A Men’s Ministry Men Want to Know (Part 14) – To Do God’s Good Works, We Must be Trained in Righteousness

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Previous posts in this series have been incorporated into Part 2 of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.”

Now we are getting into the meat of 2 Timothy 3:16. In this series, we have seen that God saves us, surrounds us with other believers who want to do good works, gives us his inspired Word, rebukes us, and restores us. Now Paul says God trains us to live a certain way: in righteousness.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16

Imagine a world where everyone knows God, loves God, and obeys God. In this imaginary world, because of their love for God, everyone also loves each other. They honor each other, speak truthfully to each other, trust each other, and work towards each other’s good. The world made up of these people has no crime and it has no locked doors. Instead, people spontaneously invite each other into their homes for fellowship around their dinner tables. In this imaginary world, people resolve any disagreements quickly and amicably. This world has no class or racial divisions because everyone accepts everyone else on an equal basis. And finally, this world has no poverty because each person considers it their personal responsibility to meet the needs of their neighbors who find themselves unable to meet their own.

“Right! If only. Pure fantasy,” you say. And you are right. This imaginary world I have just described is quite different from the actual world we live in.

And yet, we can all agree that living in a world like this would be nice. Something in us longs for this kind of world, a world where everyone indeed loves each other.

Our “God-forsaken world” is not God-forsaken after all

Possibly the first thing that comes to our minds when I describe this imaginary world is heaven. But while it certainly is true that this imaginary world resembles what we will experience in heaven, nevertheless, I am talking about an imaginary world. In fact, it is not even imaginary. It is this world. It is this world as it will be in the future.

The Bible says that the imaginary world I described above will indeed exist, but it will not happen until “the regeneration, when the son of man sits on his glorious throne,” (Matthew 19:28). Jesus’ reference to “the regeneration” on Matthew 19 refers to the Millennium, the 1,000 year reign of Christ that he will institute after his return to earth in glory as predicted in biblical prophecies, such as Zachariah 14:16-21.

Sometimes the Bible refers to that future time of righteousness, prosperity, peace and blessing as “the day” and contrasts it with our present time of sin, suffering, war, and poverty as “the night.” But the Bible also teaches that, while “the day” has not yet dawned, believers can, in anticipation of the dawn, “wake up” and “light a light” until “the daybreak comes.” Paul uses metaphors like these in Ephesians 5:8-14 when he describes precisely this betwixt and between situation we believers find ourselves in when it comes to living righteously in a sinful world:

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'”

Like the old saying, a man of God doesn’t curse the darkness, he lights a candle

Thus, a man of God who lives righteously has a different moral compass from the rest of the world. He thinks differently. He acts differently. He treat’s money differently. He responds to his boss at work differently. He talks differently. He treats women differently. He has different attitudes towards marriage, sex, and procreation. He relates to his neighbor differently. He even fills out his taxes differently.

Consequently, a man of God cannot live out his faith without being noticed. There is no such thing as an incognito man of God. “Everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

True, a man of God is righteous in God’s sight through faith in Christ, but in his daily life he must learn how to live righteously

The moment someone places their faith in Christ as their savior from sin, God removes his sin and imputes the righteousness of Christ onto him.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Christ took our sin on himself and experienced the consequences – death. We have taken Christi’s righteousness on ourselves and also experience the consequences: life. Eternal life.

But when it comes to living righteously, that is something quite different from our position in Christ. Living a righteous life is the result of learned behavior. It does not come naturally for us.

Living righteously in the Bible refers to the practice of relating to God and others righteously, fairly, and justly. God expects us to live righteously because we have been made righteous in Christ. Consequently, righteous living is the logical conclusion of our faith in Christ and our consequent position in Christ.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1-3

In this passage, our “calling” refers to our position in Christ as righteous saints. But “live a life worthy of the calling” refers to our need to live righteously in our daily lives.

Years ago, I baptized a new believer at church one cold winter Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the person responsible for filling the baptistry forgot to turn on the baptistry heater. I made the discovery when I stepped into the baptistry and immediately started shivering. But when the baptismal candidate stepped in, he spontaneously shouted out for everyone in the church to hear, “D…n this water’s cold!”

Of course, we all laughed. But it was also a vivid reminder to us “seasoned Christians” that when we started our journey of faith, we started it from mile zero.

A man of God learns how to live righteously primarily by reading and learning and obeying his Bible

Fortunately, the believer has several sources for knowing how to live righteously, such as our conscience, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and the examples of other believers.

But by far, the primary source of our knowledge of what a righteous life looks like comes from the Bible. The Bible is full of commands and exhortations to righteous living.

“The New Testament provides numerous examples of righteous living, which include:

Living righteously and doing God’s good works overlap, but are not the same

Our foundational passage for learning how to do God’s good works reads “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, restoring and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17)

Notice that our training in righteousness is the culmination of our being “thoroughly equipped for every good work,” not the performance of the good works themselves. True, doing good works is righteous in itself. But living a righteous life without giving thought to doing the good works God has planned for us negates the whole purpose of our salvation.

Failing to understand this distinction between living righteously and doing God’s good works can choke off our spiritual lives and denude us of our calling.

Prime examples of focusing only on one’s righteousness and ignoring good works are the Priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. When they passed by the left-for-dead stranger waylaid by robbers, they were practicing righteousness according to the law, which commanded them to avoid dead bodies after being purified at the temple. But they forgot the importance of good works and therefore ignored the man they passed by.

Bringing this distinction between righteous living and doing God’s good works forward to our own history, during slavery, churches in America’s southern states focused almost entirely on personal righteousness but, like the priest and Levite, forgot the radical nature of good works and thus ignored the plight of the slaves in their midst.

Living righteously is simply a prerequisite for doing all of God’s good works

We can think of righteous living in terms of the old medical doctrine, “primum non nocere,” “First, do no harm.” In other words, “Whatever you do for your patients, don’t make things worse.” But doing no harm to others is not the fulfillment of what medicine is all about. Medicine is much more than maintaining the patient’s status quo. Medicine is about curing a patient’s illness. Medicine is about healing a patient.

In the same way, righteous living is primarily about doing no harm to others and unrighteous living is about the harm such an unrighteous lifestyle causes others. One cannot do God’s good works when one’s lifestyle hurts people.

On the other hand, doing God’s good works goes way beyond simply maintaining the status quo by not hurting people any more than they have been. God’s good works proactively reach out and heal the harm that we and others have caused. God’s good works ameliorate the pain and suffering that sin and Satan have brought into the world, announcing in the process the imminent presence of the Kingdom of God.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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1. OpenAI ChatGPT 4/21/2023 response to prompt “What are some examples of righteous living in the New Testament?” [↩]