June 6 – LD 23, Day 3: Righteous in Christ
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Romans 4:13-25
Yesterday we left Balaam
on the heights of
But in the middle of the
camp of
God was saying through
wicked Balaam, “I see no sin in this nation because I am with them and Christ,
their king, is among them.”
What could be the reason
for this? The answer is that, as our teacher points out to us, we are righteous
in Christ.
Christ is righteous
because of His death on the cross. All our sins were made the sins of Christ,
and all the guilt of all the sins of all the people of God were placed on
Christ. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him” (II Cor. 5:21).
Christ was made
responsible for all our sins and guilt. For them, he went to the cross on which
God poured out all the wrath he had against all the
sins of all the elect. Christ suffered what God’s people should have suffered.
Christ paid the debt
that was our debt, and by His perfect obedience he earned for us righteousness.
If our debt is paid, we are now righteous.
This was a legal
transaction. Legally, Christ stood before God’s bar of justice and God
condemned Christ to die for the debt of all the elect. Christ did this
willingly, and paid that debt by bearing all the guilt of our sins. He,
therefore, became, though guilty for our sins, perfectly righteous.
But that righteousness
God imputed to us. Not because of what we had done, but because of what Christ
had done. “[He] was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our
justification” (Rom. 4:25).
And so our teacher
reminds us that we are righteous before God, in Christ.
This great work of God
is called justification. The word literally means, to
make just or righteous. It is God’s declaration that he sees no sin in us.
What a wonderful blessing
that is! We can sing, “How blest is he whose trespass hath freely been
forgiven” (Psalter No. 83).