God is Just. Why should we cry out to the Lord in our distress? Because God is a God of justice. His eyes are upon the righteous and righteousness. And His ears attend to their cry. God desires justice from His creation because He is just. Justness is a part of His essential character. There is no falsehood with God. There is no partiality. There is no turning of the eye to oppression. God is just. And because He is essentially just in His character the righteous have great reason to come to Him for justice. This is in fact the great confidence that the righteous have, that their righteousness has not fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes. That in the end they will be repaid for their righteousness even as the wicked are repaid for their wickedness. Of course the righteousness of the righteous is not their own for they would have no reason to cry out to God for vindication. But it is His righteous standard that they uphold. It cannot be their own righteousness for why would God then fight on their behalf? Where then would be His glory? What then would be His praise? He would be nothing more than a body guard. One whose job is to protect the glory of another. Neigh but the righteousness by which the righteous is called is God’s righteousness. It is His name, it is His glory. And that is also their confidence and their hope. that His righteousness shall be in the end vindicated. That He will pursue the vindication of His own righteous standard.
God’s justness shall prevail and His righteousness shall be vindicated. This He has made clear in many other ways. The glory of His name and His holiness is His great passion. Thus to pursue His glory in our own lives is the wisest course of action. And it is an action which again will yield great reward. The righteous may unashamedly pursue God’s righteous standard because He will vindicate it Himself. And in vindicating His righteous standard, they will be vindicated.
The folly of the wicked is in assuming that their own glory is necessary. It is assuming that their own standard of righteousness is enough. However their own standard of righteousness is as transient as their own lives. It will in the end be cast aside. God will bring it to nothing. It cannot stand in comparison to His own holy and righteous Word. They may have their “portion in this life” but in the next their portion will be to drink the cup of God’s wrath and indignation against those who have scorned His righteousness and His righteous ones. Thus the wicked are short sighted. They fail to see past the reality of the moment to the reality of the next. Consequence has become an illusion to the wicked. It has dropped out of their vocabulary along with absolute and even God. For them there is only the moment of pleasure without the thought of consequence. If there were no consequence, the righteous might fail in heart however the righteousness of God reminds us that it is only His great mercy which has thus with held the flood of His wrath upon this earth. It is His mercy which has stayed His hand this long in the condemnation of the wicked. It is not for their glory. It is not for their cunning or wisdom which has wrought them success. It is the merciful hand of their creator which ought to lead them to repentance, but which because of their hard hearts has led many to both mock His very existence – by whose mercy they stand – and to mock His holy and righteous ones.
What then is the final hope of the righteous? The punishment of evildoers? No. It is our expectation but it is not our hope that they should meet what demise they are sure to who mock the Almighty. Do we seek the vindication of our own name or righteousness? No. Before God, there are none who have reason to boast in any righteousness of their own doing because before His standard we are all guilty. What then is our final hope? Our final hope is that the pursuit of God’s righteousness in this life will not be for naught. Our final hope is that because of His righteousness, “we shall see His face…[and] we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.”
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