Jeremiah 23:6
In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior. (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-8
Jeremiah is told by God that His Messiah will be called “The Lord Our Righteous Savior.” The Hebrew translation of this name is YHWH Sedeq or Yahweh Tsidqenu. We tend to think of names as descriptions of God in that this name describes God as righteous. However, that’s not how God’s names work. The name Yahweh Tsidqenu declares God to be the source of righteousness. Anything God does is righteous because he is the source of righteousness.
Righteousness is defined as being morally right. But really righteousness is whatever God does. God is just, proper, truthful and consistent. Everything He does is right. So in order to be righteous, you would need to act like God every minute of every hour of every day. The instant you act unlike God, you are no longer righteous. It’s like having a container of clear water. It’s clear until you put one drop of dye in it and then it’s no longer clear. It will have some color. The instant you perform an unrighteous act or have an unrighteous thought, you are no longer righteous. Thus, no human beings are righteous:
“There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10).
However, we are also told that we cannot enter heaven unless we are righteous. Jesus said in the interpretation of a parable that only the righteous will have eternal life:
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matt 25:46).
So we need an outside source to make us righteous. We are not capable of attaining it on our own. God is the only one who can make us righteous. Isaiah understood this:
“And because of his experience,
my righteous servant will make it possible
for many to be counted righteous,
for he will bear all their sins” (Isa 53:11, NLT).
Isaiah understood that Jesus would be the one to make us righteous. As God told Jeremiah, Jesus would come and be called The Lord Our Righteous Savior. He is our Righteous Savior. He came to make us righteous. Paul makes this clear:
“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, ‘It is through faith that a righteous person has life’” (Rom 1:16-17).
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
Jesus took on all of our unrighteousness and nailed it to the cross. If we put our faith in him by making him our Lord and Savior, we hand him our unrighteousness and we are made righteous. The dye of sin that stained our clear record is removed and we are left righteous in God’s sight. So when we stand before God on judgment day, he will see us as righteous fitted for eternity with Him.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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