit, are called to administrate His kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven as kings and priests, with justice and righteousness, in order to unify all nations under His banner of love, with the promise that one day Jesus will return to rule from His throne with a “rod of iron,” a symbol of God’s unerring government of justice and righteousness where there is no corruption, perversion, or favoritism (Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15). Until the completion of the promise to see all nations blessed, we are to continue the work of blessing all the families of the Earth through the blessings we have received in Jesus Christ as rightful heirs to the promise of Abram, as I read from Genesis 12:1-3 earlier, and for which Jesus succinctly stated in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

We are to train ourselves to take the blessing we have been given and bless others with it – we are to bring Christ’s rule of justice and righteousness to all people. This is our mission! Now we must deal with what causes us to become distracted from the mission. This brings us to the third action step of a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

Action Step #3) Seek the Commander’s approval.

Today’s battle drill exposes our heart issues of worry and anxiety – the worry that causes us to lose focus on the mission of God and the anxiety that entangles us in the affairs of everyday life. As one pastor explained, “Our actions flow from what we actually BELIEVE to be true – not from what we SAY we believe. We worry because we really don’t believe that God owns everything, that he provides our resources and protection. Worry is a statement of belief that God will not fulfill his promises, and is not a good father.”[2]

This is a common example from our daily human experience – many of us struggle with financial security, finding ourselves worried about whether we or our loved ones will have our daily bread, enough money for retirement, or enough (and the right kind of) insurance to pay for our increasing medical care, or whatever it is we are fretting about at that moment. In that place of worry, we have a decision to make in our daily walk with Jesus Christ – to trust God and walk faithfully in His ways, or to trust in ourselves and do it our way or the world’s way.

To do justice and righteousness as a battle drill, we must trust the Commander and seek His will, His way, even in the places and times of our insecurity and fears, which cause us anxiety and worry. Simply trusting in Him is a huge step toward quelling the fears that try to overtake us. Faith moves mountain of unbelief within our own mind and hearts. Faith calms the storms that are raging inside of us. Paul promised God would do this for us in Philippians 4:6-9:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Right actions flow from right emotions which flow from right thinking. Right thinking comes from meditating on God’s Word, which is the spiritual principle behind the promise of prosperity found in Joshua 1:8, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.”

We must actively separate our thinking from the thinking of the world. It is the thinking of the world that often feeds into our anxieties and fears. But God’s way is different, and better, from the world’s way.[3] We are admonished to do just that in the promise of transformation found in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” If you want do righteousness and justice, then you must submit to God’s ways.

Let’s take this into our everyday lives. Jesus explained how we are to have victory over our worry and anxiety so that we can prioritize justice and righteousness in Matthew 6:25-34:

For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear for clothing?” For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jesus diagnosed us accurately and told us the truth of why we struggle to do justice and righteousness – we allow our worry and anxiety to control our lives, instead of living by God’s grace and walking in the Spirit. We are reacting to people and situations from fear and not faith, worry and not grace. We are not trusting God to calm the storms. Jesus is inviting you to a great faith. This leads us to the final action step of training as a good soldier to live on mission today.

Action Step #4) Live on mission.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

The conclusion of this passage, verse 25, has military image in the original language. The picture given by Paul is that when we live by the Spirit then we are walking in rank and file as His good soldiers, submitted to His commands.[4] The Commander is calling you to train yourself to live by faith and walk in the Spirit, and in doing so, you will not commit war crimes – you will do justice and righteousness – you will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), Je 22:3.

[2] Shared with me in an email from Curt Ferrell on September 22, 2022.

[3] Comments to me in an email from Emily Hurst on September 23, 2022.

[4] Emily Hurst commented on this passage in an email to me on September 23, 2022, “The original Greek shows us something interesting about verse 25. The word live here comes from the Greek verb ‘zaó,’ which means both the physical vitality of being alive as well as the process of living life. The phrase ‘let us walk by’ comes from the Greek “stoicheó” WHICH IS THE MILITARY WORD FOR WALKING IN RANK, AS SOLDIERS!!! So, a paraphrase of this verse, based on the Greek roots, might be: ‘Since the Spirit gives you life, stay in rank for the Spirit.’ Which is literally the whole point of the battle drills we are learning.”

[5] Curt Ferrell commented in this statement in an email to me on September 22, 2022, “Reminds me of John 1:12-13 – ‘But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’ This translation seems to imply that while we have the ‘right’ to become children of God, we might not claim that ‘right’ – and lose out on being called Children of God. But I recently saw a different perspective/translation – ‘he gave the AUTHORITY to become Children of God.’ If we are truly children of God, we must act within the authority that he has given us. We could simply ‘claim’ to be children of God, or be ‘identified’ as children of God – but we can only ACT as children of God if we have his authority and act according to the power inherent in that authority.”