Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." - Matthew 3:13-15
What an odd passage. Jesus comes to John to be baptized. John,
knowing Jesus' identity, tries to stop Him and tells him it should be
the other way around. Jesus tells him to do it anyway in order to'
fulfill all righteousness'. Huh? What righteousness? Isn't Jesus already
righteous, we ask? What actual need would there be to fulfill any more
righteousness? While we all acknowledge that Jesus is indeed righteous
in His essence, but I propose to demonstrate from the text of Scripture
that, in order to become a perfect substitute for us, Jesus also needed
to fulfill all righteousness as a man from our side, a man who is 'born
under the law' who needed to perfectly keep it in order to be able to
impute righteousness to us. Yes we must be quick to acknowledge that our
Lord’s atoning death removes sin. Clearly, the curse of the law is
removed because Jesus endured the penalty for us. “For our sake he made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21). “Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is
everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). Indeed, as the text of
Scripture declares, in order for human beings, who are sinners, to have
eternal life the guilt and penalty of sin must be removed. But Jesus
does this not only by dying the death we justly deserve but by living
the life we should have lived. This means, along with punishment for
sins, that we must also have a perfect record of obedience to God’s law.
When these two conditions are fulfilled people can be justified or
declared righteous, before God. Therefore, justification contains one
negative and one positive element.
The fact is, if Jesus simply needed to impute the righteousness
of God from His essence, there would have been no need for him to live
for 33 years. Instead when Herod went to go massacre the infants in
Bethlehem, Jesus death as an infant would have sufficed for our
justification. But this was not the plan of God because to become a
perfect high priest and lamb without blemish, Jesus not only had to die
for us but he had to live for us. It is clear then that the Scriptures
speak of God's people not only being justified by His death (Rom. 3:25;
5:9) but also as being saved by His life or obedience (Rom. 5:10, 19).
Aside from the above obvious passages, where else do the Scriptures
teach this? Well if you turn with me to Hebrews chapters 4 and 5 we will
find a very precise passage on this very topic: Continue at Reformation Theology
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