The Illusion of Self-Righteousness

This is a series of brief devotional articles on The Orthodox Catechism (“OC”), a Particular Baptist document written by Baptist pastor Hercules Collins in 1680. Read the series.

When confronted with a moral failure, our instinct is to minimize or to blame-shift. Yes, we shouldn’t have said this, but it only happened because you said that. No, we haven’t quite gotten around to fixing the car like we promised, but that’s because you keep using it every Saturday. Although these are silly little examples, the pattern holds true for the larger things.

Jesus summed up the law and the prophets under two heads; (a) love God with everything you have—heart, soul, mind, and strength—and (b) love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37-40). How well do we follow these summary principles? The catechism question before us now is like a mirror that strips away all our self-righteousness. It leaves us, as it were, ashamed and defenseless, alone with the truth about ourselves:

Question 5: Can you live up to all this perfectly?

Answer 5: No. I have a natural tendency to hate God¹ and my neighbor.²

Now the minimizing bit comes into play.

• Living up to all this perfectly? “Well, nobody is perfect …” we muse. But, compared to the other guy, I’m not in bad shape at all.
• A natural tendency? Well, again, nobody is perfect.
• Hating God and our neighbor? Hate is a strong word. I love God, and I don’t really hate anybody.

Unfortunately, the minimizing doesn’t work here. Holiness isn’t graded on a curve. In the same way that a woman either is or is not pregnant, and a man either is or is not a father, you either are or are not holy and righteous. To be “holy” is to be pure and perfect—without moral spot or blemish. To be “righteous” means to be morally upright in accordance with God’s standards. The catechism answer says you’ve missed that boat. We all have.

In what way have we missed that boat?

Because we all have a natural tendency to hate God and our neighbor. This tendency is natural because it’s innate, it’s our default setting, it isn’t a learned behavior—it’s just the way we are. The apostle Paul, a Jewish man, pointed out that even Jews had no advantage with God on this point: “Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin” (Rom 3:9).

Paul’s words are important and you should read them again. We’re “under the power of” this malevolent force called sin, which is basically a contagion or disease of pervasive selfishness and narcissism. Because sin is selfishness—not simply “self-love” but more like “self-worship at all costs”³—it has a marvelous capacity for self-deception and self-righteousness. We think we’re fine, but we’re not. This is why God must rip the veil away from our hearts and minds so the gospel light can shine in and do its work (2 Cor 4:3-6).

Now we turn to hate. Yes, it’s a strong word. It means something like “extreme enmity” and “active hostility.”⁴ Who wants to fess up to that? But lest we assume we have plenty of wiggle-room here, Jesus takes a sledgehammer to our rationalizations. God’s standards aren’t about externals—they’re about internal affections that show in an external way. This means that anger, contempt, and ridicule are the same as murder because they all come from an inner hostility and ill-will towards that other person (Mt 5:21-22). Likewise, adultery isn’t simply the sexual act but also the sexual thought (Mt 5:27-28).

What the catechism is driving at is that, in our hearts, we do not love God and our neighbor perfectly. We fail here because sin is that pervasive selfishness and narcissism that naturally reigns in our hearts and minds. And, because holiness (like pregnancy and fatherhood) is a “yes or no” status, that means we’ve each fallen short.

So, that’s where we are. It brings us round to Questions 2 and 3—the law of God tells us how great our sin and misery are. This naturally prompts a new question: why would God make us to be in such a terrible condition? If a manufacturer makes a bad product, it issues a recall and fixes the problem. Why hasn’t God issued a recall on us? Did he make a mistake with us? Is he holding us responsible for his own design flaws? We turn to these questions next time.