RIGHTEOUS AND DEVOUT
Luke 2
“She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.”
“Righteous and devout” are terms that are not highly sought-after these days; in fact, they are downright old-fashioned. Along with words like “piety, sacrifice, obey, self-denial”, they are rarely found in the modern Christian vocabulary.
Part of the problem was the way Paul attacked these virtues because they were abused by the religious elite to elevate themselves while denigrating others. In Philippians 3, Paul wrote, “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
However, we must not make the mistake of thinking that religious devotion is something false to be despised, and react by tossing aside these time-honoured practices that can do much to train the mind and body to obey God. Remember Jesus telling us, in Matthew 5, “Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The modern Christian has few, if any, practices that they adopt as expressions of their faith and devotion. Everything is sacrificed on the altar of convenience and urgency. How many of us devote time everyday to pray and meditate on God’s Word, set aside a portion of our resources to give to the poor, pledge some of our time and energy to serve God in practical ways—serving food to the poor in a soup kitchen, giving tuition to refugee children, visiting the sick in hospital, or even prisoners—and adopt a lifestyle of discipline, to live with less and to learn to be happy with what we have rather than crave after the things that the rest of the world crave after?
From their practices, Joseph and Mary were devout Jews, making sure that they comply with and obey the requirements of the Law, and along the way, they brought up Jesus to be someone who deeply identified with his faith, with a love for God’s word and the intelligence to inquire and understand better what God desires of man.
We see God honouring these two individuals, Simeon and Anna, for their devotion, and out of that devotion, they had developed a deep understanding and appreciation of who the child was and what he would accomplish. How else would we know and serve God, unless we are devoted to him and all he stands for? How else would our children become devoted Christians, unless we train them up in our faith from young: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
“And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.”