Counted Righteous

Track six is justification, and I gave it a western swing - twin fiddles, an easy lilt - because it is a courtroom that breaks into a dance when the verdict comes back. Counted righteous, counted righteous. It is God Himself who justifies, and the verdict came back love.

The song is staged as a trial, and it is honest about the charge. The charge was read, it bore my name, and every word of it was true. I had no plea, I had no answer. The righteousness in this song is never something the sinner worked up - he is genuinely guilty, and the righteousness is imputed, credited, given. Then the Judge gives a verdict that did not match the crime. Not guilty. Counted righteous. Clean for all of time.

And then verse three turns it into something stranger and better - the verdict was not new. He had never seen me guilty, the whole long ages through. That is justification from eternity, and the bridge tells you why it could be so. He did not count me righteous because He found me good. He looked at me and saw His Son. The reason God never viewed His elect as condemned is that He always saw the Lamb - slain before the world, the verdict sealed above. The trial was real, the guilt was real, and the verdict was settled before the trial ever sat. That is why it came back love.