SECTION II. . 99 f©r righteousness to all that believe ; I'Cor. i. 30. Christ is made of God righteousness to us ; and 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, where the gospel is described as the word of reconciliation, we are told that Christ was made sirs fòrus,,that we might be made the righ- teousness ofiod in hirn, and thisrighteousness is expressly called the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ; 2 Pet. i. 1. because it is the immediate result of his Obedience and death. And it is upon this account in the Old Testament, he is more than . once called the Lord our righteousness. But when I explain in what sense Christ is our righteousness, I would take more time and room, lest if I should not keep exactly to the common forms of expression, I should want a larger vindication. Now though our obedience to the first and great command of the gospel, viz. Believing in Christ, is not our righteous- ness, lest it exclude Christ and the righteousness of God, yet it is the way of our partaking of this righteousness ; and there- fore our justification or justifying righteousness is so often Called the righteousnessof God by faith, and the righteousnessof faith; 's <s ,r w=.nç Sxa{oSVVS, Rom. ix. 30. Row. x. 6. S{xa{oavvr) l{4 s',r IÇ, and zr.{ se r{ss, Phil. iii. 9. all which aremore properly ren- dered, " The righteousness that is by or through faith," or, that comes upon out believing. In other places it is expressed, that we are justified byfrith; but still in opposition to the works of any true and proper law. And it is in this sense that faith is said to he imputed or accounted for righteousness. Rom. iv. 5. it is not said, faith 'is our righteousness, or instead of a perfect right= eousness, but Toy;:sou 4ç Saxxwvvnv, thpt is, in order to our justifi- cation ; meaning, that of all the giraces wrought in us, or actions done by us, faith is the only think that God makes account of, or reckons to our advantage, in order to our justification, or our obtaining a justifying 'righteousness, and that not as a work or duty performed, as is proved by the context, but chiefly for this very reason, because it renounceth every thing of works, and goes mit of self to depend entirely on grace, which is the design of all that fourth chapter, by a parrellel instance of Abraham's not depending on his own sufficiency of nature, but on God's power to fulfil the promise. Nor is this exposition of the words sr hca{oo'wsv forced of strange, for they are used exactly in the same sense in other places, eyen"when it is joined with a{res ; .Rom. x. 20. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, that,is, in order to his obtaining a justifying righteousness, or in order to justification; for verse 4. Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness tò every one who believeth. This account of things gives a plain reason why the gospel justifies and accepts those persons who perform a honest and sincere, but a very poor, inconstant and imperfect
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