Jesus Perfect Life is Reckoned as Our Perfect Obedience to God’s Holy Law.
Jesus Christ is a Believers hope for future glory. All true Christians are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone. “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of His glory, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
Restating the previous paragraph, justification is a judicial act of God by which God declares sinners righteous in Christ alone, by grace through faith alone. It includes both the active obedience of Christ (His keeping the Law in our stead) and His passive obedience (His dying on the cross and paying the penalty of the Law for us). Thomas Brooks sums it up this way, “Remember, once for all, that the actions and sufferings of Christ make but one entire and perfect obedience to the whole Law; nor had Christ been a perfect and complete Savior, if he had not performed what the Law required, as well as suffered the penalty which the Law inflicted.”
Christ’s perfect life of obedience and death on the cross provides not only our pardon from sin but our perfection in Him as well. The great theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote, “To suppose that all Christ did is only to make atonement for us by suffering, is to make him our Savior but in part. It is to rob Him of half His glory as Savior.”
The gospel according to Jesus is understood in the theological terms of substitution and imputation. “Imputation is the act in which God counts sinners to be righteousness through their faith in Christ on the basis of Christ’s perfect ‘blood and righteousness,’ specifically the righteousness that Christ accomplished by his perfect obedience in life and death.” Piper defines Christ as our Substitute in two senses: “In His suffering and death he becomes our curse and condemnation (Gal. 3:13; Romans 8:3). And in his suffering and life He becomes our perfection (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The basis of justification includes the “positive” imputation of Christ’s perfect righteousness to the Believer’s account and the “negative” imputation of all the Believers’ sin to Christ’s account. Christ’s bore the punishment for sin on His own shoulders at the cross. God treated Christ as if He committed every sin of every believer who ever would believe; and He treated us as if we had lived His perfect life of obedience. Likewise Hodge concludes, “It is, perhaps, more correct to say that the righteousness of Christ, including all He did and suffered in our stead, is imputed to believers as the ground of his justification, and that the consequences are, first, the remission of sin, and secondly, the acceptance of the believer as righteous.”
In Matthew 3, Jesus arrives from Galilee to meet up with John the Baptist. He asks John to baptize Him, but John tries to prevent this from happening since he realizes that Jesus (the God-man) should be baptizing him. In verse 15 Jesus answers him saying, “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus was baptized because He did whatever the Father led Him to do and He did whatever a righteous person under the Law would do. It is this perfect life of obedience that is imputed to a believers account at justification. Jesus understood that He came not only to pay the penalty for our Law breaking, but also to fulfill in our place the original demands of the Law!
Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who are under the Law, that we might receive adoption as sons.” Everyone born after Adam is born under the Law of God. The Law’s requirement is total perfection. James 2:10 puts it this way, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” The Law reflects God’s holy character and thus demands total perfection. “To violate a commandment is to disobey God Himself and render a person guilty before Him.” Romans 6:23 explains that, “the wages of sin is death.” So in a nutshell, every person born under the Law is guilty and deserves condemnation from God.
The only people who can stand before Holy God’s presence are those who are perfectly holy and righteous themselves. This eliminates anyone from entering into heaven because all mankind sinned in Adam (Romans 5) and have sinned at least one time in their lives (Romans 3:9-20; Psalm 130:3).
The apostle Paul understood this and wrote about it in his letter to the Philippians. In chapter 1, verse 11 he writes, “Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” The righteousness Paul speaks of is totally apart from anything man has done or accomplished. It is an external righteousness that Christians inherit only through their union with Him.
This is better stated in Phil. 3:8-9, “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.” Piper comments, “The conceptual framework here is not that faith is our righteousness, but that, because of faith, we are united to Christ in whom we have a righteousness ‘from God.’”
2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” This passage clearly teaches the doctrines of substitution and imputation. Jesus became sin by nature of our sin being imputed to Him. It is heresy to think that Jesus ever sinned or became a sinner. If He had sinned even once, than the 6 topics discussed in this essay would all be worthless. The reality of imputation is in Paul’s mind as he writes these verses. “But if Christ’s being sin for us implies the imputation of our sin to Christ, then it is not arbitrary or unnatural to construe the parallel-our ‘becoming the righteousness of God in him’-as the imputation of God’s righteousness to us. We ‘become’ God’s righteousness the way Christ ‘was made’ our sin.” This is glorious reality of substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness. Jesus Christ is the Believers perfect righteousness!
The righteousness of Christ’s perfect life of obedience on our behalf is received by faith. The justified believer is in a better state than that of pre-fall Adam by virtue of this imputed righteousness; Because of our union with Christ, His perfect life of obedience is now our saving righteousness.
Covenant theologians teach that Adam was given the opportunity to merit salvation through total obedience to the “Covenant of Works.” It is not the purpose of this particular essay to delve into that theological construct. The Bible does teach that the Law and covenants of God demand total perfection (Jeremiah 11:4). Pre-fall Adam had the opportunity to remain in total communion with God had he never sinned. Scripture does not clearly explain what would have happened if Adam obeyed God’s commandments perfectly.
The Bible seems to teach that even though pre-fall Adam was sinless he still was not perfectly righteous. Perfect righteousness that is imputed to believers account at justification can never be lost! Romans 5:12-19 teaches that all mankind sinned in Adam but that in Christ (the second Adam) all men are declared righteous. “Adam acted sinfully, and because we are connected to him, we are condemned in him. Christ acted righteously, and because we are connected to Christ we are justified in Christ. Adam’s sin is counted as ours. Christ’s ‘act of righteousness’ is counted as ours.” Christians are declared righteous solely on the basis of Christ’s active and passive life of obedience.
Galatians 4:4 says that Christ came to save those “born under the Law.” The Law is not fulfilled solely by paying the penalty when it is broken; it also has to be obeyed perfectly in order to satisfy God’s holy requirements. “Why is imputation the only hope of the sinful soul? Because it is the one who knows the stain of sin who knows that he must have a righteousness that is not his own.” By His active obedience Christ lived a perfect life under the Law, and by His passive obedience He paid the penalty for sin. The Law of God is satisfied, Christians are redeemed, and God remains both just and justifier.
CONCLUSION
Jesus perfect life is reckoned as the Believers perfect obedience to God’s holy Law. Christians should confidently say with Isaiah (Is 45:24) “only in the LORD are righteousness and strength.” He is the perfect Messiah, the perfect Mediator, the perfect Example, the perfect High Priest and Sympathizer, the perfect Sacrifice, and for Christians, their perfect Righteousness.
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