Smoodock's Blog

As I look at it, to look for everlasting righteousness to be brought in at some future date is to deny the work of Christ, which he clearly claimed was finished (John 19:28, 30). This is the fourth work of God as prophesied by the angel in Daniel 9:24, and that work is complete in Christ. God doesn’t give us anything apart from Christ. Christ is the ‘treasure house’ of all we need in our walk with God (Ephesians 1:3). In other words, all of what God gives us comes through his new creation in Christ not through the rebellious old creation in Adam. In Adam we dwell in God’s wrath, the reward of rebellion (seeking our independence from God, but in Christ we have all the wealth of the Firstborn, the Son of God (Colossians 3:10). All that is Christ’s has become ours, as part of the riches within the new creation (Galatians 3:26-29). Christ is our all in all, and God causes Christ to be my Righteousness (1Corinthians 1:30; cp. Romans 3:21).

In other words, we have no righteousness apart from Christ. He is the Righteousness of God and my trust (faith) in this fact causes me to be righteous. The righteousness of Christ has been imputed or credited to us, who are the new creation of God in him (2Corinthians 5:17, 21).

Chapter five of Paul’s epistle to the Romans depicts the sad result of Adam’s rebellion. Through Adam we have inherited death and hopelessness. Man’s rebellion cannot be undone through our own efforts, because it is unnatural for a rebel to seeks his own will (Genesis 3:1-6) to be the loyal citizen of the Kingdom of God which operates on the principle that only God knows what is good or evil for us (cp. Genesis 2:16-17). Paul compares the righteousness of Christ with the unrighteousness of Adam, and the righteousness of Christ has abounded more than the effect of Adam’s rebellion, which introduced death into the human race, but mankind’s death is overcome in Christ (Romans 5:17-19; cp. 1Corinthians 15:54).

There are two ways of righteousness, the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of Christ. Under the Old Covenant the Law could only condemn the sinner, neither did it ever make a single man righteous. It was powerless to change a man’s life, because all it could do was point out what we did wrong. On the other hand, Christ is our Way, our Truth and our Life (John 14:6). It is impossible to know (behold) Christ and not be changed. The more we know (behold) him the more our lives are changed (2Corinthians 3:17-18).

When we first began to see this through the Gospel, we were changed forever. We could never go back to our old way of thinking about God and salvation. Each revelation from the Lord profoundly affects us all.

Consider the word translated righteousness in Daniel 9:24. It is tsedeq (H6664) and stands for what is right or moral. The “essential meaning is unswerving adherence to the standard of fairness. Its feminine counterpart is H6666 tsdaqah and has no discernible difference from H6664 except in gender.”[1] It is used in Jeremiah 23:5-6 to say, God intended to raise unto David a “righteous” Branch (Christ) who would execute judgment and “justice” (same Hebrew word) in the earth, and he would be called “the Lord our Righteousness” (H6664).

The feminine form of the word is used of Abraham believing in the Lord; and it was counted to him for righteousness (H6666; see Genesis 15:6). This familiar text is quoted mentioned by Paul in Romans 4:3 when he quotes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Covenant text. There the Greek word is dikaiosune (G1343) meaning: equity (of character or act); justification: righteousness. This single Greek word translates both masculine and feminine forms of the Hebrew mentioned above. The point is this: what remains of the everlasting righteousness for Christ to bring in that he has not already done for us? If he is our righteousness, how could a greater righteousness be brought in later? Our only recourse is to say that the Seventy Weeks Prophecy stands fulfilled in Christ. This, the fourth work of God according to Daniel 9:24, is complete. Christ, our Righteousness, is Everlasting Righteousness.

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[1] See The Complete Word Study Old Testament by Spiros Zodheates