Jehovah TsidkenuSample

God has provided Christ, the Righteous One, and He alone satisfies God’s demand of righteousness. 

The problem with God’s righteousness as our divine standard for deciding right and wrong is that we, as fallen, sinful people, so often fall short of this standard. We find ourselves daily living out the reality of the Apostle Paul’s conclusions in the book of Romans: “There is none righteous, not even one,” (Romans 3:10), and this is true because, like Romans 3:23 says: 

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

This gap between God’s righteous demands and our inability to meet His righteous standard was, however, bridged by Christ, the “Righteous One” (Romans 1:17). Christ lived a life that completely fulfilled God’s demand of righteousness, and, thus, He offered Himself on the cross as a perfect sacrifice for our own sins to reconcile us to our holy and righteous God: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” When we by faith alone trust solely in Christ for our salvation, His perfect righteousness is credited to us: 

“God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:19-21).

We then can stand justified (which, in a legal context, means declared righteous or innocent) before God because when He sees us, He sees Christ’s righteousness that we have received: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Christ’s perfect, righteous life was a fulfillment of the hope in Jeremiah’s day that “Behold the days are coming…when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch…and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).