"Our faith in Jesus transfers God's righteousness..." Romans 5:1 (TPT)

“…True and lasting peace with God” this isn’t something we do or achieve in our own effort, this was the gift offered to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  It is the righteousness of God.  So what is righteousness?

Righteousness involves the uprightness or the Justification of God for a person’s actions.  According to the Mosaic law the sheer impossibility of leading a righteous life was tempered with the constant ceremonial observances which God required for cleansing and washing, sacrificing, and offering.

If there was a way to lead a sinless life by observing all of these ceremonial rituals and laws then Jesus would never have needed to come.  Man will always fail in the outward observances of the rituals and ordinances required by God because mankind was never required to fully observe them in and of himself without God's full intervention.  

It literally took God to fulfill the requirements of His own law, not man.  Man is fallible and broken by the sin nature, and does not possess within himself the ability to meet God’s requirements unless God intervenes on his behalf. 

Jesus came from Heaven and is the faithful and true representation of the Father, He is God incarnate, God in human form to not only meet the rituals and requirements of the law but to fulfill them once and for all.  The Mosaic law was always speaking about how God was going to keep His own law and live among His people.  This only became evident when Jesus was revealed and was despised and rejected by the law-keeping religious community who were threatened by Jesus’ words and actions. 

God (through His Son Jesus) took on the law and demonstrated that physical observances were not what He had required, but a change of heart, compassion, and love were the true representation of the law and its ordinances.

Jesus “declares us flawless in His eyes.”  He has fulfilled the requirements of the law in every way.  

Forgiveness of sins was ours in Jesus before He died on the cross. 

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Why do you argue in your hearts over what I do and think that it is blasphemy for me to say his sins are forgiven? Let me ask you, which is easier to prove: when I say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or when I say, ‘Stand up, carry your stretcher, and walk’?”

Jesus turned to the paraplegic man and said, “To prove to you all that I, the Son of Man, have the lawful authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you now, stand up! Carry your stretcher and go on home, for you are healed.”

In an instant, the man rose right before their eyes. He stood, picked up his stretcher, and went home, giving God all the glory with every step he took. 

Luke 5:23-25 (TPT)

So then the question remains if Jesus is God and sins were forgiven before he died, then why did He have to die?  It was because the outward observances of the Law demanded it, and the message that Jesus was preaching was so radical and contrary to what was understood by the Jewish leaders that they reacted instead of listening or receiving what He had to say.  

Jesus was preaching a message of Love as opposed to a message of retaliation against the Romans by the violent overthrow of their tyranny which is what was expected, Jesus did not fit into their limited paradigm.  So rather than deal with Jesus on a heart level, the Jewish leaders took offense to His message of love and decided to silence him and kill him instead, they utilized the Mosaic law as a measure of judgment against Him.

Another word for righteousness is justification, a justification for one’s actions. At the heart of the word justification, is the word “Justice”.  Jesus came to bring the true justice of God which was love and acceptance, mercy and forgiveness, hope and peace.  

The law only brought condemnation and judgment and that was all the Jewish leaders knew, they knew how to keep people inline by fear and intimidation by heaping guilt and shame upon them and by showing them they were not keeping the law and it’s requirements and telling them that God was unhappy and disapproving of them.

The death of Jesus was very significant as it revealed that the law was ineffective to create true righteousness.  Jesus sought to undo what the law had created which was a class system of (self) righteousness among the elite leaders of the day.  Their sole purpose was to extort position, power, and money from the populace while ignoring the weightier matters of the law which was mercy, forgiveness, and love.  They were bad actors.

Jesus suffered greatly through His torture to bear the effects of sin for us, He became our sin-bearer.  Jesus was voluntarily tortured so that through His torture we would not bear the consequences of sin, even though He lived a sinless life He took the full brunt of the penalty of the law for us.

But the purpose of Jesus doesn’t end at His death, because He rose from the dead, He not only proved that He was God, He proved that everything that He said was true.  Without the resurrection, there is no life, everything about the Christian faith hinges on the resurrection, without it, faith in Christ would be pointless.

But with the resurrection, we have the promise offered to us, that God is not angry with us, but loves us and is our friend. He receives us as His own dear family if we receive the gift of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus provided access to the Father for us which was previously closed off, we now have an advocate with the Father through Jesus.

But the best part and the point of this post is that we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed (or imparted) to us, the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus resides within us.  It is no longer keeping up with standards which we could never fully keep, we now have the freedom in Jesus to actually be free.  Free from the law of sin and death and be guilt-free, and to live as children of God.  

That is what Jesus has done for us.

"...dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before His throne"

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett