I was sitting in the barracks at Fort Campbell – a young soldier, contemplating my own struggles with sin. I picked up my guitar that afternoon and wrote the words to a song I later entitled A Tear in God’s Eye. I was imagining how my sin, even as a born-again believer (knowing that all my sin is against God – Psalm 51:4) must make God feel. So I wrote these words, And how does He feel when He sees the things I do? Is there a smile on His face? Or does He hang His head in disgrace? I know He’ll always love me, but time after time, I know that I’ve caused a tear in God’s eye. That was 23 years ago. My heart was sensitive to the weightiness of my own sin before God – and for that I am thankful for His convicting grace. Since that time I have learned about how God sees me, as a born-again Christian. I have learned to exult in the glory and beauty of the gospel gift of imputed righteousness as explained in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”.
God is the standard of righteousness. God never acts in way that is inconsistent with Himself. We might say that to be righteous is doing what is just and what is right. It could never be said of God, “Well, He is just not Himself today”. When we speak of God we must say that He is inherently righteous. In His very nature, He is morally right. All that He does is right. He’s also infinitely righteous. There’s no beginning to His righteousness – He did not start being righteous one day. He will not increase in righteousness. He has always been and always will be perfectly righteous.
God took the initiative to make us righteous. The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “for our sake He [God] made Him [Jesus} to be sin who knew no sin”. We must not be confused here by the word “made” as if this means that God made Jesus or forced Jesus to go to the Cross. No. The emphasis here is on God’s initiative and sovereign plan. The initiative to put us in Christ and make us righteous was completely of God and not of ourselves. He gets all the glory.
God imputed or credited our sin to the One who knew no sin. I have watched my wife give birth to all four of our children. You might say I know – intellectually at least – all about labor. But I have no experience with it – I have not actually given birth. Jesus has intellectual knowledge of sin – He was even tempted. But He has no experience with sin – He has not actually sinned. Yet, though Jesus never sinned, He was made “to be sin”. Jesus did not actually sin else He would have ceased to be God. But on the Cross He was counted by God the Father as sinful.
How could Jesus be counted as sinful if He had committed no sin? Have you ever had a fraudulent charge placed on your credit card account saying you owed for something you didn’t purchase? Spiritually speaking, there had been no charges of sin in Jesus’ account ever. No indebtedness to sin. But on the cross, all the charges on the accounts of all those who would believe were placed and transferred to His account. However, at that point, we are still not righteous. Why? Because we have not actually done anything that is righteous.
God imputed/credited His righteousness to those Who are in Christ. The end of 2 Corinthians 5:21 states this purpose: “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”. The word for “become” is the Greek word ginomai which is translated as genesis. What this means is that we who had no genesis – no beginning with righteousness – have been counted and treated as if we are inherently and infinitely righteous. I say “as if” because just as Jesus did not become morally sinful, neither do we become morally righteous. Now here is the good news about how God sees those who are born again – He sees them as perfectly righteous as Himself. That is, He sees them like He sees His Son. If it were not clear in Scripture I would find it impossible to utter: God knows that we have sinned, but He chooses to see us as righteous as Himself. In practice we are not righteous – we still sin and grieve the Spirit in so doing, but that is not our desire. Yet our unchanging position before the Father is that He chooses to see us and treat us as if we are as righteous as Jesus. This is the gospel. This is Good News!