Rocky Balboa, Tim Keller & "Righteousness" For Parents, Students, Cube-Worlders & Plumbers

I've been listening to some sermons by Tim Keller (aka the only pastor in the world who should ever have 40 points in his sermon--young speakers enjoy the content but ignore the delivery, you can't pull it off like he can).

Last week I was listening to a sermon where he talked about the biblical concept of 'righteousness.' In our culture this word has only negative connotations--i.e. "self-righteous."

But Keller points out that in both the Old and New Testaments, the word "righteousness" has at it's root the idea of being validated or approved of by God. And this deep longing for validation and approval is at work in all of us.

In the first Rocky movie, Rocky says that he fights and he trains not for the love of boxing but 'to know that I'm not a bum.' Rocky can't just work for the joy of the work. He has to work in order to get something else. He seeks validation and justification for his very existence through the medium of his 'work.'

This is how many of us live our lives. We can't rest. We have to justify our existence. And in the West we do this largely through our work.

But what would it mean to have already been 'validated?' What would it mean to be righteous already, apart from having to seek that righteousness or validation through what we do but through what God has freely given to us?

This would free us parents to parent without our very identity on the line as to how our kids "turn out." It would free students to learn and study and excel not out of driven-ness and anxiety but out of a deep confidence and rootedness in who they are because of what God has spoken into and over them.

And it would free all of us in the working world, whether that's ministry or plumbing or cube-world or teaching or yes, even boxing or acting, to do those things for the joy of those things.

We're not grasping/clawing/wishing for our identity to be discovered through success in anything. We have already been given our new names: righteous.

We are free to work and to rest because who we are is not decided by what we do or how well we do. Who we are has already been decided and declared. We have been accepted by our good Father. It is finished and it is very good.

In Christ, we are righteous. That is, we are already validated, approved of, and our existence is justified through nothing other than the good will of our Father who loves us and who gives us work to do not as a false prop and crutch for our souls but as a joy to enter alongside his Spirit.

That's one point (out of the 40) that's worth drilling down into.