"Jesus, thy perfect righteousness my beauty is"

"When we believe in Christ, by faith we receive our justification. As the merit of his blood takes away our sin, so the merit of his obedience is imputed to us for righteousness. We are considered, as soon as we believe, as though the works of Christ here our works. God looks upon us as though that perfect obedience, of which I have just now spoken, had been performed by ourselves,—as though our hands had been bony at the loom, an though the fabric and the stuff which have been worked up into the fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints, had been grown in our own fields. God considers us as though we were Christ—looks upon us as though his life had been our life—and accepts, blesses, and rewards us as though all that he did had been done by us, his believing people.

"Accordingly, if you will turn to the thirty-third chapter of this same prophet Jeremiah, and look at the sixteenth verse, you will see it written, "This is the name wherewith she shall be called, the Lord our righteousness." I know that Socinus in his day used to call this an execrable, detectable, and licentious doctrine: probably it was, because he was an execrable, detectable, and licentious man. Many men use their own names when they are applying names to other persons; they are so well acquainted with their own characters, and so suspicious of themselves, that they think it best, before another can express the suspicion, to attach the very same accusation to someone else.

"Now we hold, you know, that this doctrine is not execrable, but most delightful, that it is not abominable, but Godlike, that it is not licentious, but holy: and let others say what they will of it, we will repeat the praise which we have been singing,— "Jesus, thy perfect righteousness My beauty is, my glorious dress;" and we will day when all things shall be tried by fire, for we feel confident that— "Bold shall we stand in that great day, For who aught to our charge shall lay," when we are clothed with the righteousness divine?" -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Jehovah Tsidkenu: The Lord Our Righteousness

Heaven is the reward for perfect law-keeping

"...the suffering and death of Christ, although fully effective in paying the debt which His people owed to divine justice, was in a sense only a negative service. Being of the nature of a penalty it could relieve His people from the liability under which they labored, but it could not provide them with a positive reward. Its effect was to bring them back up to the zero point, back to the position in which Adam stood before the fall. It provided for their rescue from sin and its consequences, but it did not provide for their establishment in heaven.

"Life in heaven is the reward for the perfect keeping of the moral law through a probationary period. Had the work of Christ stopped with the mere payment of the debt which was owed by His people, then they, like Adam, would still have been under obligation to have earned their own salvation through a covenant of works and, also like Adam, subject again to eternal death if they disobeyed. But the covenant of works had had its day and had failed. Very evidently if salvation is to be attempted a second time it will be on a different plan. For what would be the sense of rescuing a man from a torrent which had proved too strong for him merely to put him back into the same situation?

"Having rescued his people once God would not permit them to be lost a second time and in precisely the same way. This time not man but God will be the Actor; not works but grace (which is the free and undeserved love or favor of God exercised toward the undeserving, toward sinners) will be the basis; and not failure but complete success will crown the effort. Hence Christ, in His human nature and as a perfectly normal man among men, rendered perfect obedience to the moral law by living a sinless life during the thirty-three years of His earthly career, and thus fulfilled the second and vitally important part of His work of redemption.

"...we must not imagine that these two phases can be separated in His life. We cannot even say that His active obedience was accomplished by His life and His passive obedience by His death. For in varying degrees these two works were accomplished simultaneously and concurrently. Throughout all of His life He was perfectly obedient to the moral law in all that He thought and said and did. And in varying degrees every moment of His life on earth involved humiliation or suffering or both,--it involved humiliation beyond our power to comprehend for the King of Glory, the Creator of the universe, the One who is altogether holy and blessed and powerful and rich to be born a helpless babe, and that in the most humble condition, to subject Himself to the limitations of incarnate man for a period of thirty-three years, to endure the temptations presented by the Devil, to bring His holy and sensitive nature into close association with sinful men so that He would hear their failings and curses and be confronted with their ingratitude and opposition and hatred, to experience fatigue and hunger, and to look forward through all of His public ministry to the most shameful and painful death by crucifixion.

"And nowhere else was His active obedience so prominently displayed as on the cross, for there in particular as He suffered He also resisted all temptation to doubt God, or hate His enemies, or commit the slightest offense against those who treated Him so shamefully. Throughout His entire life as He actively obeyed He passively endured, and as He passively endured He actively obeyed. These two aspects of His work, while distinct in nature, were inextricably intertwined in time. Together they secure the wonderful, full salvation which was wrought out vicariously for us." -- Loraine Boettner, The Active and Passive Obedience of Christ

"Historical writing is always an interpretation"

“…the text interprets as well as records. It is a truism that historical writing is always an interpretation: A writer’s choice to use these words rather than those words, to emphasize these features of the event rather than those features, to tell the story in this order rather than that order – all these choices interpret the events in question. Writing things down always means limitation, and limitation, for any rational writer, has a rationale. Thus, while it is important to determine “really what happened,” this is not the only matter that demands attention. Something happened, but that something may be subject to a number of more or less conflicting, more or less valid, interpretations.

“…to read typologically is to accept that the Bible’s interpretation of events provides a true and the most essential interpretation of the events it records. Other ways of presenting those events were available, and might also be true; but even an interpretation consistent with the Bible’s interpretation would not have the same weight as the Bible.

Sometimes, rarely, the Bible’s interpretation is…stated explicitly. Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of the high priest Eli, were historical characters, and they were, as Scripture says, “sons of Belial” who “did not know Yahweh” and who committed “very great” sins (1 Sam. 2:12,17). If independent evidence were found that explained the practices of Hophni and Phinehas as innocent liturgical innovations, no effort could be made to “reconcile” the biblical record with the new evidence. The two interpretations would simply be at war. Similarly, it is not only true that David’s adultery with Bathsheba “really happened,” but it is also true that “the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.” (2 Sam. 11:27). In most instances however, the Bible uses more subtle means to present its interpretation of events.

"Devoutly grateful for his spotless life"

"...many young Christians who are very clear about being saved by the merits of Christ's death, do not seem to understand the merits of his life. Remember, young believers, that from the first moment when Christ did lie in the cradle until the time when he ascended up on high, he was at work for his people; and from the moment when he was seen in Mary's arms, till the instant when in the arms of death he "bowed his head and gave up the ghost," he was at work for your salvation and mine.

"He completed the work of obedience in his life, and said to his Father, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Then he completed the work of atonement in his death, and knowing that all things were accomplished, he cried, "It is finished." He was through his life spinning the web for making the royal garment, and in his death he dipped that garment in his blood. In his life he was gathering together the precious gold, in his death he hammered it out to make for us a garment which is of wrought gold. You have as much to thank Christ for loving as for dying, and you should be as reverently and devoutly grateful for his spotless life as for his terrible and fearful death. " -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "Jehovah Tsidkenu: The Lord Our Righteousness"