#62 If ye know that he is righteous ...

From Meditations on the Epistles of John, by Samuel Froehlich

If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. (I John 2:29)

We might think, who doesn’t know that? Or who doubts that Christ is righteous, perfect, pure, and holy like the Father? But if we now know this, we ought to observe what kind of conclusion and inference John draws from it with reference to us, if we want to say: "We are now children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ, the Son of God," —"ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him [descends from God like the Son]." Consequently he who does not do righteousness but commits sin is not of God, no child but a bastard, if he wishes to be called a Christian and nevertheless denies the blood of Christ (the doing of righteousness).

This verse forms the pivotal point of the whole epistle and the basis and foundation of the third chapter. We shall therefore not pass over it lightly. John therewith puts an end to every seduction—all false, erroneous anti—Christian ways and teachings and ideas about salvation, God’s sonship and righteousness in Christ—as if one could be righteous and unrighteous at the same time, a child of God and a sinner, holy and ungodly; namely, in Christ justified by faith and a child of God, but in himself and in his daily life a sinner, as, for instance, Luther expounded the righteousness of Christ as if He, by His death on the cross, were a footman of sin and it would therefore be necessary that a sinner only say, "I believe in Christ, I ascribe and impute to myself His merit, so that I may no longer be punishable on account of sin."

John most determinately declares himself as being opposed to such distortion of the Gospel, that no one may think the sonship in God took place by adoption only and not by the divine nature and birth in God, like the Son was of the Father, for an adopted child is not a natural one. But God has no unnatural but only natural children, who descend from Him like the Son, and just for this reason Christ must dwell and live in us by His Spirit, so that we become children of God (John 1:12,13).

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

For Christ died just once for our sins, that we become cleansed of them by faith, but He lives eternally so that He might give us His eternal life if we believe. The real believers therefore are not to be known by this, that they have lied themselves into the righteousness of Christ and sonship of God, for with the lie no one can stand before God but only with the truth, which is in Christ, and subsists herein, that we do righteousness, just as He is righteous and not a sinner.

If we are thus in Christ and He is in us, we do not then have a falsified, an imaginary, but a true righteousness of life in Christ, since we no longer live unto ourselves but the Son of God lives in us, for as the Son is, so also are all the rest of the children: they stand in one row, and although we are first adopted by the justification of faith as ungodly ones and sinners, yet we directly afterwards by baptism, as reborn and recreated men of God, become natural children of God, begotten of His seed. There is then no longer Jew or Gentile, but all in all, Christ.