Audio Transcript

Why does the Bible tell us not to be overly righteous? That is today’s question. It’s a sharp one from a perplexed Bible reader and pastor named Aaron. “Hello, Pastor John! Can you explain two texts to me? The first is this: ‘Be not overly righteous,’ which we read in Ecclesiastes 7:16. And square that with Peter’s lofty command: ‘As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy”’ (1 Peter 1:15–16). What would it mean to be ‘overly righteous’? Is the ESV translation accurate here? Here’s a little background story: I was laughing at a crude joke. I caught myself, and I turned and said to my Christian friend that I felt guilty for laughing at it. He said to me, ‘Well, doesn’t the Bible say not to be overly righteous? I think a little guilty laughing is fine.’ He was right about the text. But this statement didn’t sit well with me. How do these two texts hold together in your own mind, Pastor John?”

I’m glad it didn’t sit well with him. It doesn’t sit well with me either. My first thought when I heard this question was, “I should not try to answer this question, because I’m not sure what Ecclesiastes 7:15–18 means.” I remember over the years returning to these puzzling verses several times and coming away each time, after all my efforts to read the commentaries and do the work in Hebrew, saying, “Well, maybe I’ve got it, but frankly, I’m still not sure.” So, my second thought was, “Well, at least I should admit that publicly.” And I should make the difficult effort, I think, because there are a lot of verses in Ecclesiastes that I’m not sure about. The whole book is a little bit of a puzzle to me. But I think, in all fairness, I should give it a try so that we all have at least one plausible interpretation, even if we may not be sure it’s the only right one.

So here is Ecclesiastes 7:15–18:

In my vain life, I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.

Slightly Unrighteous?

Now, without any context and without any sense of what this author says elsewhere about righteousness and wickedness, I suppose you could say that these verses mean, “Well, be a little bit unrighteous: tell a few dirty jokes; laugh a little bit at the sinfulness that you see on the screen; be a little bit wicked; be a little bit unwise.” I suppose you could say, “Well, it’s what they say, and it must mean that.”

But that would fly right in the face not only of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, who told us that our righteousness better exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees or we’re not going to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20), and “be holy because your Father in heaven is holy” (see 1 Peter 1:16–17); it also flies in the face of what the writer of Ecclesiastes himself says, because he ends his book like this: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And he adds this: “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). In other words, he does not encourage just a little bit of disobedience — maybe just one or two commandments, or just a little white lie. That’s not what he says. In fact, he says every deed will be brought into judgment; every secret thing will be found out.

These are not the words of a man who thinks it is prudent to lighten up on our vigilance over the fullness of our obedience to God. The entire Bible, plus the context of Ecclesiastes itself, warns us not to think he is teaching us to be a little bit wicked, a little bit unrighteous, a little bit unwise. So we stand back and we say, “Well, what on earth does it mean, then?” Ecclesiastes 7:16 says, “Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

Righteousness of the Pharisees

Now, what if I paraphrased it like this? “Do not be greatly righteous, and do not be righteous with the aim of great righteousness, and do not become bloated with wisdom.” What would you hear in that paraphrase? Well, what you can hear in that paraphrase is my sense that what he’s getting at here is not a warning against true righteousness, or not a warning against avoiding wickedness, true wickedness, but a warning against a kind of righteousness that is excessive or great in the sense of being fastidious or lopsided or showy.

And as soon as I say that, I can’t help but hear in my own words the words of Jesus — and maybe that’s why I’m thinking it up, because those words are tucked away at the back of my mind — regarding the kind of distorted righteousness (perhaps he would say excessive righteousness), of the scribes and the Pharisees.

For example, Matthew 23:23–24:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

“We should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects.”

It’s not a stretch, is it, to call this over-much righteousness or excessive righteousness in an ironic way — righteousness that is super-vigilant over tithing every spice in the spice drawer, but neglectful of justice and mercy and faithfulness.

We all get this. We use language this way. Jesus could have easily said, with Ecclesiastes, “Be not overly righteous.” That is, don’t make yourself too wise because there is a kind of fastidious, lopsided, showy righteousness and wisdom that God abominates. So I don’t think the point of Ecclesiastes is that we should be a little bit unrighteous or a little bit unwise, but rather that we should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects, nor should we become so caught up in clever casuistry to justify our blind spots, like the Pharisees who had all kinds of ways worked out to do the kind of little bit of unrighteousness that they wanted to do.

And then in verse 17, to parallel verse 16, Ecclesiastes says, “Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?” I can’t help but think that he provided this audacious parallel to being overly righteous in order to draw out how wrong it would be to interpret the previous verse any other way than ironic. It’s just over the top, I think, to suggest he would be saying something like, “Just be a full, solid, wicked person — not excessive, just full, solid, normal wicked. Just be that.” It’s crazy. I mean, you cannot believe that this writer is saying that. I think he expects us to say, “Don’t you see this as irony in the way I’m saying this?”

Don’t Be a Fool

So instead, I think he’s saying something like, “Look, if you get the idea that the pendulum should swing from over-much righteousness to over-much wickedness, don’t even begin to think that you can lengthen your life by being a standout villain, a villain who isn’t just your average run-of-the-mill villain. Don’t even begin to think that I’m suggesting that you should be an over-much wicked person. It won’t work. You can’t save your life by being that way.”

“Let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear.”

And then at the end of that clause, he simply says, “Don’t be a fool.” And the reason that stands out is because he does not say, “Don’t be an over-much fool,” or “Don’t be an excessive fool.” He said that about righteousness; he said that about wickedness. He doesn’t say it about being a fool. And I think it’s his way of saying, “Hey, do you get what I’ve been saying? Only a fool would miss what I’m saying by thinking I’m commending a little bit of unrighteousness, a little bit of wickedness.”

But just a couple of cautions here at the end about difficult passages of Scripture (because this is one). First, let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear. You have a lifetime to get more clarity on the hard passages, but obedience is called for this afternoon — today. And the second thing I would say is to beware of those people that our friend referred to: beware of people who latch onto unclear texts to justify worldly behavior. This is not the evidence of biblical wisdom or biblical righteousness.

Audio Transcript

Happy Friday, everyone. We have a good one for you today, an episode that will answer a question we get all the time. Basically, it’s this: Is our salvation an event, or is our salvation a process? Are we saved in a moment, or are we saved in a series of unfolding events? We need to work that out with open Bibles.

The question comes to us from Andrew, a listener in Jonesboro, Arkansas. “Hello, Pastor John! My brother sends me questions frequently so we can discuss them. The most recent one from him comes from Colossians 1:21–23, where it seems as if Paul is saying that salvation is a process, not an event. The only reason I have an issue with this is because he seems to think this also indicates that the ‘once saved, always saved’ teaching is incorrect, since we aren’t actually once saved but are, more accurately, continually being saved as we continue in the faith. This seems contrary to the many verses that say salvation is by faith, not works. But I still cannot completely reconcile verses such as these in Colossians. What are your thoughts?”

Well, let’s read the text because we need to have the verses right there in front of us so that we can see what the real problem is for so many people. It goes like this:

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. (Colossians 1:21–23)

Event and Process

I think we need to make the problem worse before we make it better. Andrew says that “it looks like salvation is a process, not an event,” and that this is what creates the problem of the possible loss of salvation. But actually, salvation is an event and is a process.

Salvation — that word salvation and the reality behind it — is the really big, all-encompassing word in Scripture. It includes election, predestination, redemption, propitiation, divine calling, regeneration, reconciliation, forgiveness, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. I mean, it is a big, glorious word. All of those events and processes — some are events and some are processes — are involved in how God saves us forever, and all of them are essential.

“We have been, we are being, and we will be saved.”

So, Paul says in Ephesians 2:8, “You have been saved.” And he says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “to us who are being saved.” And he says in Romans 13:11, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” So, we have been, we are being, and we will be saved — event and process forever.

God’s People Will Persevere

But that’s not what makes this text look like salvation can be lost. What makes it look like salvation can be lost is that big daunting word if in verse 23. “You . . . he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death . . . if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel.”

This is what makes so many people think, “Wow, if our present condition of being reconciled and saved and justified and regenerated — if our present condition is contingent, dependent, on our persevering or continuing in faith, then it must be true that we can lose our salvation. Or why else would there be a condition?” Now, that inference, that conclusion from the text is false. That’s not a true inference from this text. But it’s not false because there’s no condition — there really is a condition for perseverance. One must persevere.

The text says we have been reconciled if we continue in the faith. That’s a real condition. If we don’t continue in the faith — that is, if we throw away the faith, renounce Jesus Christ, turn against him and his truth, never repent — we’ll perish. That’s what John says in 1 John 2:19 about those who fall away. Here’s the absolutely crucial thing that he says: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”

Two crucial things are made clear in that text. First, if we don’t persevere in faith, we were never truly of God and of the people of God — never born of God. “They went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” — of God, of the new birth. That is, they are not born of God.

Second, if we are born of God, he says, we will persevere. We will. “If they had been of us” — that is, among those who are born of God — “they would have continued with us.” So there’s no thought of losing salvation, no thought of being born again and then being unborn again, being justified and then being unjustified, having eternal life and then it turns out it’s not eternal after all. So the question becomes, How can there be a condition in Colossians 1:23 if you can’t lose your reconciliation? How can Paul say you have been reconciled if you persevere?

Kept Through All Conditions

And the answer is that God uses such warnings to cause his children to persevere, and he secures their perseverance, he guarantees it, by his faithfulness to keep us in the faith. The Bible plainly teaches that all of those who are truly born again will in fact be saved. They will meet the condition.

“All the predestined are called, all the called are justified, all the justified are glorified — no dropouts.”

Consider just three passages. So here’s Romans 8:30. I think this is the most important. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” This is an unbroken chain of salvation. All the predestined are called, all the called are justified, all the justified are glorified — no dropouts. Eternal security of God’s predestined ones is a biblical truth.

Here’s 1 Corinthians 1:8–9, to see where it really rests, where that security rests: “[Jesus] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” So, the issue is, is God a promise keeper? Is he faithful?

And here’s Philippians 1:6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” So, what makes us eternally secure in Christ is not that there are no conditions or that salvation is not a process, not a fight to be fought and a race to be run — it is. There are conditions: “If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast . . .” (Colossians 1:23). What makes us eternally secure is the sovereign, keeping faithfulness of God.

Peter puts it like this in 1 Peter 1:5: “. . . who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In other words, God’s power sustains our faith so that we persevere and inherit what has been promised to us. And here’s the way Hebrews 3:14 says it: “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” In other words, perseverance shows that our original union with Christ was real.

And here’s the most beautiful promise of all about God’s keeping his own people:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24–25)

God Will Keep Us to the End

So, yes, yes, yes, salvation is an event and a process. Salvation is conditional upon perseverance. Nevertheless — and it’s an absolutely glorious nevertheless — it is completely certain for God’s predestined, called, justified, believing children.

Therefore, all the warnings like this one, all the warnings of the New Testament, are to be taken seriously because God uses them to keep his children vigilant in the fight of faith. We are found to be secure by how seriously we take all the promises and all the warnings of Scripture.

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” In Luke 10:20, Jesus tells his followers to rejoice that their eternal future with God is assured. It may seem odd that he commands such joy. If someone said he was sending you to a tropical paradise for an all-expenses-paid vacation, wouldn’t you rejoice without being told to do so?

And yet, there are many reasons we may not rejoice frequently or fervently in our salvation. Perhaps we’ve lost sight of the glories of heaven because we’ve become absorbed with the joys of this world. Or maybe present anxieties have jostled out future realities. It could be that we’ve been Christians for so long we can hardly remember a time when we weren’t following Jesus. Our salvation feels like a comfortable old T-shirt — safe and familiar, but not a cause for great excitement.

Here’s another possible reason for not rejoicing in our salvation: we think of our personal conversion as a normal and, therefore, boring one, as not a very big deal. I understand the sentiment: I was converted as a little boy. Unlike some of my friends, I wasn’t dramatically delivered from highly visible sins. At four years old, my drink of choice was milk or orange juice, and my most serious habit was overeating Pez. If your story is like mine, you may be tempted to consider your conversion simply as a continuation of the path you were already on, rather than as a dramatic break with your unconverted life.

Whatever the reason, Jesus comes to our aid in Luke 10. He doesn’t just command us to rejoice in our salvation; he himself rejoices over the salvation of souls. And then he provides reasons for his joy — and ours. Jesus says that our salvation is (1) the work of the Father, (2) the choice of the Son, and (3) the climax of the ages. If we press into these three realities, they can fuel our own deep and daily joy.

1. Our salvation is the work of the Father.

Your conversion moment may have looked outwardly humdrum. For me, it was kneeling with my dad and brother on a brown rug in my bedroom on Center Street in Monson, Maine. I heard no voice from heaven. The roof didn’t split open. I didn’t even get to extend my bedtime later than normal that night! Others of us can’t even point to the moment of our conversion, it seemed to happen so gradually. You just know there was a time when you didn’t love Jesus and then a time when you did.

No matter what your conversion looked or felt like, Jesus declares that it was a direct work of God the Father: “In that same hour [Jesus] rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will’” (Luke 10:21).

In the context, “these things” includes the offer of gospel peace and the coming of God’s kingdom. Jesus is saying that God has revealed the gospel to some and hidden it from others. He’s referring to an inner revelation from God whereby he causes the gospel not only to make sense to us, but also to be desirable and attractive. The only reason someone comes to faith is because God inwardly opens that person’s mind and heart to the gospel. Our salvation is the result of God’s will: “Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

Think about what this means. If you’re a Christian, it’s because God the Father willed that you would be. He was directly, personally involved in your conversion. There are no insignificant conversions, because everything God does is highly significant. I experienced a miracle on the brown rug of my childhood bedroom. I prayed to receive Jesus because the God of the universe knew me and drew me.

Notice that Jesus responds to God’s concealing and revealing work with gratitude. He thanks God, calling him “Father” to emphasize his goodness and trustworthiness and “Lord of heaven and earth” to highlight his sovereign authority. Moreover, the very joy Jesus calls for from his disciples in verse 20, he experiences and expresses in verse 21: “He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” This is a remarkable moment of intra-Trinitarian joy: the Son rejoicing in the Holy Spirit and praising the Father.

What began these fireworks of joyful gratitude? It was my prayer on the brown rug, along with every other conversion of ordinary, unimpressive people — “little children.” Jesus joyfully thanks God for your conversion, which is an exquisite miracle wrought by God’s own hand. Your salvation is the will and work of the Father.

2. Our salvation is the choice of the Son.

Jesus then provides another reason for rejoicing in our salvation. He says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father” (Luke 10:22). He then immediately identifies one of the things the Father has given him — the right to reveal God to those whom he chooses: “No one knows . . . who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” We learn three things from this remarkable verse.

First, Jesus says he “reveals” the Father. He makes God known. When we’re saved, we don’t just come to know facts — we come to know God himself. Our salvation isn’t about winning a ticket to heaven. It’s about enjoying an eternal relationship with God.

Second, only Jesus can reveal the Father to us, because only Jesus fully knows the Father. If you want to know God the Father truly and deeply, you must know him through Jesus.

Third, the only way Jesus will reveal the Father to us is if he chooses to do so. We can’t coerce Jesus to reveal the Father to us. It’s his decision.

Again, consider what this means. If you’re saved, it’s because Jesus chose to reveal God the Father to you. There’s nothing normal, boring, or humdrum about that! Your conversion is a supernatural event, a direct result of the Father’s will and the Son’s choice.

3. Our salvation is the climax of the ages.

In Luke 10:23–24, Jesus begins to speak privately to his disciples, helping them to see the extent of their enormous privilege: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Though the Old Testament prophets and kings enjoyed great access to God and his ways, they longed to see the Messiah and the coming of the kingdom of God. But it’s happening in the disciples’ day — that’s why they’re “blessed” by God.

Like the first disciples, we live after Jesus’s first coming and before his second coming, in the time of God’s inaugurated kingdom. We read in the Bible of Jesus’s words and works. We know the love of God through Jesus’s atoning death on the cross. We know the grace of God through the gospel message of justification by grace alone through faith alone. We know the power of God through Jesus’s resurrection. We know the presence of God because his Holy Spirit lives within us.

As Christians living when we do, we’re nothing special in ourselves, but we are specially blessed.

Miraculous News

Every single time the triune God writes someone’s name in heaven, it’s a divine miracle. Your conversion, whatever it looked or felt like to you, was nothing less than supernatural. There are no ordinary conversions.

And this leads us back to Jesus’s command in verse 20: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” If we understand the miracle of our conversion, then like Jesus himself we’ll respond with exuberant thanks to God. We’ll rejoice in the fatherly love and sovereign goodness of the Lord of heaven and earth.