“The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ to all and upon all them that believe” (Romans 3:22).
“Follow … holiness without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
Let it be clearly understood that the righteousness that engages our attention in this article is IMPUTED righteousness.
There is the practical righteousness that God expects from His people, the full result of which is seen in Revelation 19:8. But whilst remembering this, we wish to take up IMPUTED righteousness contrasting it with holiness in this article.
These Scriptures connect the thought of righteousness with a work done outside of the believer altogether, whilst the thought of holiness is linked up with a work done inside the believer. In the former case the work done is that of the Lord Jesus on the cross; in the latter it is that of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the believer.
The former is judicial: the latter is experimental. Each is distinct and should be kept so in our minds, and yet the one cannot be divorced from the other. They stand in vital relation to each other.
It must be ever remembered that there are two great results of the death of Christ for the believer. Not only is what we have done—our sins—atoned for, but what we are, as utterly fallen children of Adam’s race, is condemned and set aside from before God. In the one case God is “the Justifier of him which believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26); in the other, “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, CONDEMNED sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3).
There is forgiveness for sins, but no forgiveness for a sinful nature. Nature can only express itself according to what it is, “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). There can be nothing for that but condemnation, root and branch.
But there is the positive side to this. It is not all condemnation. Where would any of us be if there were no positive side?
What is the positive side? It is the communication of divine life to the believer, through the death of Christ. We come to the realm of what is truly marvellous. Do you not, fellow believer, feel the stirring of that divine life in your heart? It was pithily described by a young convert, when he said to the writer, “The things I loved two years ago I hate now, and the things that I hated two years ago, I love now.”
When the bitten Israelites lay on the desert sand, fast dying from the poison-bite of the fiery serpents, what they needed was LIFE. This type is used by the Apostle John in his wonderful Gospel. His theme is not salvation, or forgiveness of sins, but LIFE, LIFE, LIFE. He rings the changes on “He that believes on the Son has everlasting LIFE” (John 3:36).
In chapter 6 He is the Bread from heaven, which is given for the LIFE of the world.
In chapter 10 He gives eternal LIFE to His sheep, and they shall never perish.
In chapter 11 He is the Resurrection and the LIFE.
In chapter 14 He is the Way, the Truth and the LIFE.
And life in Him, is life for the believer on Him.
Thus condemnation of the flesh, the evil nature that is ours as inherited at our birth into the world, is the one side of the death and resurrection of Christ, the impartation of divine life is the other side. Both are the result of His death and resurrection, as well as the forgiveness of our sins.
Now having cleared the ground somewhat, we trust, let us contrast righteousness and holiness, let us mark how distinct the one is from the other, yet carefully note how they cannot be divorced in relation to the believer.
To begin with righteousness is imputed. That is the great theme of Romans. “Justification by faith,” was the trumpet cry of the glorious reformation that was used of God in freeing multitudes from the tyranny and superstition of Rome and brought them into the glorious liberty of the Gospel of God.
If righteousness is imputed it needs no argument to prove that the one to whom it is imputed had no hand in it. It comes by faith, and not by works. “God imputes righteousness without works” (Rom. 4:8). It is by faith, but faith in what Another has done. It is contingent on believing on God, “who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:24-25).
How completely it is outside us is seen when we read that “Christ Jesus … is made to us … righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). Christ is our Righteousness. How perfect and complete then it must be.
The result of all this is that imputed righteousness affords the only righteous ground on which we can stand in the presence of God, and be accepted by Him. We owe it all to the great atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We may never grasp in all its fulness the wonderful devotedness that led Him through that terrible ordeal for the satisfaction of a holy God about the whole question of sin, and for the everlasting salvation of all who put their trust in Him. We may well rise to the height of the gospel and “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement [or, reconciliation]” (Rom 5:11). The Greek word is elsewhere rightly rendered reconciliation, and it should be so here.
If righteousness is imputed, if it is without works, if it is of faith, then once received it is ours forever. It comes to us as the unalienable gift of God How blessed and happy to realize this!
Now as to the question of holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Both righteousness and holiness were typified in connection with the service of the Tabernacle. The priests were consecrated to the service of Jehovah by blood. There was the blood of the sin offering and burnt offering. There was no approach save by blood, by sacrifice. This gave a priest his title.
But when he went into the Tabernacle to perform his priestly service he had to wash his hands and feet in the water of the brazen layer. Does this not illustrate how separate the one is from the other, and yet how connected? The blood of the sin offering speaks, in figure, of the atoning death of Christ; the water speaks of personal cleanliness or holiness without which the priest could not be in the presence of the Lord.
It is the blood that gives us judicial standing; it is practical holiness that gives moral fitness.
Let us give a purely supposititious case. Suppose a thoroughly bad man with depraved tastes and governed by low passions were saved, and there was no change in his nature. Could God, in whose holy sight the very heavens are unclean, be happy in the company of such a man? Would the man be happy in the blaze of the glory of God? Impossible! The man would indeed be in a sorry plight, if it were possible for him to have imputed righteousness, and yet to be dominated by his depraved tastes and governed by his vile passions. You may well cry out that such a case is impossible.
But give that man a nature that is in such consonance with God that the Apostle Peter can speak of being “partakers of the divine nature,” and the problem is solved.
True it is that the evil nature which characterized us at conversion, as still in us, its tastes and propensities, is unchanged. It is the presence of the two natures that brings in the conflict, and it is in the power of the Holy Spirit acting on the new nature that holiness of walk characterizes the believer, and as such characterizes him he will be happy and at home in the things of the Lord.
How cheering it is to realize that when the Lord takes His own at His coming, the flesh shall be left behind, and nothing will remain but the new nature, and then without a stain or a wrong desire the believer will realize that his supreme joy lies in righteousness and holiness—righteousness, he has a perfect title to be in the presence of God through the precious blood of Christ—holiness, that in the new nature, whose every movement is in accord with God, there will be perfect moral fitness.
And it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer here and now to bring his state into happy accord with all that God is. Seeing this, let us not be content unless that which will be in fulness and completeness in heaven, shall be seen in us on earth for God’s glory and our own true gain.