11.26.07

The Essential Doctrine of Righteousness

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:51 pm by Perry

Righteousness is a word that was first coined by William Tyndale in his translation of the first English Bible. The word can be directly defined as “right wise” or “right ways”. Less directly and more theologically, the word righteousness means to be without guilt or sin and morally justifiable. The word righteousness occurs five hundred times in the Old Testament derived from the Hebrew word tzedek. In the New Testament, righteousness is derived from the Greek word dikaios which occurs over two hundred times.

Righteousness is an essential component of the doctrine of double imputation. To be saved, a person’s sins must be made clean of their sins. This is called propitiation whereby God’s wrath against us in our sin is appeased through the death of Jesus Christ to pay the sin debt and absorb the wrath due us.

The problem is that we are called to be holy just as our Heavenly Father is holy (Lev. 11:44). If our sins are paid by Christ then we are essentially “neutral” in that we are sinless but at the same time we haven’t done anything good either; we are in the middle between sinful and righteous. This is where righteousness factors into the doctrine of double imputation. Not only are our sins imputed to Christ but the righteousness of Christ is imputed to those who place their faith in Him so that we receive His righteousness.

The idea of righteousness is saturated throughout the Scriptures. We are going to look at an outline of righteousness in the Old and New Testament. We will start with the command to be hold then examine our flawed righteousness and then finish with the only one who is righteous who offers us His righteousness.

Imputed Righteousness states that upon a person’s repentance from sin and belief in Jesus, individuals are declared righteous by receiving the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to the believer.

We are called to be holy. It was God’s plan for us to be pure and undefiled by sin.

Leviticius 11:44

For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.

Leviticius 19:2

- Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

Leviticius 20:7

- Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God.

God’s wrath is revealed against our unrighteousness. God made us to be holy because we were created in His image. By sinning we disobey God and rebel against His will and become unrighteous in doing so. As such, God’s exercises His wrath against those who deliberately sin and become unrighteous by their own desires.

Romans 1:18

– For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

We see from Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount that our righteousness must exceed the good deeds of the most “righteous” human standards.

Matthew 5:20

- For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Pharisees were by all human standard the most righteous people alive. They even walked around with their eyes to the ground to prevent seeing a woman to possibly lust after a woman. Jesus said that unless our righteousness exceeds the righteousness of those people that we can never inherit the Kingdom of God.

We see that Jesus was saying this with “tongue in cheek” expression because even their righteousness is of no value to our eternal soul. God goes so far to say that our righteousness is not only of no value to Him but it is offensive. God goes as far as to say that our good deeds are like dirty garments. The most honest translation says that our good deeds are like filthy tampons to God. Even if we do all of the good deeds of the Pharisees and ourselves and are seen to be good people by other people, God sees our sin and unrighteousness and we are still under His wrath.

Isaiah 64:6

- We have all become like one who is unclean,
 and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf,
 and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

It is interesting that the Old Testament verse that is most commonly quoted in the New Testament deals with the issue of righteousness. We are told by the prophet Habakkuk that, despite the fact that our righteousness is of no value, we can receive the righteousness necessary to enter the Kingdom of God through faith.

Habakkuk 2:4

– (quoted in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, John 3:36) Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

The question becomes what we have to place our faith in to receive the righteousness needed to inherit salvation. We cant answer the question completely before looking at how Old Testament saints were saved. As Christians, we believe that people are saved by placing their faith in Christ to receive His righteousness to become righteous ourselves. The question is how people were saved prior to the death and resurrection of Christ. It is curious that we see in the story of Abraham that he became righteous by placing his faith in the promises of God (The Apostle Paul provides an extensive discourse on the righteousness of Abraham that was received through faith in the promises of God in Romans 4:18-25).

Genesis 15:4-6

- And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

We are in need of someone to place our faith in who is righteous so that their righteousness may be imputed to us. Without one who is righteous there is no one who we can place our faith in to become righteous ourselves. Luckily, there is one who is righteous.

1 John 3:5

- You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

The truth of the Gospel is that we can become righteous by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. He is the only one who is righteous. By placing our faith in Christ Jesus, in His atoning death and victorious resurrection, we not only have our sins atoned for but we also receive the righteousness of Christ. We become righteous by trusting in the righteousness of Christ. This is the essential second component of double imputation:

Philippians 3:8-11
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

1 Corinthians 1:30-31
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Romans 10:3-4
For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Romans 3:21-25
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Jesus said in his discourse of the beatitudes on the Sermon on the Mount that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed by God (Matthew 5:6). We too should hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

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