What Does It Mean to Be ‘Overly Righteous’?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday, everyone.
00:00:05.520 | Just a scheduling note before we begin today.
00:00:08.440 | You may remember three years ago, almost three years ago,
00:00:10.680 | we recorded a handful of episodes live.
00:00:14.400 | We recorded them at the Getty Worship Conference
00:00:16.520 | in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:00:18.360 | It was a great time.
00:00:19.240 | We had an hour together,
00:00:20.880 | and I think about 2,000 or so of you showed up on site
00:00:24.320 | for that event, and we're gonna do it again in one month.
00:00:28.280 | Again, at the SING Global 2022 Conference,
00:00:31.560 | and again in Nashville.
00:00:33.640 | Our live recording is a breakout session,
00:00:36.280 | and I think it's currently scheduled
00:00:37.440 | for the afternoon of September 6th,
00:00:39.680 | at Tuesday, I believe, at 1.30 p.m. local time in Nashville.
00:00:44.600 | We would love to see you there,
00:00:45.880 | and I would love to meet you there if time permits.
00:00:48.320 | So keep that date on your calendar.
00:00:51.160 | And so why does the Bible tell us
00:00:54.000 | not to be overly righteous?
00:00:57.960 | That's today's question, a sharp one,
00:00:59.780 | from a perplexed Bible reader and a pastor named Aaron.
00:01:04.080 | Hello, Pastor John, can you explain two texts to me?
00:01:06.400 | The first is this one.
00:01:08.000 | Be not overly righteous,
00:01:11.280 | which we read in Ecclesiastes 7.16,
00:01:14.080 | and square that with Peter's lofty command.
00:01:16.760 | As he who called you is holy,
00:01:18.720 | you also be holy in all your conducts.
00:01:21.120 | Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.
00:01:25.200 | That's 1 Peter 1, 15 to 16.
00:01:27.880 | What would it mean to be overly righteous?
00:01:30.000 | Is the ESV translation accurate here?
00:01:32.360 | Here's a little background story.
00:01:34.700 | I was laughing at a crude joke, and I caught myself,
00:01:37.240 | and I turned and said to my Christian friend
00:01:38.800 | that I feel guilty for laughing at it.
00:01:41.200 | He said to me, "Well, doesn't the Bible say
00:01:42.840 | "not to be overly righteous?
00:01:44.260 | "I think a little guilty laughing is fine," he said.
00:01:47.800 | He was right about the text,
00:01:48.960 | but this statement didn't sit well with me.
00:01:51.720 | How did these two texts hold together
00:01:53.720 | in your own mind, Pastor John?
00:01:55.680 | - I'm glad it didn't sit well with him.
00:01:57.400 | It doesn't sit well with me either.
00:01:59.200 | You know, my first thought when I heard this question was,
00:02:02.520 | I should not try to answer this question,
00:02:05.120 | because I'm not sure what Ecclesiastes means
00:02:10.120 | in chapter seven, verse 15 through 18.
00:02:14.040 | I remember over the years
00:02:16.840 | returning to these puzzling verses several times
00:02:20.440 | and coming away each time with all my efforts
00:02:23.220 | to read the commentaries and do the work in Hebrew,
00:02:26.820 | coming away saying, "Well, maybe."
00:02:28.960 | (both laughing)
00:02:32.200 | Maybe I've got it, but frankly, I'm still not sure.
00:02:35.840 | So my second thought was,
00:02:38.880 | well, at least I should admit that publicly,
00:02:43.400 | and I should make the difficult effort, I think,
00:02:48.040 | because there are a lot of verses in Ecclesiastes
00:02:50.920 | that I'm not sure about.
00:02:52.240 | The whole book is a little bit of a puzzle to me.
00:02:56.720 | But I think in all fairness, I should give it a try
00:03:00.400 | so that we all have at least one plausible interpretation,
00:03:05.400 | even if we may not be sure it's the only right one.
00:03:12.200 | So here are the verses.
00:03:14.160 | In my vain life, I have seen everything.
00:03:16.840 | There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness,
00:03:21.840 | and there's a wicked man
00:03:23.200 | who prolongs his life in his evil doing.
00:03:27.240 | Be not overly righteous.
00:03:29.840 | Do not make yourself too wise.
00:03:32.580 | Why should you destroy yourself?
00:03:34.540 | Be not overly wicked.
00:03:37.040 | Neither be a fool.
00:03:40.000 | Why should you die before your time?
00:03:42.200 | It is good that you should take hold of this,
00:03:46.080 | and from that withhold not your hand,
00:03:50.480 | for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.
00:03:54.640 | My, my, my.
00:03:56.320 | Now, without any context,
00:04:00.160 | and without any sense of what this author says elsewhere
00:04:04.000 | about righteousness and wickedness,
00:04:07.800 | I suppose you could say that these verses mean,
00:04:11.340 | well, be a little bit unrighteous.
00:04:13.440 | You know, tell a few dirty jokes.
00:04:15.520 | Laugh a little bit at the sinfulness
00:04:18.640 | that you see on the screen,
00:04:20.960 | and be a little bit wicked.
00:04:23.560 | Be a little bit unwise.
00:04:25.520 | I suppose you could say, well, that's what they say.
00:04:27.560 | It must mean that.
00:04:29.360 | But that would fly right in the face,
00:04:33.120 | not only of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles
00:04:37.400 | who told us that our righteousness
00:04:39.000 | better exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees,
00:04:41.040 | or we're not gonna enter the kingdom of heaven,
00:04:43.040 | Matthew 5:20, and be holy,
00:04:45.500 | because your father in heaven is holy, 1 Peter 1:16.
00:04:49.780 | It also flies in the face
00:04:52.140 | of what the writer of Ecclesiastes himself says,
00:04:56.220 | because he ends his book like this.
00:04:58.440 | "The end of the matter, all has been heard.
00:05:04.340 | Fear God and keep his commandments,
00:05:09.140 | for this is the whole duty of man."
00:05:12.220 | And he adds this, "For God will bring every deed
00:05:17.220 | into judgment with every secret thing,
00:05:23.300 | whether good or evil."
00:05:25.140 | In other words, he does not encourage,
00:05:28.420 | just a little bit, a little bit of disobedience,
00:05:32.020 | maybe just one or two commandments,
00:05:33.820 | just a white lie kind of disobedience.
00:05:37.020 | It's not what he says.
00:05:39.580 | In fact, he says, "Every deed will be brought
00:05:42.820 | into judgment, every secret thing will be found out."
00:05:47.820 | These are not the words of a man
00:05:51.180 | who thinks it is prudent to lighten up on our vigilance
00:05:56.180 | over the fullness of our obedience to God.
00:05:59.820 | So the entire Bible, plus the context of Ecclesiastes itself,
00:06:06.460 | warns us not to think he is teaching us
00:06:11.140 | to be a little bit wicked, a little bit unrighteous,
00:06:15.100 | a little bit unwise.
00:06:17.500 | So we stand back and we say,
00:06:19.060 | "Well, what on earth does it mean then?"
00:06:24.060 | The verse 16 says, "Be not overly righteous
00:06:29.060 | and do not make yourself too wise.
00:06:32.140 | Why should you destroy yourself?"
00:06:35.220 | Now, what if I paraphrased it like this?
00:06:37.700 | "Do not be greatly righteous,
00:06:43.260 | do not be righteous with the aim of great righteousness,
00:06:48.260 | and do not become bloated with wisdom."
00:06:52.660 | What would you hear in that paraphrase?
00:06:56.780 | Well, what you can hear in that paraphrase is my sense
00:07:00.660 | that what he's getting at here is not a warning
00:07:05.140 | against true righteousness and true unwisdom or wickedness,
00:07:10.140 | or not warning against avoiding wickedness, true wickedness,
00:07:16.060 | but against a kind of righteousness that is excessive
00:07:20.340 | or great in the sense of being fastidious
00:07:24.660 | or lopsided or showy.
00:07:27.940 | And as soon as I say that,
00:07:31.220 | I can't help but hear in my own words, the words of Jesus.
00:07:36.220 | And maybe that's why I'm thinking it up
00:07:38.780 | 'cause those words are tucked away at the back of my mind,
00:07:41.980 | the words of Jesus regarding
00:07:43.980 | the kind of distorted righteousness,
00:07:48.140 | perhaps he would say excessive righteousness
00:07:51.820 | of the scribes and the Pharisees.
00:07:54.860 | For example, Matthew 23, 23,
00:07:58.020 | "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,
00:08:01.340 | you tithe, mint, and dill, and cumin,
00:08:04.820 | and have neglected the weightier matters of the law,
00:08:08.500 | justice, and mercy, and faithfulness.
00:08:11.420 | These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.
00:08:14.400 | You blind guides, straining out a gnat
00:08:18.020 | and swallowing a camel."
00:08:20.720 | It's not a stretch, is it?
00:08:23.100 | To call this over much righteousness
00:08:26.460 | or excessive righteousness in an ironic way,
00:08:31.200 | righteousness that is super vigilant,
00:08:34.660 | over tithing every spice in the spice drawer,
00:08:38.540 | but neglectful of justice and mercy and faithfulness.
00:08:42.140 | We all get this.
00:08:44.340 | We use language this way.
00:08:46.780 | Jesus could have easily said with Ecclesiastes,
00:08:52.180 | "Be not overly righteous."
00:08:54.300 | That is, don't make yourself too wise
00:08:57.300 | because there is a kind of fastidious,
00:08:59.740 | lopsided, showy righteousness and wisdom
00:09:04.180 | that God abominates.
00:09:05.760 | So I don't think the point of Ecclesiastes
00:09:11.020 | is that we should be a little bit unrighteous
00:09:15.420 | or a little bit unwise,
00:09:18.100 | but rather that we should not become so preoccupied
00:09:23.100 | with the minor aspects of righteousness
00:09:26.680 | that we neglect the major aspects,
00:09:28.940 | nor should we become so caught up in clever casuistry
00:09:35.260 | to justify our blind spots,
00:09:39.420 | like the Pharisees who had all kinds of ways worked out
00:09:43.740 | to do the kind of little bit of unrighteousness
00:09:47.080 | that they wanted to do.
00:09:49.020 | And then in verse 17,
00:09:52.940 | to parallel what he has just said in verse 16,
00:09:56.420 | Ecclesiastes says, "Be not overly wicked,
00:10:01.420 | "neither be a fool.
00:10:04.540 | "Why should you die before your time?"
00:10:07.940 | I can't help but think that he provided
00:10:11.500 | this audacious parallel to being overly righteous
00:10:16.720 | in order to draw out how wrong it would be
00:10:20.680 | to interpret the previous verse any other way than ironic.
00:10:26.180 | It's just over the top, I think,
00:10:29.400 | to think he would be saying something like,
00:10:32.800 | "Just be a fool, solid, wicked person, not excessive.
00:10:39.500 | "Just fool, solid, normal, wicked, just be that."
00:10:45.580 | It's crazy, I mean, just you cannot believe
00:10:48.220 | that this writer is saying that.
00:10:50.460 | And I think he expects us to say,
00:10:51.840 | "Don't you see this is irony in the way I'm saying this?"
00:10:55.540 | So instead, I think he's saying something like,
00:10:59.200 | "Look, if you get the idea that the pendulum should swing
00:11:06.060 | "from overmuch righteousness to overmuch wickedness,
00:11:12.400 | "don't even begin to think that you can lengthen your life
00:11:15.800 | "by being a standout villain,
00:11:18.240 | "a villain who isn't just your average run-of-the-mill
00:11:21.940 | "villain, don't even begin to think that I'm suggesting
00:11:26.940 | "that you should be an overmuch wicked person.
00:11:32.100 | "It won't work, you can't save your life by being that way."
00:11:37.920 | And then at the end of that clause, he simply says,
00:11:42.040 | "Don't be a fool."
00:11:43.440 | And the reason that stands out is because he does not say,
00:11:49.620 | "Don't be an overmuch fool,"
00:11:51.480 | or "Don't be an excessive fool."
00:11:55.220 | He said that about righteousness,
00:11:57.400 | he said that about wickedness,
00:11:59.380 | he doesn't say it about fool.
00:12:02.160 | And I think it's his way of saying,
00:12:04.700 | "Hey, do you get what I've been saying?
00:12:08.640 | "Only a fool would miss what I'm saying."
00:12:11.980 | By thinking I'm commending a little bit of unrighteousness,
00:12:16.380 | a little bit of wickedness.
00:12:18.600 | But just a couple of cautions here at the end
00:12:22.780 | about difficult passages of scripture,
00:12:25.300 | because this is one.
00:12:27.100 | First, let the things that are clear in scripture
00:12:32.100 | control your thinking,
00:12:34.820 | rather than the things that are unclear.
00:12:38.940 | You have a lifetime to get more clarity
00:12:43.020 | on the hard passages,
00:12:44.860 | but obedience is called for this afternoon, today.
00:12:48.880 | And the second thing I would say is beware of those people
00:12:52.980 | that our friend referred to,
00:12:54.860 | beware of people who latch on to unclear texts
00:12:59.860 | to justify worldly behavior.
00:13:03.820 | This is not the evidence of biblical wisdom
00:13:07.400 | or biblical righteousness.
00:13:09.780 | - Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:11.260 | And Aaron, thank you for the great question.
00:13:13.120 | Greatly appreciated that you send it in to us.
00:13:14.880 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:13:16.360 | You can ask a question of your own,
00:13:17.660 | search our growing archive,
00:13:18.600 | or subscribe to the podcast,
00:13:19.740 | all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:13:23.700 | And with that, week number 499 on the podcast concludes.
00:13:30.020 | We are gonna break for the weekend
00:13:31.540 | and return on Monday with a new episode
00:13:33.420 | as we kick off week number 500.
00:13:36.780 | Incredible, week 500 of the podcast begins on Monday.
00:13:40.500 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:42.260 | We'll see you back here in a few days.
00:13:43.760 | Have a great weekend.
00:13:44.760 | (upbeat music)
00:13:47.340 | (upbeat music)
00:13:49.920 | [BLANK_AUDIO]