Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian – Part 11

“The Christian has righteousness applied to him and eternal life secured through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ”

Welcome again to Powerful God – Practical Faith. I appreciate you taking the time to visit us as we are continuing our blog series called, “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”. We have thus far been having a very insightful time in God’s Word. I hope that you find the blog informative and spiritually edifying.

I want to especially thank, again, those of you who have been following along through this series with us. I appreciate you being a part of this journey. What God has to say to us through scripture, becomes more and more personally meaningful and powerful as we gradually understand His eternal plan and provision for those of us who believe in him. As we continue to gain knowledge in this series on what a Christian “really” is, I hope those of us who are Christ followers carry the name of Christ with a sense of honor and humility, out of reverence for the One who gave it to us.

In our last post, we discussed Statement 6, in which we learned about God’s preemptive Love for the Christian, and how while we were still dead in our sin, and under the wrath of a Holy God, Christ chose to be the remedy for our sin. We learned that Christ took on the payment of death for us freely, when we had no capacity to pay it ourselves and live. The activity of the Triune God to bring about our salvation is extraordinary. As we learn more and more about who our God is, it becomes clearer to us that God and He alone is at work in the creation of the Christian, and we, who by his grace have placed trust in Christ, are both the result and recipients of his powerful handywork.

As the Apostle Paul wrote……

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NASB)

Now in can’t be overstated that there are enormous spiritual benefits God has given to the Christian in salvation. But so often, Christians can take a rather “entitled” approach to being a Christ follower and come to believe that they have or even deserve “perks” for being in God’s family. There are many Christians who say that we ought to expect God to bless us materially, financially, physically and otherwise. I know that God can do all of those things if he so desires. But I believe when the Christian truly understands how he came to be so, and the enormous demonstration of God’s grace on him, the only honest and genuine response would be a humbling sense of complete unworthiness and reverence for what God has done for him. Anything God gives us in addition to salvation, when we don’t even deserve that, is never to be considered deserved, but rather a reason to give even more thanks to a God that would sovereignly desire to give us more than what we deserve. This should always be the attitude of the Christian.

In this blog post, I would like to look deeper into this work Christ did on our behalf. In so doing we approach Statement 7 in our series.

Statement 7 says….

A Christian is a person who has had the righteousness of God applied to him through the life and death of Christ, and his eternal life secured through the resurrection of Christ.

Now if you have been following this series, we have learned that the Christian has never been righteous in and of himself. There is no person on earth, no matter how good they may appear to be to themselves or to those around them, that can lay claim to the designation of “righteous”. The Scriptures have taught us many things about our righteousness, or lack thereof, hasn’t it……?

Our righteous is as filthy rags ………………….       Isaiah 64:6

The heart is… desperately wicked…………….       Jeremiah 17:9

There is none righteous ………………………….       Romans 3:10

You were dead in trespasses and sins……….       Ephesians 2:1

All have sinned ……………………………………..        Romans 3:23

The other dilemma we have regarding righteousness is that we can never see God in peace without it. Scripture teaches us that righteousness is a prerequisite for being in the presence of God.

Listen to these passages of Scripture….

Your eyes are too pure to look at evil, And You cannot look at harm favorably.

Habakkuk 1:13

For the Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will see His face.

Psalm 11:7

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God

Matthew 5:8

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish

Psalm 1:5-6

Surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you

Psalm 140:13

 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

Hebrews 12:14

We also learned, especially in our last blog, that our unrighteousness, or sin, had to be dealt with severely, by way of death.  This penalty, we also learned, we could never have recovered from. However, God the Son, Jesus Christ, did pay this debt on behalf of those of us who are Christians. Our sin penalty was placed on Jesus Christ and he bore our penalty for us.

But what about this righteousness that we need in order to enter God’s presence? We have already learned that we were dead in sin, with an inability to be righteous, due to our nature being corrupt from the inside out. How can we enter the presence of God if we need a righteousness that is absolutely unattainable? Similar to the dilemma we found ourselves in during our last lesson, in which we could not pay our sin debt and live, we now have a righteousness that we need in order to be in relationship with God, but do not possess. How can this issue be resolved? Well, the remedy remains the same. It is again, Christ Himself. The only person capable of paying for our sin debt is also the same person who alone can satisfy our need for righteousness.

Have you ever asked yourself what was the purpose of Christ’s life on earth? When most people I know who are Christian, or have some knowledge of the Christian teaching, think of Jesus Christ or Christianity in any general biblical sense, They, at least allude to Christ’s death burial and resurrection, and as well they should. However, in terms of understanding Jesus’ life, the conversation often surrounds Christ’s incredible miracles, and his profound, authoritative teaching and preaching that he gave to bring us to an understanding of Himself and His kingdom. These aspects of Christ’s life also should and must be taught. But there was also something Christ did while on earth that we should never de-emphasize, because it is vital in the Triune God’s redemptive plan. Christ Himself put it plainly when being baptized by the prophet John.

Jesus said….

“………it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

Matthew 3:15

God the Son, the second person of the Triune God, came to earth as a man to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus Christ became the one and only man to fulfill the law of God perfectly. He lived a perfect and sinless life. Christ’s life was the only kind of life that was acceptable to God. Why? Because Jesus Christ was the only person who obeyed the Law of God without error, both in heart and deed.  

Listen to what Jesus says with respect to God’s Law….

Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished!

Matthew 5:17-18

Even the Apostle Paul confirms Jesus’ statement in the letter to the Romans….

For Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Romans 10:4

So why is this perfectly righteous life of Jesus Christ so important to the Christian? What does it accomplish? Well, there is an insightful passage found in Romans 8:3-4 that lays out the reason Christ’s life was absolutely vital to our redemption.

Paul writes….

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:3-4

This passage has so much rich truth that we must take some time to really understand its meaning.

First of all, Paul says that the Law of God could not do something. What was it that the Law could not do? Well, if it is true that a righteous person keeps the Law of God, and no unrighteous person can enter God’s presence, then we can conclude that the Law, although good, cannot make “us” righteous. But you may be asking yourself, ” well wait a minute, if I can keep the Law of God, I can be righteous right?” The answer is yes. but the more important question is…

Can you keep it?

Paul answers us in the following passage by explaining why the law can not make us righteous.

Paul says that the Law was “weak through the flesh”. Now what exactly does this mean? Well, it is an expression of what we have already learned about our condition without Christ. Paul meant that because the sinner, due to his sinful nature cannot keep the Law perfectly, the law is limited in its ability. Man, in his sinfulness, or “sinful flesh”, can only through the Law of God come to understand the necessity of righteousness and his inability to attain it. 

Romans 3:20 says….

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Romans 3:20

Paul then says, “what the Law could not do…. God did”. So, what is it that God did? I would like to give attention to what Paul says next, because God’s activity here for the Christian is absolutely profound.

Paul says, first of all, that God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. This is what Christians refer to as the incarnation or God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ. Note that Paul says that God the Son came in the “likeness” of sinful flesh and not “in” sinful flesh. God the Son, became a perfect human being, free of sin. Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man.

Paul goes on to say that God not only sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, but also for sin or as an offering for sin. This means, as we learned in our earlier post that Christ offered himself as our substitute, to bear the penalty of our sin in our place. Christ died in payment for our sins.

Paul then states that God….

.. condemned sin in the flesh so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us….

In this phrase, Paul describes the activity of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Christ condemned sin in the flesh by providing a righteous life, which fulfilled what God required in His Holy Law. Jesus in essence condemned sin by overcoming it as a man. God then applied that righteous life lived by Jesus to the Christian, as if the Christian had lived that righteous life himself. God then considers the requirement of the Law satisfied for all those placing faith in Jesus Christ as their substitute in righteousness, thus making them… righteous.

But there’s more. It was not enough for the Christian to receive Christ’s righteousness. In order for our redemption to be complete, Christ had to take something from us in exchange for giving us his righteousness. Now this exchange has nothing to do with some mutual transaction between two parties in which both benefit. In fact, from a human perspective, what Christ received in exchange for giving us His righteousness was to his detriment. Christ had to receive our sin. For us to be in right standing with God, Christ Jesus had to give us his righteousness, because we did not have any of our own, and take on our sin, which we could not pay for on our own. This is how the Triune God expresses his love to the Christian!

Listen to these words in 2 Corinthians 5 and Philippians 3:9-10

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

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

Philippians 3:9

Are you beginning to see that all this is God’s doing on our behalf?

The words of the songwriter, Elvina Hall, sums up our gratitude for a grateful savior…

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

There is so much more for us to discuss as we continue our look at Statement 7. I hope you return to our series as we learn more about the necessity of Christ’s righteousness and resurrection.

God Bless