Sign #3 - God in Jesus Calls Us to Right Living

The word righteous appears 3070 times in the Bible. As a professional student of the Scripture I can officially and authoritatively tell you, "That is a lot." Righteousness is a theme of Scripture. What does it mean? I would imagine the average person is really not sure. In the seventies it was synonymous with the word cool, awesome, great, "righteous." I am confident many of the things they were referring to as righteous, the Scripture would disagree. I think if you were to take a poll today you would find people's response to this word mostly negative. If we use it all, it is probably in the context of referring to someone as "self-righteous." That is someone who thinks they are better than everyone else because by their own judgment they keep a list of rules better than others. The American Christian is often viewed this way by the general public. They think we sit in here and say, "We are better than you because we go to church. We are better than you because we don't do . . . (fill in the blank). It is really important we understand righteousness because God is calling us to it.