"Rights" Or "Righteousness?"

What will it take to inspire us to change our perspective on God's purpose in our lives? Instead of using Faith as the ultimate, egocentric, "self help" plan, we are challenged to become new creatures

Real inspiration isn’t easy! I’ve become suspicious of the real, lasting power of inspiration based on mere sentiment or even “good intentions.” It always seems to be reduced to nothing more than making someone else “feel” better about “inspiring” someone else. And the sentiment disappears instantly when “real life” sets in.

So, is inspiration really possible?

Yes, I think it is, but it has to be transfigured, as all life has to be transfigured in Jesus Christ.

It has to become “exhortation.”

I love that word because it conveys something more profound than mere sentiment to actual transformation. To “exhort” is to encourage based on a deep love for the other and having only the other’s best interest at heart. The exhorter has no selfish or “marketing” motivation in mind. It is based purely on the care of the other and the desire to see the other being the free person she was created to be. True exhortation is always wholly selfless.

And it’s based on a truth more profound than mere moral behavior. It’s the difference between rights and righteousness.

Contemplate the powerful insight of “rights” instead of “righteousness,” and you’ll start unraveling the power to discern authentic spiritual health from the deluded modern notion of perpetual victimhood.

Look at our lesson today in Galatians 4:22-27:

“BRETHREN, Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in travail; for the children of the desolate one are many more than the children of her that is married.”

These Galatians had been captured by the merely “moralistic” heresy of the Judaizers, a group of early believers in Christ who were convinced you had to become a Jew and then become a Christian to ever be in the Church.

They insisted on all the old rules and regulations of Judaism, imposing them on even the Gentile converts to the Christian faith.

St. Paul heard of this situation in the church he had planted there, and he writes the severe letter to the Galatians to correct their false notion of the purpose of faith. He teaches them that the purpose of the faith isn’t merely to “reform” our behavior and make us “good” people, but something much more radical is offered to those of us who follow the Christian message of God becoming flesh so that we might become like Christ!

This message of the Christian faith is a complete break from the old and an initiation of the timeless purpose for which God created humanity in the first place: not to be good, but to become a partaker of the very Divine Nature!

(By the way, there is no way for me to emphasize this profound truth adequately. A daily contemplation of this cosmic invitation motivates me to write these devotionals so I will never forget this offer from God to be LIKE CHRIST!)

This is what the Orthodox faith calls “theosis.” It is the purpose of our spiritual labors, the goal of our love, and the center of our practice of purposeful Orthodoxy. It is not merely the “behavior modification” of a better moralism (which only feeds a self-righteous attitude) but the actual “transfiguration of we humans to become “like” Jesus Christ!

Sounds pretty impossible, doesn’t it?

That’s because it is!

But “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” (Luke 18:27). And this vision, this ultimate purpose for you and me, is essential if we are ever going to escape the slavery of an “earthbound” focus on my “rights” and ascend to the actual dignity of becoming righteous. After all, our faith calls us to say we are each the chiefest of sinners. I will never ascend to my true dignity until I, like Christ, empty myself of my ego and pride so that I might be filled with His New Life!

The Church has us look at this passage today to recall the profound transitional ministry of St. John the Baptist. In celebrating the Feast of the Conception of St. John, the Blessed Forerunner, we are invited once again to confront God undoing the “impossible” by giving a child to a barren couple, St. Zacharias and St. Elizabeth. God displays His intentions to undo the barrenness of human weakness by bringing the last and greatest Old Testament Prophet to the People of the Promise to call them to recognize and embrace the Messiah! The Conception of St. John declares God’s intention to fulfill all His promises to St. Abraham, the Father of the Chosen People, and He does this entirely in Jesus Christ.

Today, do you see the Orthodox Faith as merely some moral code meant to make you a “good neighbor,” a “good husband,” a “good wife,” or a “good worker?” Are you enslaved by this time-bound smallness that keeps you both discouraged about your “progress” or making excuses that “well, I’m not as bad as ______.” It’s time to escape the dead-end of doing “good” and enter into the hard work of being made “righteous” by practicing the faith from a motivation of love and not mere moralistic “progress.” Our egos have to succumb to the incredible humility of Christ, and our actions have to become the byproduct of our spiritual labor in living a Normal Orthodox life!

P.S. Rejoice, O barren one who has not born until now; for lo, in all truth you have conceived the lamp of the Sun, and he shall send forth his light over all the earth, which is afflicted with blindness. Dance, O Zacharias, and cry out with great boldness: The one to be born is the blessed Prophet of God Most High.

Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack.