The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness
Tullian Tchividjian Blog | May 7, 2012
The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel. And there is perhaps no group of people who better embody the sin of self-righteousness in the Bible than the Pharisees. In fact, Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for them, calling them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites. Surprisingly to some, this demonstrates that the thing that gets in the way of our love for God and a deep appreciation of his grace is not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous goodness.In Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God's grace as the sailors and the Ninevites. But the fascinating thing about Jonah is that, unlike the pagan sailors and wicked Ninevites, Jonah was one of the "good guys." He was a prophet. He was moral. He was one who "kept all the rules", and did everything he was supposed to do. He wasn't some long-haired, tattooed indie rocker; he was a clean-cut prep. He wasn't a liberal; he was a conservative. He wasn't irreligious; he was religious. If you've ever read S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders, than you'll immediately see that the Ninevites and the sailors in the story were like the "greasers", while Jonah was like a "soashe."
What's fascinating to me is that, not only in the story of Jonah, but throughout the Bible, it's always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It's the prostitute who understands grace; it's the Pharisee who doesn't. It's the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.
There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types need to be careful of. There's an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We "authentic", anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?
It's simple: we become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous.
Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents' conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of "older brother religion" with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of "younger brother irreligion" which screams, "That's right, I know I don't have it all together and you think you do; I know I'm not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you."See the irony?
In other words, they're proud that they're not self-righteous! Hmmm...think about that one.
Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the religious and the irreligious, the "buttoned down" and the "untucked", the plastic and the pious, the rule-keepers and the rule-breakers, the right and the wrong. The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are when it comes to our own sin. Steve Brown writes:
You will find criticism of Christian fundamentalists by people whose secular fundamentalism dwarfs the fundamentalism of the people being criticized. Political correctness and the attendant feelings of self-righteousness have their equivalent in religious communities with religious correctness. If you look at victims, you'll find self-righteousness. On the other hand, if you look at the people who wield power, they do it with the self-righteous notion that they know better, understand more, and more informed than others...arrogance, condescension, disdain, contemptuousness, and pomposity are everywhere.
For example, it was easy for Jonah to see the idolatry of the sailors. It was easy for him to see the perverse ways of the Ninevites. What he couldn't see was his own idolatry, his own perversion. So the question is not whether you are self-righteous, but rather, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean? Depending on who I'm with, mine goes in both directions. Arghhh!
Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both directions!
Comments:
May 9, 2012 at 02:19 PM
[...] Tchividjian in his post The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness states that we are concerned “not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous [...]
May 9, 2012 at 02:14 PM
[...] Tchividjian in his post The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness states that we are concerned “not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous [...]
May 8, 2012 at 11:15 PM
[...] through it and, if there’s something that is bothering you, ask about it in an open-ended way. The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness by Tullian Tchividjian Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the [...]
May 8, 2012 at 10:56 PM
Is sanctification a working-backwards in all of our choices/actions to before the Fall? Working backwards to sinlessness? Even though we cannot reach perfection, do we seek to obtain holiness this way?
May 8, 2012 at 03:12 PM
My whole life, before and after becoming a christian need Jesus as my only Savior. Now if I can stop being self righteous I have that figured out on paper better than the other guy..Boy im messed up, but boy is Jesus' grace sufficient.
May 7, 2012 at 12:06 PM
As it says in our Lutheran catechism: "This is most certainly true."
I heard this from a recent sermon, and I am confused: "Most Christians don't live as if God is real. We live as if he is a good philosophical idea. We live as if God is love, compassion, kindness, goodness. We live as though God wants to take care of us. God does not expect great things from me. I don't have to be perfect. We live our lives in such a way that we don't strive for perfection. We don't strive for godlness or holiness. We live in mediocrity. We live as though God doesn't care about our conduct, our actions, our behavior. We live everyday as if God doesn't even notice. And ultimately we live in the grace of God to the point to where we've cheapened that grace to where we believe that God will simply forgive me and everything is ok. Everything is fine."
Is this a --taking away of grace? The whole sermon was this way all the way to the end. The Gospel was not included. In fact, it felt as if the pastor was wielding a 2 x 4. And everyone left feeling that way.
I understand the Bonhoeffer quote about "cheap grace" that pastor's like to use at times. But if you look at that quote in context it is not really used as Law. Unless I am wrong.
Recently I heard another message which was one of the best I had heard and when I left I felt overwhelmed with God's forgiveness. But you know, it doesn't last. The very next could come a sermon like this that seemingly takes the grace away again and puts the onus of behavior back on our shoulders.
I loved Tullian's latest Wed. night Q & A message about Sanctification. But I have to say, it sure is confusing out here.
May 7, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Pastor
I remember reading about the other side of the coin of self-righteousness. good point and one we sometimes forget. And thank God, yes, Gods grace reaches us where we.
May 7, 2012 at 10:13 AM
Great article. I find myself using both forms of self-righteousness as well. I think it is most prevalent on either side when we take our eyes off Christ, and begin to rank our sanctification in comparison to others. Your book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything was a breath of fresh air--thank you. Oh, and I love the use of the word "untucked" in this article.
May 7, 2012 at 09:19 AM
"Depending on who I’m with, mine goes in both directions. Arghhh!"
I love this statement because it is exactly true for me as well. For the first four or five years that I was a Christian I was an Older Brother Pharisee/legalist. Then after falling into into sin and seeing my own hypocracy and really understanding grace I gradually began moving to the other side of the pendulim, until after about ten or eleven years later I was wearing my anti-legalism like a badge and felt nothing but contempt for most of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Eventually I did see this for the idolatry that it was and have now been gradually becoming more accepting of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ. But now because of my experiences on both ends of the pendulum I feel tossed to and fro in my judgementalism. Some days I look down my nose at Christian hipsters for their idolatry of relevnce but just minutes later I will become outraged at some extra-biblical or legalistic claim or statement somebody makes. I know that seeing the legalisms on both sides is probably a good place to be in some respects but on some other days I just want to pick a side and just stay there.
May 7, 2012 at 08:43 AM
I think it was FF Bruce who wrote about those who "are in bondage to their emancipation". I am reminded of those who now drink alcohol insisting on going to a bar with their old friend who still doesn't drink alcohol. Also, of those who have subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and yet boast of how many years they have preached now without ever talking about Christ's definite just effectual atonement for the elect alone. And I mean boast: they don't talk about it in the pulpit, but it's still their "shelf doctrine" which means that they are still "card-carrying Calvinists."
May 7, 2012 at 07:28 PM
Clair David from his essay, Systematics, Spirituality and the
Christian Life, in the volume The Pattern of Sound Doctrine.
p 270–”Just what is the connection between forgiveness and change?
Roman Catholicism had suggested that being forgiven depended on your
heart attitude. Grace was a divine fudge-factor, the giving of more
credit for a little change than it deserved."
May 7, 2012 at 05:10 PM
Indeed, pride is no respector of Christians.
We are all sbject to living as practical atheists, not trusting God. But His external Word keeps us in faith. And His pure gospel in the bread and the wine are there for some concrete assurance in the face of our inward doubts and pride, and anything else that eminates from the hearts of fallen creatures.
Don't believe what you see in yourself (true, or not)...believe that Word that will never fail you that comes in the hearing of the gospel and in the partaking of Christ Himself in His Supper.
May 7, 2012 at 04:06 PM
[...] The Double Reach of Self-Righteousness [...]
May 7, 2012 at 01:01 PM
I must confess that I still have a tendency to revert back to what comes most naturally to me. My default setting is a desire to earn my salvation like a Pharisee by relying upon self-righteousness.
By relying on myself and what I do, I diminish Christ and what He did. Reliance upon the person and work of Jesus through faith alone guarantees me reconciliation with God; reliance upon myself and my tainted works guarantees me a nice hot corner of hell all to myself.
And yet even this exposes yet another form of Pharisee-ism.
Because I know I shouldn’t rely on myself or my works, I sometimes think I’m smarter or more clever than others. Putting my old works into the dustbin (where they belong) are my "new good works." But these new good works are just as filthy as my old ones, and I am still a Pharisee because I want them to count for something!
Counting nothing to my account should count for something, right?!?
Do you see how insane that is? I can’t get out from underneath it.
Only Christ Jesus can get me out; and He bids me only to reach for the cross. As Ray Ortland said, "...reach for anything else, and it will turn into its opposite and betray you."
May 28, 2012 at 05:20 PM
What a potent reminder. I love being stirred to courage by men of conviction who have stood and currently stand so boldly for Christ and His work. I also know that I am prone to overstate my case, make new laws to defend grace, and arrogantly speak louder than I ought at times. I want to have the zeal of Phinehas in acting unorthodox if compelled by the Spirit to do so. I want to count it all as lost and recklessly know nothing by Christ and Him crucified like Paul. I want to be right and to have the source of my belief be the only Right there is. In that is great hope and great potential for sin and self-righteousness. The lukewarm may sniff at grace and wink at sin while the religious turn grace into law. All the while the sinner turns law into grace. it is a tangled web we weave.
I love the tie in to "The Outsiders." I just read this book the past week and definitely see the self-righteousness which can be fostered in either scenario by either side of the tracks.
May Christ forgive us our arrogance, our shortcomings, our overbearing rightness, and our cowardly wrongness.
http://onceforalldelivered.blogspot.com/
May 13, 2012 at 03:56 AM
Well, even if Christ did end God's Law by fulfilling it, we still have a duty to Christ in regards to those who believe they are still under the law, ie the Jewish people. This principle is firmly established by Paul in 1 Cor 8:9-13, specifically in regards to food sacrificed to idols. However, this injunction not to sin against Christ can be applied to the laws of the OT. We ought not cause our weaker brothers to stumble. Even if we know that our justification is not based on the works of the Law we ought to keep the Law simply to help our weaker brothers walk in truth and light.
May 12, 2012 at 07:51 AM
"Christ is the end of the law, for all those who have faith."
May 12, 2012 at 04:19 AM
As a new testament addendum to the law, how about 1 Corinthians 4-6. It's all about head wear during prayer, for ladies and men. Some say it pertained specifically to that time and place. But in fact Paul, the author of the letter, addressed his letter to "the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call o nthe name of our Lord Jesus Christ." vs 2. The "everywhere" can no doubt be taken to include right here, where I am, where you are. Anyways, how do we become sanctified? I know there is a tendency to self-righteousness and that we all share it. Yet maybe God has laid out a path to righteousness in His Word. Yes, it begins and ends with Jesus. And Jesus carries you through the whole way. Does he not help you with your burden? Is not your burden to obey the Law? What is Law? What is tradition? Oh, in relation to the prayer-wear for your head: how often do you like to pray? Every moment of your life? Wouldn't that be fab? The great thing is that with Christ as your guide, you cannot fail. He'll simply keep on picking you back up again. Lovely.
May 11, 2012 at 11:09 PM
"For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:20.
The Pharisees get a bad rap 'mongst us Christians. In what ways were they righteous? Why did Jesus tell us Christians that we had to be more righteous than the Pharisees? Well, we'll rely on faith for righteous cred. But faith has to be alive, right? (James 2:17) So we help one another. For sure. Our church coffers overflow and we help those around us, since no self- and God- respecting Christian could give less than a Pharisee, right?
But we better get pretty certain about all the ways that Jesus thought the Pharisees were righteous, seeing as though we must exceed them in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Um, was he measuring their righteousness by their obedience to God's Law?
Um, will he measure our righteousness in a different way?
Ok, so here's my point: do you think that Christ ate pork? Do you think he wore a beard on a whim?
Or was Leviticus involved?
May 11, 2012 at 09:43 AM
Here is where my head is at on this topic right now. I agree that this is a problem. My wife is constantly slapping my hand when I become graceless towards the graceless in the name of grace. Right. However, I just finished a lengthy study of Hebrews, and one of the things that impressed me is that the writer of Hebrews was just OUT there with this:
"1 For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. 2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, 3 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" Hebrews 2:1-3
He really gets with it later on with talk of being diligent to enter that rest, and the example of the Israelite's unbelief. I think there is a place for being stringent with the message to those who insist on being under the law. I find that people in their minds will find some way to make the gospel into a legalistic quagmire in order to short-circuit and water down grace to make it more palatable and less offensive to their flesh. You just can't escape the fact that you are going to have to offend the elder brother types. If grace is the way, and they specifically hate the manifestation of grace, how can that ever work?
How does this balance with Tullian's article here? I don't know, I haven't figured this out yet at all. However, it all involves going back to the cross, that even in my lack of understanding and my own gracelessness, I am justified and my sins are judged, and if the moralists among us are believers, the same is true of them. I have started to see that in coming into such a strong grace message, I have on occasion been like a brand new baby Christian, so excited about it that I just kill everyone. At the least, it needs to be tempered down if there is to be any progress for them.
For the record I deeply appreciate not only Tullian's wonderful posts and writings on this, but the community of commenters on here. This blog is always a blessing!
May 10, 2012 at 12:30 PM
[...] the Elder Brother by David Browder on May 10, 2012 • 1:30 pm No CommentsIn keeping with the excellent article by Tullian Tchividjian over on the Gospel Coalition site about being self-righteous toward the self-righteous; a song by [...]
May 10, 2012 at 04:12 PM
Tullian
It was good for me ...the Glorious Impossibility: Part 2 | I'm sorta glad I don't sit in the congregation I would be a specticle... But I can view you from afar in my own puddle.
March 22, 2013 at 08:24 PM
[...] There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types need to be careful of. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We “authentic”, anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. Read more… [...]
February 21, 2013 at 09:48 AM
[...] Double Reach of Self-Righteousness (Tullian Tchividjian, The Gospel [...]
December 5, 2012 at 07:11 AM
Just a point that I wish to make on this matter is to just how important it is to not damn anyone no matter how vile they may be through our own eyes. For one, the most vile brute of a man that one could ever imagine to be would have to be a Jewish pharassee by the name of Saul. This particular self righteous brute of a man was feared by newly converted Christians everywhere, he delighted in rounding up the adherents of our Lord Jesus Christ whenever he could and although the bible does not specify I ca only imagine just how much blood of Christian people would have been on his hands. It simply amazes me how God selected this most vile Christian hater to become,inaccordence to His Own Will ,to become among the most reverend of all in his unceasing zeal in promoting the Love of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. One very important thing that we all need to be mindful of is that Jesus Christ did not come to judge and condemn the world of sin but rather He came to convict the world of sin and that even in his most potent remarks towards the people who hated Him the most He was simply pointing out to them about the potential danger that they were in so long as they were to hold onto their present self righteous evil lives.it was the most empathetic love towards them that he could offer them !.
Ronald K
May 9, 2012 at 10:46 AM
Good piece. The last sentence sums it up very nicely. When we receive new life in Christ then his grace is what keeps us humble. All of our fleshly righteous acts are but filthy rags because there is not one of us besides Christ who is good. He did it all and Him all we owe. No matter which way we are leaning at the present moment.