Where Steadfast Love and Righteousness Meet

God’s steadfast love and God’s righteousness are not rivals, and Psalm 85 pictures them greeting each other with a kiss. It is Sunday morning, and many believers carry a quiet picture of God in which love and justice take turns, as if one had to step aside for the other to speak. The psalmist saw something else entirely, and it is worth sitting with before the day begins.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: I Picture a God Who Has to Choose Between Being Loving and Being Fair

The picture usually forms without anyone teaching it. A loving God, the thinking goes, must overlook what is wrong, and a just God must be harsh with it, so the two seem to share one throne by turns. A believer can hold that picture for decades and sense, without quite naming it, that approaching God means guessing which one will show up. Scripture refuses the picture, and it does so with a surprisingly tender image.

H – Hear: Psalm 85 Pictures Love and Righteousness Greeting Each Other

“Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.” (Psalm 85:10-11)

Psalm 85 is a prayer of the sons of Korah that remembers God’s past forgiveness (verses 1-3) and asks for restoration again (verse 4). In the middle of the prayer, the psalmist describes what restoration looks like, and he treats four attributes as if they were four people. Steadfast love (chesed) and faithfulness (emet) meet, using the ordinary verb for coming face to face. Righteousness (tsedeq) and peace (shalom) kiss, the greeting of reconciled brothers, as when Esau ran to Jacob and kissed him (Genesis 33:4).

Notice that none of the four is asked to step aside. Righteousness does not shrink so that love can speak, and love does not soften so that righteousness can stay. Paul explains where that meeting takes place when he writes that God put Christ forward so that he might be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

The verse is not asking you to resolve a tension. It is announcing that the tension was never in God. At the cross, God’s steadfast love and God’s righteousness met and kissed, and neither one had to give way. The God who is fully loving and fully righteous is the same God, in the same act.

E – Exchange: Trade “Love Takes Turns With Justice” for “Both Reign at Once”

The old belief says that God’s love and God’s righteousness take turns. Psalm 85 replaces it and shows us that both are complete at the same time, and the cross is where Scripture shows them meeting. Exchange the picture of a God who must choose for awe at a God who never had to. Sunday is a good day to practice the exchange, because worship is where the new picture gets spoken aloud before the old one returns.

Because God’s love includes both love and righteousness, how does that change my beliefs about approaching Him?

W – Walk: Say Psalm 85:10 Aloud, Then Praise Both Attributes

Take five minutes. Read Psalm 85:10 aloud once, slowly. Then speak three sentences of praise: one beginning “Father, Your love is…”, one beginning “Father, Your righteousness is…”, and one beginning “Father, at the cross You…”. Finish by repeating the verse. Praise spoken aloud holds both truths in one breath, the way the psalm does.

Closing question: What changes if God’s love and God’s righteousness have never once been in competition?