Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; be gracious to me and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:1)

Calling out to a righteous God is a dangerous thing. Why would He want to help us who are sinners? We are not even in the same category of moral character. To be sure, we mere humans, being made in His image, can and do act at times benevolently and do the right things. But God’s righteousness dwells in a category of an infinitely greater magnitude. He is not just more righteous than we are. Though the word “righteousness” is used in reference to both God and man, His righteousness is a quantum shift beyond ours. The prophet Habakkuk’s fundamental miscalculation was this: he considered the Jews to be more righteous than the Chaldeans, the invaders whom God was planning to use to punish Israel (Hab 1:13) and considered himself to have a higher moral compass than God Himself:

Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge; and You, O Rock, have established them to correct. Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor. Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they? (Hab 1:12–13)

In our passage today, we find the psalm writer, David, calling out to “God of my righteousness.” Certainly God is righteous, but the passage is not making that point. Nor is David saying, “The God who recognizes that I am righteous.” For he knew that he was a sinner, falling far short of God’s righteous standard. No, what he is saying is this: “I come to You, God, because You are the one who has made me righteous, the one who gives me righteousness.” Anything David did that was righteous was because he served a righteous God. It is God who justifies, that is, who makes people righteous. What is obliquely seen in an OT passage like this is made clear in the NT. The apostle Paul wrote that God “demonstrate[d] … His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).

That is the kind of God we believe in, One who makes us righteous. No other conceptions of deity portray God in this way, and thus they consign people to the treadmill of trying to gain righteousness through their own good deeds. But as believers in the God of the Bible, we can approach Him as “God of my righteousness.” We are confident that He has made us righteous.

Lord, God of my righteousness, I rest secure in being made right by You.