Lydia Tian Rectifies Our View of Righteousness

Student ministry is one of the most overlooked blessings at Judah. The opportunity to hear and learn from our peers is nothing short of extraordinary. On April 10, Lydia Tian preached to the student body on the righteousness and holiness of Jesus. Here is what she shared:

The world is broken. You are broken, and I am broken too. The solution to all our brokenness is the righteousness of Jesus. Our (self-)“righteousness” leads to our brokenness. Jesus’s righteousness leads to life. His righteousness is for everyone. It uplifts the one who seeks after it. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). 

Yet not everyone chooses Jesus and His righteousness. Some think His righteousness is straight-up “rules.” Others think their own righteousness is good enough. The truth is His righteousness is the only righteousness that will suffice. None of us are perfect in any aspect, but Jesus is perfect in every aspect. Jesus taught in Matthew 7:17-18, “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” Jesus is a good tree; He bears good fruit. The rest of us are diseased trees; our societies and our lives do not bear good fruit. 

We might think we are right, but almost anything can seem right in our eyes. Proverbs 21:2 says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.” There must be a higher standard for us to know what is truly righteous. The only way to focus our lives and to live well is to know that true righteousness can only come from God. Except for Jesus, no one on earth can put their hand on their heart and say they never had an evil thought, never chose a wrong path, never wronged a fellow human being, never ignored the love of God. Everyone’s heart is selfish, and what comes out of us is evil. But what comes out of Jesus is good. The only way to fix the brokenness of the world and of our own hearts is to fix our eyes on Jesus and to seek His righteousness. 

Jesus is holy. By saying He is holy, I mean He is spotless, without sin. He is pure like fine gold. He is blameless and righteous in every way. All who knew Jesus while He walked the paths of ancient Israel said that He had never sinned nor had done anything wrong. The author of Hebrews testifies, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The apostle John, who knew Jesus intimately, testifies that “he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him, there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). Jesus’s close friend Simon Peter said, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). Charles Edward Jefferson, in his study The Character of Jesus, puts these testimonies together, saying, “It is inconceivable that in so short a time a great body of intelligent men and women should have been worshipping him as God and singing hymns of praise to him if he had not made upon them the impression that he was holy.”

The same testimony emerges from the people who know Jesus today. Everyone who truly spends time seeking Jesus confesses with their heart that He is always good. All who know you and me can report many things we did wrong in the past day. Who can call us spotless, without sin? But all the people who know Jesus testify that He is spotless, without sin. Anyone can know Jesus and His righteousness by seeking Him with all their heart. The question is, do we really want to?

It’s not just that everyone who knew Jesus said that He was holy. Jesus himself acts as if He is without sin. He talks as if He is perfect. Which one of us would dare say that? If we did, we would be arrogant and blind with pride. Yet Jesus dares to say these things. In John 8:29, Jesus said of Himself and the Father, “I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” Later, in verse 46, Jesus asked, “Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” In John 14:9, Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” In multiple places, Jesus forgives sin. In Luke 5:20, Jesus said to a paralyzed man, “Friend, your sins are forgiven,” and then Jesus healed the man’s legs. In Luke 7:48, Jesus said to a sinful woman, “Your sins are forgiven.” In John 8:11, Jesus saved a woman out of people’s hands and said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” Who that you and I know of could say that and not make people feel weird? Only Jesus. When Jesus did it, He did it with authority, and people followed Him for that reason. 

Jesus also identified Himself as being above all men. In Matthew 12:42, Jesus said, “Behold, something greater than Solomon is here,” referring to Himself. In Mark 2:10, Jesus answered the Pharisees by saying, “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Jesus declares His identity as the Messiah to them, by using the prophet Daniel’s “Son of Man” name for the Messiah. Unless Jesus had full confidence in who and what He is, all of this is blasphemy. In 1 John 1:8, the apostle John writes, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” According to God’s word, if what Jesus said is not true, then He sinned and deceived Himself by lying. Yet Jesus claims to be totally righteous. If He is totally righteous, then He can be our example, our savior, and our king. But if He’s not totally righteous, then He’s not qualified to be anything special. He’d be just another person overestimating His own righteousness, just another person telling sadly deluded lies.

Jesus’s holiness is far above our understanding, because holiness comes from God. In 1 Peter 1:16, the apostle Peter gave God’s command that “you shall be holy, for I am holy.” In the Greek, “holy” means set apart for a special purpose. It means to be different. We are called to be set apart from the world, to be different from the world and useful to our God, to be a part of His special purpose and plans. Only by God’s power, by his Holy Spirit, can we do that. Holiness is above anything we can identify in ourselves. Holiness is a supernatural character that we don’t have, and we can’t get it except through God. 

When we encounter this absolute holiness that we have never seen on earth, our reaction will be supernatural. When people truly encounter the holiness of Jesus, they are not even strong enough to stand in front of Him. When Peter encountered Jesus, he fell on his knees and told Jesus to depart from him, because, he said, “I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Who in our life that we’ve ever seen is like whom Peter encountered? There is no one but Jesus. In Mark 4:35-41, when the raging sea ceased by one simple command of Jesus, “Peace, be still,” the disciples are filled with awe and full of wonder. Even the criminal on the cross shows that Jesus is holy. The criminal, repenting of his own mocking in Matthew 27:38-44, rebuked the other criminal for mocking Jesus. Something about the way Jesus suffered gave that man the fear of God. The criminal recognized Jesus’s holiness by confessing that Jesus is God, that Jesus has done nothing wrong, and that Jesus will “come into his kingdom” (Luke 23:40-42). The criminal did not just recognize Jesus's holiness; he knew that he needed Jesus’s holiness to make him clean and go into heaven. These people’s reaction when they encounter Jesus all point to Jesus as the holy one. Even the criminal knows Jesus is spotless in sin, for Jesus’s holiness is undeniable. As the Roman centurion said after Jesus died, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:47). Jesus is above all of us, and we need Him just like the criminal on the cross. 

Witnesses from Jesus’s time all confess that Jesus is holy and righteous, that He is the one who comes with authority. Jesus identifies Himself as sinless and holy. And the Father too testifies that Jesus has found favor in His eyes. For the Spirit of God is the origin where Jesus’s righteousness flows from. Jesus, in John 5:26-27, says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” Jesus does everything for the Father, so He stands firm on everything the Father says and does. In John 5:30, Jesus said, “As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.”

Jesus is not just saying all this. He proved what He said before He started His ministry, and He proved what He said at the end of His ministry. In Matthew 4:10, when Jesus was fasting in the wilderness, He did not fall into Satan’s trap. To defend Himself, Jesus quotes the word of God: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” He is fully relying on the Father and doing God’s will only. Jesus dedicated Himself to doing God’s ministry. Jesus also proved Himself by completing God’s work. In Luke 22:42, Jesus asked God in tears, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Facing such a great task, Jesus chooses to fully give Himself up for God’s plan and for us. Jesus lived for the Father, so the Father is with Him. Jesus is holy and righteous in the Father’s eyes. In Matthew 3:17, after Jesus gets baptized, God opens the sky and says to the earth, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” In Mark 9:7, the Father says to Jesus’s disciples, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” God again and again reveals Himself through Jesus and to Jesus. God commanded us to listen to Jesus. 

Jesus’s righteousness is not just telling us what is right or wrong; Jesus makes our wrong things right through Himself. His righteousness is selfless and generous. He never complained once about giving up His life for us, yet we complain every day. For Him, our heart being made right through Him is the most important thing. He wants to make us right in the Father’s eyes. Whose righteousness is greater than this? Does not our righteousness focus only on what is right in our own eyes and seek only what is good for our flesh? But Jesus is holy. He seeks what is right in the Father’s eyes and does what is good for us. Does our righteousness fulfill our emptiness, fix our brokenness, and bring us justice? No, it does not. But Jesus is holy. He is blameless and spotless in sin, and He is here to make us more like Him. And that is exactly what we need in this broken world. 

Reading more about Jesus from all four gospels, the more I see His righteousness. His righteousness is a raging sea, a gentle wind, and a bright light. Jesus’s righteousness is brutal toward those who do evil yet do not repent, but it is gentle to the one who is poor. His righteousness is justice. As humans, our righteousness is unjust and shaky. Our righteousness changes based on our feelings and the feelings of the world; it changes every day. Yet Jesus stands firm on everything the Father says and does. No matter from which perspective we look, Jesus is perfect and perfectly righteous. 

Lydia challenged the whole student body to recognize the brokenness within us. Human imperfection and sin forces the realization that no worldly offering can provide us with true and complete righteousness. This can only be achieved through Jesus. Lydia’s sermon provided biblical evidence again and again to prove this.

 —Liza Carder, class of ’26