Everlasting Righteousness

Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. - Psalms 119:142

    The righteousness that is ours by imputation and impartation is the righteousness of one who is infinitely and immutably righteous—The Lord Jesus Christ. Even when our sin was imputed to him, he remained righteous because he was God, and God cannot be anything less than righteous. When he was made sin for us, it was not his transgression, but ours for which he suffered death as a man. In this great transaction there is a great mystery of which we can only comprehend in part. Two great truths (many more than two) are revealed in the substitutionary death of our Lord.

    In his death he was made sin—For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:21).

    In his death he did not sin—And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedientunto death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2:8).

    The Lord Jesus Christ died justly because he was made our sin (our sin became His)—For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit (1 Pt 3:18). He died righteously because he did no sin, had no sin of his own (who knew no sin) and was obedient to the will and law of God. Therefore, it is as equally true that he knew no sin, as it is that he was made sin. If Christ our Lord be the same yesterday, today, and forever—If he be indeed God in the flesh—Then indeed his righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and all those to whom his righteousness is imputed has an everlasting righteousness as well.

    These great truths in no way contradict each other, but rather reveal the manifold wisdom of God in the great work of redemption. Some things revealed in the Scriptures are to be believed and declared rather than explained.

    Thank God the Scriptures clearly reveal the substitutionary work of Christ and the imputed righteousness of Christ, as one and the same. It is the work of God and not man, otherwise it would not be everlasting and we would have no hope of salvation.