Hunger and Thirst after Righteousness in Relationships
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God calls us to walk in good relationships with others as believers, as far as it is up to us. And through the paradigm of relationship is one way we can think about righteousness — righteousness as always treating the other rightly, full of love and truth.
I have started on a long journey of my life — to hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is an area of life in which I dearly want to grow. I think about how others have treated me: with faithfulness, with truthfulness, with forgiveness, with love, with compassion, with mercy, with grace. And I want to take the best I have received from others and start living it toward the people in my life in new and wonderful ways.
Jesus wants us to remember Him in all of our relationships. I once proposed that a relationship in my life be based on the grace of God, and I think that is a beautiful suggestion. Jesus’ grace is where we find the foundation for our very salvation. If we don’t have grace, we don’t have Christ working in us by faith. We are saved by grace through faith. Now, when I say a relationship based on grace, I simply mean that the relationship be one in which both individuals are finding their total satisfaction in Jesus.
When that happens, we can see the other through Jesus’ eyes, for we see our own neediness in sin and have our own joy in grace.
Can you imagine what this does in a relationship? Finding grace in God allows us to forgive ourselves and others. It allows us to know we are cared for, and not seek to fill ourselves with the other person. It allows us to be willing to sacrifice our desires so that the other person may have desires met.
Oh, how I do long for this kind of righteousness in my life. Scriptures warn that in the last days, people will be lovers of themselves. I see far too much of the world in me, friends. I see far too little of Christ in me. But thank God that He does credit His righteousness to me, that He does give me grace for my selfishness, and that He does lead me forward through admiration of Him.
Think of this: the God of all did not “consider” equality with God a thing to be grasped. He would have been right to demand worship, minute by minute, from all of creation every bit of the time He was on earth. That would have been fitting for Him, but He thought of us. And He decided that to provide the way of our salvation was how He wanted to treat us because of His own goodness.
Can we learn to walk in the way of the Savior who humbled Himself to death on a cross? Can we trust God to take care of our hearts and emotions so that we can consider others more highly than ourselves? This is a growth process, undoubtedly. But it is one we do well to embark upon. Let’s bring our requests to Jesus and pray that we can hunger and thirst for righteousness in our relationships. If God saw it fit to sacrifice for others, we can find it in our new-creation selves to sacrifice for our friends!
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Lianna Davis is author of Keeping the Faith: A Study in Jude and Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss. She is also a contributor to We Evangelicals and Our Mission with Cascade Books. Lianna is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She lives in Illinois with her husband and daughter. You can learn more about her writing at her website.