God’s righteousness, but through Christ, God’s righteous moral character and wisdom was ultimately acted out, displayed and demonstrated for all the world to see by doing only what He, being love, could do.

What Christ did for us is considered righteous because He enabled us to be right with God by appeasing His wrath and satisfying His justice against our sin by shedding His own blood on the cross and thereby paying the penalty of death for our sin in our place, justifiably making full payment for our sin.  To do such a selfless act is a righteous act because it reflects His moral, holy nature.¹

God couldn’t simply forgive, justice had to be served in order to free us from the power of the law.

We would like to think that the easiest solution for us to be restored back to God would be for Him to just have mercy on us and forgive us.  But how would our sin be punished by simply doing that?  God is a God of justice, should a crime go unpunished?  Can you imagine a world without justice?  God’s justice needed to satisfy His wrath and judgement.  Somebody had to die as punishment for our sin. Only a sinless person is qualified to atone for sin, and only God is sinless, so He became a man so that He could be both, a sinless man. The God of all wisdom took our place and suffered the punishment for us through His Son Jesus Christ, His life for our life, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” (Leviticus 17:11). By this display of His selfless love, we can say that love fulfilled the demand of justice, the law no longer has power to accuse us and keep us separate from God. It served its purpose in exposing our sinful nature, we realize that we can’t fulfill its requirements but Christ has done it for us. The price was paid once and for all by the sinless One, the righteous One. This act of atonement for our sins redeemed us to God, by paying the ransom of our captivity to death with His sacrificial blood.  We can now stand forgiven before God, having our relationship with Him fully reconciled and restored.

God couldn’t simply forgive, we have to be Spirit-filled in order to receive His righteousness, made possible by Christ’s resurrection.

But forgiveness alone does not revive us, only the Holy Spirit can come and fill us to impart life to our morally and physical dead bodies.  And the Holy Spirit will not enter us unless we ask Him.  And we will not ask Him unless we understand that we have a fallen nature due to the original sin and how the evil, sinful characteristics of the fallen nature are opposed to God’s holy nature of love.  We need to see the error of living self-sufficiently; to see sin for what it is, the power that it has over us and desire to be free from it.  But not just for freedom’s sake; we desire to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit because we love Him and His ways and desire to live in full submission to Him as His child, in loving devotion and worship to Him as our heavenly Father like it was meant to be before the original sin took place when Adam explored his God-given capacity to have free-will and was tempted to use it erroneously.

Because Christ was sinless, the grave could not hold Him, and so He was resurrected to the right hand of the Father, seated on His heavenly throne. Our immoral fallen nature is dead and can only be restored back to life by receiving the Spirit of life, which He made possible for us and proved it when He Himself was resurrected from the dead.

 If we accept this priceless favor which He has done for us, and ask Him to be Lord of our life, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit, the righteous presence of Jesus, so that we no longer have to function in our sinful nature that brought us death, but instead we can be revived back to life with His life living in us, as if we have become a whole new creation in Christ.  We can now live and move in submission to His righteous presence in us² and not by the sinful impulses of our old, fallen, dead nature, “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4:22-24).

As believer’s in Christ, when God sees us now, He does not see us in our fallen nature, but instead He sees the righteous presence of Christ imputed to us because of our faith in what He was able to do for us.³ We have been given new life in Him.  We are forgiven, reconciled, and restored; and through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, we stand righteous in the eyes of our Father God, for we have been acquitted of all guilt (Ja. 2:23; Rom. 4:20-24; Philip. 3:9).

The difference between being good and being righteous.

There is another kind of righteousness described in the Bible, and that is the self-righteousness of man.⁴ Many people think they are right in their own eyes and live by their own standards.  As we can observe throughout history, the error of these standards are exposed, especially in the minds of world leaders whose idealism has resulted in war, organized crime, and terrorism, among other things.

There are also many people who are mindful of God but mistakenly think that by being good we can be in His favor.  This is a conditional view of God and is far beyond His character.  It is actually saying that Christ’s accomplishment on the cross did not produce its desired result.  It reveals our lack of understanding of the nature of our fallen condition (Rom. 3:10-12) and of how the sacrificial system in the Old Testament and the sacrifice of Christ showed how we are in need to become righteous before God in order to be in His presence.

If we think we have what it takes to earn our salvation, then that would give us reason to boast in ourselves, which is of the sinful nature, the very nature from which Christ came to rescue us. There is no virtue or merit of our own, or anything we can do that will earn our salvation.  To be good is to say “Look what I can do.” To be righteous in Christ is to say “Look what the Holy Spirit can do through me.” God does it all by His grace, salvation is a free gift, and He alone receives all the glory, honor and praise (Eph. 2:8-10). God does it all, we just have to be willing to let Him.  If we let Him, that means we trust Him and know His love and desire for us.  We are darkened in our sin of being self-sufficient and self-righteous; and God will have none of that.

Do we need the righteousness of Christ for more than a gateway to a restored relationship with God?   Did Adam and Eve need to be in a righteous (Christ’s) status before the fall?  Was the fall pre-destined in order to make them complete? They were innocent before the fall, but not righteous. They were dependent on God until they chose not to be.  After experiencing self-dependency – being darkened and dull to the truth of God, we have to wean our way out of self dependency and get used to being fully dependent on God who established our righteousness for us. We have to take off our filthy garments and put on the robe of righteousness (Is. 61:10; Job 29:14; Zech. 3:1-4) – righteous because we survived a legal battle by Christ to right a wrong and put the offender Satan away for life.

So it’s not so much about being good as it is about being righteous.  If you know you have the righteousness of Christ in you, then you naturally, willingly do what is good.  As a new creation in Christ we can now do what is good without the attitude of the self-centered flesh influencing us to oppose Him, because if we understand salvation correctly, we will be grateful and humbled towards the Lord in doing His will for the remaining time we have on the earth.  All of our emotional needs are met – we know we are loved unconditionally and accepted for who we are.  We know our purpose in life – to love and serve God with joy.  We are confident from knowing our true identity – a child of God, making us royalty and holy as He is holy.  (If  you see yourself as being too sinful to ever consider yourself as being holy, yet would be willing to accept it so that your sinful past can be forgiven and  permanently washed away, then believe it, this is your dream come true.  Our separation from God is not based on the measure of our sin, for even the smallest sin will cause separation.  The fact that all people sin is inevitable because we were born with a sinful nature, and that sinful nature can be put to death and buried forever by replacing it with the righteous nature of Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit).  We are also equipped with the Holy Spirit to overcome every obstacle and opposition of maturing in our status of being a child of God.

We have so much to look forward to by receiving the Lords free gift of salvation, here are a few things:

• Acceptance by God (Jn. 6:37)
• Friendship with God (Jn. 15:14-15)
• A peace that surpasses all understanding (Philip. 4:7)
• Abundance of joy (Jn. 15:9-11; Titus 3:6; Rom. 15:13; 1 Pet. 1:8)
• Partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Pet. 1:3-4)
• Everlasting life (Jn. 3:16)
• The crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:7-8)
• The crown of life (James 1:12)
• The ability to endure trials (2 Tim. 3:12; Matt. 5:10-11)
• Glorified bodies (Philip. 3:21; Col. 3:4; Rom. 8:30)
• We will rule and reign with Christ (2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 3:21; 20:4-6)

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those 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 no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

²¹ But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, ²² even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, ²⁶ to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:9-26).

Notes

1. God’s Righteousness. “With respect to character, God is transparently holy and righteous in all His acts.  When combined with love, His righteousness results in grace.  God’s righteousness is ever absolute and perfect to infinity: “In him is no darkness at all.” God’s righteousness is seen in two ways:  (a) He is a righteous Person (Ja. 1:17; 1 Jn. 1:5) and (b) He is righteous in all His ways (Rom. 3:25-26).” Systematic Theology by Lewis Sperry Chafer, Vol. 7, Pg. 270, Kregal Publications. Copyright 1948, 1976 Dallas Theological Seminary.

2.  Imparted righteousness.  “Romans 8:4 presents a righteous conduct as being possible on the part of each believer which is not the result of his own effort, but on the contrary that of the Spirit.  This righteousness is produced not by the believer, then, but “in” him.” Ibid.

3.  Imputed righteousness. “The imputed type of righteousness in not God’s attribute as if that were bestowed on man, nor human goodness in any form.  It is that which the believer becomes in virtue of his being in Christ.  Jesus Christ represents the righteousness of God, and the believer becomes what Christ is at the moment of believing (2 Cor. 5:21).  Righteousness was imputed likewise to Old Testament saints (cf. Abraham, Gen 15:6; Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6; James 2:23).” Ibid.

4. Man’s righteousness. “This kind of righteousness is recognized only to show its inadequacy and ripeness for condemnation (Is. 54:6; Rom. 3:10; 10:3; 2 Cor. 10:12).” Ibid.