What is "The righteousness meant" Here 1/2

What is the righteousness here meant?  

The Scripture speaks of a twofold righteousness; the one legal, the other evangelical.

           First.  A legal righteousness—that which God required of man in the covenant of works: ‘Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them,’Rom. 10:5.  Three things concur to make up this law righteousness.

           First.  An obedience absolutely perfect to the law of God, that is, perfect extensively, in regard of the object; intensively, in regard of the subject.  The whole law, in short, must be kept with the whole heart; the least defect either of part or degree in the obedience spoils all.

           Second.  This perfect obedience to the law of God must be personally performed by him that is thus righteous.  ‘The man that doeth these things shall live.’  In that covenant, god had but man’s single bond for performance—no surety engaged with him—so that God having none else to come upon for the default, it was necessary, except God will lose his debt, to exact it personally on every man.

           Third.  This perfect personal obedience must be perpetual.  This law allows no after-gain.  If the law be once broken, though but in one very thought, there is no place for repentance in that covenant, though it were attended with a life afterward never so exact and spotless.  After-obedience being but due, cannot make amends for former disobedience.  He doth not satisfy the law for killing a man once, that doeth so no more. How desperate were our condition, if we could not be listed in Christ’s muster-roll, till we were provided with such a breastplate as this is?  Adam indeed had such a righteousness made to his hand.  His heart and the law were in unison; it answered it, as face answers face in a glass.  It was as natural to him to be righ­teous, as now it is to his posterity to be unrighteous. God was the engraver of his own image upon man, which consisted in righteousness and holiness.  And he who made all so perfect, that upon a review of the whole creation, he neither added nor altered any­thing, but saw ‘all very good,’ was not less curious in the master-piece of all his work, he ‘made man per­fect.’  But Adam sinned, and defiled our nature, and now our nature defiles us; so that, never since could Adam’s plate—righteousness, I mean—fit the breast of any mere man.  If God would save all the world for one such righteous man—as once he offered to do Sodom for ten—that one could not be found.  The apostle divides all the world into ‘Jew and Gentile,’ Rom. 3:9.  He is not afraid to lay them all in the dirt; —we have before proved that they are ‘all under sin.  As it is written, There is none, no, not one.’  Not the most boastful philosopher among the Gentiles, nor the precisest Pharisee among the Jews—we may go yet further—not the holiest saint that ever lived, can stand righteous before that bar.  ‘Enter not into judg­ment with thy servant,’ saith David, ‘for in thy sight shall no man living be justified,’ Ps. 143:2.  God hath nailed that door up, that none can for ever enter by a law-righteousness into life and happiness.  This way to heaven is like the northern passage to the Indies —whoever attempts it, is sure to be frozen up before he gets halfway thither.

           Second.  The second righteousness, which the Scripture speaks of, is an evangelical righteousness.  Now this also is twofold—a righteousness imputed or imparted.  The imputed righteousness, is that which is wrought by Christ for the believer; the imparted, that which is wrought by Christ in the believer.  The first of these, the imputed righteousness, is the righ­teousness of our justification, that by which the be­liever stands just and righteous before God, and is called, by way of distinction from the latter, ‘the righteousness of God,’ Rom. 3:21; 10:3.  Not, as if the other righteousness were not of God also, but,

           First.  Because this is not only wrought by Christ, but also performed in Christ—who is God —and is not inherent in us, so that the benefit of it redounds by faith to us, as if we had wrought it.  Hence Christ is called ‘the Lord our righteousness.’

           Second.  Because this is the righteousness, and not the other, which God hath ordained to be the meritorious cause of the justification of our persons, and also of the acceptation of our inherent righteous­ness imparted by him to us.  Now, this righteousness belongs to ‘the fourth piece of armour’—the ‘shield of faith’—indeed we find it bearing its name from that grace, Rom. 4:11, where it is called ‘the righteousness of faith,’ because apprehended and applied by faith unto the soul.  The ‘righteousness’ therefore which is here compared to ‘the breastplate,’ is the latter of the two, and that is, the righteousness of our sanctifica­tion, which I called a righteousness imparted, or a righteousness wrought by Christ in the believer.  Now, this take, thus described.  It is a supernatural prin­ciple of a new life planted in the heart of every child of God by the powerful operation of the Holy Spirit, whereby they endeavour to approve themselves to God and man, in performing what the word of God requires to be performed to both.  Briefly let us unfold what is rolled up in this description.