Now, it is true that our moral goodness and our righteousness can be in the closest relationship, that someone good and holy is righteous per se. But still one must be careful to note that righteousness only stems from moral goodness by means of a judgment of God. One’s condition taken into account by the judge yields that person’s judicial state. Pollution becomes guilt because it passes through the judgment of God. If Adam had remained unfallen and kept the probation command, then God would have justified him—that is, God would have taken into account Adam’s holy and steadfast condition and would have had a state of immutable righteousness follow. Conversely, when Adam sinned, it was the condemnation of God that followed on the heels of this sin that transferred him from a state of rectitude into a state of damnation.
Geerhardus Vos | Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., vol. 4 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012–16), 138.
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Inwoo Lee
Inwoo Lee (BA, UCSD) earned his MA (Historical Theology) in 2020 from Westminster Seminary California and is author of “Righteous Before God: William Perkins’ Doctrine of Justification in Elizabethan England” (MA Thesis, Westminster Seminary California, 2020). He lives in the Great Seoul area, in South Korea with his wife Holly.
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