The three-year lectionary of readings now begins its final Year C with the 1st Sunday in Advent and the following assigned readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 and Luke 19:28-40 or Luke 21:25-36. Chosen as the text for this Sunday’s sermon is Jeremiah 33:16, “In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Does it not appear strange that the name for the chosen people of God is “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”? Does this mean that the people of God will become gods? Of course not. What the title depicts is the source of the righteousness of the people of God; namely, the LORD and Him alone. A good question to ask the hearers is whether they think that they are righteous enough to get into heaven. Most of the members of a congregation will say “no” because they are thinking that they have to be righteous to get to heaven and they confess that they are not.

But then the second question is asked, “Oh, so when God gave you faith, He gave you imperfect faith?” It’s a problem of the head not having caught up to the heart. In other words, God has given us perfect faith in the heart (Create within me a clean heart) but unfortunately, our head uses its reason to dumb down the message of the Christian faith. For a mature Christian would answer the question with a sure “Yes, I am righteous enough to go to heaven,” because he is confident that the righteousness which saves is not his own but that free gift of righteousnessw he received from Jesus Christ.

The robe of Christ’s righteousness which we receive in baptism is not His intrinsic righteousness. Instead, it is that righteousness which He accomplished while here on earth in not sinning once by thought, word or deed! It is a glorious exchange when we receive His righteousness and we give Him our sin. For when He died He was our Substitute upon the accursed tree in that He took upon Himself the curse of the Law which should have been ours.

There is another piece of the puzzle which His righteousness solves in regard to the accusations of the Law. For the Law not only accuses us of sins of commission but also of sins of omission when we did not do the good works we should have done. But because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, each Christian receives that robe of righteousness from Christ Jesus. So if our heavenly Father were to ask us how we are to escape the punishment for the sins of omission, we can point to the robe which we wear which fulfills every command and will of the Father.

When verse 15 of Jeremiah 33 speaks of the Branch of righteousness executing judgment, God is referring to the execution of Judgment that came upon Jesus Himself on that accursed tree for our sakes. While the Law accuses us of both sins of commission and omission, the twin benefits we receive from the cross to counter those sins are the forgiveness of sins and the robe of righteousness. Or to put it another way, “Yes, you are sufficiently righteous in God’s sight to enter into His holy Kingdom of heaven forever and ever.”