PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD – RIGHTEOUSNESS

David C.Brown

1 Corinthians 1: 30; 2 Corinthians 3: 9, 5: 21

The verses that I have read make reference to righteousness and that is what I would like to speak about tonight. It is one of the great themes in the gospel, righteousness. It is a great thought from God’s side, but it may be if you come to the gospel preaching and find it is about righteousness you might think it is not a very comfortable subject. Perhaps you would prefer a preaching on grace. But I will tell you why I like righteousness -because righteousness is a free gift. If you read in Romans – you will read more about righteousness in Romans than in Corinthians – one thing that it tells you is that there is a free gift of righteousness (see Rom 5: 17). That is very attractive. The gospel comes to you to present to you righteousness, not as a demand upon you, but as something from God’s side, God’s supply to you of righteousness.

Where we read first is addressed to persons who were believers, and it speaks about, “Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God and righteousness”. So for persons who have trusted in Jesus, who know the Lord Jesus as Saviour, Christ Jesus has been made to them righteousness. So when I speak about righteousness in this way it is not a demand upon you, but it will bring out the fact which is very clear that the righteousness, which the gospel speaks about, is “in Christ Jesus”. Whatever righteousness – or sinnership – attaches to you is not of any value in the sight of God. If you come with any thought that your own attainment or anything of your own worth has value before God, we have to tell you that it is not so. God is not interested; He is not going to be satisfied by anything that you can provide by way of righteousness because He has only one standard. It is a far better standard than any one of us can attain to, and that standard is Christ Jesus. I think it is a wonderful thing that God never has a second class. He never has what is second best. He never has what is below par. He always has His standard, and His standard is Christ; and what He is going to have in believers, those who trust in Him, is Christ. The righteousness that they are going to have, the righteousness that God has towards us is “in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us … righteousness”.

If that righteousness is to be upon us, if it is to be given to us as a free gift, what has to be taken up is the fact that you and I are sinners. We can do nothing to amend that from our side. We can do nothing to improve that. That applies however great or small a sinner you are. In the parable the Lord tells about the two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii; one owed fifty (see Luke 7: 41): neither had anything to pay. It may be that you feel as the woman in Luke 7 felt, that you are a five hundred pence debtor, that is what you owed. You may say, Look, my condition is helpless and hopeless – that is my condition before God. There is only one hope: turn to the Lord Jesus. I trust that anyone who feels like that will do that. But it may be that you are a fifty pence debtor, or think you are a fifty pence debtor; you may think it is not too much, and you do not see your position before God: you have nothing to pay.

The gospel is not, of course, only about righteousness – we cannot continue in the gospel without speaking about grace. Grace is from God’s side too. It is through the grace of God that righteousness is extended to you. It is a wonderful thing that these persons had nothing to pay, and God says to you, as a sinner, you have nothing to pay to get into this. You have nothing to pay: nothing is demanded of you to get into the blessing; it is all from His side. There is nothing to pay – “he forgave both of them their debt”, He showed grace to them: that is His attitude. And God’s attitude towards you and towards the whole world, ever since the work of Christ was completed, is that there is nothing to pay. It is all from His side; it is a free gift of righteousness: there is a righteousness to be had and it is in Him, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us … righteousness”. It is based, of course, on redemption. One of the other references in that verse is redemption. This means that there has been a cost and if we refer to the last scripture which I read, it speaks in a wonderful way of what that means because it speaks of Jesus – “Him who knew not sin”. Sin was no part of His being, no part of His make up, no part of His activity. You are not only a sinner because you sinned, but you sinned because you are a sinner. What you do is the effect of what you are, the way that you behave as a sinner away from God; that is your position before God. Here was a Man who had no desire to sin, no cause to sin. Satan came and he spent forty days and forty nights thinking of any way in which he could divert this Man from the path of righteousness. Every temptation that has been thought of has been applied to the Lord Jesus. But when he had finished every temptation (see Luke 4: 13), there was a Man who had been plied with every temptation, and there was nothing in Him that was linked with any temptation. If the temptation was to be spectacular in throwing Himself off the edge of the temple that might appeal to us, that might seem a good thing to you or to me. People might see us and think of us as famous because of what we had done. The Lord Jesus did not have that impulse at all. The impulse to be spectacular or to be famous for what He had done was not there. Think of that! We can refer to any of these other temptations and it was not in Him – “he knew not sin”.

And yet think of the glory of the way that He had come! Think of the glory of the fact that here was One who was personally God. I have been thinking about the fact that it says about God in the Psalms that He humbles Himself (see Psalm 113: 6). You could understand perhaps that He humbles Himself to look at the earth but it says that God humbles Himself to look at the heavens. Even to look at them – and the Lord Jesus has not only humbled Himself to look at them, but to come into His creation. He has come into the creation which He made to give to you this free gift of righteousness, so that He could become righteousness to you. It is wonderful that He has come that way, but if He was in this scene He was here as a sinless Man, as revolted by sin in whatever way it was. Yet He had to go the way in which He had to take the cup. It came to a point when He was again assailed by Satan, who would have diverted Him from the path. But He did not, as has often been said, take the cup from Satan, and He did not take it from man, He did not take it from the nations. He took it from the hand of the Father, “not my will but thine be done”, Luke 22: 42. He went forward – and what was it that affected the Lord Jesus as He was before the Father in Gethsemane? Why was One who had been in such perfect links with the Father so affected by having to do something that the Father wished Him to do? Perfect in relationship with His Father, perfect in Gethsemane in relationship to the Father, yet recoiling from what was before Him. That is what we read here. “Him who knew not sin he” – that is, God – “has made sin for us”.

There is much that we can speak of about the way in which the Lord Jesus suffered – a righteous pathway. Especially as He suffered from that time in Gethsemane onwards, men did many wicked things to Him. He was not unaffected by that, in fact we get some of His feelings in the Psalms. “Reproach hath broken my heart”, Ps. 69: 20. The very fact that they had reproached Him affected Him, and yet that did not have an effect in atoning. It was, in fact, a Man suffering for righteousness. As He was in the hands of men He suffered as a righteous Man, and men did the worst that evil men can do to a righteous Man. But, when it came to the three hours of darkness, which is what this scripture refers to, this same Person suffered not just the worst that Satan or man could do, but He suffered as a sin-bearer. He was made sin. I would not pretend to be able to understand fully this scripture, and I do not think anyone would, but think of the wonder – we can only wonder and worship – that this One went the way that meant that He was to be made sin. But God treated Him as if that was what He was. The wrath of God is against sin, righteously the wrath of God is against sin, and if you or I are to be blessed we are not going to be blessed by God forgetting sin, and we are not going to be blessed by God overlooking sin. We would not want it that way because if God simply overlooked it we would never be satisfied that He would not raise the matter again. But here, in the way that finally satisfies Him, He has dealt with the question of sins and sins. God is satisfied with the work of Jesus on the cross. God is satisfied with it. The Lord Jesus is satisfied with it too. He could say, “it is finished” (John 29: 30) -that is, that He was satisfied with the work. So that at no time will God ever raise the question of sins with a person who has trusted Jesus, because they can say that the work of Jesus is sufficient. It has finished it. God could not righteously charge me with one of my sins because the work of Jesus is so full and so perfect.

The Lord Jesus is an advocate with the Father now, and He is pleading before the Father for His own. It has been spoken of, the Lord Jesus saying to God, ‘You know what I have done’ (J.T. Vol. 92 p.122). The Lord Jesus can draw attention to His finished work. The Father is satisfied, delighted by the fulness of the work of Jesus. It was not easy, it was not anything other than the greatest agony that there has ever been known in the history of time, when that cry went up, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me”, Matt. 27: 46. That is a word that no one will ever in the fulness have to say again. No one had ever said it before in such fulness of the knowledge of what it meant. One who had a perfect right to call God, “My God” -yet forsaken by God. Why was that? It was a bearing of sins; it was taking on that judgment of sin so that I might be free. It was so that the sinner who has trusted in Him should be free, so that the sinner who has trusted in Him should know that righteousness conferred upon him, so that we as believers might “become God’s righteousness in Him”. I do not fully understand this scripture, but I think that it is wonderful.

We have thought of Satan; he accuses persons. We see that in the book of Job – he comes and God speaks to him about Job, “Hast thou considered my servant Job”, Job 1: 8. God had something to work out with Job, but Satan is still interested in believers. He would do anything to divert them from the pathway, but he cannot remove them from the safety of the hand of God. He cannot do anything about that. He would divert them from the path if he could, for the time that they remain in this scene. But God could say, these are My righteousness, these people. Satan might, if you are a believer, speak about you: God could say, My righteousness is there; My righteousness is in display on that person. You cannot challenge that, you cannot take him out of My hand. Nothing can take you out of the hand of God. Not only is the righteousness “in Christ” but it is God’s righteousness which is displayed so that we should become God’s righteousness in Christ. That is the position of the believer. Where is Christ? We have spoken of Him on the cross, but that is not His position now. He is now at the right hand of God, that is His position in glory, and the believer is in Him. I am secured eternally in my salvation because I am in Christ. Satan cannot take me out of Christ; I cannot take myself out of Christ. “In Christ” -what a wonderful place! There is nothing that can challenge it, nothing that can remove me. That is the position of someone who has trusted in the Lord Jesus. Do you know that as your position?

We could speak of many other things that are necessary, and there is much else in the gospel. We have gone straight from the cross to the glory, but there were others things that had to be gone through. Jesus had to die, because that was the penalty of our sins. He had to shed His precious blood for the remission of your sins, He had to go into the grave for the removal of the person who had sinned, and He had to rise again to introduce you, if you are a believer, into the fulness of the blessing and into relationship with Himself with a new life that cannot be affected by death. That is the way He has gone. All this was for His own glory; all for the Father’s pleasure: all is for my benefit. Can you say that? Are you assured that these ways, that path that the Lord Jesus went, the depths that He went into the grave, to be bound by it for these days, were for your benefit? So that in the risen, glorified Man you can know your place, “that we might become God’s righteousness in Him”.

I am sure that you will understand why it says where we read in Chapter 3, “the ministry of righteousness abounds in glory” – I can hardly think of anything that abounds in glory more than what we have spoken of. How great it is! How full it is! There is a ministry of righteousness that, is, a word of righteousness, a speaking in righteousness, an administration in righteousness. It is being doled out, righteousness for those who wish to take advantage of it, “the ministry of righteousness abounds in glory”. There is righteousness and glory to sustain you for the pathway here. There is righteousness and blessing to be with you.

I would like just to refer to a few other references to righteousness in Corinthians. In the next chapter Paul is speaking about his ministry and the way that he served, and having much against him, prison and riots and all sorts of contrary things. But then he says, “through the arms of righteousness on the right hand and left”, 2 Cor 6: 7. So that you can go forward as a believer through the arms of righteousness on the right hand and left. What a way forward for a Christian, a way forward protected and cared for through the arms of righteousness; whatever is testing you on the right hand or challenging you on the left hand, you can go forth in the power of God.

But then righteousness has to be worked out practically. It is not in God’s mind that He should confer that righteousness upon you and that you should have no change in your behaviour, that you should go on just as you did before. So Paul brings in later in chapter 6 practical question. “Be not diversely yoked with unbelievers; for what participation is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship of light and darkness?” (6: 14). That is something that each one of us has to be careful about – our company. It has been referred in a very appropriate way to actual associations, but it is not just that. It asks “what participation is there between righteousness” -remember, that is the believer who has been made God’s righteousness in Him – “and lawlessness? Or of fellowship of light with darkness?” That is a test every day – are we participating along with lawless persons? We need to work, we need to do duties, all these things are necessary; but what about our participation? The Holy Spirit would give us grace that we should be maintained according to the divine standard, and the divine standard is Christ. Always Christ. Are we maintained according to Him?

It speaks later about giving as a particular example of righteousness; “He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor, his righteousness abideth for ever” (9: 9). Think of the righteousness that is displayed in the righteous person because he scatters abroad and gives to the poor. So God is affecting the behaviour of those He has secured. They are going to be helped by Him along a path that is a path of righteousness. It does not secure your eternal salvation – although it does save you from what is in the present world. But for your eternal salvation you depend on that work of Jesus on the cross at Calvary. Eternally nothing can add to it, nothing can take away from it, nothing you can do can affect it; it is sublime and it is complete. It has satisfied God, it has satisfied the Lord Jesus, and it has satisfied the true heart of the believer. Nothing to be added to it. But He would give you a pathway to walk in pleasing to Him, so that if we speak about God’s righteousness, persons are going to see that – a righteous person, somebody distinct from the way the world is running on. It would be something attractive to the heart of those who are affected by God’s grace when we see someone who is walking with God in that pathway.

So I trust that every one of us is assured of the righteousness upon us. We are clothed in it, and we can go forward and be in the presence of God clothed in it. It depends on Christ’s work, it depends on you laying hold of it, being sure that you have trusted Him for yourself, being sure that you know for yourself that you have trusted the Saviour, that He is your Saviour and your Lord, and that you have a right to the tree of life because of what He has done. May it be so that each one of us is fully in that assurance. For His Name’s sake.

EDINBURGH