The Double Reach of Self-Righteousness

from On Earth as it is in Heaven by Tullian Tchividjian

(Given the sermon series that I am currently doing, I thought I’d re-post
these thoughts below. They originally appeared in a post some months
ago.)

One thing the Bible makes clear is that self-righteousness is the

premier enemy of the Gospel and no group of people better embodies the
sin of self-righteousness in the Bible than the Pharisees. In fact,
Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for them, calling them
whitewashed tombs and hypocrites.

In his book The Prodigal God,
Tim Keller rightly shows that the Pharisees were the primary audience
Jesus had in mind when telling the parable of the prodigal son in Luke
15. The Pharisees are compared to the elder brother, the one in the
parable who “kept all the rules”, and did everything he was supposed to
do. The elder brother is not a long-haired, tattooed indie rocker; he’s
a clean-cut prep. He’s not a liberal; he’s a conservative. He’s not
irreligious; he’s religious. If you’ve ever read S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders,
than you’ll immediately see that the younger brother in the parable is
like a greaser, while the elder brother is like a soashe.

Now, it’s very interesting that in the Bible it’s always the immoral
person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the
prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s
the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous
older brother. Tim’s book points this out well.

There is, however, another (perhaps more subtle) side to
self-righteousness that younger brother types need to be careful of.
There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues
the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We
anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite
direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we can become self-righteous against those who are
self-righteous. Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their
parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older
brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking
flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, ”That’s right, I
know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not
good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.” See the
irony?

In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous!

Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to
the religious and the irreligious; the “buttoned down” and the
“untucked.” The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are
when it comes to our own sin. For example, it was easy for Jonah to see
the idolatry of the sailors. It was easy for him to see the perverse
ways of the Ninevites. What he couldn’t see was his own idolatry, his
own perversion. So the question is, in which direction does your
self-righteousness lean?

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace
reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both
directions!