I recently listened to your October 31st sermon. In that sermon, you quoted someone who said, “At the point of believing faith, God placed all of Christ’s righteousness on us.” Would you expound on that a little? I’m not sure I get it or believe it.
Wondering about wonders
Dear Wondering,
The full quote was from a devotional by Bob Gass. He wrote, “At the cross, God placed all our sins on Christ, and at the point of believing faith, He places all Christ’s righteousness on us.” In the October 31st sermon, I was attempting to answer the question, “Why Christianity?” “Why bother?” I pointed out that to answer that question, we have to answer the question, “Why Christ?” When I used Gass’ quote, I was supporting the scriptures that declare Christ’s primary purpose—especially his death on the cross—as providing forgiveness for our sins so that we could, if we want to, walk into the presence of God. (Isaiah 53:5-6; 1 Tim. 1:15; Rom. 3:23-24)
For centuries, Christians have tried to come up with explanations and illustrations of Christ’s sacrifice. The one I’ve heard the most is that since God is a just and perfect God, only those who are fully forgiven can enter into his presence. Since sin is what contaminates our lives, we have to be cleansed of our sins in order to be in a living relationship with God. Another popular image—and one I used that Sunday—is Christ as the bridge that spans the separation between us and God (sin being the cause of the separation). Both explanations say the same thing: We can’t go into God’s presence based on our own righteousness. As Isaiah said, even our most righteous acts are nothing more than filthy rags (paraphrase of Is. 64:6). So, when we place our sins on Christ, God places Christ’s righteousness on us. Someone else said that at salvation, God looks at us through the lens of the cross. It’s the same general idea.
My suspicion is that you may really be asking, “If God placed Christ’s righteousness on us, why are Christians so UNrighteous?” If that’s your question—or at least a part of it, let me offer another analogy. Let’s say God is the king of the land and we as lowly peasant can only enter his presence if we are perfectly clean and have paid the debt each of us owe. For whatever reason, we’ve finally decided we want to be in the presence of the king, so we make our way to the castle. As we stand outside the throne room, we can readily see the filth in our lives and the emptiness of our pockets. However, standing next to us is the king’s son. He offers to wash us himself and give us the price we owe. We accept his offer, receive a cleansing, and then just after the son hands the payment for our debt, he places a purple robe on our shoulders. In that moment, the son is making us heirs to the king. All that available to the son is available to us. We can walk into the throne room with confidence because we walk in as a son because of The Son (Hebrews 4:15-16).
The sad reality of that analogy is that if (and this is a big “if”) we chose to, we could remain clean, and we could constantly sport our new purple attire. But for whatever insane reason, we all inevitably choose to take off the robe, try life again our way, and consequently lose the right-ness Christ has so graciously given. Thankfully, we can return to the throne room and be cleansed and made righteous again. The questions are, “Do we want to live fully righteous lives?” and “What’s keeping us embracing that possibility?”
Jesus said, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Jesus also said we could love God with all our heart, mind, and soul (Luke 10:27). Paul referred to a fully righteous life as staying in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). The question isn’t really if our receiving Christ’s righteousness is possible. The question is why don’t we run head-long into that great promise and experience it every day? Maybe that will be the text of another “Ask JimBob.”
JimBob
