Imputed Righteousness
What does it mean to be righteous? We might say it means that we are virtuous, honorable, moral. But with God, righteousness has a different meaning. God’s righteousness is absolute perfection. Of course, none of us as human beings can even come close to that, at least not on our own. But at the moment of faith alone in Christ alone, God gives us His righteousness, His absolute perfection. And when He does, He declares us righteous. The highest authority in the universe, God Himself, declares a believer righteous. No one can come along later and say that is not true.
Romans 4:3 says, “Abraham believed in the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Who can contradict that? God’s righteousness imputed becomes our spiritual DNA. Romans 4:23-24, “Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him (Abraham), but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Romans 3:22, “even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.”
His righteousness given to us at salvation makes us eternally justified before God. Romans 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” When the believer is justified as a gift of God’s grace, he is not without sin. Yet as an undeserving sinner, he is made acceptable to God because God’s righteousness resides in him from that point forward.
But notice God does not give us His righteousness because we are a good person or because we have done something to earn it. He gives it to us because we accepted the grace gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
If salvation is a grace gift (and it is) and we did nothing to deserve it (and we do not), how can we do anything to lose it. “Saved” is the Greek perfect tense of SOZO, which means saved in the past with results that go on forever. The fact is we can do nothing to earn our salvation, and we can do nothing to lose it. God graciously provided it for us. That means it is undeserved. When we believe in Jesus Christ and accept that gift we are still undeserving. For the rest of our lives, we will be undeserving of what Christ did on the cross for us. Yet, when we commit a sin that shocks us or someone else, and we begin to think we are no longer saved, in a sense we are saying that we no longer deserve the gift that we never ever deserved in the first place. Do you see how ridiculous that thinking is?