Righteousness by Faith

Rom 3:22 Righteousness by Faith

What would you give to know for sure that your legal acceptance and approval before God was as sure as the standing of Jesus Christ, his Son? This is what Christ came to do: fulfill a righteousness and die a death that would remove all your sins and become for you a perfect righteousness. (Piper).

Available through Christ

Romans 1:18-3:19 presents all human beings as unrighteous before God. (Rom 3:10-12) Isaiah declares that all our “good deeds” are like filthy rags before a holy God. Hebrews says without holiness no one can see God (Heb 12:4). Thus we have no ability to be justified by our righteousness before a righteous God (Rom 3:19). That is why we need the righteousness of Christ to be accounted to have a right standing before God. Jesus is the very embodiment of God’s righteousness and He can impart divine righteousness to those who trust in Him. During his earthly incarnation, Jesus demonstrated God’s righteousness by living a sinless life. In his death, Christ demonstrated God’s righteousness by paying the penalty for the unrighteous lives of every human being. (McArthur). God's righteousness, in short, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, his absolute, intrinsic, unalloyed righteousness, implicit in his perfect faith and his perfect obedience. (Coffman) It is Christ’s righteousness that justifies us (Makes us right with God). It is his merit that provides a place for us in the kingdom of God. (Sproul) The "righteousness of God" is "Jesus Christ" He became and continues to be the "manifested righteousness (Price). He abstained from every sin, fulfilled every duty, and exemplified every virtue. Neither God nor man could accuse him of failure in duty. Here then is a righteousness worthy of the name, divine, spotless, broad, lasting - beyond the power of language to characterize. This righteousness is broad enough to cover every sinner and every sin. It is pure enough to meet the eye of God himself. It is therefore the sinner‘s only shield. (Barnes) Remember, Christ is your righteousness. Your righteousness is in heaven. It's the same yesterday today and forever. It doesn't get better when your faith is strong. It doesn't get worse when your faith is weak. It is perfect. It is Christ. (Piper)

Acquired by Faith The righteousness of God is acquired only by faith. (Rom 4:5, 5:1) (Mc Arthur) Faith is the means by which something is accomplished. The instrument that links us to Christ. (Sproul). Faith is simply the acceptance for ourselves of the testimony of God as true. It is relying on His testimony concerning the person of Christ as his Son, and work of Christ for us on the cross, so faith is the assurance of things hoped for (Heb 11:1) Faith see what God says he has done and believes his word, having the conviction that it is true and true for ourselves. You do not look to Christ to do something to save you, He has done it at the cross. You simply receive God’s testimony as true. (Newell) . . . Faith is the key to

receiving God’s righteousness (Boa). Our faith does not make a contribution to our salvation and has some merit. Faith simply takes what God gives. It adds nothing to the gift (Constable). It is then a righteousness which is of faith, by means of faith, is not on account of faith. Faith is not the ground of our justification; it is not the righteousness which makes us righteous before God. This righteousness is through faith, as it is received and appropriated by faith It is, moreover, not faith in general, not mere confidence in God, not simply a belief in the Scriptures as the word of God, much less a recognition of the truth of the spiritual and invisible, but it is faith of Christ; that is, faith of which Christ is the object. A man may believe what else he may; unless he receives and rests on Christ alone for salvation, receives him as the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us, he doesn’t have the faith of which the apostle speaks as the indispensable condition of salvation (Hodges) Faith means simply your reception of Christ. It is your contact with him, your embrace of Him. (Moule) . God’s righteousness comes to us by faith in Jesus (Jones) A person is saved though faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from anything else. (Mac Arthur). Faith involves a response from our whole being. It is intellectual, emotional and willful (Rom 6:17). So, The faith of which Christ is the object, or the faith which Christ requires. This faith is not simply the belief of the intellect, embracing the historical facts of Christ’s character and death. It is the faith of the whole man. It is the act of the assenting intellect, the consenting heart, and the accepting will, by which man’s soul deposits itself into the hands of the Redeemer, It is self-surrender to Christ. (Wedon). Saving faith is placing oneself totally in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. (Mc Arthur) Faith means really trusting in Jesus and what he has done on our behalf and for our salvation. The man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself or to himself. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus and his finished work and he rests on that alone. Faith rests entirely and exclusively upon the Lord Jesus and what he has done. Faith does not save us; it is through faith we are saved. Faith is the instrument, it is not the cause of our justification. . . faith is the only channel which the righteousness becomes mine. (Jones). So when the object of saving faith is designated, it is said to be Christ himself. (Rom 3:25, Gal 2:16, 2:20; 3:24; Eph 3:19) The act, therefore, which the sinner is required to perform, in order to be made a partaker of the righteousness of God, is to believe on Christ; that is, to receive him as he is revealed in the gospel as the eternal Son of God, clothed in our nature, loving us and giving himself as a propitiation for our sins. That the righteousness of God which is revealed in the gospel is to be attained by faith, not by works (Eph 2:8-9) , not by birth (John 1:12), not by any external rite (Rom 3:19), not by union with any visible Church, but simply and only by believing on Christ, receiving and resting upon him. (Hodge) Faith through Christ is the way people become right with God. Only those who have an obedient faith will receive salvation (Price) This righteousness of God, to which the law and the Prophets render their testimony, and which is now manifested in the Gospel, whereby man is justified, is not imputed to him on account of any work of his own in obedience to the law, but is received by faith alone. Faith is no part of that righteousness; but it is through faith that it is received, and becomes available for salvation. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;’ because, though we do not yet possess what God has promised, and do not yet see it accomplished in ourselves, we see it accomplished in Jesus Christ, in whom what we hope for really exists. In respect to the promises not yet fulfilled, believers are now in the same situation as the fathers were of old respecting the unaccomplished promises in their day. Like them, they see these promises afar off, are persuaded of them, and embrace them. Believers thus flee to Christ and His righteousness as the refuge set before them in the Gospel. By faith they receive Him as their surety, and place their trust in Him, as representing them on the cross, in His death, and in His resurrection. (Haldane) Faith is what unites us with Christ and all that God is for us in him. When God sees faith in Christ, he sees union with Christ. And when he sees union with Christ, he sees the righteousness of Christ as our righteousness. So faith connects us with Christ who is our righteousness Our faith is not the thing credited as righteousness, but righteousness is the thing credited to us. God's righteousness that comes to us through faith. Faith is what unites us to God's righteousness. (Piper)

Accounted to us because of Christ The theological term for Christ’s righteousness being applied to us is imputation, which means to place on the account of another or think of as belonging to someone and therefore to cause it to belong to that person. There are three primary aspects of this in Scripture: First, When Adam sinned, his guilt was imputed to us (inherited guilt); God viewed it as belonging to us and therefore it did. (Rom 5:12-19) Second, When Christ suffered and died for our sins, our sin was imputed to Christ. God thought of it as belonging to him and he paid the penalty for it. (2 Cor 5:21). Finally, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and therefore God thinks of it as belonging to us. It is not our own righteousness but Christ’s righteousness that is freely given to us (1 Cor 1:30, Phil 3:9) The righteousness we have before God is not anything of our own doing; it is the righteousness of God that comes through Jesus Christ. (Grudem). Imputation is the work of God outside of us: God's own righteousness, not imparted to us, but imputed to us. Credited to us. Put to our account. Reckoned to be ours. (Piper). So the good news of the gospel is that God declares believers righteous not on the basis of our own actual condition of righteousness, but on the basis of Christ’s perfect righteousness. As a child of God I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ, and God has put his righteousness on my account. (Jones) God pronounces us

acceptable, satisfactory, and at peace with the law and he does this for another’s sake; on account of the merit of another. Who has so done and suffered as to win an eternal welcome for Himself and everything that is his, and therefore for you who have fled into Him, believing. So, you receive with joy the righteousness of God, and even though you are deeply guilty yourself, you are welcome without fear into his presence. Not because you are transformed into a morally perfect being. No, but because Jesus Christ died and you, receiving Him, are found in Him (Moule) Faith enables us to participate in his righteousness in the sight of God (Sproul) The act of justification is a forensic one., a declaration about a sinner who believes, accounting him righteous (though he is not intrinsically so). Thus, God is accounting a man (even as he is, ungodly Rom 4:5) righteous in His sight. (Newell). God’s righteousness becomes man’s possession and begins to operate in his life through faith in Jesus Christ ( Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16; Mark 11:22). (Constable). Applied by faith: his righteousness becomes ours. That exchange made, our sins are laid over upon Him, and His obedience put upon us. (Haldane). Here we have a double imputation. God imputed our sins to Christ who knew no sin. And God imputed his righteousness to us who had no righteousness of our own. (2 Cor 5:21) in Christ we have an alien righteousness. It is God's righteousness in Christ. Or you can say it is Christ's righteousness. He takes our sin. We take his righteousness. (Piper). This, the great glad tidings, that we are made righteous by Christ: It is not a righteousness wrought by us, but given to us, and put upon us. Faith closes with it, and rejoices in it; without either doing or suffering, the sinner is acquitted and justified, and stands as guiltless of breach, yes, as having fulfilled the whole law. And happy they that thus fasten upon this righteousness — they may lift up their faces with gladness and boldness before God (Haldane).

One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants

[lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yesterday, today and, and forever" (Heb 13:8). Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. (John Bunyan)