might redeem those who were under the law. We are freed from the law by the body of Christ. He was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He is the end of the law for righteousness to all them that believe. It is by his obedience that many are made righteous. (Rom. v. 19.) We obeyed in Him, according to the teaching of the Apostle, in Romans v. 12-21, in the same sense in which we sinned in Adam. The active and passive obedience of Christ, however, are only dif- ferent phases or aspects of the same thing. He obeyed in suffer- ing. His highest acts of obedience were rendered in the garden, and upon the cross. Hence this distinction is not so presented in Scripture as though the obedience of Christ answered one pur- pose, and his sufferings another and a distinct purpose. We are justified by his blood. We are reconciled unto God by his death. We are freed from all the demands of the law by his body (Rom. vii. 4), and we are freed from the law by his being made under it and obeying it in our stead. (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) Thus the same effect is ascribed to the death or sufferings of Christ, and to his obedience, because both are forms or parts of his obedience or righteousness by which we are justified. In other words the obe- dience of Christ includes all He did in satisfying the demands of the law.
The Righteousness of Christ is the Righteousness of God. The righteousness of Christ on the ground of which the believer is justified is the righteousness of God. It is so designated in Scripture not only because it was provided and is accepted by Him ; it is not only the righteousness which avails before God, but it is the righteousness of a divine person ; of God manifest in the flesh. God purchased the Church with his own blood. (Acts xx. 28.) It was the Lord of glory who was crucified. (1 Cor. ii. 8.) He who was in the form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Phil. ii. 6-8.) He who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person, who upholds all things by the word of his power ; whom angels worship ; who is called God ; who in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth, and of whose hands the heavens are the workmanship ; who is eternal and immutable, has, the Apostle teaches, by death destroyed him who has the power of death and delivered those who through fear of death (i. e., of the wrath of God) were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Heb. i., ii.)
144 PART m. Ch. XVII. — JUSTIFICATION.
He whom Thomas recognized and avowed to be his Lord and God was the person into whose wounded side he thrust his hand. He whom John says he saw, looked upon, and handled, he de- clares to be the true God and eternal life. The soul, in which personality resides, does not die when the man dies, yet it is the soul that gives dignity to the man, and which renders his life of unspeakably greater value in the sight of God and man, than the life of any irrational creature. So it was not the divine nature in Christ in which his personality resides, the eternal Logos, that died when Christ died. Nevertheless the hypostatic union be- tween the Logos and the human nature of Christ, makes it true that the righteousness of Christ (his obedience and sufferings) was the righteousness of God. This is the reason why it can avail before God for the salvation of the whole world. This is the reason why the believer, when arrayed in this righteousness, need fear neither death nor hell. This is the reason why Paul challenges the universe to lay anything to the charge of God's
elect.
§ 5. Imputation of Righteousness.
The righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer for his justification. The word impute is familiar and unambiguous. To impute is to ascribe to, to reckon to, to lay to one's charge. When we say we impute a good or bad motive to a man, or that a good or evil action is imputed to him, no one misunderstands our meaning. Philemon had no doubt what Paul meant when he told him to impute to him the debt of Onesimus. " Let not the king impute anything unto his servant." (1 Sam. xxii. 15.) " Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me." (2 Sam. xix. 19.) " Neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it." (Lev. vii. 18.) " Blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood." (Lev. xvii. 4.) " Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity." (Ps. xxxii. 2.) " Unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works." (Rom. iv. 6.) God is "in Christ not imputing their trespasses unto them." (2 Cor. v. 19.)
The meaning of these and similar passages of Scripture has never been disputed. Every one understands them. We use the word impute in its simple admitted sense, when we say that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer for his jus- tification.
It seems unnecessary to remark that this does not, and cannot mean that the righteousness of Christ is infused into the believer,