"Therein Is The Righteousness Of God Revealed"

Rom.1:17

 

    

The gospel of Christ is the revelation of God's righteousness, without which no one can be saved. That righteousness which is revealed in the gospel is both the rightness and rectitude of God's character and the righteousness which Christ wrought out for his elect by his obedience to God as our Mediator, by which we have been justified.

     THIS IS CALLED THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD BECAUSE ALL THREE OF THE DIVINE PERSONS IN THE GODHEAD HAVE AN INTEREST IN IT. We worship one God in the trinity of his sacred Persons (I John 5:7) and rejoice to know that all three of the Divine Persons are engaged in the salvation of our souls (Eph. 1:3-14). Our salvation was purposed in eternity by God the Father, purchased in time by God the Son, and performed in us by God the Holy Spirit. God the Father sent his Son into the world to work out righteousness for his elect. That having been accomplished by Christ's life and death as our Substitute, our heavenly Father, the Judge of all the earth, approved of it, accepted it, and imputed it to us. God the Son is the One who performed righteousness for us, as our Representative and Substitute before God. In his life he obeyed the law's precepts for us. In he death he satisfied the law's justice for us. Christ is "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." And all who believe have been made the righteousness of God in him. God the Holy Spirit reveals the righteousness of God in Christ to chosen, redeemed sinners through the preaching of the gospel. He works faith in their hearts, enables them to lay hold of Christ, and pronounces the sentence of justification in their consciences. The Holy Spirit of God, in his work of conviction, shows us our need of Christ's righteous- ness, shows us how that Christ accomplished righteous- ness, and gives us faith to trust Christ's righteous- ness. And he does this by the preaching of the gospel.

     Aren't you thankful that God sent someone to preach the gospel to you in the power of the Spirit? You were without Christ, ignorant of the righteousness of God in him. But now you are in Christ. You have been made the righteousness of God in him. Will you not do what you can to send this gospel to your fellowman? Without it they are, as you once were, lost, without Christ, being ignorant of the righteousness of God.

 

Don Fortner