Righteousness is right: Is 48:17-19

"Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, 'I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to My commandments! Then your well-being would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like the sand, and your offspring like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from My presence.' " (Isaiah 48:17-19)

God commands us for our own benefit. God's standard of righteousness is not arbitrary. God did not haphazardly come up with His laws and commandments. God commands us to live righteously because that's the way He created us to live. When we live God's way, when we live according to his laws, we are living the way we were created to live.

When the spies that Moses sent into the promised land returned, ten of them gave a bad report of the land. Among other things, they said, "The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants." (Numbers 13:32) While they may not have known it, in this saying the spies were correct. We cannot live in the Kingdom of God by our own way. If we try to, it will chew us up and spit us out. We must live in the Kingdom of God according to God's way. The blessings of the Kingdom can only be had when we live in it according to God's way. Solomon said, "Good understanding produces favor, but the way of the treacherous is hard." (Proverbs 13:15) It is hard to live contrary to God's design for our life. When we depart from God's ways, we only find pain and heart ache. Paul said, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." (Romans 1:18) When we live a life of sin, we are living a lie. We are living contrary to the nature to which God created us. God created us for righteousness, all other lifestyles hide the truth of who we were created to be and for whom we were created.

Promises await for those who are willing to yield to God's ways, to find the pathway of righteousness, and to live their lives according to its way. "But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day." (Proverbs 4:18)

David Robison