A dear Jewish friend of mine tells me that she prays for that one righteous person who would keep Torah perfectly for one day. She believes that when that one righteous person fulfills the righteousness of the law for a day, the Messiah will come. How tragically hopeless this is. For the Messiah will come not because there is a righteous man, but because the Messiah gives righteousness to men. The reason that our heavenly Father sends the Lord Christ is that men cannot become righteous apart from his incarnation, suffering, death, and glorious resurrection. It is God's business, God's work, to bring righteousness to fallen human beings like us. This was the plan that our heavenly Father announced to Adam and Eve in the garden when he promised the Seed that would crush the head of the serpent. This was the plan announced to Abraham when God told him that in his Seed all the nations on earth would be blessed. This was the plan put into effect in time, when Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit the Son of God, when the Son of God took up our sins and carried our sorrows, bearing them all the way to the cross, leading captivity captive, and giving the gift of perfect divine righteousness to the children of the church.

The monks of Luther's day were not much different from my Jewish friend, because they too prayed that they would be able to see that one righteous man who would keep the law perfectly. What a wonderful prayer; but one which has already been fulfilled in Christ. Whenever he speaks we hear the voice of the one righteous man (Ps 1:1-2). Whenever He acts for us what He does is holy and righteous. He offers Himself to us under bread and wine and by receiving these gifts poor sinners like us receive the righteousness of the one righteous man. It's not wrong then, to pray that we might see that one righteous man. For God has answered that prayer long before we have considered praying it, because Jesus Christ fulfills that human hope and desire that the law would be kept perfectly by one human.

We tend to ignore that which is perfectly obvious to us, that which is easily within reach, that which takes no effort on our part; namely the Gospel. We seek rather those things which are high and impossible. We strive foolishly beyond ourselves. All the time we are seeking that one righteous human, Christ is before us in preaching and sacraments; the one righteous man who offers Himself as a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1Jn 2:2).

What if we should see that perfectly just man keep Torah for one day? What will have been accomplished? How will we be benefited? Only when it is God's Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who is that one righteous man will we be benefited, for His righteousness becomes the righteousness of the sinner through imputation. We seek a fulfillment of a hopeless hope when we await the one righteous man from among mere humans. And we are left striving and straining, or looking for the one who can reach an impossible height. How foolish, when the fully human Christ, the Son of God, has long ago fulfilled our yearning completely. One has already done it, and He has given it to the many.

Martin Luther