Self-Righteousness

A striking feature of our age is the rise of pure self-righteousness the kind seen in a young wife who abandoned her family yet indignantly cried, “How can he do this to me after all I’ve done for him?” or in a pampered son who, despite receiving every advantage from devoted parents, angrily insisted they had “never done anything” for him. In both cases, the moral sickness is the same: the self-righteous person sees all faults in others and none in himself. His revolutionary solution to every problem is simple everything around him must change; he must never change. He becomes his own law and judge, demanding that family, society, and even God be remade to suit his will. Scripture calls such people what they are: “pure in their own eyes, and yet not washed from their filthiness” (Prov. 30:12). No man is justified by self-made righteousness “for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16) and a culture that exalts self-righteousness courts anarchy and judgment. Only God’s righteousness saves, and only the humble seek to conform themselves to His Word rather than demanding that the world conform to theirs.