One of Those Churchy Words  

We come to church and hear and recite words that we almost never use in our everyday conversation. If we’ve been coming to church long enough, we have a basic grasp of the meaning of those words, at least most of them. But if we’ve not been in church for very long, then not so much. And we won’t even mention how confusing it must be for the occasional visitor, whose experience in the church may be scant or totally lacking.  

We who speak about our faith need to be careful about the words we use. We want above all to communicate clearly with those to whom we are explaining our faith. This, of course, can be challenging, especially because certain “churchy” words are central to the message and therefore cannot be so easily avoided.  

One of those words is “righteousness.” It is an obscure, even archaic word, one that we do not use outside of church, but one that we cannot help but use within church. We first encounter the word in the Old Testament. In the original Hebrew it is tsedeq. If a person is tsedeq, then his or her ways are in keeping with God’s ways and commands. This is true so far as it goes, but it may still seem somewhat vague. We need an illustration that opens up for us the meaning of this important word.