Christ Our Righteousness

by Ivan Maddox

West End Bible Fellowship

Atlanta, Georgia

 

In this study we will look at how God has made us righteous through the shed blood of His son Jesus Christ.

Do you remember the record in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve heard the sound of God coming after they had disobeyed him in the Garden? Their instinctive reaction was to hide from Him! This intense desire to run and hide from the presence of God is the OPPOSITE of what we mean by righteousness.

Simply put, righteousness means being in a right relationship with God. Righteousness means honestly knowing that God credits no sin to your account, and that no sin stands in the way between you and God.

I remember a time in my life when I believed in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but looked on it as something to dread rather than as my hope, because I knew that when Christ returned, I would be judged; and I already knew that I was guilty as charged. But in Psalm 7 we see an entirely different attitude towards God’s judgement.

Psalm 7:8-13.

8   The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me.
9   Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.
10   My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.
11   God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
12   If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.
13   He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.

Here is a man practically BEGGING for God to judge him! And he seems to presume that when he is judged, he will be found clean. He knows that "God is angry with the wicked every day," but this is not a source of fear to him. He puts his confidence in God’s justice, both toward him, and toward those who are doing evil. This is a picture of a man whose heart is right with God.

The man praying in this Psalm was a Jew. In the Bible, three categories of people are recognized. All three are mentioned in one Bible verse.

I Corinthians 10:32.

32   Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:

The word "Gentiles" simply means "nations." Originally, everyone was a Gentile. Then God made a covenant with the people of Israel, and placed them in a separate category, Jews, and dealt with them differently than He did with those who were Gentiles. Finally, after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God made it possible for those who confessed Christ as Lord, and believed that God raised him from the dead, to be born of the spirit of God. These were now neither Jew nor Gentile, but became instead the Church of God.

It is important to understand this distinction, because the basis of righteousness with God is different for each of these groups.

For the Jews, righteousness was based on the Law given by God to Moses.

Deuteronomy 6:20-25.

20   And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God hath commanded you?
21   Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand:
22   And the LORD shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes:
23   And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers.
24   And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.
25   And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.

Are you familiar with the ten commandments? The Jews had to live according to these, plus about six hundred more! What this passage says is that when your children ask you, "Why do we have to live under all these laws?" you (as a Jew) were to explain to your child how God turned your people into a nation, and remind him that by obeying all of these commandments, you would be counted as righteous before God.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, you run into some problems when you try to live it out. In the Book of James we see one of these problems described.

James 2:10-11.

10   For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
11   For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.

James is explaining that the Law of God is not a smorgasbord. You can’t pick and choose the parts you want to do, while ignoring the rest.

You can faithfully adhere to whole sections of the Law; but if you disobey one law, you’ve become a lawbreaker. Your obedience to all the other laws suddenly doesn’t matter, in light of your disobedience

It’s sort of like being ticketed for not stopping at a stop sign. You may have faithfully adhered to the speed limit for years. You may have faithfully stopped at thousands of stop signs. You may be one of the safest drivers on the street. But when you come into court, the judge is not interested in any of that. He doesn’t pay any attention to all the stop signs you stopped at; he’s only interested in the stop sign you ran. As far as he is concerned, you broke "the law," even though you may have adhered to the law countless times.

The Jews had the Law of God, which let them know what was right and wrong in the sight of God. But God didn’t give the Law to the Gentiles. How, then, were they to know what was right and wrong, and how was God to judge them? Romans 2 addresses this question.

Romans 2:11-15.

11   For there is no respect of persons with God.
12   For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
13   (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14   For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15   Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

Gentiles, or non-Jews, didn’t receive a written Law from God. But you don’t need a written Law to tell you that murder is wrong. Or stealing. Or lying. Or adultery.

How does God judge Gentiles who don’t know His standards for righteousness? God knows what each one knows in terms of what is right and what is wrong. God also knows each person’s thoughts. From comparing each one’s thoughts with what each one knew, God determines who was honestly trying to do what was right, even if his sense of right and wrong was warped, and who knew he was doing wrong but did it anyway.

Does that sound like a good deal? Think about it: would you really want to be judged on the basis of your thoughts?

Those who are in the Church of God are judged a completely different way.

I Corinthians 1:30.

30   But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

This verse tells us that in some as yet unexplained way, God has made Jesus Christ the means of receiving righteousness for every person who has confessed Christ as Lord.

Romans 3 explains briefly how God has done this for us. It begins by explaining that both the Jews and the non-Jews have failed God’s righteousness test.

Romans 3:9-18.

9   What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
10   As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11   There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12   They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
13   Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14   Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15   Their feet are swift to shed blood:
16   Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17   And the way of peace have they not known:
18   There is no fear of God before their eyes.

This, in a nutshell, is God’s assessment of the collective righteousness of mankind. Not a pretty picture, is it? In terms of living up to God’s standards, mankind has been pretty much a dismal failure.

The next two verses point out something else: While the law was very good at letting you know what you were doing wrong, it provided very little help for doing things right!

Romans 2:19-20.

19   Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
20   Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

In other words, the end result of the Law is to establish that everyone is guilty before God; and, in the end, no one will be made righteous by obeying the Law.

But, having given us the bad news, God now gives us the Good News.

Romans 3:21-25.


21   But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22   Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
23   For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24   Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25   Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

Through Jesus Christ, God has made a way for sinful people to be made righteous without living according to God’s Law. Instead of having to be earned on the basis of performance, righteousness is now available on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. By paying the full price for our sins by his death on the cross, Jesus Christ has redeemed us, or purchased us back, to God.

Romans 3:26.

26   To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.


Because Jesus Christ paid the full price for our sins, he made it possible for God to declare us unrighteous people righteous, without compromising His righteous standards one bit. He didn’t merely pretend that we hadn’t sinned; nor did He discount the debt we owed for our sins, which was death. Instead, He allowed the one man who perfectly obeyed God by perfectly fulfilling His Law to die in our place on the cross, paying the price for us that we could not pay for ourselves.

Romans 3:37-38.

27   Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28   Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

So what does this give us to boast about? Nothing! Our salvation is not based on how good we were; it is based on how good Jesus Christ was on our behalf, and on his voluntarily paying the debt we owed but could not pay.

The fourth through the seventh chapters of Romans are packed with excellent teaching about this righteousness that God has given us. For this study, though, we’re going to skip right to the bottom line in Romans 8.

Romans 8:1-4.

1   There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
2   For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
3   For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4   That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Packed into these few short verses are several very important truths.

Because of what Christ has done for us, we are no longer under condemnation. The Greek word translated "condemnation" is KATAKRINO, which means "to judge against." There will never come a time when we will stand before God and hear Him bang His gavel and shout "Guilty!" at us. The last part of the verse, "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," is not in most Greek texts. It appears to have been accidentally copied from verse 4, where it properly belongs. We have not escaped condemnation because we walked in the Spirit; we escaped because Christ walked in the Spirit on our behalf.

"The law of sin and death" in verse 2 was the law that "You sin, you die." Christ set us free from this law when he died in our place.

Because the Law was unable to make us righteous because of the weakness of our flesh, God sent His son to die in our place. By doing this, He confirmed the penalty for sin and condemned our sins, even as He made it possible for us to be declared righteous in spite of our sins.

Verse 1 told us that we would never again be condemned by God. But I John 3 seems, at least on the surface, to contradict this.

I John 3:18-22.

18   My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
19   And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.
20   For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
21   Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.
22   And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

What’s going on here? Why the apparent contradiction?

The word translated "condemn" in this passage is entirely different from the word used in Romans 8. The word used here is KATAGINOSKO, meaning "to know against," or "to accuse, condemn."

In Romans 8 we were talking about God passing judgment against us. Here we are talking about being aware within ourselves that we have disobeyed God. The point being made is that if WE know that we’ve done something wrong, GOD knows it, too. Moreover, WE know that God knows it! This makes it awkward, to say the least, for us to come before God in prayer in faith. If sin is standing between us and God, we will feel that we don’t deserve His help, and we’ll be reluctant to ask for it. On the other hand, if there is no un-dealt with sin standing between us and God, we won’t hesitate to go to Him in prayer, nor will we lack confidence in His willingness to come to our aid.

How do we go from our hearts condemning us to confidence toward God? The secret is found in the first chapter of I John.

I John 1:9.

9   If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

When we confess our sins to God, He faithfully forgives us for our sins, so that once again we are no longer just legally righteous, but are righteous in practice as well.

But God has gone even further than this in helping us to walk in righteousness before Him. He has given us a defense attorney who stands in His presence to represent us: His son, Jesus Christ.

I John 2:1-3.

1   My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2   And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
3   And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.

Jesus Christ is not only our advocate, or attorney; he is also the propitiation, or full payment, for our sins.

So what is the end result of all this?

I John 3:1-3.

1   Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
2   Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
3   And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

God has made us His sons. Through His son, Jesus Christ, He has made us righteous. And just as we have been made (legally) like Christ in this age, so also will we be made even more like Christ when he returns. This is a future we can hope for, rather than fear!

And what is the proof that you are hoping for the return of Christ? Those who do so are not content to be just legally righteous, but seek to live out the righteousness God has given us in practice. We endeavor to purify ourselves by walking in obedience to God and His word, even as Christ is pure.