Jehovah-tsidkenu, the Lord Our Righteousness

From Do You Know How God Loves You?

“ ‘Behold, the days come,’ saith the LORD, ‘that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ ” (Jeremiah 23:5-6)

A highway running through our town becomes two one-way streets for several blocks. When people go the wrong way, wrecks occur. If the friendly folks and the policemen decided to be nice to strangers and allow them to go up it the wrong way, disasters would result. Drivers must travel the one-way streets the right way. I don’t think the law enforcement officers are arrogant when they require the traffic to flow in one direction.

The majority of church goers in the United States today feel that the idea of having one way to get to heaven is arrogant, uncharitable, and politically incorrect. They have decided that if people are sincere, there must be more than one way. If the people following other paths should terminate their life-journeys at the destination of heaven, where they would have to spend eternity with Jesus, the God they do not know or love, they would, I believe, reject Him there. Why would He want to let uninterested, ungrateful guests into His Father’s house?

Throughout history, human beings have sought to avoid the simplest path to salvation by traveling all kinds of circuitous routes. We human beings have taken raw materials that God has given us and shaped them into objects to worship, we have found exotic alien systems of religions to follow, we have tried to attain righteousness by pretending we are capable of obeying every law of God without loving Him, or we have taken a self-absorbed and self-achieving path to pseudo-righteousness.

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6)

No matter what perspectives human beings have, there is only one Way to righteousness. As human beings, we have no true righteousness, except through the one Way...the Lord, our Righteousness, Jehovah-tsidkenu.

Our Father God is kind and loving. His nature is goodness. If there were some other way He could remedy the central problem in the world, if there were some other way He could correct the underlying sin nature of mankind, if there were some other way besides a blood sacrifice for our sins, He would not have sent His beloved Son to earth to live without material possessions and then to suffer from the ridicule of scoffers, not to mention laying down His life in a death of torture for us. If He had another way to save us besides through the blood and sacrificed His Son anyway, He would be a cruel, hateful deity; but we know He is all love, kindness, purity, life, light, and intelligence. There is only one Way.

Jehovah-tsidkenu, the Lord Our Righteousness, is all righteousness and the only provision we have to make us righteous. This name applies to the Father, the Provider; the son, the Giver; and the Holy Spirit, the constant Presence. We have no righteousness of our own except through Jehovah’s righteousness.

Copied from Do You Know How God Loves You? by the author, Mary Lou Cheatham