mean His deity which is in the flesh and
blood and is meat and drink for us. Thus, too, when John says, 1 John 1,
7: The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin, we must understand the
deity of Christ which is in the blood; for John does not speak of the
blood of Christ as it was shed on the cross, but as it, united with the
flesh of Christ, is our heavenly meat and drink by faith." (23.)
Osiander, therefore, is but consistent when he reiterates that the Son
of God, the Holy Spirit, and the Father are our Righteousness, because
their divine essence which by faith dwells in Christians, is one and the
same.

Osiander emphasizes that the essential righteousness of the divine
nature of Christ alone is able to save us. He says: "For of what help
would it be to you if you had all the righteousness which men and angels
can imagine, but lacked this eternal righteousness which is itself the
Son of God, according to His divine nature, with the Father and the Holy
Ghost? For no other righteousness can lift you up to heaven and bring
you to the Father. But when you apprehend this righteousness through
faith, and Christ is in you, what can you then be lacking which you do
not possess richly, superabundantly, and infinitely in His deity?"
Again: "Since Christ is ours and is in us, God Himself and all His
angels behold nothing in us but righteousness on account of the highest,
eternal, and infinite righteousness of Christ, which is His deity itself
dwelling in us. And although sin still remains in, and clings to, our
flesh, it is like an impure little drop compared with a great pure
ocean, and on account of the righteousness of Christ which is in us God
does not want to see it." (Frank 2, 100. 102.)

To this peculiarity of Osiander, according to which he seems to have had
in mind a justification by a sort of mystico-physical dilution rather
than by imputation, the _Formula of Concord_ refers as follows: "For one
side has contended that the righteousness of faith, which the apostle
calls the righteousness of God, is God's essential righteousness, which
is Christ Himself as the true, natural, and essential Son of God, who
dwells in the elect by faith and impels them to do right, and thus is
their righteousness, compared with which righteousness the sins of all
men are as a drop of water compared with the great ocean." (917, 2; 790,
2.)

In his confession _Concerning the Only Mediator_, of 1551, Osiander
expatiates on justification