We reign in life in establishing not our own righteousness but God’s righteousness and also in taking Christ as God’s righteousness (Rom. 10:4; Phil. 3:9; 1 Cor. 1:30).
We are exceptionally extolling in taking Christ as God’s righteousness. How do we take Christ as God’s righteousness? The key is in living a grafted life with Christ. Such a grafted life includes dying with Christ, being raised with Christ, and being overcoming and transcending with Christ in our mingled spirit. This is the way for us to take Christ as God’s righteousness.
When we live the grafted life, not living by our natural life, but living by the Triune God, the result is that Christ becomes our subjective righteousness. When we enjoy the Triune God, Christ is constituted into us as God’s righteousness subjectively. Hence, the objective righteousness is for grace to come to us that we may receive Christ as our subjective righteousness. Therefore, God’s righteousness is the subjective Christ, the Christ whom we enjoy and experience and who is constituted into us.
This is something which we should particularly extol and designate. In the Lord’s recovery we particularly extol and designate the truth concerning taking Christ as God’s righteousness, that is, living a grafted life with Christ. We do not establish our own righteousness but the righteousness of God, the subjective Christ.
We are exceptionally successful in taking Christ as God’s righteousness. What does it mean to be successful? It means to have an accomplishment. In all our service and work, our particular accomplishment should be to take Christ as God’s righteousness, that is, to have the subjective Christ in us.
God’s righteousness is the way of His acts (Psa. 103:6-7); it is revealed in the gospel of God as its foundation, solid and steadfast as the foundation of God’s throne (Rom. 1:17; Psa. 89:14). The lawkeepers attempt to keep the law for the building up of their own righteousness (Rom. 9:31). But “out of the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before Him [God]” (3:20). Christ is the end of the law by fulfilling all the requirements of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory, and is made the righteousness from God to the believers (Rom. 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9).
Christ’s becoming righteousness from God to the believers is of two aspects: the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. In the objective aspect, God has given Christ to us as our righteousness for us to put on as our outward covering that we may be justified before God outwardly and objectively. In the subjective aspect, God has given Christ to us as our righteousness that Christ may enter into us to be our life and life supply and live God out from us that we may be justified before God inwardly and subjectively. The parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 implies these two aspects. On the one hand, he was clothed with the best robe, and on the other hand, he ate the fattened calf. Being clothed with the best robe is the objective, outward covering; eating the fattened calf is the subjective, inward life supply. God’s salvation not only has an objective aspect in which we are justified by God positionally; this is our solid foundation. Based upon the objective justification, God’s salvation also has a subjective aspect in which we enjoy Christ as grace. The objective justification is not the purpose but the procedure to fulfill God’s judicial requirement so that the Triune God may become grace to us.
The objective righteousness is positional and judicial; it was fulfilled by Christ Himself and received by the believers once for all at the time of their salvation through justification by faith. The subjective righteousness is organic; it was not accomplished by Christ in His flesh but is carried out in the believers by the pneumatic Christ. The believers need to work out their own salvation by cooperating with the indwelling Christ (Phil. 2:12). This salvation which we are working out is our subjective righteousness and it requires our daily and moment-by-moment experience of the subjective Christ.