And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:30-31 (ESV)
In Genesis 22:1-14 we find the story of Abraham, when in obedience to God, took his son Isaac on a journey with the intention of offering him as a sacrifice to God. When they reached the place that God had shown him, Abraham took the wood for the offering, the fire and the knife. As they proceeded to the place of sacrifice Isaac asked his father what would be used for the offering. Abraham responded, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar, placed the wood on it and laid Isaac on the wood. As Abraham was about to slaughter his son the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and stopped him. Abraham lifted his eyes and saw a ram caught in a thicket. He killed the ram and offered it to God for the sacrifice. Abraham called the place “The Lord will provide”.
It was in a very similar manner that Christ Jesus became righteousness from God to us. Being dead in our trespasses and sins we had no righteousness of our own. We had neither the means nor the capability of producing any righteousness that could be considered ours. We could not keep God’s righteous law. We had no merits with which to vindicate our lawlessness (Romans 3:10-12). Therefore, God himself had to provide the means of righteousness in order to vindicate his own righteousness in justifying fallen man. So, he gave his only son, he provided the lamb (John 1:29, 3:16). Paul wrote, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4 ESV)
It was through Jesus’s perfect obedience to the righteous requirement of the law that he became to us righteousness from God. He lived a sinless life in regards to the law and fulfilled every jot and tittle (Matthew 3:15, 5:17). And it was through his sinless and obedient life that he became God’s perfect sacrifice for the atonement of man. It was through the merits of Christ, his shed blood on the cross and his endurance in absorbing God’s wrath on sin, that God could justify forgiving man of sin and withholding his great wrath from them. So now all those who are in Christ, who have by faith received him as savior and Lord, God declares righteous (Romans 5:9).
Peter wrote that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteousness, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18). When God looks upon his redeemed people through the lens of his righteous son, he sees them as righteous and welcomes them.
Albert Barnes wrote, “It should greatly increase our gratitude to God, that it was a subject of eternal design . . . that he loved us with such love, and sought our happiness and salvation with such intensity, that in order to accomplish it he was willing to give his own son on the cross.” And lest we forget, the son was willing to go. God indeed saved us from himself, for himself, by himself so “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Is your boast in the merits of Christ?
Scriptures for meditation:
Romans 3:21-26
Isaiah 53:4-6, 10