Plainer words can hardly be found than those of Scripture itself, to express the doctrine I have been insisting on. Christ, who is the Well-beloved, All-powerful Son of God, is possessed by every Christian as a Saviour in the full meaning of that title, or becomes to us righteousness; and in and after so becoming, really communicates a measure, and a continually increasing, measure, of what He is Himself. In the words of the Apostle, “We are complete in Him,” and again, of the Evangelist, “Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” He makes us gradually and eventually to be in our own persons, what He has been from eternity in Himself, what He is from our Baptism towards us, righteous. That acceptableness, which He has ever had in the Father’s sight, as being the reflection of the Father’s perfections, He first imputes, then imparts to us.
This especially St. Paul lays down, when he says in the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” He says that by Christ’s righteousness we are made righteous; made, not accounted merely. Christ, who is the Son by birth, makes us sons by adoption; Christ, who is “the righteous” in Himself, makes us righteous by communication, giving us first the name, then causing the name to change into the substance.
Now, over and above what is so plain that the phrase “made righteous,” in this passage of St. Paul, is something beyond being accounted righteous, two circumstances may be mentioned as making it still plainer. In the original Greek the word means not merely made, but brought into a state of righteousness. It is the same word as is used by St. Peter, when he says, “If these things,” faith, charity, and other graces, “be in you and abound, they make you,” that is, constitute you as being “neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is the word used also by St. James, when he says that “so is the tongue,” has such a place, “among our members, that it defileth the whole body;” and again, when he says that “whosoever will be a friend of the world, is,” or is constituted “the enemy of God.” Is the world’s friend but accounted God’s enemy? or is the tongue accounted a defilement? or are mature Christians but accounted fruitful in the knowledge of Christ? When, then, St. Paul says that we “become righteous” by Christ’s obedience, he is speaking of our actual state through Christ, of that internal nature, frame, or character, which Christ gives us, nor gives only, but constitutes ours. He speaks of our new nature as really righteousness.
But, again, he parallels our privilege in Christ to our loss in Adam; “as by one man’s disobedience,” he says, “many were made sinners; so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” Now, who will deny that Adam’s sin is both imputed and imparted to us? If any one did, we should call him a Pelagian. So indeed we should consider him, and justly; but how shall we argue with him if we deal with the latter half of the verse, as he disposes of the former? We cannot take just so much as we will of a free interpretation; we may open the door to heresy, we cannot close it.
Though these words of St. Paul, then, were the only passage of Scripture adducible, it would be clear, I think, that Christ’s obedience, which is All-righteousness, does also work righteousness in us, according to our measure.
2.
But here another line of argument is commonly taken, which will furnish matter for the present Lecture. It is said that, though it be true that our Lord not only is our righteousness by imputation, but works righteousness in us, still there [are] two distinct and unconnected senses in which the word “righteous” may be taken, one of which belongs to Him, the other to us. It is owned that Christians really are righteous, but then not righteous in the sense in which Christ is righteous, but in another sense. Now if by this is merely meant that He has an incommunicable righteousness, as He has an incommunicable wisdom, holiness, and bountifulness, it is of course most true. None but He has infinite perfection in any respect. Yet He does impart to us a measure of these latter excellences notwithstanding, and in like manner He may impart to us a measure of His righteousness. There is no controversy what righteousness means; and certainly it is an attribute which admits of being imparted. All parties seem to allow that the word denotes, as I have already intimated, what is intrinsically good, what admits of being contemplated and accepted as such by Almighty God. In this sense Christ is Righteousness in God’s sight; He is the Well-beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased, as being “the Brightness of His glory, and the express Image of His Person,” “the unspotted Mirror of the power of God, and the Image of His goodness.” Nothing can He absolutely delight in, but what is like Himself; hence he is said to “put no trust even in His servants, and to charge His Angels with folly.” None but the Eternal Son, who is incommunicably like the Father, can be infinitely acceptable to Him or simply righteous. Yet in proportion as rational beings are like the Son, or partake of His excellence, so are they really righteous; in proportion as God sees His Son in them, He is well pleased with them. Righteousness is nothing else than moral goodness regarded in its intrinsic worth or acceptableness, just as love, truth, and peace, are other names for the same moral goodness, according as it is viewed in different aspects. It is love, or truth, or goodness, viewed relatively to God’s judgment or approval of it; or, in words already used, it is the quality in love, truth, or goodness, of being intrinsically pleasing to Him. And, being acceptableness, it is surely as capable of being imparted to man, as love, truth, or goodness; and that in fact it is so imparted, and imparted from and through the Eternal Son, is the literal and uniform declaration of Scripture. Not only is the word “righteous” applied to Christians in Scripture, but the idea is again and again, in various ways, forced upon us. We read, for instance, of “God working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight;” of our being “holy and without blame before Him in love;” of Christ, “who is His image,” “shining” and “living” in our hearts; of His “making us accepted” or gracious “in the Beloved;” and of His “knowing what is the mind of the Spirit” in our hearts, because “He maketh intercession for the saints in God’s way.” [Heb. xiii. 21. 2 Cor. iv. 4. Eph. i. 4, 6. Rom. viii. 27.]