There prevails a notion (unknown to the Bible) that Christ was making out our righteousness when He was here below. Now the life of Christ was, I do not question, necessary to vindicate God and His holy law, as well as to manifest Himself and His love, but the righteousness that we are made in Christ is another thought altogether — not the law fulfilled by Him, but the justifying righteousness of God founded on Christ’s death, displayed in His resurrection, and crowned by His glory in heaven. It is not Christ simply doing our duty for us, but God forgiving my trespasses, judging my sin, and finding such satisfaction in Christ’s blood that now He cannot do too much for us. It becomes, if I may so say, a positive debt to Christ because of what Christ has suffered.
The law is the strength of sin, not of righteousness. Had Christ only kept the law, neither your soul nor mine could have been saved, much less blessed, as we are. Whoever kept the law, it would have been the righteousness of the law, and not God’s righteousness which has not the smallest connection with obeying the law. It is never so treated in the Word of God. Because Christ obeyed unto death, God has brought in a new kind of righteousness — not ours, but His own in our favor. Christ has been made a curse upon the tree; God has made Him sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Were the common doctrine on this subject true, we might expect it to be said, He obeyed the law for us, that we might have legal righteousness imputed or transferred to us. The truth is in all points contrasted with such ideas. Surely Christ’s obeying the law was not God’s making Him sin. So, in the passage that is so often used, by His obedience many are made righteous. How is His obedience here connected with the law? The Apostle does introduce the law in the next verse as a new and additional thing coming in by the way.
Further, Adam would not have known the meaning of “the law,” though undoubtedly he was under a law which he broke. What, for instance, could Adam in his innocence have made of the word, “Thou shalt not lust,” or covet? No such feeling was within his experience. Accordingly, as we see, it was only after man had fallen that in due time the law was given to condemn the outbreak of sin. But Christ has died for and under sin — our sin. And what is the consequence? All believers now, whether Jews or Gentiles, in Christ Jesus are brought into an entirely new place. The Gentile is brought out of his distance from God; the Jew, out of his dispensational nearness; both enjoy a common blessing in God’s presence never possessed before. The old separation dissolves and gives place by grace to oneness in Christ Jesus.
W. Kelly