Christ Our Righteousness

In a previous chapter we dealt with what man is able and unable to do in terms of obedience and obtaining righteousness. Since this issue is so important, and because there are so many misunderstandings regarding it, we will take a closer look at the knowledge God wishes us to have in order to experience Christ our righteousness.

What is man able to do, and what is he unable to do after sin entered the human family? Most of us do not know what it was like before sin, except for what we read in the Scriptures. It is easy to make certain assumptions about this topic that can be dangerous to our spiritual welfare. For years we have believed that if we could only convince people that the law of God is still to be kept, that the standards are still to be observed, then they will do it; and if they fail to do it we think they need more convincing, or perhaps they should pray more or try harder. This concept of righteousness has been held for many years. ...

Is man able to obey after conviction? Some think so. If it is possible, how does man obey? “It was possible for Adam, before the fall, to form a righteous character by obedience to God’s law. But he failed to do this, and because of his sin our natures are fallen and we cannot make ourselves righteous. Since we are sinful, unholy, we cannot perfectly obey the holy law. We have no righteousness of our own with which to meet the claims of the law of God.” SC 62. Since Adam and Eve sinned, mankind has lacked the ability to obey the law, and often we do not recognize this.

“It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless.” SC 18,19. The idea that it is necessary only to develop the good that exists in man by nature is a fatal deception.

We have problems here that some people do not like. This makes it almost impossible to understand Christ our righteousness, for if we do not understand what man is and is not able to do after sin, it is certain we cannot figure out how to be changed or how to improve. We must accept where we are and what we are, and the truth on this is not agreeable with some people. It is true that we must be educated about what is right, but that does not accomplish all we hope it will. We can produce an outward correctness of behavior, but Jesus taught that at the same time we can be filled with dead men’s bones, still vile on the inside.

Others say: Just do your best and Christ will make up for the rest. What can a sinner do that is his best? This is not exactly truth, for how much good is in us that we can develop? As soon as you mention this, it causes a violent reaction in some who think this is criticizing them. They become spiritually paranoid. Legalists have always found fault with our poor performance, and we think this is doing the same thing. We begin to squirm and demand for everyone to get off our back. But if you are lost and do not know it, you will never be found. If you are in a weakened condition and assume you are strong, you will never get strong. Somehow you must understand what you are and where you are or you can never find the way out.

Because some people are so sensitive about this subject of discovering our inability, there are those who say we must help people find self-worth, selfesteem, prestige, self-love. If we can help them to do that, then they will achieve. Is that true? It might make you feel good but does it make the life different? Does it really help you to achieve? And people call this Christ our righteousness, just as they do about doing your best and having Christ make up the difference. There are many things termed Christ our righteousness that operate on assumptions that might be less than certain.

What is man’s condition after sin came into the human family? This is the most basic point in any development of the human being, because he must discover what he can do and what he cannot do.

What has sin done to man? When Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, she went to tempt Adam. He loved her so much and was so afraid of losing her that he also partook; thus they would not be separated. But after his sin—only that one sin—he told the Lord that Eve was to blame. Just one sin changed love to accusation.

“He who, from love to Eve, had deliberately chosen to forfeit the approval of God, his home in Paradise, and an eternal life of joy, could now, after his fall, endeavor to make his companion, and even the Creator Himself, responsible for the transgression. So terrible is the power of sin.” PP 57.

One sin accomplished all of that. What has happened after nearly six thousand years of sin? In the second generation after creation, love had so diminished and hatred so increased that Cain killed his brother without a cause. In the short span of time from father and mother to children, that is all it took. We are discovering what sin does to human beings.

In the account of early man, we find that after only ten generations, the Lord said, speaking about the human family, “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5. God repented that He had made man and sent a flood to destroy all but eight people. He started over again with Noah and his family who were spared in the ark, and you know the story well. After the flood, Noah became intoxicated, and his son Ham committed some kind of moral sin. Then Nimrod, the great grandson of Noah, began to build a nation called Babel. The outcome of that rebellion against God is described in Genesis 11 where they attempted to build a tower to reach the heavens. They wanted to keep from being destroyed again by a flood, even though God had promised He would not do that again. They were trying to secure their own salvation, not trusting God to save them. That happened in the fourth generation after Noah.

Finally, because of these problems, God chose another person and began again with Abram. When he arrived down in Egypt he seemed to have trouble telling the whole truth. Then difficulties arose between him and his relative Lot, and between Lot’s herdsmen and those of Abram; and the troubles were so extreme and violent that they had to divide. Lot decided in his materialistic viewpoint to go down to Sodom to make a good living, and you know the results of that venture.

The Bible is the history of the intrusion of sin. We sometimes think that those who lived back then were ignorant and that we are wiser than they. Since we are wiser, we think that none of those things can happen to us. This is a gross assumption. The Bible talks about sin as being in darkness, a sort of blindness and deception, which means we have an incapability of understanding how it functions in our lives and what it does to us. When we begin to examine issues like what we can and cannot do, we must have a certain amount of distrust of our judgment, for it is been clouded and obscured and confused by past sin.

There are many Bible texts that specifically reveal what has happened to man as the result of sin. The gospel prophet wrote that “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6. Job asked, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” Job 14:4. Another prophet said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. The psalmist wrote that “man at his best state is altogether vanity...Surely every man is vanity.” Psalms 39:5,11. “I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Psalms 51:5.

The most extreme viewpoint on this was penned by the apostle Paul. “What then? Are we better than they [meaning the Jews]? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans 3:9-18.

This is not only talking about people two thousand years ago, it is talking about us today. It is not only talking about the heathen, it is talking about Jews and gentiles, believers and unbelievers, and it says we are like this. Some will say, “I do not believe I am like that.” Perhaps we cannot see ourselves as we really are. Some do not like to read these things, for it frightens them, and makes them appear as wretched individuals.

If the doctor tells you that an x-ray reveals you have some pretty bad things down in your colon, you would not think the doctor is a horrible person. We are not sensitive when a physician tells us bad news about our bodies, but when God tells us about our inabilities and our defective characters, we just scream. If you do not know your physical defects, if you refuse to accept what the doctor has found, you may very well die from those defects. However, if you acknowledge them and seek correction, you might live a long time. The same is true with the Great Physician and our souls. He knows us better than we do, and you have just read His diagnosis. You can accept it or reject it. He will not try to thrust it upon you. If you reject it, the Great Physician cannot work for you; but if you accept it, He can. It is that simple.

Here are a few statements from the Spirit of Prophecy that are very specific about our condition after Adam sinned: “Nature had become depraved by sin; they [Adam and Eve] had lessened their strength to resist evil and had opened the way for Satan to gain more ready access to them.” PP 61. “Sin not only shuts us away from God, but destroys in the human soul both the desire and the capacity for knowing Him...The faculties of the soul, paralyzed by sin, the darkened mind, the perverted will, He has power to invigorate and to restore...There is in his nature a bent to evil, a force which, unaided, he cannot resist.” Ed 28,29. “In our own strength it is impossible for us to deny the clamors of our fallen nature.” DA 122. “But should they [Adam and Eve] once yield to temptation, their nature would become so depraved that in themselves they would have no power and no disposition to resist Satan.” PP 53. “There is in the nature of man, when not under the direct influence of the Spirit of God, a disposition to envy, jealousy, and cruel distrust, which, if not subdued, will lead to a desire to undermine and tear down others, while selfish spirits will seek to build themselves up upon their ruins.” 3T 53. “The fallen nature of Adam always strives for the mastery.” PP 80. “Through sin the whole human organism is deranged, the mind is perverted, the imagination corrupted. Sin has degraded the faculties of the soul. Temptations from without find an answering chord within the heart, and the feet turn imperceptibly toward evil.” MH 451.

If this is our condition, will convincing us that we are wrong and telling us what is right accomplish anything for us? We may agree that our natures are fallen, but we say we cannot do anything about it. The nature is still depraved after conviction, and it is still helpless. Will education accomplish anything? The nature is still as bad as it was before. Education does not change the nature of man. Doing your best does not help, either. Developing what is good in us accomplishes nothing because we are depraved, so we only develop more depravity.

Many give up in discouragement when they sense these restrictions, these inabilities. But the Lord does not want us to do that. He wants us to seek for help, and that help is available, but it is not in self. That help has always been outside of self since man sinned. There is One who can do this who comes to bless us. There must come a change in the old nature, but only Jesus can accomplish that change, for He said that without Him we can do nothing, but with Him we can do all things.

Let’s read again the quote about our helplessness: “It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless.” SC 18. The answer to our dilemma is found as the quote continues. “There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken the lifeless faculties of the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness.”

For years we have not acknowledged that the nature of man has to be changed. We discuss it once in a while; we have some realization of it. But it is not something we commonly teach. We teach obedience and then we leap over the change that is necessary before obedience. And we assume we have been changed too often when we have not been; and without that change we are helpless. The quote continues: “The Saviour said, ‘Except a man be born from above,’ unless he shall receive a new heart, new desires, purposes, and motives, leading to a new life, ‘he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ John 3:3, margin.” These things must come to us and we must receive them or we are utterly helpless in conducting our lives according to the will of God.

Another difficulty we have is not realizing how complete the change must be. Many assume that the change of one or two habits is a change of nature, but that is not quite true. Strong willed people can give the appearance of an outward correctness of behavior by changing one or two habits, but no human being can change the heart. You often find in those who try to perform outwardly a bitterness coming out of the inside, and you detect that there is something inside that should not be there. It could be that the outward performance is nothing but a way to gain heaven. The person may not be different at all. All you have to do is cross that person’s will and vile things come out of the inside.

This complete change required by the Lord is described in several quotations. “The Spirit works upon man’s heart, implanting in him a new nature.” COL 411. “Jesus made the infinite sacrifice, not only that sin might be removed, but that human nature might be restored, rebeautified, reconstructed from its ruins, and made fit for the presence of God.” 5T 537. “The word destroys the natural, earthly nature, and imparts a new life in Christ Jesus.” DA 391. The next quote confirms the totality of the transformation that is to take place. “The whole heart must be yielded to God, or the change can never be wrought in us by which we are to be restored to His likeness. By nature we are alienated from God. The Holy Spirit describes our condition in such words as these: ‘Dead in trespasses and sins;’ ‘the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint;’ ‘no soundness in it.’ We are held fast in the snare of Satan; ‘taken captive by him at his will.’ God desires to heal us, to set us free. But since this requires an entire transformation, a renewing of our whole nature, we must yield ourselves wholly to Him.” SC 43.

This is where we have problems. Again, it is not true that dropping off a few bad habits means we have a new nature. We assume that because we might go to church on the right day and pay our tithe that our natures have been changed. That is not proof that the heart is changed, because you might go to church unwillingly or forcibly (because someone is pressuring you), or because it might not look well if you did not attend, or it might keep you employed in the denomination. None of these are proof of a transformation of the heart. The Lord is interested in the heart; then the outside takes care of itself. God is interested in an entire transformation. Often we have problems in what we call sanctification because we assume we have had the entire transformation.

After we have been justified, there is another problem that confronts us. When I have been changed by His grace and by His power, do I then have two natures, or one nature? This is a real riddle, and many is the argument that rages over Romans chapter 7, contending we have two natures after conversion, or the new birth. But the Bible talks about the death of one nature and the life of another. Some would have the growth in Christian life to be a gradual dying and a gradual living. In other words, I am not yet quite born again. Or I am just a babe and not grown up; and I am not quite dead, I am just dying. This is sort of an evolutionary death and evolutionary life, but not a creative life, which the Bible teaches very strongly. Do we gain victory by evolution? Then how do you explain that some seem to gain victory immediately, overnight, to which many thousands can testify. Some say that because I still have the old body, even though the heart has been changed, the body is the old nature and the new heart is the new nature; and therefore, sometimes I serve the old, and sometimes the new.

If you go back and study this well, you will find out that only one thing is changed in the new birth, and that is the heart. The body will not be changed until resurrection or translation. And the reason why the heart is changed is that it is the ruling agency in the human being. It is the authoritative organ in the body. It can command the body and can rule. All stimulation in the body must be funneled through the mind, or the heart as the Bible calls it. Everything is centered in that heart, with new purposes and new interests and a new nature. That new heart, then, can keep the body under, as Paul calls it. The problem is not with the old nature of the body. It functions through the mind and does not have a separate mind of its own. If it functions through the mind, so the new heart controls it.

Why does there seem to be this dual activity in the life? How is that sometimes I serve the Lord and sometimes I serve self, after I have a new nature? The problem is always with the heart. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” Romans 10:10. “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” Matthew 15:19,20. Out of the mind, or the heart, proceed the things that corrupt us. The reasons and motivations we have, and not what we take inside our bodies, are what defile us. There is a cycle, where what is in our minds causes us to eat as we do, and what we eat can in turn have a negative influence on the mind. But the sins we commit come from the heart, according to Jesus.

The Lord knows this, so He deals with the heart in conversion, or this transformation that takes place. He says He will give us a new heart, or a new nature, that will function differently. All the problems we have are with the mind, or heart; and I am not eliminating the influence of the body on the mind at all.

The one key issue of the heart is that it always has the power of choice by God’s grace. Before conversion, and after conversion, and all during your Christian life, you can always choose. The reason for this is that Christianity is a love affair. The conscience cannot be forced. It is always free to choose, every moment, every hour, every day. All of your life you can choose. And it is not one choice for life. The Lord always asks you, “Do you still want to be Mine?” This morning when you woke up, He asked, “Are you still Mine?” Sometimes we go through the whole day and do not acknowledge the fact that we belong to Him, but He would like to know. In all our decisions that day, He asks us one thing: “Are you still Mine? Or have you given your affections to another lover? You have the choice. I will not force you. I only have one pressure which is the pressure of love.” The love of Christ constrains us. We may do what we please, but God would have us to be His. And He shows this in thousands of ways.

Because of this option, this power of choice, we sometimes choose Him today and choose the world tomorrow. James called that spiritual adultery, for if you love the world, you are at enmity with God. God tells us that there is no harmony between Him and the world, and we cannot get along very well with God as long as we try to have two lovers. But the Lord is longsuffering, and He will take us back, and take us back, and take us back, even from prostitution if I read Hosea correctly. Because of His longsuffering and patience, and because He is constantly wooing us and trying to win us back to Him, even though we have left Him by choice, we are permitted to vacillate in our choices and our love affairs, and we can go on and on with two lovers. But we are always troubled and dissatisfied by this. Something seems not quite right in our inmost souls. When you come back to the Lord you sense a strange distance or coldness, and you say, “It used to be so warm and satisfying here.” He is still begging us to come back, but the problem is with our memories. Where was I the night before? If I could just forget that other lover, then there would be no distance between me and God. But I do not forget that other lover. And Jesus senses a strange lack of warmth, too, and almost no communication. But He waits, and He woos, and He continues to love in spite of our waywardness and unfaithfulness. He does this for years because He loves us so much He cannot let us go.

The Christian life is like the national life of Judah and Israel. He continued to want her, but she chose to go to Babylon. He did not choose to send her there. Read how she worshipped their gods and brought them to Jerusalem. She insisted on loving the heathen’s customs and practices, not just the people. They insisted on being like the world in thousands of ways. God could not take away the power of choice from them and still have them love Him. He had to permit them to choose. If they wanted another lover, then He allowed them to go to Babylon to be with their lover. He was not punishing her. He was allowing her freedom of choice. That is exactly what He does to me. He cannot force me to love Him. He will allow me to love whatever I choose.

But strange things happen to our spouses in love affairs where we go off and share that love with someone else. Over the months and the years, the coldness gets colder and the gap gets wider. We cannot see how He can still love us when we have chased around so much. He still does, but we cannot see how He can. We cannot imagine a love that is so boundless that it continues loving the one who is always going away to another lover. Eventually we become unbelievers in His love for us. It is dangerous to share your love with someone else. In no way are we being forced to stay with Him except for that marvelous love that constrains us.

I do not think that there are two natures living in me that back and forth are dominating me. I think there is the power of choice, and I can either choose Him or choose another lover. And I can do it all day long every day. But I will have trouble with my soul and my relationship with God if I do that. Christianity is a loving submission to a Husband who has earned the right to rule us in love. It is a loving submission on our part, a delightful submitting to the Husband who has earned the right to our submission. He does not dominate us by force. It is a delight to have Him dominate us because He is so kind, so understanding, and so good to us. So every day I must choose the same Master, for there are two masters in the great controversy. Both seek our affections, and both want to be joined to us and have us on their side. We may choose whose side we will be on and whom we will serve.

This power of choice that God has given to us is described this way: “Many are inquiring, ‘How am I to make the surrender of myself to God?’ You desire to give yourself to Him, but you are weak in moral power, in slavery to doubt, and controlled by the habits of your life of sin....What you need to understand is the true force of the will. This is the governing power in the nature of man, the power of decision, or of choice. Everything depends on the right action of the will. The power of choice God has given to men; it is theirs to exercise. You cannot change your heart [that is not part of the will], you cannot of yourself give to God its affections [and that is not part of the will], but you can choose to serve Him [that is part of the will]. You can give Him your will; He will then work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Thus your whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ; your affections will be centered upon Him, your thoughts will be in harmony with Him.” SC 47,48.

In other words, as I choose Him totally, as I choose Him constantly, God’s will and desires function in my life. A power outside of me, by a magnificent love affair, comes to dominate me; and I choose Him in love because I love Him who first loved me, and because He is a God of love. When I choose Him and invite Him in, the law of love— supreme love for God and love for my neighbor— is fulfilled in me. And we know that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” Romans 13:10. Again, it is an outside power coming in. This is Christ our righteousness.

“Through the right exercise of the will, an entire change may be made in your life. By yielding up your will to Christ, you ally yourself with the power that is above all principalities and powers. You will have strength from above to hold you steadfast, and thus through constant surrender to God you will be enabled to live the new life, even the life of faith.” SC 48. It is choosing to submit in love to His love. It is making Him Lord, or Master, or King, or Ruler of my life.

We began this chapter with this quote: “It was possible for Adam, before the fall, to form a righteous character by obedience to God’s law. But he failed to do this, and because of his sin our natures are fallen and we cannot make ourselves righteous. Since we are sinful, unholy, we cannot perfectly obey the holy law. We have no righteousness of our own with which to meet the claims of the law of God.” SC 62. The quote continues on with the remedy for this inability. “But Christ has made a way of escape for us. He lived on earth amid trials and temptations such as we have to meet. He lived a sinless life. He died for us, and now He offers to take our sins and give us His righteousness. If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous.” The whole heart of Christ our righteousness is that willing, loving choice where we give ourselves totally to Him (and it must be a total surrender). “If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ’s character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God just as if you had not sinned.”

Then she goes on and tells us how we must daily surrender and abide in Him. It is like marriage. Just because you are married does not mean you have to stay home. It does not mean you have to love that person. It does not mean you have to abide with that person. You can always choose to leave. Every day and every hour in marriage you are choosing whether to stay and maintain the relationship, or whether to leave and go to another lover. Likewise, everyday of the Christian life after conversion we make the choice of whether to stay (or abide as the Bible says) or to leave. Sanctification is giving our affections constantly to our heavenly Spouse instead of to some other lover. When I yield my heart to Him, He does His will in me, and He gives me His righteousness in sanctification as well as justification. As long as I desire His will to be done in my life, and ask Him to rule and dominate me, He takes over and controls my life. If the time comes when I am tired of His control and want to submit to another master, He says, “You may go.” We have that freedom in all love affairs. The problem is that when I return to God and to His church, I think that somehow He does not love me as much as He once did. But He does. We have difficulty because our love is not exclusively for Him. We have been sharing it.

The very thing that causes us so much difficulty and makes us so sensitive about discussing our inability, our ineffectiveness, our deficiencies, our depravity, is the one point in life that turns us toward Jesus. The thing we think is the way of failure and of criticism is really the way of success. And amazingly, an understanding and acceptance of our inabilities is the one thing that leads us to Christ. “No deep-seated love for Jesus can dwell in the heart that does not realize its own sinfulness.” SC 65. The more I try to make myself look good, in my human effort, or in doing my best, and thinking He makes up the slack, the less I need Jesus and the less I will love Him. “No deepseated love for Jesus can dwell in the heart that does not realize its own sinfulness.”

“The less we see to esteem in ourselves, the more we shall see to esteem in the infinite purity and loveliness of our Saviour. A view of our sinfulness drives us to Him who can pardon; and when the soul, realizing its helplessness, reaches out after Christ, He will reveal Himself in power. The more our sense of need drives us to Him and to the word of God, the more exalted views we shall have of His character, and the more fully we shall reflect His image.” SC 65.

It is easy to misunderstand this. We do not want to be told how bad we are and we will hate the person who tells us. Tell me what I can do, and we like that; and we begin to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. We cringe when we read from the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy about our inability, about our proneness to failure, about our deficiencies, about the evil nature of man. We insist that there is some goodness in man that can be nurtured and made to grow. We think we are much better than that. Can I not develop that inherent goodness in me? And so we try, and we try some more, and we invent new gospels, new theories, and we search for Bible texts and quotations to prove our theories. But the world today is establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt, in the church and out of the church, that we are depraved people. Look at our selfishness, our selfcenteredness, our neglect of our own children. We give them things but we do not give them ourselves. Look at our politics, our competitive natures, our vengeful spirits, our abuse of others, our envy, our jealousy, our seeking for the highest place. We, like Adam, blame others for our troubles. I have no problems with myself. All my problems are with my spouse, my children, my church, my neighbors, my boss. I am right and everyone else is wrong. I will do anything to justify myself. Everyone around me knows I am wrong, but I refuse to admit it.

The knowledge that God wants to give us, the knowledge from which we run and seek to escape, is the knowledge that leads us to Jesus. It is a knowledge that leads to a new nature, to a blessed love affair. It is a knowledge that will warm our hearts as we sense how precious we are to Him, that our value is not what we are but what He wants to make us. The precious price He paid, the restoration He will accomplish, the rebeautification of the soul—these make us valuable. We are priceless to Him, not because we are so good, but because of what He can do if He is allowed to work in us.

This very day, our Lover is asking, “Will you be Mine?” There is one thing we can do, which is to choose, and choose, and choose, and keep on choosing. Will you always choose Him? Is He supreme in your affections? Is He not the One altogether lovely? Is there anyone else in the universe like Him? Then choose Christ and live; and you will be crowned with success as you let Him come into your heart and work an entire transformation by His love and grace. May God grant you this glorious change that comes about by our choosing Him in love.