The Good News of the Judgment
| Righteousness By Faith in the Judgment Hour William Diehl The Bible is very clear that we are justified by a righteousness that is found in Another. This is the righteousness of faith and the only righteousness that can enable us to be ready for the coming of our Lord in His glory. Those who are trusting in the sinless life and atoning death of our Lord upon the cross of Calvary are ready for His coming no matter when our Lord should appear. There is perfect sinless righteousness only in the person of Christ. All our good works and prayers and our Christian characters which are the fruit of the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit are tainted with the corrupt human nature we inherit from fallen Adam. The righteousness that is in us by our good works and deeds must still have the incense of the merit of Christ imputed unto them to be acceptable before God and worthy of reward. This corrupt human channel which all have through Adam necessitates that we come to God through the only mediator between God and Man, the only Good Man, Jesus Christ. In Him is contained the righteousness by which we are accounted and reckoned righteous by God's unmerited grace. Our Lord was NOT righteous by faith. That is, He never needed to be justified by an external righteousness found in Another for He was the very essence of the righteousness of God in His own person. He alone could say "the devil comes to Me and can find nothing in Me". He alone could say that He always did the will of God and had no sin in Him. Of Him alone could the Father say, "This is by beloved Son with whom I am well pleased." The Law of God could find nothing in Him to condemn for He, as the Second Adam and the incarnate Son of God, was the very embodiment of the righteousness of the Law. Repentant believers in Christ are always accepted before God and His Law on the basis of Christ's perfect sinless life and atoning death ALONE. The indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer which begins to write the law of love for God and Man in our hearts is a down payment of the life that we shall have in eternity. Until then our salvation begins in faith and ends in faith in the righteousness that is by faith in the imputed righteousness of Christ upon all and unto all who believe. All have sinned and all (including the most pious and godly of Christian believers) continually fall short of the glory of God, but being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we rejoice in the glory of God to be revealed at His coming. All other ground is shifting sand and the deception of self righteous, blind, miserable, naked wretchedness, and pompous flatulence of the Antichrist. Blessings, Bill
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