It's all About Perspective
Article By: Joe Osgood Jr.
Scriptural Support: Romans 4:22-25
“simul justus et peccator” (Simultaneously Righteous and Sinner.) This Latin phrase was Luther's formula for explaining the very heart of the Gospel message. The actual act of Justification. This phrase is not to be interpreted that we are both righteous and sinner at the same time, which is a great contradiction, for one cannot both be righteous and a sinner in himself. The phrase is meant in saying that from one perspective we are righteous, and from another perspective we are sinners. From God the Father's perspective we are righteous if we have TRUE FAITH in Christ because of his perfect sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.
Many are familiar with imputed righteousness. That is, when the righteousness of Christ is imputed or applied to our account. In fact it is a double imputation. Before Christ's righteousness can be applied to our account, our sins must be imputed to his account. Through his perfect keeping of the Law in his life on Earth he is the only suitable sacrifice. He is the only one with excess merit to his account. If we sin only once, our account is deficient, and not any amount of good works can bring that deficiency into the black.
When Christ presented himself as the perfect sacrifice and wholly and fully righteous, he had enough excess merit or righteousness to cover all who would have faith in him. In this way he took or imputed our sins onto himself for judgment of death, and imputed unto us his merit or righteousness in sin's stead.
In conclusion it is not that we are both righteous and sinner at the same time. It is however well said that while we are still sinners, in God the Fathers eyes, he takes only the imputed merit or righteousness of Christ into account. This is not to say that we are free to sin as we please as Antinomians, that God's Grace may abound, but that we should strive for perfection and sanctification, as obedience is the true sign of a faithful servant and a loving child.
As John Bunyan the author of Pilgrims Progress noted:
One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yesterday, today and, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. (John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, [Hertfordshire: Evangelical Press, 1978, orig. 1666],pp. 90-91)
