Self + Righteousness = Rubbish (Are You Struggling With It?) | Theocast

Self-Righteousness in the Church and Why It Is Dangerous

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we are going to be discussing self-righteousness. And let's be real, it has really been affecting the church and those around the church. And this is a problem that goes all the way back to Philippians chapter 3 when Paul talks about his own self-righteousness.

It's a helpful conversation, Justin and I are both encouraged by it, and we hope you are too. Stay tuned.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging worried pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Justin, we are not a discernment ministry. We are not here to blow people up.

Your hosts today are Justin.

We're not here standing on the wall to mow people down.

That's right.

We're going to correct everybody. So your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. I am Jon Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in beautiful Spring Hill, Tennessee, where everybody in California is currently moving to.

They want to move to the land of the free.

It is no joke. We have more Californians in Tennessee than I think we have Tennesseans. So there we go. Justin, we got an excellent book to give away today, my friend.

So not only are we not a discernment ministry, we like to give stuff away to the people that listen to us. We're not trying to buy your attention or anything like that. We just want to try to put good resources in the hands of the people who listen to Theocast.

So today, as always, I assume we've used the Wheel of Names, which again is the software application thing that we use to randomly select people from our membership to win the giveaway for the week. And this week's winner is Peter Christensen.

And so, Peter, I think we're going to email you.

Yeah, we'll send him an email.

Great. And we'll get all the details that we need from you, man, in terms of trying to ship you what you're going to win this week, which is an excellent book by our brother in Christ, a man who has been very helpful to both John and myself from a distance.

The book is The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson is one of the books I know that I give away as much as any. It's one of the better books that I've read in a number of years.

And in that book, Sinclair deals with the themes of legalism and antinomianism and the sufficiency of Christ. And he also gives some historical context to that conversation in terms of the marrow controversy in the Church of Scotland.

I think it's a great read and it's very informative. And I trust, Peter, you will find that book to be helpful for you, man, as you try to sort through some of these categories. If you are listening to this and you want to buy a copy of The Whole Christ, I think there's going to be a link in the show notes, John, for people to do something like that.

And we're going to give away an additional copy via social media. So this podcast comes out on a Wednesday. If you go today to any of the Theocast social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you will find instructions on how to get involved in the social media giveaway extravaganza.

And so if you follow those instructions, you can sign yourself up for that and we will announce the winner tomorrow, which will be Thursday if you're listening to this on a Wednesday. So, yeah, you can win a copy of The Whole Christ that way, or you can just go to the link in the show notes and buy it.

If you don't have the book, get it. It will be well worth your time.

Yeah, it's a good read. It's definitely not going to be a simple read if you think you're just going to breeze through it. It will challenge you, but it's worth the time for sure.

But it's not it's not written in a way that's hard to read. It's just it's like the material is substantial for sure.

Yeah, it's kind of a historical theology more than a theology book.

So it's good.

Very little different from some of the other books we have recommended recently. But, hey, Justin, I don't know if you know this, but Sinclair Ferguson, he's my spirit.

Animal. I don't even know what that means, John.

Really? You don't know what a spirit animal is? You don't remember this movie?

Yes. Yes, kind of.

Yeah, no, but what is when I die, I want to come back to Sinclair Ferguson, especially so I can have his accent, the Scottish accent.

I was going to say. Absolutely.

I'm Scottish. I just don't have the accent.

So no, you do not.

Moffettville is where it comes from. It's a little little village in Scotland. So anyways, let's go ahead and move on to today's topic, which Justin and I had a great conversation pre-recording, as always.

The Blindness and Weaponization of Self-Righteousness

And today we are talking about, man, there's so many angles to this, but really we're talking about all the different negative dangers, weaponization of self-righteousness. And it is a tricky topic because self-righteousness is not this glaring rock that's right in the middle of the road that everybody can see that they need to drive around.

Often self-righteousness is that big pothole we don't see and we fall right into it. And the damage can be quite significant.

I might even say it's the black ice of the Christian life.

There you go.

It's you don't see it.

Slippery.

You hit it and it derails the train. I might go and lead with this, John, and then I want you to continue setting up the topic.

Sure.

I think that self-righteousness is the sort of billboard sin of the church that we need to always have in the crosshairs. It's the thing we've talked about before how it seems that in many church contexts today or in evangelicalism today, nominalism is in the crosshairs.

That's right.

In my opinion, biblically, self-righteousness is in the crosshairs within the minds of the. Because they are trying to blow up any notion of Jesus plus theology. And we're going to talk about the posture of Christ here in a minute in terms of his mission on earth and who he often was seeking to unsettle.

But go ahead.

So one of the goals that we have here at Theocast is to always be taking the Bible, Scripture, and the themes of the Bible and make them, I would say, more practical in our everyday conversations.

Or at least relatable.

Yeah, relatable. So as I preach and as Justin preaches, we get together. Today is different for us. We're recording on a Tuesday. We are about to both go on vacation, so we've got to get ahead on our episodes.

We're doing one today and one tomorrow.

I'm actually going to a pastor's thing.

Oh, well, you know.

All right, fine.

I'm going on vacation and you're going to go work some more.

I'll take a vacation eventually.

Yes, point of it is we're going to be missing some time. And when we preach, we often get together on Wednesday morning and we talk about what we preached about this last week and the excitement about the text and what we learned and some of the nuances of the text.

And that definitely is what happened today. But we have been trying to explain throughout our time on Theocast the nuance of what Christ and we think the New Testament and I'll just say all of points out glaringly with the spotlight is one, self-righteousness exists in everyone, two, it's danger, and three, the effects of what it causes upon us.

So a good example of this is what I'm, I'm currently in John 19. And so I'll just use this as an example, kind of a springboard, Justin. In John 19, Jesus has officially has declared it is finished. And in verse 31, John multiple times will, I think through the power of the spirit and God's wisdom will point out the irony of the self-righteous Pharisees and the Jews of how they are going to crucify an innocent man and yet be sure not to defile themselves.

So a couple of examples of this is, let me just, well, I'll pull it up here in a.

Second.

So Jesus says it is finished. And as soon as it's done, of course, it says that in verse 31, the Jews go to Pilate and ask for Pilate to take the men off of the cross so that according to Deuteronomy, any time a criminal was put or hung on a tree, that they were not to be left there after sundown because it would defile the land.

So they didn't want to go into the Passover defiling the land. It also says in John 18, they didn't want to go into Pilate's courthouse because they too would also defile themselves by going in there so that they would not be able to partake in Passover.

So just the, John mentions this, right? They are taking a man who Pilate says, I find no guilt in him. And yet they crucify him anyways. They want to make sure that they don't go into his courthouse. They want to make sure that they take him down off the cross.

So they are righteous enough to receive Passover. And yet they miss the irony that they killed the actual embodiment of righteous. So the self-righteousness of the Pharisees ends up murdering the actual righteousness of those who were standing before him.

And I love how scripture points out how one, I think, blinding and too dangerous self-righteous can be. You know, another example of this, and I'll throw it over to you, Justin, is the apostle Paul himself even explains how he himself as a Pharisee was blinded by his own self-righteousness and even was persecuting and killing Christians.

And he himself could not see it until, of course, the Holy spirit had to come and confront him and on the road to Damascus. So this is kind of where scripture is giving us. These are just two examples.

I mean, you have the log in your eye, splinter. I mean, there's so many examples. James is another example of this, but that's what we're going to be talking about today.

Justin Perdue. A little more Bible backfill.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the illustration of the apostle Paul is really good where he was convinced at one point in his life that his zeal for God was being expressed in an appropriate way by persecuting the church.

And so he would have seen that as a good thing and even a meritorious thing, that he was so zealous for God that he was persecuting these blasphemers known as Christians. And yeah, Jesus in the sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter seven, verse one and following that, that is where he says, don't judge others lest you be judged yourselves.

And the point of that passage is that you will be held. And he goes on to say this in verse two, that the standard that you use to judge others is the same standard that will be used against you. And he's pointing out the blindness of people that, you know, you, again, you have this log in your eye and you presume then to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

Well, what's the point of all that? The point of all that is you have this standard that you use to judge other people with, and you yourself have not even met that standard and thereby condemn yourself.

I mean, this is the language of Paul in Romans two. He says the exact same thing, that you can't even meet your own standard. And then he takes it further and is basically like, let alone God's standard.

So when you have your own standard that you can't meet, that you judge others with, I mean, how much more so have you not met God's standard? And it's the doers of the law who will be righteous and justified, not those who just hear it only.

I think what I'm struck by, John, in terms of just the blindness piece, maybe to launch us into that a little bit further, is like you were illustrating with the Jews around the time of Passover and the crucifixion of Christ.

They are so consumed with adhering to the letter of the law as they understood it. That they completely missed the point of the law wholesale. And they are so blinded by their zeal to abide by even this hedge that they have placed around the law, to do the right things and to avoid doing the wrong things, that they have missed the entire message of God from the beginning, which was a plan of redemption, right?

The plan to redeem God's people through the Messiah in terms of how he would do that, and so, yeah, it's wild how we are blinded by misplaced zeal to keep commandments or to avoid doing things that are against the commandments and miss the point of the entire thing.

And where we're going to go here, I think, is that your confidence is completely misplaced, because what you're doing is in some way, shape, or form in varying degrees, admittedly, but still, to some extent, you are placing confidence in what you are doing, and you think that it's appropriate to do that.

And it leads to all kinds of problems. You become incredibly dangerous to other Christians, and you will ultimately ruin yourself, which we'll get to later. But let's talk a little bit about just the danger of self-righteousness, maybe, and how it ends up being a situation where we just kind of cut other people to pieces, and there's blindness in doing that.

That's right. Basically, we weaponize it, is what we do.

We do.

Self-Righteousness as Ritual Without Christ

So, we look at well, there's a great book, I was telling Justin about it, it's by a professor by the name of Drew Johnson. It's called The Human Rights, Religion, Rituals, and Habits of Humanity. And it's an interesting book, because it does deal with kind of the psychology of humanity, of how we have certain habits and rituals that we create, and we don't even realize how we are programmed to do things.

Like, for instance, there was a study done that when you step into an elevator and the closed elevator door, most of the time those buttons are a placebo. They actually aren't even connected. So, if you can hit it and people keep hitting it, it actually closes.

And we have a lot of habits and rituals we do this with. And from the beginning, I'm going to say, I believe in religion, habits, and rituals, the scripture, true religion points us to Christ, Christians are called to create good habits.

And we have rituals that we participate in every Sunday, right?

Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, two things on that, just very quickly, if I can. I mean, one, we believe in corporate worship. I mean, we're instructed to do it in scripture, but in terms of just a discipline of our religion, for example, is show up to church on Sunday and worship with the saints.

But what is corporate worship about? If it's done rightly, it's about Christ and we're being pointed to him. The sacraments, like you said, you want to talk about rituals. I mean, the Lord has sanctified two of them.

That's right.

And has connected them to himself. But again, those rightly understood and administered are about what? They're about Christ.

That's right.

They're about our union with Christ. And so that's, I think that's an important distinction to make. We are not against ritual. We are not against habits. We are not against religion. We're actually in favor of all of them.

And true religion is about Jesus Christ.

That's right.

So going back to, you can look at the Apostle Paul, the Pharisees throughout all of the accounts of Christ, but specifically in John 19, since this is where I was, they were considering themselves to be right in the eyes of God, even upholding justice for God.

Because how dare this man claim to be God? So we're going to crucify him for that. They missed the sign for the substance, right? So they embraced the sign, which is the ritual of cleanliness for the sake of Passover, they missed that for the actual substance, the lamb, the actual lamb.

They missed the substance for the sign. I think that's what you mean to say.

That's what I meant to say. Exactly.

They're so wigging out. They're wigging out about the sign itself and like the 17 different ways that it needs to be observed, that they miss what the sign was about in the first place. Who is standing quite literally right in front of them.

That's right.

And they would make accusations to Christ that this man, he's a drunkard, he's a sinner, he hangs out with sinners, he spends time with them.

If he were a prophet, he wouldn't have anything to do with this woman because he would know that she's a prostitute and she should not touch him.

That's right.

So they look at their own obedience to their rituals, which some of them were right, a lot of them were added upon, they were not. I mean, Christ was being accused of breaking the law for healing on the Sabbath, which is not something that was instituted by God, no, by his father.

The point of all of this is that these are examples. As you move into the New Testament, you can see where this attitude is not just of those of the Pharisees before Christ on the cross, but it ends up transitioning even into the first Corinthians, where we're dealing with the whole chapter on love, where we are projecting how righteous we are, and yet we aren't doing things out of love.

And Paul says, if anything is not done out of love, it's of no use. And these were projecting the righteousness of those who, look how spiritual they are because of whatever gifts that they have. And I would even dare say James is a great example of this, where they were creating really a caste system of righteousness.

Those who had wealth were considered more righteous, and we were going to show favoritism towards them versus those who were of a lower status. And that's when I mean weaponizing, is that we end up using our own capacities to do habits and rituals to say, because I do these, God is more favorable of me, or I am clearly more righteous.

And so, I am going to look down upon or even use my own words to cut those who aren't living up to the same level to which I am capable of doing.

Totally. And the absurdity of that posture, a self-righteous posture where you bludgeon other people with your own righteousness effectively, because you are convinced that you have the high ground. You're looking down on other people who are not as disciplined or not as holy as you perceive yourself to be.

And then, yeah, your posture toward them is a number of things, maybe condescending, exacting, threatening. It's certainly not gentle. It's certainly not humble. It's certainly not gracious. But the absurdity of all that is that you, in trusting to some degree in your own righteousness, you are exactly the kind of person that Christ would have set himself over and against in his ministry on earth.

Now, don't misunderstand me. All of us are self-righteous in ways that we don't see, and Christ died for our self-righteousness. I mean, and he saves us from our own foolishness and trusting in ourselves more than we should.

I mean, none of us ever completely are devoid of any sense of self-righteousness. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying.

Can I give an illustration for that, Justin?

Please.

I mean, the moment you see some kind of heinous crime on the news and you're appalled by it, not by the crime, but almost a comparison of like, I can't believe that that is self-righteousness at that moment, because you have to understand when Paul says, if it's not by God's grace, I am that person.

That's what real, when you see real grace and mercy and you understand you're standing before God as only merciful and full of grace, that's where you can see the heart of it. Now, that doesn't mean you cannot be, Justin and I are highly appalled by sin, but there's a difference being appalled by the sin and casting judgment upon the sinner.

Right.

Just to finish my thought, we all tend, and this is the stupidity of self-righteousness. We tend to trust in what we're doing or not doing, and we tend to be like the Pharisee in Luke 18, who is trusting even in his own God-wrought righteousness.

He acknowledges that God has done it. God, thank you that I'm not like other men.

Right.

So we can't just say, oh, well, you know, it's God's grace in my life, as though that just solves the problem. The issue is you do not trust in yourself in any way, even if it's the work of the Holy Spirit in you.

That sounds scandalous to say, like even if God has made you more righteous in terms of your life than you once were, that is not what you trust in as the ground of your standing before the Lord. You trust in Christ only.

That's the point of Luke 18, that the one who is trusting in his own God-wrought righteousness is not justified, but the one who knows that he's a sinner and is desperate for the mercy of God is justified.

And so the stupidity and the craziness of self-righteousness is that whenever we prop ourselves up and trust in things that we're doing and trust in our own righteousness, we are acting like the people that Jesus set himself against in his earthly ministry, because what did Jesus do over and over and over again?

One of the reasons, you already mentioned that the Jews crucified Jesus because he was a blasphemer. I think one of the other reasons it becomes very clear in the gospels that they want to kill him is that they hate him because he constantly explodes their own notions of their righteousness.

And he makes it very clear because they're trusting in these things, and this is what they understand righteous living to be, and Christ constantly sets the grenade on the table and pulls the pin. And it's like, we got to get rid of this guy because he can't keep saying these things.

And I mean, yeah, you gave the illustration of the Sabbath where they would constantly try to trap him. He heals a man on the Sabbath, and it's breaking the law because of the hedge they had put around the Sabbath day.

And he looks at them, and he's like, basically, which one of you, if you even had an animal that was caught and trapped, wouldn't go get it? Of course this is permissible. Like, how insane is this that you think these ways?

And last thing I'll say about this, it's very clear when you read the gospels and you observe the posture of Christ with different groups of people. Whenever he is dealing with people who are aware of their sin and know that they're not righteous, he is gentle, tender, and compassionate, and he forgives their sins.

Whenever he deals with people who are trusting in themselves that they're righteous or think they can achieve righteousness, he crushes them with the law, and he sets himself against that kind of thinking.

And so the craziness of self-righteousness is that it is the exact opposite of what Christ came to exhort us to. He came to exhort us to come to the end of yourself. You don't have what it takes, and you need me, was the message that he heralded over and over again and what he demonstrated in his posture over and over.

Again anyway.

Well, good friend of mine and pastor, planter, Patrick Crandall, who's going to be planting a church here in about a month. We were talking about this at lunch, and he said to me, we would rather have the credit than the gift.

That's what self-righteousness produces. We want the credit before the eyes of man than we do the gift before our father. And that's what self-righteous, that's how insane it is. We want to prove we are worthy of it.

Think of it this way. When the prodigal came home, what did the father not let him do? He would not let him have any credit at all.

No, exactly. Because the prodigal son is convinced that he's going to come back as a slave.

That's right.

Yeah, here's how the conversation goes in my mind.

Yeah, go.

This is how the conversation goes in my mind. He comes up and he braces him, and the son starts talking. He says, father, he goes, hold on one minute, hey, get the fatted calf. Okay, what was that, son?

And he starts talking again. Father, I think, no, hold on one second, and the robe. Okay, well, dad, I want it to be a surrogate. Oh, hold on, and the ring.

Yeah, same way. I mean, brother, I agree. It's like, I mean, in the text, you can feel it too, because he's already got the pitch prepared, the prodigal son does. And he's probably rehearsing it over and over again as he's making his way home.

And then, yeah, what does he do? He sees his dad, his dad runs to him, and the first thing the son says is, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

And before he can even get to the whole business about, let me serve you as a slave, right, I'm going to somehow make it up to you, dad. You don't even have to treat me as a son anymore. You know, the father, like you're saying, interrupts him, bring the best robe and put it on him, put rings on his hands and shoes on his feet, kill the fattened calf, let's have a party because my son is found, you know?

And, yeah, it's crazy how we desperately, we think in terms of merit and, yeah.

Yeah.

So here's what's hard. It would be easier for the son, in his conscience, it'd be easier for the son if the father would have allowed him to work it off. It's harder for the sinner to accept full forgiveness.

And that's what's so hard about that story. We want to show God we mean business and God goes, no, there's nothing left. There is no such thing as penance. You do not pay me back. You do not earn it. You do not establish it.

Forgiveness is a gift and it always is a gift. And that's really hard for a self-righteous person to accept.

Justification by Christ’s Righteousness, Not Our Own

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

This maybe is another podcast for another day because it was a topic I was going to suggest to you today, we didn't get around to it. The fact that absolution, being absolved of our guilt and being forgiven of our sins, is something that makes people very uncomfortable.

When we start heralding on the basis of Scripture, when we start heralding that you're forgiven and you are absolved, people immediately rise up. And I'm talking about people who love God, right? I mean, people rise up and immediately get very concerned, like, brother, you might need to qualify that, you know, because man, are you not being a little reckless with, you know, forgiveness and absolution here?

And it's like, biblically, no, we're not being, because in Christ Jesus, we are forgiven and we are absolved and it's done. And like you said, it's a gift and there's nothing that we can contribute to that equation.

And lest you think that we're overstating it, I think my last line of defense in this whole conversation about self-righteousness and putting no confidence in the flesh is Philippians chapter three.

That's right.

Where the apostle Paul is over the top clear. I mean, I'm talking, John didn't even know what I meant by the top turnbuckle before, but he does now, amen. Paul really does come in from the top turnbuckle and, I mean, elbow drop on any notion of our own merit and righteousness in Philippians three, one through 11, where he talks about how we are the circumcision who put no confidence in the flesh, Philippians three, three, and then goes on to unpack what he means.

And he talks about how, though, if there was anybody who has reason to put a confidence in the flesh, he has more reasons to be confident. And he lists like seven things about his former life to illustrate the fact that he was a rock star.

Even amongst people like the Pharisees who were really good at doing the right stuff, he was elite and was crushing it in terms of a life of holiness. And then what's scandalous about Philippians three, John, and I'm happy for you to jump in with your own thoughts on this, is how Paul then goes on to say that all of the things that he had, he counts them as loss, and then he's going to go on to say that anything that I had that was gain, I counted as loss, and anything that I had, I consider it rubbish.

And he's not there renouncing the bad things about himself. He's not renouncing his possessions either, like some kind of easy or good life. It's very clear that he is renouncing his virtue, and he's renouncing his own righteousness.

And he says that, that I do not want to have a righteousness of my own, but what I want and need is the righteousness of Christ that is received by faith. It's an incredible text, man.

Go.

And this really, I think, just transitions to the second part. I think there's two types of self-righteousness. There's those who weaponize it. They become so confident.

Yeah, and wound others.

They should become so confident in their ability to perform certain actions or not to perform certain sins that they can quickly stand up on the stage and point their finger out at everyone and basically judge them.

Then there's the quiet self-righteous person who I think is a lot more introspective. They're more concerned about themselves than they are other people. They're too afraid to look out to others. So they are, I think, those who have a super tender conscience.

I know, Justin, you've talked about this to where they're always examining the house that they have built, that they live in, and they're wondering if it's going to, if the waves are going to crash it down.

I mean, to even use Jesus' illustration, right, where they're built it on sand. And Paul looks back at the house he built that was murdered by the sand. He looks at it and he goes, this entire structure, which is better than anybody's structure that's ever been built in the history of man, is smashed.

It is of no value. You guys, you have to understand when Justin and I are talking about this, we are talking about in relation to your standing before God as child, either as justified or condemned, as unrighteous or righteous.

This is what we're talking about. We cannot collapse sanctification, that process by which God is changing us and our justification, that which we are declared right in the eyes of God. People often hear what we're saying and they're saying, John, Justin, you are deemphasizing the necessity for obedience in the Christian's life.

We are saying, yes, if it's relation to your standing before God, which is what Paul is talking about, and I would even say in John 19, Jesus is always dealing with people saying, come to me, not to the law, come to me, not your own works.

And we refuse to do that as it relates to our right standing before the Father.

Two comments. First is self-righteousness is foolish and it is dangerous because it will destroy you in terms of your standing before the Lord because you cannot stand on your own merit to any degree.

I had a conversation with somebody about this recently, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, you're never going to have perfect faith. You're never going to have a moment where there's just not even a hint of self-righteousness in your mind.