RIGHTEOUSNESS LEGALLY OURS

HIM who knew no sin God made to become sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him." God made Jesus sin. Sin was not only reckoned to Him, but His spirit actually became sin. He died twice on the Cross. Is. 53:9, marginal rendering, "And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his deaths." Note that "in his deaths" is plural. He died spiritually the moment that God laid sin upon Him and made Him to become sin. He died physically hours later.
He died in spirit. Then it tells us in 1 Tim. 3:16 that He was justified in spirit, and in 1 Peter 3:18 that He was made alive in spirit. As soon as He was justified, that moment justification belonged to the world for He was our substitute. Romans 4:25, "Who was delivered up on the account of our trespasses, and was raised because (or when) we were justified." When were we justified? When Jesus was justified.

When was Jesus justified? When He was made alive in spirit. That explains two Scriptures. Acts 13:33-34 where God says, speaking of the Lord Jesus, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee", and Col. 1:15-18 "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation .... And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead." Jesus was the first person ever Born Again.

He was the first born, and His birth out of death into life was for us.
Now we can understand Eph. 2:10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." When did He do that work? At the time of which I have just spoken-from the time He was made sin, justified, arose from the dead, carried His blood into the Heavenly Holy of Holies and sat down at the right hand of God. He sat down because His work was finished, because the New Creation could become a reality. Now men could pass out of death into life, could become the Righteousness of God in Him.

If Jesus was made righteous, and made so righteous that He could come out of hell and go into heaven; if He after being made sin could become so righteous that He could go into the Father's presence, sit down at His right hand, and be accepted there by the Father, then everyone who accepts Jesus Christ as Saviour, confesses His Lordship over him, and receives Eternal Life will become as righteous as Jesus is because Jesus was made unto us Righteousness from God.
Don't stop there. Dare to turn to Romans 3:26 and read the American Revision. ,

"That God might himself be righteous, and the righteousness of him that hath faith in Jesus." There God declares that He Himself becomes the Righteousness of the man who has faith in Jesus as a Saviour and confesses Him as his Lord. If we become the Righteousness of God in Christ-and Righteousness means the ability to stand in the Father's presence without condemnation and with absolute freedom-then God has solved the Sin Consciousness problem.

How God Deals With The Sin Problem

No man can stand right with God simply by having his sins pardoned. It would leave the old nature that produced those sins still master of the situation. But when a man becomes a child of God, he is a New Creation. "The old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all these things are of God, who reconciled us unto himself through Christ."
There is a perfect reconciliation. There could not be a perfect reconciliation if there was sin in this New Creation. He has made man a new being. At the same time everything man has ever done in his past life is remitted, wiped out as though he had never committed sin. The word "remission" is never used in connection with the believer. It is always used in connection with the New Birth. A man's sins are remitted only once.

Eight or nine times "aphesis" is translated "forgiveness". Forgiveness is never used in connection with the New Birth.
Take as an illustration 1 John 1 :9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This is not written to the unsaved man. It is written to the believer who has lost fellowship with the Father. Forgiveness belongs to the believer. Remission belongs to the sinner. Notice carefully that the sin nature is eliminated and a new nature takes its place. All the sins that the Old Creation has ever committed are wiped out as though they had never been. God has no remembrance of them.

When a man tells you that you must confess the sins you committed before you were Born Again, he is ignorant of God's dealing with the sin problem. The New Creation has no sins and has no sin. If he has sin, he has not been Born Again. If he has sins, his sins were never remitted. Heb. 9:26 says, "Now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."

Here we get God's statement in regard to sin. Man can become a New Creation because his sin nature was laid on Jesus. When He was made sin and put sin away, the sin problem was a closed issue. The most wicked man that ever lived can accept Jesus Christ, and the instant he does he becomes a New Creation. When he becomes a New Creation, the sin nature stops being and a new nature takes its place.
The New Creation
2 Cor. 5:17. We have used this Scripture once, but let us go into it once more carefully.

"Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a New Creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all these things are of God who has reconciled us unto himself through Christ." Notice first, "Wherefore if any man is in Christ." The expression "In Christ" means that when a man is Born Again he comes into Christ. As the branch is in the vine, so the believer is united with Christ.
Romans 6:5, "For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." There is our union with Christ. That union means that we are in Him. So he says, "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there' is (or he is) a new creation." It is not a problem of sins being forgiven, nor a problem of our having repented enough, but it is a problem of an actual New Birth.
Natural man is without God, without hope, spiritually dead, a child of the Adversary, and by nature a child of wrath. When he accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour, confesses Him as his Lord, at once he is recreated by receiving Eternal Life, the nature of God.
John 10:10, "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."

John 5:24 declares that he who believes on Him passes out of death into life and cometh not into judgment. I John 5:12, "He that hath the Son hath the life."
Or I John 5:13, "These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God."
This is not a hope of Eternal Life. This is the actual receiving of Eternal Life, the nature of God. When you receive this nature you lose the old Satanic nature.
You cannot have the two natures at the same time. If you did, you would belong to two families at the same time. God would be your Father, and Satan would be your father. When you died, you would have to go to both heaven and hell. The part of man that is recreated is his spirit. His intellect is renewed. His body is healed-if sick. I want you to see clearly that this New Creation created in Christ Jesus, who has become a partaker of the Divine Nature, has passed out of Satanic dominion into the dominion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Lord over this New Creation. Gal. 6:15, "For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation." Eph. 2:8-9, "For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory." All that an unsaved man does in repenting, in giving up sin, in penance, is the work of an unregenerate man. It has no standing with God.
God takes the sinner as he is. No matter how deep in sin he has gone the New Birth will straighten him out. We have thought that a sinner could pray through, that he could repent until God would forgive him. All that is unscriptural. It is all right for a Jew under the Law, but not for a sinner tinder grace. The sinner is dead. He is sin. All the good works that he does are the works of sin. God does not want them.
God takes him as he is-full of sin, rebellion, Satanic nature-and imparts to him His nature. His nature drives out that foul, unclean nature of Satan and makes him a New Creation. All the sins of that Old Creation are remitted instantaneously. The man stands before the Father as though sin had never been. The next step in the drama is the crux of the whole thing. 2 Cor. 5:21, "Him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf ; that we might become the righteousness of God in him."
Everything we have done so far has been to one end, that man might become the righteousness of God in Christ. What does Righteousness mean? It is the ability to stand in the Father's presence as though sin had never been, as free as Adam was before he transgressed. John 8:36, "If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed (or in reality)." In the New Creation the Son has made us free.
Rom. 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.".

We are New Creations. We are the Righteousness of God in Christ. We have arrived; We are children of God. The only righteousness the church has known has been the Calvanistic type that made an unworthy man righteous. The new kind of Righteousness, that Paul described, is the Righteousness of a righteous man whom God has made good by imparting his very nature to him.
When He said my righteous ones shall live by Faith, He is describing a New Creation that has been made righteous with His own nature. This is not a legal righteousness, nor a reckoned righteousness, but the actual impartation of God's own righteous nature.