None Like Him: 5 Attributes of GodSample

God Is Righteous

God is righteous. He is morally right and just all the time—no exceptions.

Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance who thought they were always right? Their pride sucked up the air around them, and very few people wanted to be their friend. Because they thought they were always right, they walked around judging everyone else for what they didn’t do perfectly. That is called self-righteousness—when someone sees their morality as perfect and their actions as just. Maybe you’ve been there yourself. I know I have. (Be careful, it’s an easy bug to catch.)

This isn’t who God is. He is not self-righteous. He is righteousness Himself.

Morality and justice overflow from God’s character. Moral codes, justice, and goodness wouldn’t exist without Him.

God is the standard for righteousness, and righteousness is unattainable outside of Him.

God isn’t like the self-righteousness we tend to have. He is always right and always just and has every right to flaunt every bit of it. God’s righteousness is also humble and meek. (We see this throughout Jesus’s life.) When God points out His righteousness and glory, it’s not a brag—it’s a fact. It’s not prideful. It is weighty, though. We know what is right because of Him.

The best part is that God doesn’t keep His righteousness to Himself. He doesn’t withhold it or wave His finger in our faces when we fall short of it. Instead, He extended His righteousness to us by sending His only Son to die for us so we could be clothed in His righteousness too. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

When we accept Jesus’s sacrifice as payment for our sins, God sees us as though we are covered in Jesus’s sinlessness. On our own, we are unrighteous, constantly wrong, and like chickens with our heads cut off, running around trying to prove we are good enough for God! With God, however, we are called righteous. Not because we are, but because He is.