Righteousness outside of you or from another. (Think of sin as being curved in on oneself.) The Righteousness of God in Christ.

God supplies the Righteousness He requires. Christ Is Righteousness. Yes, God is Righteous by nature (an attribute), but He has also earned Righteousness, merit, by Christ keeping the full will and law of God.

Christ became sin for us. Christ is Righteousness.

Justification is a two-fold declaration of God that we are both “not guilty” and also “perfectly worthy” on account of Christ’s substitutionary death and meritorious life. Justification is the most important teaching, the doctrine “on which the church stands or falls” (Martin Luther).

“Christ died for your sins,” but that’s only half the story. The other side of the coin is that He lived the perfect life in your place, every moment of every day, in every thought, word, and deed. God credits you with Christ’s passive obedience on the cross and His active obedience from keeping the law throughout His life. The declaration is "forensic" - AKA legal status.

Think of it like this. You earn an F on your report card, but Christ earns an A. God credits your F to Christ, and He pays the price on the cross. But God also credits Christ’s A to you, and you receive His reward. You receive a righteousness that is not your own, an ‘alien’ righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Christ and His righteousness really and truly become yours. God not only sees you just as He sees Christ, but you are personally united with Christ and His merit imputed through Word & Sacrament. In communion, you receive His body, blood, and benefits.

Re-living in the palace of another. A federal association as a basis for a forensic or legal verdict. Christ is the New Adam. Just as sin through one man, Adam… so righteousness and life through one man, Christ.

Drives the story / how to interpret scripture - AKA how scripture is all about Christ. Christ is the New Israel. Israel was a failed servant, son, messenger; Christ is a worthy servant, son, messenger. But recapitulation extends beyond Christ as New Adam and Christ as New Israel. Israel is Eden; Noah is Adam, etc. Everyone strikes out, until Christ is up for every one of them, Christ the New Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, Joseph… Christ, the new you, the new me. Recapitulation is theological but also literary.

Christ earns merit, accomplishes Active Obedience, through Recapitulation. Christ goes to certain places, does certain things, says certain words in performative acts (think, "Let there be light") to fulfill recapitulation - it crafts the contours of the story, knowing for whom He is succeeding in place of their failure.

"Christ Suffered & Died for My Sins"

- "Not Guilty," Removes the Negative, person at neutral still needs to earn the positive.

"Christ Subjected Himself to Law to Earn Merit for Me"

- "Perfectly Worthy" is not 'just' an attribute, but a verdict He earns from passing tests.

"God Credits Me with Christ's Perfection"

- Gives the Positive, the Righteousness of God in Christ, person has nothing else to earn.

"Christ Lived My Place in Thought, Word, Deed"

- Substitution isn’t just on the cross but throughout the entire life of Christ, shapes the story.

"Christ Shares Himself and His Status with Me"

- Co-Rulers, Holy Ones, Sons of God, ‘saints’, recreated heavenly assembly shared in Word & Sacrament.

"Active Obedience: Are We Only Saved by Christ's Death and Resurrection?"

- Deep Dive into Lutheran Scholastic Theology on Active Obedience and Terms above

A Narration of The Active Obedience of Christ by Theodore Engelder in Concordia Theological Monthly - Original Article Here

The Bible is about Christ. After His resurrection, He explains all the scriptures, Moses, Prophets, Psalms, showing how they are all about Him, from beginning to the end, specifically how He must suffer, rise three days later, and His name be proclaimed to the nations. He shows up all throughout the Old Testament, eating, wrestling, leading physical marches, fighting and destroying, holding court, sitting and talking in His throne room, and then departing until His return at Advent.

Ten commandments have two tablets, not b/c there wasn't enough space, or the topics 'just' deal with God then humanity, but b/c there's always two copies of a treaty, one stays with the little king, one goes off to the great king of kings. The ten commands read like one of these contracts. The shocking thing is that both copies are kept together, God will be there to be the Great King with them. This is why it's tragic when Israel rejects God as king but wants their own to be like the other nations, or when they reject Christ, proclaiming they have no king but Caesar.

Reveals Christ's person and work, the plan of redemption over time through the story. God keeps things hidden. Partially as a curse blinding the eyes and shutting the ears of Israel lest they see and hear (Isaiah, etc.). Partially because He wants to execute His plan at His own time. Christ tells evil spirits not to proclaim Him until the time, tells those He's healed to keep it quiet, teaches in parables that reveal/conceal, and people don't understand. Later, Paul explains that He did this so that the evil supernatural powers wouldn't know the plan, otherwise they never would have crucified the Lord of Glory.

God's Anointed One who will redeem and rule. He will undo the Fall in Eden, undo supernatural incursions before and lingering after the Flood, undo Babel and gather the nations, undo Israel's split and exiles, and gather the tribes as a Good Son / Servant / Shepherd / Messenger, undo the failure of everyone in the story to keep the law.

He will be the God-Man, the Son of Man as man (like the prophets), and the Son of Man as cosmic ruler (of whom the prophets get glimpses). He will accomplish the entire Law all down to crossing the T and dotting the I (Sermon on the Mount), earn the judgment that God is "Well Pleased" (Christ's baptism), and defeat Satan in the wilderness as the New Adam & New Israel.

He will go to the gates of hell promising to smash them down, ascend Baal's mountain (Transfiguration) and reveal Himself as the one who tabernacled with Moses and met Elijah face to face, now discussing His Exodus to Jerusalem to ascend the Hill of the LORD before taking his victory as sacrifice on the Cross and destroying death at His resurrection.

He will be the New Adam, Israel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, you and me, and He will bring the Day of the LORD where death is swallowed up on the cosmic mountain, proclaiming His victory to those He's bound in chains of gloomy darkness and proclaiming our names in the midst of the cosmic assembly. He will raise our bodies and reunite us with them, recreate this world as new, and kickstart Eden off again.

The invisible church is all believers throughout all time and space, trusting in the promise of the messiah to come / who has come. The visible church is the institution that expresses the marks of the church, word, sacrament, discipline. These do not always overlap, and often the visible church goes bad. It may even be all but wiped out. Elijah gets demoralized when he can't see it, until God reveals He's in control of the invisible church, keeping them from worshipping Baal.

When you read "Israel rebelled," think "the visible church in action," and then the story, as well as current events, will fall into place. The entire story is Israel as the visible church failing repeatedly in raucous, hilarious, and tragically jaw-dropping ways.

The visible church in Christ's day. These are Babylonian exiles returned after hundreds of years. They are attempting to keep the law not only in order to prevent another exile but to fix the Roman rule, which is its own exile. Their goal is to bring the Messiah. They think they're the good guys. Keeping the law demonstrates that they're the good guys, and it's the whole job description to bring the Messiah.

This Christ is a rabbi who should know this, but He keeps getting in the way. He's eating with sinners, touching the impure, preventing the Messiah from coming. At the same time, He's claiming to be not just the Messiah but God Himself. The essence of Christ's debate with them is this. They can't keep the Law. Only God can, and this is precisely what He is doing. Keeping the full will and law of God to earn merit to credit to me and you (active obedience).

They also misunderstand God's holiness. He's not requiring them to clean up the mess before He gets here. He shows up in the mess to clean it up, humiliates Himself in the incarnation, and suffers at the crucifixion (passive obedience). It's not just works-vs-grace or law/gospel but goes to the heart of justification. He's not just here to sacrifice Himself, but to keep the Law and credit that righteousness to us in a cosmic declaration of both "not guilty" and also "perfectly worthy."

The Righteousness of God Is a Person, Who submits to keep the law in our place, pays for our sin, and then credits us with His merits, uniting us to Righteousness Himself through the preaching of this Gospel, through baptism into His Life and Death, and through partaking in His Body, Blood & Benefits.

The Bible is written for you, but not to you. It's a different culture, time, actually different cultures and times. It's a great conversation, a canon throughout the ages that presumes the reader is not only literate but catches references from within the Bible itself and also the broader cultures and times it's interacting with.

TLDR, you're going to have to work at it. God could zap you, but He chose to work through means, words, pages written in real history with people/places/times. Perspicuity of scripture means you can know enough to be saved, but not that God owes you immediate visibility into instant understanding. In fact, He indicates you'll have to work at it, meditate on it (not murmur or chant, but think about it as different parts unlock other pieces - scripture interpreting scripture over time).

He actually engages your mind and says that not only is the word a means of grace for justification, but sanctification is being transformed through your mind into that pattern of understanding. Christ is Wisdom, the Person, whose first act post-resurrection is to explain the scriptures. Don't go off in the closet and conjure up what it means to you.

Don't look to a pope or patriarch. Instead, read with the invisible church, in the great conversation throughout the ages. The authority is here, in scripture itself. Scripture alone doesn't mean trash everything else, but when any and even all other authorities conflict with scripture, scripture alone trumps them. So don't ignore reading together in the church, that's precisely where Christ has promised to be.