Matthew 5:20
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
What is righteousness? What does it mean to fulfill righteousness? Basically, in the Bible, righteousness can be described as fulfilling all that God has commanded or required of us. Righteousness includes a right relationship with the Father and Jesus Christ, as well as, our fellow man. Practically speaking, it has to do with the totality of our life and our relationships.
As you may recall, in Matthew 22:36-40, when Jesus was asked “…which is the greatest commandment, in the law”, He stated that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. It appears that righteousness is a matter of a right relationship, and this right relationship is defined in the Bible, in terms of love. It is to love God with everything we’ve got; with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind and our whole strength, as well as loving our neighbor on the same basis, as ourselves. We must treat our neighbor in the same way that you treat ourselves.
In Matthew 9:15, Jesus asked John the Baptist to baptize Him for the sake of fulfilling all righteousness. Why? Because this was commanded by God. It was an ordinance of God. And every ordinance of God is designed to have a definite effect on our relationship with Him and our relationship with our neighbor. Each of the Ten Commandment, in the Bible has either to do with our relationship with God or our relationship with our neighbor. We cannot disobey any word of God, without affecting our relationship with God and with our neighbor.
One of the primary concerns of Jesus’ ministry is that we have a right relationship with God and a right relationship with our fellow man. That requires a complete change in our lives. And the starting point of that change is repentance. Jesus preached repentance because it is the turning point from a life of sin to a righteous life. Repentance is what moves us from our old life of sin to a new life of righteousness.
