Who Are the Righteous Jesus Didn’t Come to Call to Repentance?

Remember Jesus’ words in Luke 5:32 (ESV): “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance”?  The righteous are not being called to repentance.  OK.  Then Jesus says in Luke 19:10 (ESV) “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” If there are “lost” then there must be “found,” right?  I thought an investigation into this mystery was needed. 

This is no big deal for those who already knew about the “righteous” and the “found,” but for me I was assuming it was like having a Fairy Godmother and didn’t really exist.  My take on Jesus saying He had not come to call the righteous but sinners was a jab at the self-righteous Pharisees.  Apparently, I am not alone in this because the NLT takes the verse in this direction:  “I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”  There is an assumption that no “righteous” existed, nor had ever, nor ever would, and only those who were somehow deceived would have considered themselves “righteous.”    That to me was acceptable except that Jesus seemed to be referring to the “righteous” without irony.  So, I wondered are there really “righteous” out there?  The investigation began. 

Abraham is a big name in the Bible.  He would be one to check out.  He lived some 1800 years before Jesus came, but according to the Scriptures how did God view him? 

In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” Galatians 3:6 (NLT)

Simeon is called righteous and devout which doesn’t seem to be a concept here plagued by self-deception or self-aggrandizement, but a statement of fact.  “Could it be?” I asked myself.  I was finding that there were real “righteous” ones on the earth.  “Could it be that Jesus did not, in fact, come for the righteous, but sinners?”  It seems so.

Abraham is considered righteous.  So there is the possibility of a person being righteous.  The Letter to the Galatians was written by the Apostle Paul following Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection.  Paul was familiar with Jesus’ meaning of righteousness.  Paul was referencing the account of Abraham recorded in the book of Genesis which Jesus was fully versed on.  And, yet, knowing Jesus’ meaning and usage of the term “righteous” Paul was confident to say Abraham, a human being of the line of Adam, was “righteous.”  “Well,” I thought, “that is huge.” 

Another personage of the Old Testament who seems to be “righteous” is Job.  From the first lines of the first chapter of Job there is this:  There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

Job appears to be a man who has a right relationship with God and lives it.  He isn’t deceiving himself or pretending to be something he isn’t.  The text reveals this is God’s view of Job and even Satan recognizes it to be real.

 

I began to see that being “righteous” is possible, and was acknowledged by God, by heavenly beings and by others.  “But,” I considered, “that was a long time before Jesus’ time, and maybe the real “righteous” were gone by the time He shows up.”  The investigation continued because I needed to find out if there were “righteous” at the time of Jesus.

 

The opening paragraphs of Luke’s Gospel point to a righteous couple.  In fact, they were relatives of Jesus.  This is what I found:

 

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.  Luke 1:5-6 (ESV)

“Whoa,” I thought, “what a couple they are both righteous before God.”  These are people who are “righteous” in Jesus’ time.  They are the parents of His cousin John.  John the Baptist is blessed and a blessing.  Jesus said John was the greatest of the prophets. Was John righteous?  Mary, Jesus’ mother, is called the favored one of God, and she visits Elizabeth who is moved that the mother of her Lord should visit.  Is Mary righteous?  Joseph is called a just man and wanted to do the right thing by Mary.  When he heard from the Lord about what God was doing he immediately joined in with God’s plan married Mary and became the earthly father of Jesus.  Is Joseph righteous?  I wondered what else I might find.

 

After Jesus was born he was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem.  While Mary and Joseph took their baby through the crowd they are approached by a man.  It is said of him in Luke 2:25: Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

 

Going on, I had more questions.  About the “found” who were not the “lost.” “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”   To find the “found” I thought I would start with the “lost.” What about the “lost?”  Not the convoluted Lost TV show, but the “lost” Jesus came to find.  Jesus gave three snapshots of the lost in Luke 15.  One is a sheep, one is a coin and one is a son.  With the sheep and the coin a great search goes on and then great rejoicing upon having found the sheep and the coin.  The son is different.  He is allowed to wander far and through self-discovery come to his senses and return, but, as in the other snapshots, there is great rejoicing.

 

“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?” Luke 15:4 (NLT)

The context given is that Jesus is spending time with sinners and the Pharisees don’t like it.  So Jesus tells these stories.  And He sums them up similarly.  Here is His statement on the finding of the sheep. “In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!”  Luke 15:7 (NLT)

I had to think about my take on that.  In my mind the lost sinner was glorious and the righteous who hadn’t strayed were somehow disgusting.  Weird, I know.  That isn’t what Jesus is saying, but I had determined the “righteous” were the evil-hypocritical-self-deceived-holier-than-thou-Pharisees.  So in my thinking a broken sewer line smelled better than the “righteous.”  Wrong.  I was wrong.  And I hate when that happens.  Jesus is saying something different than what I had thought.  Here are some of my observations.

 

There are more righteous than those lost.  99 and 1. 9 and 1.  Family and 1.  I had in my mind the issue was all were lost and Jesus had come to fix that.  But that isn’t what He says.

 

There is joy over the righteous and a party (more joy) for the returning one. I pictured joy for the returned one and disgust for the righteous-never-strayed bunch, but that isn’t what Jesus said at all.

 

The “found” ones are the “righteous” ones, and my investigation comes together.  They exist.  God acknowledges them.  Jesus has come for the ones who strayed away not because He thinks less of the righteous, but because they are already His.

 

The investigation has led me on a path that uncovered some beautiful new areas of who God is and what Jesus did.  The puzzling pieces of Scripture fit together better.  And, even so, I have to wrestle with thoughts of other views that come up inside.  It is agonizing letting go of long held opinions even when Scripture leads another direction.  The investigation is worth it.  There is more to investigate on the theme of the “righteous,” but this is enough for now.