Right=Wrong

What is a three sentence comment that distills the spirit of 2015 across all the media, including Facebook?

“I’m right and you’re wrong!”

“You can’t really see that your explanation is so full of holes that it even embarrasses swiss cheese? No, I’m right and you are positively lost and wrong. You will just have to live in the knowledge of my mind being more superior to yours.”

Am I right or am I right?

I’ve been involved in quite a bit of study recently and came across something that might address this issue in a way many might want to consider. In the New Testament writings there is a Greek word which the translators/interpreters have claimed to be either “righteous” or “justified.” There are obvious variants of these two words such as “righteousness” and “justification,” but these words all trickle down from the well spring of one Greek word employed by all the writers. (I could give you the word, but unless you read Greek, what difference does it make?)

Each of these two translated words, in our era, are attached or associated with a particular viewpoint which when the Greek was penned was not intended in its use. Righteous, for example, is a term that specifies a correct position according to a moral or written code of behaviors. Justified, conversely, is a term which comes from the legal field establishing innocence from accusations made from violating laws and commandments. In each of these descriptions for these words there is a “human” distinction or factor involved. What if these two “right” words are wrong?

There is an old proverb that states, “When faced with deciding between two choices, always pick the third.” Consider the use of a third word, little employed, yet vast implications follow its meaning throughout the New Testament text. That word and its variants are: rectify; rectified; and rectification. The definition means to correct a matter, bring it to a correct conclusion; to realign to a predetermined course.

Notice how the use of this word assumes that an agenda or plan was already in force before someone comes to make the correction. Notice that the corrective matter never involves those who are in the process but comes from outside of it. Note too, that once the correction is made, the process continues along as intended or predetermined.

What if we have been looking at this whole salvation matter and its results completely sideways? What if there is no possible way that we ever have been righteous according to a moral or written code of behaviors defined by the religious establishment? What if, similarly, we have never been justified, or declared innocent, through a series of laws and commandments enacted by humanity to keep peace in the community?

However, we have all been rectified by the work of the Father in Jesus Christ. We had no part in it simply because we were in the process or their creation. Their work came from outside of where we were headed and it corrected all of us to their predetermined plan. Notice that not one person missed out on this correction by not doing something right or justly. All were rectified in Christ by the cross.

If you want to understand the depth of grace, look at it from being rectified for a change. The air is much clearer here and no one can argue about their position being right, before or after the fact.