THIS term is often used in Scripture. Sometimes it describes the divine attribute of God’s infinitely just nature; at other times it is used in the sense of the righteousness that God requires and which has been provided in Christ for His people. It was this righteousness which the Apostle had in view when he declared that he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because in it there was revealed the righteousness of God by faith. It is true that the infinitely righteous nature of God is revealed in the most solemn and arresting manner in what took place on Calvary’s accursed tree, but this is not the righteousness that is imputed to sinners in the day of their justification, but the righteousness of Christ which God in His infinite wisdom provided for them in His wonderful salvation. By this righteousness is meant “all He became, did, and suffered to satisfy the demands of divine justice and merit for His people, the forgiveness of sin, and the gift of eternal life” (Hodge’s Systematic Theology, iii., 142). This righteousness of Christ on the ground of which the believer is justified is the righteousness of God. It is so called to distinguish it from (1) the righteousness of man; (2) because it is the righteousness God required; (3) because it is the righteousness that God Himself provided through Christ.
1.—Man’s righteousness. It will not be necessary for those who are familiar with their Bibles to stress the point that one
of man’s great delusions is that he has a righteousness that is sufficient to take him to heaven. This is the rock on which the Jews suffered shipwreck. They refused to submit to God’s righteousness and went about to establish their own righteousness. This, also, is the rock on which millions of so-called Christians in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Protestant Churches are making shipwreck for eternity. Whenever the question confronts the sinner—How can man be just with God? he makes an effort to answer it, and down through all the ages we have attempts made by man to answer that question and provide a righteousness that will be sufficient. In doing so man sets up his standard, and may, through strenuous effort and whole-hearted zeal, like Saul of Tarsus, reach the height of the standard he has set up, and be able to say with him “as concerning the law blameless.” But alas! the man is building on a false foundation, and it had one tremendous defect—it is not God’s high standard. When the sinner is made to realise that God requires him at all times, in all circumstances, and forever to love the Lord with all his heart, strength, mind and soul, and his neighbour as himself, his own righteousness is shattered and the falseness of the foundation on which he was building his hope for eternity is revealed as a thin covering over a bottomless chasm. No longer does he see a beauty in his own righteousness. He begins to realise how much it is in accordance with truth when the Scriptures describe it as filthy rags. No argument, however, from any man will bring this conviction to the sinner rejoicing in his own equipment for heaven. But when confronted with the high and broad claims of God’s law, this dream fades away and leaves him hopeless and helpless. Such would be his case forever if God had not provided a righteousness as high and as broad to meet all the claims of justice—that righteousness is the righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.
2.—The righteousness God required. We have already seen that God required of man the love of all his heart, mind and soul to be given to his God. The task for man in his fallen
state, so far as his own efforts are concerned, is eternally hopeless—if this is the only way to heaven, man faces blank despair. Before him stands the high standard of heaven—all the love of his heart to be given to God—not for a second or two, but forever. What a rude awakening for the man who was complacently walking, as he thought, straight to heaven with a hope that was a lie. Like the Psalmist when awakened to realise the imperative claims of God’s law he felt that God’s commandment was exceeding broad. Nothing short of what God required would meet the sinner’s case. But herein is Heaven’s wonderful grace revealed that when man stood helpless and condemned God sent His own Son to provide the righteousness that He required. That righteousness was not needed by those who imagined they had sufficient of their own, at least as far as their sense of need was concerned, to take them to heaven, but oh! what an avenue of eternal hope it opened to those who faced the claims of that law with a dismay that would have been but the beginning of eternal despair had it not been for the revelation to them of God’s righteousness in the gospel. All hope of getting to heaven by their own works was gone, and gone forever, when they were confronted with the claims of God’s holy law. There were claims which were beyond their power to meet, a debt so great they could never pay it, and a penalty so awful that the very thought of it shut the door of heaven for ever in their faces if they were to meet it themselves. To a sinner in such a case the question—”How can man be just with God” is one of the most tremendous that was ever put to his conscience. But man’s hope of getting to heaven by his own works must be effectively destroyed if the righteousness that God requires is to be real to him. The claims of that righteousness do not leave him with the faintest hope that now or forever he will be able to improve his case.
3.—The righteousness God provided. It is the glory of the gospel that it shows so plainly that the very righteousness which God required He provided through His own dear Son. He met the claims of God’s law to its uttermost extent, and in
its height and depth. He paid the penalty that was forever beyond the sinner’s power to pay. Such was the righteousness which the Just One dying for the unjust provided, and this righteousness is free to all who were given to Christ before the foundation of the world in the day of their effectual calling. It is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His great mercy He saved us. The sinner’s part in this wonderful provision is to receive the righteousness of God by faith. That is, as Halyburton puts it, when there is an acquiescence with God’s way of salvation as set forth in the gospel, the sinner is receiving God’s provision by faith. This way of salvation is suitable for all classes and conditions of sinners—learned and unlearned, rich and poor, civilized and uncivilized, for those who are not far from the kingdom and for those who have reached the utmost borders of the far country, for young and for old, for those who are in the full vigour of health and for those who are step by step swiftly going down the dark valley. It is this righteousness that is the theme of the epistle to the Romans. In it God’s wonderful way of salvation is set forth—the sinner brought in guilty and condemned—a righteousness provided for such—its application and reception and finally the security of the justified sinner. The guilt is taken away not by an arbitrary sentence of the Judge of the whole earth but because the utmost claims of law have been met in the sinner’s Surety, and hence the bold challenge—”Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” i.e., in their justification, and the unanswerable reply is: “It is God that justifieth,” and in this reply tremendous emphasis is laid on God. Guilt now being removed there is no condemnation—”Who is He that condemneth?” “It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen.” This is the explanation of the removal of the sentence of condemnation—”it is Christ that died.” Guilt is removed, the sentence of condemnation cancelled, and the seemingly inevitable and dreaded separation will never take place—”Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” For an answer the Apostle takes a survey of all
possible agencies and circumstances that might cause separation and finds none. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Roms., viii., 35-39). Of God’s justified it may be truly said, as it was said of Naphtali: “O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full of the blessing of the Lord” (Deut., xxxiii., 23).