Righteousness
Take care not to perform your own righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. “Righteousness”, dikaiosýne, is not an abstract or generic concept, in fact Jesus intends a very specific and particular righteousness. Etymologically dikaiosýne, “righteousness, directive, indication, order”, derives from the adjective dìkaios, “right, righteous, in accordance to the law”, which originates from dìke, “right, justice”. Dìke and dìkaios, from the denominative verb dikaiòo, “I make right, I justify, I recognize as right, I proclaim justice”, also combined to the Greek verb dèiknymi, “I show, I indicate” – from the Akkadian deku, “lift”, linked to gestures – and to the Latin one dìco – with the original meaning to “raise a hand to make a sign”, from the Akkadian basis daku, “lift up”, very close to the Sumerian di-ku, “judge” –, reproducing etymologically ancient Akkadian voices such as dikugallu, “chief of justice”, dikuru, “verdict”, and daku, “to execute”, denoting justice, righteousness, equity, in accordance with the law, the right, the fair, the due. If, for the Greek-Roman world, dikaiosýne is the rule that guides human actions providing a law which man must obey, in the Old Testament the concept of dikaiosýne is at the very heart of the concept of God, the expression of His manifestation; it is performing God's will. In the New Testament this term is used by Paul, the apostle, fifty-seven times, Mark does not use it at all, Luke uses it once in Zechariah's song of praise, John twice, and Matthew seven times, twice in the Beatitudes. In Hebrew “righteousness” is called tsedèq, which literally means “correct action in accordance with some form of divine plan”, tzaddìq, “right”, dìkaios in Greek, in the meaning of adhering to the Thorà, it was the title of Joseph, Mary's husband.
Clearly the concept of righteouness and right actions is always linked to belonging, to adherence, to following a principle. In this case performing righteous deeds refers to adherence to the will and desires of the Father. You could say paradoxically that if people with evil intentions perfectly adhere to a principle and never become detached from it, even they are working in the right way. It is clear and evident that this is stretching the meaning in a paradoxical way, but it is done to better express the concept. In this respect even Jesus speaks of the “righteousness” of the scribes and pharisees and puts it in opposition with the righteousness of God's Kingdom. Being right and making justice means following the prime principle, a will, a desire. It means continuing in one direction, such as following a compass, regardless of what happens, without ever deviating or sidestepping. Dikaiosýne, “righteousness”, is “justice, impartiality, precision, accuracy”.
In the Old Testament the idea of righteousness is not based on the idea of corresponding to laws and behaviors more or less in conformity to a rule, but in accordance to choices and actions within a relationship or agreement between two parties. It is thus an alliance, a loving relationship, a bond of trust which establishes the measure of a right or wrong behavior, not a law or a principle. For rabbinic Judaism, righteousness is harmony within the law which is carried out in passionate obedience, for the accumulation of benefits. But in the true spirituality of a healthy, harmonious relationship with God, it is faith which determines the fullness and the purity of justice. Moses' faith alone was enough to divide the sea; no one can be right, if he/she does not have a deep friendship with God. The righteousness that Jesus offers is a new righteousness based on a new relationship with God out of which a new relationship with life and people emerges. The justice that God offers to man is, in any event, a behavior that is tied to an alliance with the principles of life and happiness and is completely detached from a mechanism of merit and of reward. A mechanism of merit and of reward, in fact, immediately detaches justice from God's righteousness because it detaches it from love and freedom. Even when Jesus makes mention to a compensation on God's part for man's actions of justice, the verb used to express this concept is apodìdomi (preposition apò, “way”, combined to the verb dìdomi, “give”) which literally means : “I give back, I return, I pay, I deliver, I give, I grant, I assign, I make due”. It is the verb of fulfillness, of income, of return, of paying in the sense of telling someone he/she is right about something. Therefore God's recompensation for man's right actions is not attached to the idea of worthiness, which would only favor pride and human competition and would soil every form of justice in mud because lacking love and freedom, but is attached to the idea of restitution, the secret return of energy, grace, love, beauty, and of sharing generating a bond in the name of love and happiness. God's righteousness does not repay, it restitutes. That is why Jesus insists and reveals: Take care not to perform your own righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.
God does not repay, he does not reward, he does not establish merits and demerits; God restores, restores the type, quality, quantity of energy used by each person to build righteousness in the world. Anyone in this life that generates energy, choices, and actions, in order to be seen, appreciated, rewarded by man cannot in any way receive God's restitution because he has already received rewards from man.