Un-Righteous

Published: Feb. 22, 2023, midnight

b'I started noticing the word \\u201cunrighteousness\\u201d in the Bible. I thought, why\\nnot use a stronger word like wickedness or depravity? Why just put an \\u201cun\\u201d\\nin front of righteousness? But I\\u2019m not an ancient language scholar, and I\\nassume Bible translation teams know what they\\u2019re doing. So, I let the\\nquestion remain in my mind, holding it loosely to see if God might answer.\\n.\\nAnd soon after, I noticed something. A young deer, lifeless, discarded on\\nthe side of the road. It was probably hit by a car on its way to the woods.\\nMaybe it was following its mother but got scared and froze. Maybe the\\ndriver stopped. Maybe they didn\\u2019t. But now, the body that was once warm and\\nbreathing was now cold, its insides turned outward. Pink. Those innards,\\nthose intestines and kidneys, should have been tucked safely inside the\\ndeer\\u2019s belly. Kept warm by skin and fur. Instead, someone had draped an old\\ncoat over the dead body to hide its ugliness. But the wind snatched the\\ncoat away.\\n.\\nUn-righteous. A perversion of what is right and good. Wholeness become\\nun-wholeness. Life become death. Innocence become collateral damage. That\\u2019s\\nwhat sin does. Sin takes what is good and lovely and turns its insides out.\\nThat\\u2019s what happened to the world when the first humans went their own way\\nagainst God. All that God made, everything that existed, was good. But our\\nsin made things un-good. Twisted. Broken. Violent. Un-righteous. Now,\\ninstead of doing good, we kill. We steal. We destroy. We let our greed\\ntrample the innocent. We revert to self-preservation and accusation. We do\\nwhat is un-righteous.\\n.\\nBut God still loves His creation. He still loves us. And He came to save\\nus. When Jesus lived among us, He embodied righteousness. All He did was\\ngood, through and through. No mixed motives, no \\u201cends-justify-the-means\\u201d\\nrationale. And yet, we killed Him. We turned His insides out, ripped at His\\nflesh and exposed His blood to the sky. And He let us. Because He wanted to\\nforgive us. . . and set His creation free from unrighteousness. Though\\nJesus\\u2019s body hung lifeless on a cross, though Joseph of Arimathea and\\nNicodemus wrapped Jesus\\u2019s cold corpse with spices and strips of linen\\nbefore the tomb was sealed, death was not the end. Unrighteousness would\\nnot prevail. Because on the third day, Jesus the Righteous One rose from\\nthe dead. \\u2022 Hannah Howe\\n.\\n\\u2022 Where have you seen unrighteousness in the world or in your own life?\\n.\\nIf we\\u2019ve put our trust in Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit in us, who\\nempowers us to live righteously. And when Jesus returns, He will put an end\\nto all unrighteousness and we will live with Him forever in restored\\ncreation. How can these truths give us hope? \\n.\\nFor Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,\\nto bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the\\nSpirit. 1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)\\n\\xa0\\nRead Verses:\\nJohn.10.10|John.19.38-John.19.42|Rom.8.18-Rom.8.22|1John.1.9|1Pet.3.18'