What Is Righteousness?

We’ve been talking so much about righteousness and about the fact that our new spirit has become the righteousness of God in Christ. But what is righteousness really? You may or may not have asked yourself that question before. Righteousness is that nature of God that defines His character and His ways of doing all things. It’s the character of God to always be right and perfect in everything. It’s about who He is. How He thinks is always right. What He says is always right. What He does is always right, because He is God. We can also call it the quality of rightness. It’s the rightness of God. He is never wrong. He is always right no matter what any other being might say. He could never be wrong. When it comes to the things of this world, if God says to a flower “You’re a tree,” that flower will have no choice but turn into a tree, because God can never lie and He has to be always right. When God said in Genesis: “Light be!,” light came into existence. When Jesus cursed the fig tree in Mark 11 and decreed over it: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again,” the fig tree had no choice but to comply and wither away. That is power. He creates and curses with His words. He imposes His reality into things and circumstances. However, when it comes to people, God’s righteous words will never infringe people’s free will and authority. God’s words referring to people need to be first freely accepted by them through faith before they come to pass in their lives. In other words, people have the choice and they decide whether a righteous word from God will come to pass in their lives or not. When God said to Abraham in Genesis 17:5 “I have made you a father of many nations” and He even changed his name from Abram to Abraham to reflect that reality, what God said eventually came to pass, but not without Abraham’s cooperation of faith. When God said to believers in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that they have become His righteousness in Christ when they received Christ into their lives by faith, what God said came into being. When God said to believers in 1 Peter 2:24 that they were healed, that righteous word comes to pass in their lives, only when they freely choose to accept it by faith.

When this righteousness of God is imparted into our spirit at the new birth, it gives us right standing with God, because there is a legal side to righteousness as well. However, first and foremost, righteousness is a nature the same way sin is a nature. When we were born physically in this world, we were born sinners before we did anything bad, because of the sinful nature we inherited from Adam. That sinful nature carried along with it the legal guilty standing before God as well. Likewise, when we were born again from the Spirit, we received a new nature of righteousness by faith, before doing anything good. Our good deeds didn’t make us righteousness the same way our sinful deeds didn’t make us sinners. But our righteousness nature prompts us to good works while our sinner nature makes us do sinful deeds. Our actions are vastly influenced by our nature.

When Adam entered spiritual death, he became sin both legally and vitally. His spirit’s nature was altered, he entered death, and his legal standing with God became that of a condemned person. Because of him, the whole human race died in its nature as well. However, the Bible tells us in Romans 5:15-19 that Christ, who is the last Adam, not only canceled what the first Adam did, by reconciling us back to God legally, but did much more. He gave us the free gift of righteousness as a nature. Let’s read this whole passage together:

Romans 5:15–19 (NKJV) 

15 But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. 

16 And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. 

17 For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) 

18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. 

19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. 

Christ should have accomplished at least what Adam did, right? Otherwise, He would have been less powerful than Adam. Of course, what Christ did was towards spiritual life, and not to spiritual death. But Christ had to perform an alteration in both the legal status and the vital state of believers and put them back in the position of righteousness in which Adam was, right? The interesting part is that Christ did something much better than what Adam did. The position and nature of Adam before the Fall was one of positive righteousness maintained by and conditioned on Adam’s obedience to God’s command. It was not a fixed, eternal, and unconditional righteousness independent of his deeds. If Jesus Christ were to just undo what Adam did, that meant that people who were going to believe in Him, would have only been brought back from minus to zero, having a clean slate and a temporary conditional righteousness. People in that position would have had to earn unconditional and fixed righteousness on their own by their obedience to God’s laws and commands. But Jesus didn’t leave believers in that position. He has undone what Adam did, but He also earned unconditional eternal righteousness by His obedience to the Law during His life, and then gave it as a gift to believers. That is amazing!!! 

Romans 5:19 says that, since through Adam, humans were made sinners both legally and in their nature, through Christ, the born again Christians were also made righteous both legally and in their spirit’s nature. That’s reciprocity. If they were not made righteous in nature as well as legally, Christ would have been less powerful than Adam and that is not biblical. Since sin (or spiritual death) was not just imputed legally to Adam and to the rest of the human race, now righteousness (or spiritual life) is not just imputed legally to Christians. However, Christ did much more than that. He freely gave believers God’s unconditional eternal righteousness that He earned on earth by His irreproachable obedience to the Law. The quality of His righteousness is superior to the one Adam had initially. Jesus didn’t let believers earn it on their own by their obedience as Adam was supposed to do before the Fall. That is amazing! Jesus obeyed and fulfilled all the commands and conditions of God from Deuteronomy 28 and gave that obedience to believers as a gift. It’s exactly this righteousness of Jesus Christ present in the reborn spirit of the new creation that gives Christians the legal right to health and prosperity on this earth. That is why they are no longer subject to the law of sin and death, but live by the law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2). They are immune to sickness, disease, and lack, if they start believing that they have Jesus’ righteousness. That is why sin, with all its negative effects, no longer has dominion over believers (Romans 6:14). And it doesn’t h...