On the Righteousness of God
Excerpt from 'The Righteousness of God: What Is It?'
By William Kelly
"What is the righteousness of God? It must be settled not by notions, feelings, fancies, traditions, not by what is preached or received, but by what is written—by the word of God. Are you afraid of this test? Do you shrink back from the word which searches out what you hold as to the righteousness of God? It is to be supposed you have reason to fear the scrutiny. When a man shrinks from the Bible, depend upon it it is because the Bible condemns him. It does not support speculations which he is not yet prepared to abandon. Certainly, I do not ask you to abandon anything that is of God. By all means hold fast Christ in all His ways magnifying God, and the blessedness of this for our acceptance before God. Still the question recurs, What is God's righteousness? Is there a legal ground laid for justification, as some suppose?
Here is God's answer.
"Now,"
it is said,
"the righteousness of God without the law."
["But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Romans 3:21-26]
No language can be more absolute and precise. What the Holy Ghost employs is an expression which puts the law entirely aside, as far as divine righteousness is concerned. He had been speaking about the law, and the law condemning man. He had shown that the law required righteousness, but could not get it. This is another order of righteousness, not man's but God's, and this, too, absolutely exclusive of law in any shape. How suitable a time to say, had it been the good news of God, that Jesus came to obey the law for us, and that God substitutes this as His righteousness for every man to stand in! Why is it not said, then? Because it is not the ground, nor character, nor nature of the righteousness of God. That righteousness is wholly apart from law.
Accordingly, this is what is here said,
"But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets."
Observe the exceeding accuracy of the language. The law and the prophets did not manifest the righteousness of God: yet the law, in various forms, pointed to another kind of righteousness that was coming; the prophets brought it out, if possible, still more clearly in respect of language. The one furnished types, the others assured that Jehovah's righteousness was near to come. But now the gospel tells us it is come. Now divine righteousness is a revealed fact. The righteousness of God without the law was not only witnessed by the law and the prophets, but is actually manifested. There is no veil now; there was once, but the death of Christ rent it from top to bottom. The righteousness of God, therefore, is no longer a shadow of coming good, no longer a blessing locked up in promises or looming in a prediction, however truly the law and the prophets bore their witness all the way through, from the time that man broke down and his righteousness entirely failed. Now there is far more than a witness to it: there is a standing manifestation of it since the cross. Such is the present result of that great fact. Divine righteousness is not only being revealed (ἀποκαλύπτεται) in the gospel; it has been and is manifested (πεφανέρωται).
The matter is more fully explained as
"the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ."
Here, then, was another place to have affirmed the value for our justification of what the Lord Jesus was doing when here below. Not one word is said about it. All that is added in the passage is the statement that God's righteousness (in contrast with man's, which is by his accomplishing the law) is
"by faith of Jesus Christ."Still, one can understand the objection raised that this is not conclusive. Believing in Christ does not settle the point, they say; for all hold that it is by faith of Jesus Christ. But is it the value of what He was doing in His life, or is it the efficacy of His atonement — of His death? Is Scripture silent? It is, on the contrary, explicit against mixing up the law. It is most express against turning away the eye from Christ in His death.
Thus, at the very outset, if the object had been to withdraw attention, in the matter of righteousness, from the active life of Christ, and to fix it by faith upon His blood, how could the task have been accomplished more effectually than in the passage? Is not this an extraordinary way of handling the truth, if the ground of God's righteousness were Christ's obedience to the law? If it be the all-important point in order to justifying, if it be the great indispensable preparation, and the only solid ground, on which a man is righteous before God, how comes it that Scripture preserves such absolute and singular silence in the fullest passage where the Holy Ghost discusses the ground and means of justification before God?
It is not so that reasonable men would act. When we have to bring out a truth dear to us, and important for those to whom we are about to explain it, do we hide the most characteristic portion? do we omit the smallest reference to the very turning-point? Surely not. And does not God reveal His own truth infinitely better than we can explain it, or convey our own thoughts? Listen to the man who holds the popular doctrine on the subject: does he conceal the distinctive feature [of his theory]? Does he keep back Christ's [supposed] observance of the law for us? On the contrary, it is the uppermost idea, and continually pressed in his discourses. It is the law kept by Christ, he tells you, which specially and alone constitutes the righteousness of the believer before God. He does not deny that the blood of Christ is the means of the sinner's pardon: but then it will never do, he argues, to approach heaven with pardon merely; one must have righteousness also, and this for him is found in the legal obedience of Christ. Thus, if it is a question of justifying (and in general the popular theologian sharply distinguishes between the two things), his justification is made to depend on the fact that Christ kept the law for him, which he could not keep for himself — that Christ omitted no duty of his, and performed all perfectly in which he himself failed.
But how comes it to pass that God does not put the matter thus? Because it is not the truth. Nothing more simple, if it be not the truth. It is the truth that man has failed in every way; it is the truth that Christ obeyed the law of God; it is not the truth that even His keeping of the law is the real sense of God's righteousness, or the ground of our justification before God. Let me press this upon every candid mind among our adversaries, who contend for this theory. Account for it if you can; account for it with the maintenance of the inspired character of God's word; account for it, that the Holy Ghost, who certainly understands justification in perfection, does not treat the subject as your system demands. Why? Because He and you do not agree. How awful that believers should, on so fundamental a truth, differ from the mind of the Spirit, and that man should prefer his own thoughts, because they are the common quasi-evangelical tradition, and a sort of "short cut" to understanding how a man is justified!"
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