Righteousness

To me, the objective aspect of my justification that has the most subjective meaning to me in my walk is that of the righteousness of Christ imparted to me by the Father. It is very freeing, yet humbling, to realize that God has cleansed me from all my sin and given me His own righteousness, especially when I contemplate the depth of my sinfulness before I came to know Christ. Although I still have the capacity to walk after my flesh, it is awesome to know that he counts me as righteous in Christ regardless of my sometimes sinful behavior. Not that He condones those actions, but that He has given me a new identity as a saint – a holy, righteous child of God. Praise the Lord that He has done this amazing work in my life!

I have become more and more aware in recent years of the importance of understanding our righteousness in Christ as not merely an external declaration, but an internal reality. This has come about as I have learned more of our union with Christ and how His righteousness was actually given to us. I found the following excerpt from Erickson to be most helpful:

For Christ and the believer do not stand at arm’s length from one another so that when God looks squarely at the believer he cannot also see Christ with His righteousness but only pretends to. Rather, Christ and the believer have been brought into such a unity that Christ’s spiritual assets, as it were, and the spiritual liabilities and assets of the believer are merged. Thus, when looking at the believer God the Father does not see him or her alone. He sees the believer together with Christ, and in the act of justification justifies both of them together. It is as if God says, “They are righteous!” He declares what is actually true of the believer, which has come to pass through God’s constituting the believer one with Christ.[1]

This has startling implications for us as believers. Often, we are taught by well-meaning teachers that God just ‘sees’ us in Christ, as if through a screen – but take away the screen, and we are just the same old filthy sinners we have always been. However, we can see from the Erickson excerpt that this simply is not true – we are righteous because of our justification and our union with Christ. Further, this is corroborated by the witness of Scripture itself. 2 Corinthians 5:21 states that we have actually become the righteousness of God in Christ, and 1 Corinthians 1:30 makes a similar statement. Also consider Romans 5:19 – “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” (NASB, emphasis mine) This definitely implies something more than a mere external declaration. We are, in fact, righteous through the joining together of Christ’s Spirit with our human spirits – it is part of our new identity as children of God.

So, how does all of this affect my daily walk with God? Proverbs 23:7 is a key passage here: “For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” (NASB) If I, as a believer, continue to think of myself as a dirty, rotten sinner despite of my cleansing from sin and union with Christ, then sin is certainly what will be produced in my life. However, if I set my mind on what is true in the Spirit (Rom. 8:5-8) – that I am a partaker of the righteousness of Christ – then righteousness is what will naturally be produced in my behavior. As I renew my thinking with what is true about me in Christ, then I will find that I abide in Him on a more continual basis and will be better equipped to ward off the accusations of the enemy.
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[1] Erickson, Millard J., Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 971-972.