Faith in the Righteousness of God

Jonathan Linebaugh, Robert Candlish, and the eschatological hope of the gospel.

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

Although it might seem like an odd endeavor to undertake, my aim in this post is to show the theological coherence between the musings of a nineteenth-century Scottish Free Church minister and the assertions of a twenty-first-century Episcopalian scholar and professor. The reason for this is that both attest to the grace of the gospel as understood and realized in the “righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:16), which is given to those who believe through faith in Jesus Christ. Despite their varied starting points, they both arrive at the same conclusion — namely, that this gift of righteousness is what constitutes the hope of salvation within the gospel itself.

1. Unpacking Jacob’s Eschatological Hope

Robert S. Candlish was a churchman living in Scotland during the 1800s, whose influence helped establish the Free Church of Scotland following the Disruption of 1843. He was, in many ways, a thoroughly evangelical thinker who held a number of denominational offices and served several parishes during his lifetime. In his expositional commentary on the Book of Genesis, Candlish unpacks the swaths of history in God’s book of beginnings in a distinctly sermonic format, making his insights both enduringly accessible and applicable.¹ Case in point, his “sermon” on Jacob’s deathbed prophecies includes a well-intended rabbit trail to discuss what God’s rascally patriarch might have meant when he declared, “I wait for your salvation, O Lord” (Gen. 49:18). Biblically speaking, of course, this is the first of many such declarations from those who long to see the consummation of God’s promised deliverance (Ps. 25:25; Isa. 25:9; Micah 7:7; Luke 2:25).

2. God’s Righteousness Is Revealed in Christ

Of course, the church is imbued with the good news that what was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was realized in the person of God’s Son. “This salvation of the Lord,” Candlish writes, “is brought near in the train of righteousness — his own righteousness.”² What Jacob was waiting for has been revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, who brings God’s salvation to the world. This allows us to understand how the aged patriarch lied so hopefully on his deathbed since the tendrils of God’s eschatological hope were, even then, on the horizon. Jacob just saw them “from afar” (Heb. 11:13). Accordingly, this is consistent with what Jonathan A. Linebaugh, the Anglican Chair of Divinity and the Director of the Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School, attests in his excellent collection of essays entitled The Word of the Cross. “‘The righteousness of God,’” he writes, “is God’s eschatological demonstration and declaration of righteousness enacted and spoken in the gift of Jesus Christ.”³

The good news, then, is injected with divine resonance in the realization that its sum is covenantal promises given to the patriarchs and its substance is the embodied Word of God who dwells and dies on the Earth to carry out God’s project of reconciliation. “‘The righteousness of God,’” Linebaugh continues, “is a description of the eschatological demonstration of righteousness and the eschatological declaration of righteousness that is God’s gift of Jesus Christ.”⁴

• What the gospel announces is the free gift of God’s peace and holiness offered to sinners in the person and work of God’s Son.

• It is he who consummates the promises and fulfills the will of the Father on our behalf as he assumes our sin and dies our death.

In so doing, he paves the way for the ungodly to be justified through the gracious bestowal of a righteousness not their own. “Paul does not employ δικαιοσύνη θεός [the righteousness of God] to make sense of what happens in Jesus,” Linebaugh determines, “for Paul, δικαιοσύνη θεός [the righteousness of God] is what happens in Jesus.”⁵ In a way, Candlish agrees:

The righteousness of God: — a righteousness that is in every view his, — provided by him, wrought out by him, accepted by him, applied by him; a righteousness infinitely worthy of him, and therefore worthy of being called his; — commensurate with his own perfect righteousness of nature; — corresponding perfectly to the righteousness of his government and law; — a righteousness having in it both precious blood to expiate deadly guilt and sinless obedience to win eternal life; — such a righteousness, in the holy person and atoning work of him whom the prophet describes as ‘wounded for our transgressions,’ — goes before, and opens up the way for, the Lord’s salvation; — a salvation as worthy of him, and of being called his, as is the righteousness which is its pioneer; — such a salvation as the Psalmist had before his eyes; — such a salvation as Jacob would fain have seen, when he said; ‘I have waited for they salvation, O Lord.’⁶

3. The Power of the Gospel in the Pulpit

Accordingly, as “the word of Christ” is proclaimed (Rom. 10:17), faith and righteousness are, likewise, brought to bear in and for the people of God. Pastors, then, are relieved of the burden of making their sheep righteous since that’s what the Word does and is meant to do. Week after week, when preachers stand behind their pulpits, they do so with the word of God’s power — a.k.a. the gospel — which heralds nothing less than the miracle of righteousness and grace in Christ. This is what fills all our harrowing days with hope and assurance — namely, because the longing of Jacob was satisfied in Jesus, who gives himself to us in the giving of his Word.

Grace and peace.

1. Robert S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis Expounded in a Series of Discourses, Vols. 1–2 (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1868).

2. Candlish, 292.

3. Jonathan A. Linebaugh, The Word of the Cross: Reading Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022), 13.

4. Linebaugh, 19.

5. Linebaugh, 9.

6. Candlish, 293.