AN EXTRACT.
THE evident scope of the righteousness of God is, that He Himself is righteous in justifying the believer by virtue of Christ's work in all its extent and blessedness—a work first viewed in the efficacy of His blood-shedding upon earth, but alone fully displayed in His resurrection, that we might stand in Him cleared from all charge,—the very old nature being thus judged, dead, and gone, and a new life given according to the power, and character, and acceptance of Him risen from the grave.
Legal obedience is essentially individual. The law is the measure of duty as in the flesh to God. Its righteousness, therefore, wholly differs from God's righteousness, not in degree and sphere only, but in source and kind. To the sinner the law was necessarily a ministry of death and condemnation; to our blessed Lord an occasion of manifesting His perfectness, and having its own character retrieved. But never did the law hold out such a prospective reward as quickening or justifying others. The idea is purely imaginative and entirely false. Nor did Christ earn life by doing the law,—such a thought denies the glory of His person. "In Aim was life;" yea, He was “that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. "Not as made of a woman, made under law, did He give life, but as the Son of God, quickening whom He would in His own sovereign title, and in communion with the Father. For the law knows nothing of 'the sort. It says the man that doeth these things lives, and the man that does not dies... No dead ever passed into life by this road, but only by faith, only by hearing the voice of the Son of God.; for eternal life is the free gift of God, and is never otherwise the portion of sinful man. It is false, then, and ignorance of the gospel to say that we enter into life by virtue of Christ's keeping the commandments; for life and incorruption are expressly declared to be brought to light by the gospel, not by the law." If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law;" but it could give neither. "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”
Hence, in Scripture, legal righteousness is never treated as vicarious. If it be, where? Not only is the language of the law intensely, exclusively personal; but the New Testament pointedly contrasts it with the language of faith. (See Rom. 10) "The righteousness which is of the law" (verse 5); "the righteousness which is of faith" (verse 6).