“The righteousness of God” embraces the entire display of God’s ways in Christ. If we are to compare things which are all perfect in their place, one of the least ways was His accomplishment of the law here below, for the law was not intended to express fully and absolutely God’s nature and character. It stated, if we may so say, the lowest terms on which man could live before Him. It was the demand of what God required, even from a sinful Israelite, if he pretended to obey God, whereas, though the Lord Jesus was made under the law and submitted in His grace to all its claims, He went much farther, even in His living obedience, and infinitely beyond it in His death. To the righteous, the righteousness of the law proclaims life for his portion, and to the unrighteous it proclaims death. But God’s righteousness goes immeasurably deeper as well as higher. It is a justifying righteousness, not a condemning one, as that of the law must be to the sinner who has it not. Hence the Lord Himself established the sanctions of the law in the most solemn way by suffering unto death under its curse: He bore the penalty of the ungodly, of which substitution the law knew nothing, and so to die is grace. There was no mitigation, much less annulling of the law’s authority.
Divine righteousness provided One who could and would settle the whole question for the sinner with God. Nor is this all, for God raised Christ from the dead. He was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; in short, His moral being, His purposes, His truth, His love, His relationship, His glory was at stake in the grave of Christ. But God raised Him up and set Him at His own right hand in heaven, as a part of His divine righteousness. No seat, no reward inferior to that, could suit the One who had vindicated God in all His majesty, holiness, grace and truth, who had, so to speak, enabled God to carry out His precious design of justifying the ungodly, Himself just all the while.
To him who has faith, it is no longer a question of the law or of legal righteousness, which rested on the responsibility of man, but Christ having gone down into death in atonement and thus glorified God to the uttermost, the ground is changed, and it becomes a question of God’s righteousness. If man has been proved by the law to have brought forth wrongs, and only wrongs, God must have His rights, the very first of which is raising up Christ from the dead and giving Him glory. Hence the Holy Spirit is said in John 16 to convince the world of righteousness, and this, not because Christ fulfilled that which we violated, but because He is gone to the Father and is seen no more till He returns in judgment. It is not righteousness on earth, but its heavenly course and character, in the ascension of Christ, which is here spoken of.
In 2 Corinthians 5, it is in Christ glorified in heaven that we are made, or become, divine righteousness. It is plain, then, that the phrase, though no doubt embracing what Christians mean when they speak of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, is a far larger and more glorious thing. It includes not only that which glorified God on earth in living obedience, but the death of the cross, which if it met the deepest need of the sinner, broke the power of Satan in his last stronghold and laid the immutable foundation for God’s grace to reign through righteousness.
In Romans 1:1717For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:17), God’s righteousness is said to be revealed in the gospel in contrast with man’s righteousness claimed in the law, and being revealed, it is “from faith,” not from law-works — that is, it is a revelation on the principle of faith, not a work to be rendered on the ground of human responsibility. Therefore it is to “faith.” He that believes gets the blessing. In Romans 3:21-2221But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: (Romans 3:21‑22), it is formally contrasted with anything under the law, though the law and the prophets witnessed respecting it. It is ‘’God’s righteousness without law,” by faith of Jesus Christ, and hence “towards all men,” but taking effect only ‘’upon all them that believe.” It is here in special connection with redemption, and therefore it is added that God has set forth Christ a propitiation (or mercy-seat) through faith in His blood (Rom. 3:24-2624Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom 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; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:24‑26)).
In Romans 10 it is shown to be incompatible with seeking to establish one’s own righteousness. God’s righteousness being complete, the object of faith in Christ has to be submitted to or we have no part in it.
Second Corinthians 5 rises higher and shows what the saint is, according to the gospel of the glory of Christ made divine righteousness in Him risen and glorified. Hence in the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul, transported even to the last with this new and divine righteousness, shows us that, compared with it, he would not have the righteousness of the law even if he could, for what was of the law had no glory in his eyes because of the glory that excelled — that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness of God through faith (Phil. 3). Far from superseding practical godliness, this righteousness of God in Christ strikes deep roots in the heart and springs up in a harvest of kindred fruit, which is by Jesus Christ to God’s glory and praise (Phil. 1:1111Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:11)).
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