the Fourth Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Jeremiah 23:6
‘The Lord our Righteousness’
Read Isaiah 1:1-19
Beloved, we sustained a great loss by the Fall in this matter of righteousness. We suffered the loss of a righteous nature and the loss of all legal righteousness in the sight of God. Man sinned; he was therefore no longer innocent of the transgression. Man did not keep the commandment; he was therefore guilty of the sin of omission. In that which he committed, and in that which he omitted, man’s original character of uprightness was completely wrecked. Jesus Christ came to undo the mischief of the Fall for his people.
Christ Jesus, by his one sacrifice, has satisfied the penalty of sin in his flesh. ‘He, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’ But it is not enough for us to be pardoned. It is required of man that he keep the whole law. God requires of man a perfect obedience. He must continue in all things written in the book of the law to do them. Man must have a perfect righteousness, or God will not accept him. Man must have a perfect obedience, or God will not reward him. God cannot accept anything less than perfection.
How is this necessity supplied? There is no righteousness in us. Even the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification is imperfect in this life. If we would be righteous, we must have the righteousness of another. Christ alone is our righteousness. We are accepted in the Beloved. The righteousness by which the saints are clothed, through which we are accepted and with which we are made meet to inherit eternal life, is the work of Christ. The perfect life of Christ as our Representative constitutes the righteousness of his people. By his death Christ washed away our sins. His life covers us from head to foot. His death was his sacrifice to God. His life is his gift to man, by which we satisfied the demands of the law. In his life, Christ rendered a perfect obedience to the law as our Representative. In his death, he satisfied the claims of the law as our Substitute. Christ is ‘the Lord our Righteousness’.
