The Lord Our Righteousness by T. E. Bowen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 9, 1908

The Lord Our Righteousness

By T. E. Bowen

T. E. BOWEN (Concluded)

That sixth day, on Calvary, was the most important day for our world since the sixth day of creation, when the human race found its birth in the creation of Adam and Eve. That day the Father fulfilled the text in 2 Cor. 5:21. He, then, that very day, made his Son to be sin on our behalf. This was actually done. Had it not been so, death could not have claimed by its power his holy Son. But how could this be? one may ask. No one but God knows. The how of it can never be told, but the blessedness of it for us is that it is so.

Sinner, stop and ponder this truth. God’s own Son, after thirty-three years of resisting temptation successfully,—more powerful, more subtle, than any of us ever endured or met,—at the end of such a life as that, with the testimony of that voice from heaven only a few days before, proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” was actually treated by his Father as if he were one of the veriest sinners. From this some faint idea can be had of the terrible enormity of sin. This Jesus endured for us. And this agony the Father endured for us, that it might be possible for him to present to those who believe, and who with Jesus “endure temptation,” the blessed “gift of [Jesus’] righteousness.” Jesus knew no sin. We know no righteousness. God made Jesus to be sin, that we who know no righteousness “might become the righteousness of God in him.” O, the blessedness of it all! It is a living truth. It is that blessed truth for us all to receive by living faith.

It was through the disobedience of one, Adam, that “the many were made sinners.” It is through the “obedience of the one,” Jesus, that the many are “made righteous.”

Now shall we conclude that since Jesus has won righteousness back, we can continue in sin, and meet the approbation of the Father?—God forbid! For if disobedience was so severely dealt with in the angels who rebelled against God, and in the father of our race, let us not think we shall escape the penalty if we likewise transgress. Here is where thousands fail, and miss obtaining the gift of righteousness. The one extreme is to think there is nothing to do, since Jesus won it; the other extreme is to conclude that by our own works we can in some manner earn righteousness. The one is as fatal as the other.

Jesus placed his merits within our reach, but it is only through faith and obedience to God’s revealed will that righteousness is imputed to us. Never can it be earned. God places the righteousness of his Son upon only the humble, obedient believer in Jesus (although by right it is not his, nor ever could be), just as surely as he made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our stead. So it will be eternally true that Jesus was made sin when he did not deserve to be so counted. It will equally be true eternally that God counted the redeemed from earth righteous, when in very fact they deserve not to be so counted. Well may we exclaim, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

God’s plan will eternally exalt that Son who left the glory which he had, freely laying that all aside, that he might win back to loyalty, through his love and life of self-sacrifice, a lost world. No true follower of Jesus will take any pleasure in magnifying himself or counting as meritorious anything he has ever done, in view of such wonderful condescension as is exemplified in the life of Christ Jesus. All such glory becomes contemptible, fitly compared to “filthy rags.” All such glorying is worse than vain, because it at once proclaims to the universe that the subject of divine grace and mercy does not appreciate what Jesus has suffered to make it even possible for sin to be forgiven. Like the man in the parable, who had not the wedding garment, he fails to appreciate the worth of Christ’s righteousness by thinking his own will be accepted of God.

God’s holy law stands guard at the city’s gate. None will be admitted who can not present in that supreme hour of eternal destiny the spotless righteousness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To each saint that truth presented by Paul to the church at Corinth

will have become literally true: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

Takoma Park, D. C.