2 Corinthians 5:21 — “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.”
Think about that. He doesn’t say that in him we would become righteous before God, but become the righteousness of God. If I’m understanding this right, he’s not pointing out something we will do, but something we are: God makes us his righteousness.
This sounds unbelievably liberating to me: God makes us his righteousness and we go from there just to live true to what we already are.
And just what is the “righteousness of God”? I propose the following: it is God always acting according to the value he has placed on people.
You see, we are immeasurably precious in God’s eyes. That’s the message of the cross, isn’t it? That God would sooner surrender to an unspeakably horrifying death before he would see one man, woman, or child, lost? So God, in absolutely everything he thinks, says, or does, always treats people in a manner that reflects their value to him.
So now if we are the righteousness of God in this world then to be that means being a living expression of how God sees others. That is, like God, we too in everything we think, say, or do, always treat others in a manner that reflects their value to him. In so doing, we become what we already are — what God has made us to be — his righteousness for time and eternity.
