I. What is being confessed in this article?⤒🔗

This article confesses the surprising fact that unjust people nevertheless look perfectly righteous in God’s eyes, thanks to what Christ accomplished for us.

1. Our salvation lies in the forgiveness of our sins thanks to Jesus Christ. Our righteousness before God rests on Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and for that reason we are righteous in God’s eyes.
   This is what David and Paul declare. They call someone blessed (meaning “saved and therefore happy”) to whom God imputes this righteousness without them doing anything for it. We receive it “for free," in other words, “by grace," because it is Christ who has redeemed us.
   That is the foundation on which we stand. All the credit and honour for it we give to God, while we have no claim to have contributed any of ourselves. We depend solely on what Christ obediently accomplished on the cross.
2. And this obedience is truly ours when we believe in him. It is also sufficient to cover all our sins. By relying on this obedience of Christ our conscience is set free from “fear, terror, and dread." Thus we gain “confidence in drawing near to God," without fleeing like our first father, Adam. For if we had to rely on ourselves — even to a small extent — or on some other creature, we would be lost, for we must say with David that no mortal being is righteous in God’s sight.

II. The significance of our righteousness before God←⤒🔗

1. This confession touches directly on our relationship with God. It speaks of how we can approach and appear before him. He is the Judge who calls us to account. We need to hand in the end result of all our actions (and inactions) to him. No one can escape this. No question is therefore more important than this: whether God approves or disapproves of our actions. If so, then he accepts us completely and we are saved; but if not, he condemns us and we are lost. So, more than anything else, salvation means that things are perfectly right between God and man.
2. But then follows the question of when God finds things in order and on what condition he approves of our lives. What we hand to him every day must be “righteousness before God." That is the condition. It implies that our life has to fully meet the requirements that God has put in place. If that is the case, then we can appear before God with the result of our lives with peace of mind. The total of all our actions may be “our righteousness before God." He will certainly approve. Then our relationship with God is perfect. And therein lies our salvation.
   It is obviously not enough for us to assume that we have done well. Paul writes in a certain situation that he is not conscious of evil, but that he is not in the clear because it is God who will judge him (1 Corinthians 4:4). People tend to overrate themselves: “All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit” (Proverbs 16:2).
3. It is at this point that the Bible sounds the alarm. For the result of our deeds and omissions does not bring us “righteousness before God." On the contrary, he condemns our life and this indicates our dreadful need, for our eternal calamity is implied with this. The terror and dread of having to appear before God with such a mountain of guilt resonates loudly in the three closing sentences of this article.
   Reference is made to Adam, who trembled with fear and attempted to hide and cover himself with fig leaves; and to ourselves, who, at the thought of judgment, cry out, “Woe to us! We will be consumed!”; and to David, who cried out, “O Lord, do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.”
   Based on this terrible reality, the church confesses in this article how we are yet saved.

III. How we receive our righteousness before God←⤒🔗

1. We appear before God with a guilt that fills us with terror. The article talks about “fear, terror, and dread” in approaching God. And if we relied, be it ever so little on ourselves, or on any other creature, woe to us: we would be consumed in God’s wrath.
   However, “we rely and rest on the only obedience of Christ crucified." What then did Christ do for us? He stood in our place and, as it were, re-lived our lives. He bore in our place the punishment that we deserved and in obedience he fulfilled the law which we had broken. In short, his obedience unto death replaces our disobedience entirely. Instead of obedience we can also speak of his righteousness. We depend wholly upon this obedience or righteousness of Christ. In other words, his righteousness is “our righteousness before God.”
   This righteousness of Christ becomes ours because God imputes it to us. Thus David sings, “Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity” (Psalm 32:2), while Paul rephrases it in saying that God imputes righteousness to such a person – apart from works (Romans 4:6-8, see also 2 Corinthians 5:19). Very eloquent is also the expression that our sins are "covered” (Psalm 32:1, Romans 4:7).
   We appear before God with our iniquities. But he does not want to see them, and therefore covers them with the obedience or righteousness of Christ. And this righteousness “is sufficient to cover all our iniquities."
   This means, on the one hand, that our sins are a frightening reality and remain, in this life, but on the other hand, that they are really covered before God’s eyes. In passing judgment, he acts as if these sins are no longer there. Our defiled life is covered before God’s eyes with the white robe of Christ’s righteousness. And therefore there is now “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
2. Nothing else remains for us but to believe. After all, God imputes to us the obedience of Christ: “His obedience is ours when we believe in him.”

IV. The Roman Catholic doctrine of obtaining this righteousness←⤒🔗

1. According to the Roman Catholic Church, man himself has to work in a certain way to get things right with God. God would not acquit us by covering our iniquity with Christ’s righteousness, but only after we ourselves have done something about sins by our good works.
   What should we be doing beforehand? According to Roman Catholic teaching we need to  (a) sincerely mean it; (b) sincerely say it; and (c) act honestly
   ​Therefore we must do the following:
   • sincerely repent of our sins;
   • accurately confess our sins; and
   • be prepared to bear the appropriate punishments.
     Only those who have fulfilled these obligations and have borne the punishments as far as purgatory will be justified. It is clear that with their abc the divine acquittal depends on man’s righteousness.
2. The worst thing about this doctrine is that it robs God of his honour, that our redemption is only his work. The church emphatically affirms that we “give all the glory to God, humble ourselves before him, and acknowledge ourselves to be what we are." There is no boasting in any way of “ourselves or our merits.” See also Romans 4:2.
   Of course it is not about whether God demands repentance (a), confession (b) and good works (c). The Bible clearly teaches that he does ask that of us. But the decisive question is whether these three form the basis for God’s acquittal. In contrast to the "yes" from Rome is the "in no way" of the church. We would be lost even if our repentance or confession or good works were to be the foundation of our acquittal. For then all three of them should be perfect, and they never are. Our repentance, however sincere, is never perfect. And we can honestly confess our sins, but who says there is no evil hidden from us? And even our best works are stained with sin. Therefore no one arrives at true peace in this way. Luther serves here as a cautionary example. Therefore we cling to God’s Word, which teaches that God imputes to us righteousness without works (see Section III point 2, above): “We rely and rest on the only obedience of Jesus Christ crucified.”
   We appear before God as we are, without in any way having prepared ourselves as more decent beforehand. We are deeply ashamed. But the obedience of Jesus covers and overlaps our disobedience and even our sinful nature (see Heidelberg Catechism, q/a 56).

V. Our righteousness before God and our deliverance←⤒🔗

1. It is a most wonderful thing that God treats us as if we never had or committed any sin. He does not do this because we were already combatting our sins or pushing back against them, as the Roman Catholics teach, among others. It is God who justifies and acquits the ungodly (Romans 4:5). One who can only cry out from the bottom of his or her heart, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” is acquitted by God (Luke 18:13-14).
   The surprising element is that with all our sinful existence we are still able to draw near to God without fear, because he covers our iniquity with Christ’s righteousness. And this “frees our conscience from fear, terror and dread” and thus gives us confidence to come before God.
   And this liberation, this deliverance, is called our "blessedness" at the beginning of this article. For he or she who may confidently draw near God is already saved and therefore blessed!
2. Unfortunately, many believe that the Bible contains a message of liberation practically only for the political and social realm, thinking of being liberated from poverty, oppression, and discrimination. The mistake is that people do not want to see or acknowledge a connection between God’s anger against sin and the misery in the world. Generally people deny the existence of God’s wrath (He is love!). People assume that they have God on their side when, together with all people — believers or not — the misery in the world is being addressed. Reconciliation with God has turned into a forgotten chapter.
   But the Bible teaches that a derailed culture, a crooked society, has everything to do with the wrath of God coming down upon “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18 in connection with Romand 1:28-32).
3. The Bible does not teach us to close our eyes to the many problems in the world. It shows us the only way to the solution of all problems. For those who are reconciled to God are in principle already set free from all the powers of darkness: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).
   The reconciliation with God implies our deliverance, in the broadest and deepest sense of the word. The result will be a new earth with righteousness and peace, a perfect blessedness.

Points to discuss←↰⤒🔗

1. If God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5), is he then allowing mercy to prevail over justice?
2. Evaluate this sentence: “Justification is not only the forgiveness of sins, but also sanctification and renewal of the inward man through the free gift of grace and the gifts by which a man becomes righteous from having been unrighteous, and from an enemy he becomes a friend.“
3. What do you think of this reasoning: “When you are sure that you will be forgiven it is unnecessary and useless to be bothered and grieved by your sin.”
4. In connection with the previous question: Does our article not end too much in a minor key?
5. Is there also such a thing as a false confidence to draw near to God (Luke 18:9-14)?
6. Is all the attention this article pays to justification by faith time-bound, and should the church be paying more attention to current social and political issues? Does this teaching matter to the developing world?
7. The Danish pastor and playwright Kaj Munk wrote in 1949 that for the people of today the burning question is not so much how their sins will be graciously forgiven, but where they will get the resources to buy themselves a Ford. Are we immune to this lifestyle?