Righteous Standards
of Measurement

What is the stan­dard by which you mea­sure oth­ers? If any­one’s stan­dard—any­one’s sys­tem of mea­sur­ing the good­ness or worth of some­one else—is un­able to mea­sure the good­ness or worth of the one per­form­ing the mea­sure­ment, it is an un­right­eous stan­dard.

An ac­cu­rate scale will mea­sure both the goods of oth­ers and the goods of the own­er of the scale ac­cu­rate­ly. If it did not, it would be faulty. It would not be a re­li­able in­di­ca­tor of the weight of the ob­ject placed on it.

If only there were an ac­cu­rate sys­tem for mea­sur­ing hu­man good­ness that did not fa­vor one man over an­oth­er!

Thank­ful­ly, God has giv­en us such a stan­dard in the Ten Com­mand­ments. The first of which is: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

If some­one says they love good­ness but does not love God, they fail this first, great­est test — and what­ev­er good­ness they claim to have is cor­rupt. You can­not say you love good­ness and fail to love the God who is good. And every­one has failed to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

There­fore, uni­ver­sal­ly, even at this first point, every sin­gle hu­man is de­clared to be wicked, un­right­eous, cor­rupt. We fail to love that which is good, be­cause we, our­selves, are not good.

One of God’s pur­pos­es in giv­ing the law, the scrip­ture says, is to shut the mouths of all mankind. Mankind is here—sin­ful man—bick­er­ing with one an­oth­er, ar­gu­ing with one an­oth­er about who is right­eous, who is good, who is wor­thy of praise. And God ef­fec­tive­ly says to the whole hu­man race: “Shut your mouths. None of you are good. Stop cre­at­ing false sys­tems of mea­sure­ment that you use and wield against one an­oth­er. You are all evil. I am the only good one.”

Of course, sin­ful man does not like this mes­sage. Sin­ful man wants to hold on to the idea that he is good, so he can look down on oth­ers, hold pow­er over them, and feel right­eous about him­self—or to fit into some struc­ture of pow­er that the world has made. But this is whol­ly in­com­pat­i­ble with re­al­i­ty. What is true is what the scrip­ture says: there is none right­eous, no, not one. Not a sin­gle one of us. And it is hypocrisy for us to judge and con­demn one an­oth­er for the very things that we prac­tice.

If you have a sys­tem of mea­sure­ment that says every­one who lies is evil, but you only ap­ply that sys­tem to oth­ers and not to your­self, it is worth­less. Your sys­tem of mea­sure­ment is ac­tu­al­ly, “Every­one who lies, ex­cept for me, is evil.” You can see the ab­solute ridicu­lous­ness, in­jus­tice, and un­right­eous­ness of that state­ment.

Here’s an ex­per­i­ment:

Ask an un­re­gen­er­ate per­son whether, in an­cient times, God was right­eous to de­stroy a na­tion of sin­ners. Most peo­ple will say, “No, he was not right­eous to kill them. How dare he!” So ask the ques­tion again.

“In an­cient times, God killed a na­tion of peo­ple who slept with their daugh­ters, had sex with an­i­mals, ate dis­gust­ing, de­cay­ing road­kill, and sac­ri­ficed their chil­dren by fire to the false god Molek. Was God right­eous to kill this peo­ple?”

If they con­tin­ue to de­clare that God is un­right­eous, ask them, “Which of these things dis­qual­i­fies that na­tion from pun­ish­ment? Ei­ther God was right­eous in re­mov­ing them from the face of the earth, or he was un­right­eous in re­mov­ing them from the face of the earth. But if he was un­right­eous to re­move them from the face of the earth, then the deeds they were do­ing must have been right­eous. So, is it right­eous for men to have sex with their daugh­ters? Is it right­eous for men to have sex with an­i­mals? Is it right­eous for fa­thers and moth­ers to burn their chil­dren alive to a false god?” If they say yes—if they con­tin­ue to ar­gue that God was un­right­eous in de­stroy­ing this peo­ple—they are giv­ing their ap­proval to all of these evil, wretched things.

A per­son may then ar­gue that this is dif­fer­ent from telling a lie, or sim­ply be­ing an­gry at some­one. Is a judge who only en­forces the weight­i­er laws, or who only pun­ish­es some wrong­do­ers, a right­eous judge?

They may con­tin­ue to ar­gue. Ex­plain that God is an­gry at mankind for all of their un­right­eous­ness—not just some of it.

Some­one may re­spond, “It’s not right for God to send peo­ple to hell for ly­ing, and also send peo­ple to hell for mass mur­der.”

To the con­trary, it is ex­treme­ly right­eous. There is one law giv­en to all mankind. There is one pun­ish­ment for every trans­gres­sion of the law. There is no un­fair­ness what­so­ev­er. Every act of un­right­eous­ness, every thought of un­right­eous­ness, has the same out­come. It is per­fect eq­ui­ty.

Af­ter shut­ting the mouths of all mankind, af­ter im­pris­on­ing all un­der sin, as Paul has said, the beau­ty and sweet­ness and glo­ry of the gospel be­comes ev­i­dent, and bar­ri­ers be­tween a man and his broth­er from an­oth­er creed or na­tion dis­solve. When a per­son sees that he him­self is wicked, and that God is good, his weapons for wag­ing war against his fel­low men are dis­card­ed and ren­dered im­po­tent. Yes, per­haps his sharp tongue could be used to cut an­oth­er one down, but he has be­come so dev­as­tat­ed at his own fail­ing that he does not have the en­er­gy to wage war against his broth­er. And his de­sires to do evil are re­placed by de­sires to do good.

You see the wis­dom of God in this. Man, in his pride, would ex­alt him­self to the throne of heav­en and mer­ci­less­ly slay his fel­low man for crimes that he him­self com­mits. But God throws the pride of man to the dirt—with all of its glit­ter, all of its pomp, and all of its glam­our—he throws it to the ground. He alone is right­eous. He alone is God. And he goes so far as to be­come man him­self, ful­fill­ing his own law per­fect­ly, to prove his di­vin­i­ty, grace, and good­ness.