We recently finished Holy Week, which commemorated Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.

We learned that Christ’s death on the cross settled man’s “sin problem,” and His resurrection provided our “stairway to Heaven.”

But one more issue remains — that of making us “fit,” as sinful creatures, for coming face-to-face with our Holy God in Heaven — and surviving the experience.

Let’s call it our “righteousness problem.”

That brings us to one of the least-understood, and yet revolutionary concepts of the Christian faith.

It so happened that this was the very issue over which the so-called Protestant Reformation (1517-1648) was fought centuries ago.

How is a person “justified” before God? Millions of souls hung in the balance back then, as they still do to this very day.

The issue of justification (being made righteous) boils down to two choices and their eternal consequences:

Choice 1: If a person is depending upon their own personal intrinsic righteousness/merit before God (living a good life, religious devotion, etc.), they are doomed to live a life of anxiety, uncertainty and fear.

That’s because they can never know if you have done enough to pay their debt of sin. Scripture clearly declares in Romans 3:10-12:

“There is no righteous person, not even one;
There is no one who understands,
There is no one who seeks out God;
They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good,
There is not even one.”

So, how can such a person ever please God on their own? Impossible. Yet billions of people are doing just that to this very day — going it alone, and insulting God by ignoring Christ’s work on the cross FOR THEM in the process.

Choice 2: If, on the other hand, a person is depending upon the “extrinsic” righteousness of Christ available only in Him as a free gift, they will be blessed beyond their wildest dreams with peace, joy and eternal certainty.

That’s because such a person knows that Christ has already fulfilled all righteousness FOR THEM, as their Substitute, and was raised from the dead.

As noted in 1 Peter 3:18, it proved God has fully accepted Christ’s sacrifice/death, as settling man’s “sin problem” once for all, “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all time, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit …”

So why would anyone try to fit themselves for Heaven through religion or a life “well lived” when Christ has already provided the only authentic means of justification? So how does this work?

Clothed in Christ’s righteousness.

Paul explained in Philippians 3:8-9:

“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith …”

And in Romans 5:1-3:

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate in hope of the glory of God.”

Oh, what a joy it is to have peace with God! How many psychiatric couches would be emptied, addictions cured, marriages saved, suicides prevented, etc. if people could finally know their guilt is removed and they have peace with their Maker.

To illustrate: Remember what God did for Adam and Eve AFTER they had rebelled against Him in the Garden? As written in Genesis 3:21, He “… made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

Those innocent animals had no part in Adam’s sin, yet their blood had to be shed, and they paid with their lives for the sins of those two guilty humans. Sound familiar?

And note, Adam and Eve remained unrighteous IN THEMSELVES, but the animal skins covered them with a God-provided “extrinsic” righteousness.

This is what it means when the full value of Christ’s righteousness is “imputed” to believers who come empty-handed to God and receive Him as their Savior and Lord.

How About You?

Are you still clinging to the vaporous hope of reaching Heaven on your own recognizance? My, you have chosen a hard “row to hoe!” Give it up before it is too late.

Ponder the passage of 2 Corinthians 5:21 carefully, not so much with your head, but with your heart: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

The old saying, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” comes to mind.