Christ’s Righteousness Credited to Us

But it wasn’t enough for us to have a clean, but empty, ledger sheet. God also credits us with the perfect righteousness of Christ “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This happens the same way Jesus was made to be sin—by transfer. Just as God charged our sin to Christ, so he credits the perfect obedience of Jesus to all who trust in him. In what is often called the Great Exchange, God exchanges our sin for Christ’s righteousness. As a result, all who have trusted in Christ as Savior stand before God not with a clean-but-empty ledger, but one filled with the very righteousness of Christ!

The theological term for what we’ve just described is one of Paul’s favorite words, justification. The word justified in Paul’s usage means to be counted righteous by God. Even though in ourselves we’re completely unrighteous, God counts us as righteous because he has appointed Christ to be our representative and substitute. Therefore when Christ lived a perfect life, in God’s sight we lived a perfect life. When Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, we died on the cross. All that Christ did in his sinless life and his sin-bearing death, he did as our representative, so that we receive the credit for it. It’s in this representative union² with Christ that he presents us before the Father, “holy and blameless and above reproach” (Colossians 1:22).

There’s an old play on the word justified: “just-as-if-I’d never sinned.” But here’s another way of saying it: “just-as-if-I’d always obeyed.” Both are true. The first refers to the transfer of our moral debt to Christ so we’re left with a “clean” ledger, just as if we’d never sinned. The second tells us our ledger is now filled with the perfect righteousness of Christ, so it’s just as if we’d always obeyed. That’s why we can come confidently into the very presence of God (Hebrews 4:16; 10:19) even though we’re still sinners—saved sinners to be sure, but still practicing sinners every day in thought, word, deed, and motive.

The perfect righteousness of Christ, which is credited to us, is the first bookend of the Christian life. The news of this righteousness is the gospel. Christ’s righteousness is given to us by God when we genuinely trust in Christ as our Savior. From that moment on, from God’s point of view, the first bookend is permanently in place. We’re justified; we’re credited with his righteousness. Or to say it differently, we’re clothed with his righteousness (Isaiah 61:10) so that as God looks at us in union with Christ, he always sees us to be as righteous as Christ himself.

And that changes everything.

The Present Reality of Our Justification

From our point of view, however, we sometimes handle our books as though the bookend of Christ’s righteousness is not in place on our bookshelf. We do this when we depend on our own performance, whether good or bad in our estimate, as the basis of God’s approval or disapproval.

And when we take this approach, our assurance that we stand before God as justified sinners inevitably fades.