Christ’s righteousness is that garment of wrought gold that we all need to cover all our imperfections and to render us perfectly beautiful and glorious in the sight of God. In this robe of righteousness we are complete, we are without spot or wrinkle, we are without fault before the throne of God. Through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, we are made righteous in the sight of God. God looking upon us, as invested with the righteousness of His Son, accounts us righteous. All believers have a righteousness in Christ as full and complete as if they had fulfilled the Law. “Christ being the end of the law for righteousness to believers” (Rom 10:4). Christ invests believers with a righteousness every way as complete as the personal obedience of the Law would have invested them withal. When men had violated God’s holy Law, God in justice resolved that His Law should be satisfied before man should be saved. Now this was done by Christ, Who was the end of the Law. He fulfilled it actively and passively, and so the injury offered to the Law is recompensed. God had rather that all men should be destroyed, than that His Law should not be satisfied. No man can perfectly be justified in the sight of God without a perfect righteousness, every way commensurable to God’s holy Law, which is the rule of righteousness. Neither can any person have any choice, spiritual, lively communion with a righteous God, until he be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. All Christ’s active and passive obedience was either for Himself or in our stead and behalf. But it was not for Himself, but for us that He suffered and obeyed. Whatsoever Christ did or suffered in the whole course of His life, He did it and suffered it as our Surety and in our steads: for as God would not dispense with the penalty of the Law without satisfaction, so He would not dispense with the commands of the Law without perfect obedience. Remember, once for all, that the actions and sufferings of Christ make up but one entire and perfect obedience to the whole Law; nor had Christ been a perfect and complete Savior, if He had not performed what the Law required, as well as suffered the penalty which the Law inflicted. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us is a gracious act of God the Father, according to His good will and pleasure, whereby as a judge He accounts believers’ sins unto the Surety, as if He had committed the same. And [He accounts] the righteousness of Christ unto the believer, as if he had performed the same, the same obedience that Christ did in His own person. Christ’s imputed righteousness is as effectual to the full, for the acceptance of the believing sinner, as if he had yielded such obedience to the Lord himself. Hence His righteousness is called “our righteousness” (Jer. 23:6). Now without this righteousness there is no standing before the justice of God.