Of course we made up what was righteous and unrighteous. In the south, in America, you couldn't wear jewellery, make up, slacks; you couldn't drink wine, you couldn't do any of that. If you didn't do those things, then you were righteous; but you could hate black people - that was okay. So our concepts of righteousness started to be jaded around things we withdrew from; so if you withdraw from the wrong evils, then you're righteous.
The word righteous in Hebrew has nothing to do with withdrawing from evil. It has everything to do with something you enter into. It has everything to do with entering into something; largely and namely to make other people's lives better. All through scripture, there is a connection between righteousness and generosity. Listen, there are 2,106 scriptures in the Bible that talk about the righteous' responsibility to be generous. All through the Bible righteousness and generosity are connected; and greed and wickedness are connected. All through the Bible, righteousness/generosity, greed/wickedness - 2,106 scriptures about this.
This is even in the language itself. The word for righteousness is Tzedek. This is the word that would always be translated: righteous; or righteousness. Remember now, every Hebrew letter is a picture, so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. In the picture Hebrew, the first letter is a fish hook with bait on it. It means: what lures you, what's the desire of your heart. The D is an open door; and the Q there is the back of someone's head, which means humility. So in the picture Hebrew, the word righteousness is this: the desire of one's heart, opens the door to humility. I want you to notice again, what is the starting point of righteousness? The desire of your heart. It's not your behaviour per se; it's that you're hungry and thirsting for something. We're hungry and thirsting for righteousness - so that is the word righteousness.
Now the word generosity is the word Tzedakah. Now so righteousness is the word Tzedak; generous is the word Tzedakah - it's the same word! It means: to reveal righteousness; so to them generosity was righteousness revealed. It begins to make sense as to why 2,106 times in scripture, more than heaven, hell, faith and prayer combined, the writers of scripture combined the ideas of righteousness and generous. Do you realise that to a rabbi, it is impossible to be righteous and greedy - you cannot do it. It doesn't even fit in the word; like to say someone is Tzedak, without producing Tzedakah, would be false - you can't say that. One writer said it this way: faith without works is dead. Are you really going to depend on dead faith to save you? I mean come on, so Tzedak always produces Tzedakah and that makes sense.
Let me just show you some scriptures around this, that really start to make this make sense. Matthew 6:22-23, its Jesus. He says the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? Now you've got to understand Hebrew imagery to understand this. In First Century Hebrew culture, to say someone had an eye full of light meant they were generous. To say someone had an evil eye - it meant they were stingy. The etymology of the phrase "don't give me the evil eye", means "don't be stingy with me". So Jesus said: if your eye is full of light - in other words if you're generous - then it'll bring favour to everything you do. If your eye is full of darkness - if you're stingy - then it'll bring darkness to everything you do; and then He qualifies it. He says: but if the light that is in you, is actually dark, now you've got a real problem. In other words, if your generosity has greedy motives - you're going to run into a real problem.
In the same passage, later He says: where your treasure is, there's your heart is, because you can't serve both God and mammon. In other words, if your heart, if your eye is full of light; if in your heart, you're hungering and thirsting to have a generous spirit; then this will create favour for your whole life. If you're stingy, it won't; and please be sure that you're generosity isn't greedy in its motives.