Today’s Scripture: Romans 10:4

“Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

Like his fellow Jews, Paul sought to establish his own righteousness through keeping the law (Romans 10:3-4). But there came a time, possibly during his three days of blindness and fasting in Damascus (Acts 9:7-9), when he realized his efforts to become righteous through law-keeping were going nowhere. They kept him from the only means of salvation God has provided. As he realized more clearly the perfect righteousness God has provided through his Son, Jesus Christ, he saw his own efforts to be righteous as no more than garbage to be dumped overboard.

Paul made what I call his “great exchange”—his own righteousness for the perfect righteousness of Christ. He not only threw his own righteousness overboard, but he regarded it as mere garbage compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ as his savior and being credited with his righteousness. He exchanged the garbage of his goodness for the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Of course, Paul could make his great exchange only because God had already made the great exchange described in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him [that is, through union with Christ] we might become the righteousness of God.” God laid our sin upon Christ that he might lay Christ’s righteousness upon us.

Note the subtle wording. Paul exchanged his righteousness through keeping the law for Christ’s righteousness that comes by faith. Yet in 2 Corinthians 5:21, God exchanges our sin for Christ’s righteousness. Our own efforts at righteousness are, at bottom, only sin because they fail to measure up to the perfect righteousness required by God’s law. They’re only scraps to be thrown out as garbage. (Excerpt taken from The Gospel for Real Life)

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