THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
by William Romaine
Considered in two discourses, preached before the University of Oxford, March 20, l757; in the morning at St. Mary's, and in the afternoon at St. Peter's.
Their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.--Isaiah 54:17
- Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I the Lord have created it. --Isaiah 45:8.
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While man is in the body he must receive his instruction from the bodily senses.. He cannot of himself form an idea of anything spiritual, but as it is compared to, and illustrated by, some material object. And this method of instruction God has followed in the scripture, both in the language, and in the composition. The language is entirely suited to man in his present state, every Hebrew word signifying first some material object, and thereby conveying the idea of some correspondent spiritual object.--And the scripture composition abounds with images and illustrations of divine things taken from nature. The evangelical prophet is a remarkable instance of this kind of writing. He represents the various parts of the kingdom of grace under their expressive and familiar pictures in nature. He sets spiritual things as it were before our eyes, under the images which God had established in his created works, in order to bring them down to our understandings. And every illustration of this kind, being God's own application of natural things, must be considered as infallible truth. The spiritual application is as certain as the outward fact from which it is taken. God would not use the book of nature to illustrate the book of grace, unless the illustration was just and instructive, for it is not consistent with his perfections to propose to his creatures for truth what would deceive, or to reveal what did not tend to edify them.
In this light, let us consider the beautiful image in the text. God is here recommending to us THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE GOSPEL. He proposes it as clear and plain terms; and to convince our understandings, and to win our affections, he sets it before our eyes under a very affecting picture. He represents the doctrine under one of the most common and familiar occurrences in nature. Thither he sends us for instruction in righteousness--and may the Spirit of the Lord enable every one of you to apply the instruction for the good of your souls, while I am First, opening the true sense and meaning of the words. And then Secondly, making some practical remarks upon them. And first, the words are a scripture image and application of a well-known fact in nature. The earth is supposed to be deprived of the rain of heaven. It has no refreshing showers, no enlivening dew to saturate the thirsty soil; and for want of their fruitful influence the earth is entirely barren. It produces nothing either for use or ornament. While it was lying in this state, God gave the word, and clouds descended. and the earth opened to receive the fruitful drops of rain, which they poured down, and their prolific virtue such effects followed, as the Psalmist has beautifully described in these words, "He watereth the hills from above, whereby the earth is filled with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. The high trees are satisfied, even the cedars of Libanus, which he hath planted. These are the certain consequences of warm and gentle showers.
When they are animated with the light of the sun in the spring season of the year, they never fail to bring forth rich products of the earth, from the lowest herb to the highest cedar on Libanus. Under this plain and familiar image, God intends to teach us THE MOST IMPORTANT TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. Because it is the most necessary to be believed, he has therefore made it the most easy to be understood. The principal point of view in which he would have us to consider the image in the text is this: The earth without rain lies barren and desolate, the rain descends from heaven, and is dropped down from the clouds, and when it comes in plentiful showers and there is clear shining after it then it always produces fruitfulness. Hither the Holy Spirit sends us for instruction in righteousness. Righteousness is to the soul, what the rain and dew are to the thirsty ground. The heavens were to drop this righteousness from above, and the skies were to pour it down, while man's heart being opened thankfully receives the heavenly gift. He has no hand, no merit in procuring the gift, but has only to accept it, as the dry parched ground does the enlivening drops of rain, which change its withered barren face into pleasing verdure and rich fruitfulness.
In order to understand clearly what the all-wise Spirit would teach us under this sweet image, we should have a perfect idea of the word righteousness, upon which the whole stress of the passage turns. In the Old Testament it is a mercantile term, taken from the method of trading in the early ages of the world, when business was carried on, and money paid and received by weight. The fair trader kept an even balance in paying and receiving, therefore he was a just or righteous man. And hence justice, which is the emblem of this fair trading, is always painted with an even balance in her hand. When the scripture speaks of human affairs, this is always the sense of the word righteousness; for thus it is used. Lev. 19:36. "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall you have." The same word is here four times rendered just, which in the text is rendered righteousness. And in like manner in Deut. 25:14,15, the command runs, "Thou shalt not have in thine house diverse measures, a great and a small, but thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have." So again Ezek. 45:9,10. "Take away your exactions from my people saith the Lord God. Ye shall have just balances, and just ephah, and just bath." In passages, not to mention any more the same word which is translated righteousness in the text, is undoubtedly applied to the evenness of the balance, and strict justice in weights and measures.
When the scriptures speak of dealings between man and man, this is the established sense of the word; and if we spiritualize this sense we shall understand the usage of the word in religious affairs. All that we are and all that we hope for, is God's free gift; and therefore as the Lord and giver of all, he has an unalienable right to our continual service. And he demanded it. He gave us a holy, just, and good law, to which he required the perfect, uninterrupted obedience of every faculty of soul and body. If man had paid it him in thought, word, and deed, then he would have been just--he would have dealt uprightly with God, and the divine law and justice would have had no demands upon him, But if we pay it not, then we are unjust: and the law for the first offence pronounces its curses upon us: for it is written, "Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law." If we continue not in all things, if we fail but in one point, then we rob God of his due. We become his debtors, and law and justice may seize upon us, and cast us into prison, until the uttermost farthing be paid; which it is impossible we should ever pay, because the obedience of millions of years could make no satisfaction for one single transgression against the infinitely perfect law of God. One transgression having infinite demerit in it, would weigh down the scale infinitely, and therefore eternally: unless some infinitely perfect obedience, which no finite creature can pay, be put into the opposite scale.
Upon this state of the case it appears, that righteousness signifies the most strict and unerring justice in our dealings with God. The law of God, which is his revealed will, and the rule of our obedience, is holy as God is holy, yea perfectly, infinitely holy. It cannot behold the least iniquity, any more than God can hold it, and therefore it cuts the sinner off from all right and title to legal righteousness for the very first offence, puts him under the curse, and subjects him to all its pains and penalties: and upon whom the law pronounces its curses, God the righteous Judge will pour down the vials of his wrath. Upon the unrighteous he will rain snares, fire, and brimstone, storm, and tempest: this shall be their portion to drink for ever and ever.
Are your then, my brethren, in the number of the righteous, or of the unrighteous? Is it not of infinite consequence to know what state you are in? For certainly if it should appear that you are unrighteous, you would not act so contrary to your own interest, as to choose to be subject to the curses of God's holy law, and to suffer the threatened punishment, if there be a way left to escape. Do you see then, how necessary it is we should inquire, whether we have acted righteously with God or not. To the infallible word therefore, and to the testimony, let us repair. The oracles of truth inform us, that, after God had finished his six days' work, he looked down from heaven, and behold all things were good. There was no disorder in the natural world, and no evil in the spiritual world. But he is soon after represented looking down from heaven upon the children of men, and behold all things were evil. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Gen. 6:5)
Whence was the origin of this universal evil? Mankind had gone out of the way of righteousness, they had broken the law, and had made themselves altogether corrupt, and were become abominable, there was none of them righteous, no, not one. What! Not one righteous man left upon earth? No. God declares by the mouth of his holy prophet, that there was not one. They had all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. They were by nature children of his wrath through one man's disobedience, and they were ten times more the children of wrath by actual guilt; and being sinners against God's law, both by nature and by life, he hath shut them all up under sin, in a state of condemnation, reserving them to the judgment of the great day. This is our condition, We are all unrighteous: and we are without strength to attain any righteousness of our own: Because we are poor, broken debtors, who have nothing to pay. One offence attaints our blood, and renders us incapable of doing any act that will be deemed good and valid in the court of heaven, for this irreversible decree stands against us in the divine records: "The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
From hence arises a question, the most important and interesting that can engage a sinner's attention, upon which every person concerned about his eternal welfare, would reason in this manner. "I acknowledge the law of God to be holy and good, but I have broken it, and have robbed God of his glory, and the law of its honour. I am unrighteous. As such, heaven is shut against me and will be shut for ever, unless I can be made righteous. But how or by what means can this be done? God's law is immutable. His truth that threatened to punish transgression is inflexible. His justice is infinite, and must have satisfaction for the broken law; yea, full and perfect satisfaction, suitable to the infinite purity and holiness of the divine nature. But alas! what satisfaction can I make it? Nay, what satisfaction could all the holy angels and the highest order of beings, if they would lay down their lives for me, make to that justice, which is infinite, and to which I am an infinite debtor. Nothing can save me, but some divine and infinite righteousness wrought out for me, and in my stead, and God alone can work out such a righteousness; but how can I hope that he will, since he is the very person whom I have offended by my sin?"
In this manner, every person concerned about eternity would reason: When he is convinced of his own unrighteousness, he will look out for some means to be made righteous, and he will soon find that there are no human means. Righteousness grows not upon this earth. It fled to heaven, when all the world was brought in guilty before God: and it cannot return to earth until all the offended attributes of God be satisfied. But what created being can make a satisfaction equal to the offence? All hope, humanly speaking, is cut off: for no finite creature can do an infinite action. Oh! what glad tidings then does the prophet here bring to a guilty world. He sees the heavens from above dropping down righteousness, and the earth opening and receiving it. The blessing is so unmerited, so inestimable, that one would be tempted to ask, How God could be so gracious? How can he exercise such mercy consistent with his other perfections? How can he suffer the guilty to be accounted righteous, until the demands of law and justice be fully satisfied? But where is satisfaction equal to their infinite demands? And until such a satisfaction be made, how can his all-pure holiness look upon the impure sinner, or how can his inflexible truth, which threatened punishment remit it? Glory be to his free grace, which hath found out a righteousness for us, against which law and justice cannot make the least exception, and which hath preserved the glory of all his attributes inviolate; and that the righteousness of the God-man Christ Jesus.
We are taught by Christian verity, that in the divine essence there are three persons of equal glory and majesty: none is before or after other, none is greater or less than another. Between these divine Persons the covenant of grace was ordered in all things and sure; and from this covenant the co-equal and co-eternal Three took the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Son is a name of office, descriptive of the wonderful humiliation of the Messiah, who took our nature, and was made a Son for our salvation--God and man being united in one Christ, as much as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man. The God-man undertakes in our nature to pay perfect satisfaction to his Father's justice. Accordingly he paid the law an infinitely perfect obedience. And he thereby magnified it, and made it more honourable than the obedience of all created beings could have done. Then he suffered what was due to our breach of the law, and paid the death which we deserved. And justice demonstrated, that it had no more demands upon him, when it released him from the prison of the grave. And by this obedience and these sufferings he wrought out an infinitely perfect righteousness, which being imputed to the unrighteous; and laid hold of by the band of faith, renders them perfectly righteous at the bar of justice.
This is the righteousness of God to which every sinner must submit, if he be ever discharged from condemnation. He must receive it from God as his free gift, without the least merit or deserving. And he must trust wholly to it, never presuming to add anything of his own to it as a condition of justification. These are hard lessons to the pride of our corrupt hearts. Indeed it is the hardest of grace to humble us so far, that we can give up the merit of all our fancied good works, and take righteousness as a free gift. As if God's righteousness was not perfect enough, we are always thinking to add something of our own to it. Our fallen nature is ever tempting us to this absurdity, and the Holy Spirit has not offered us a more forcible argument throughout the scripture, than the striking image in the text. Our guilty souls are compared to the dry withered ground, which has been long deprived of the fruitful rain and dew of heaven. When they were lying parched and burnt up with drought, it pleased God to command the heavens to distill the refreshing drops of dew, and the clouds to pour down their genial and enlivening showers, which the earth opening its mouth thankfully received.
Now the righteousness of Christ is bestowed as these sweet influences of heaven are, freely-- the earth has no hand, no merit in bringing down the dew or the rain, nor have we any in bringing down the righteousness of Christ. And the fruits, which the rain and dew enable the earth to bring forth, are produced by their prolific virtue, animated with the genial warmth of the sun: for the earth is entirely passive and inactive, and only acts as it is acted upon. In like manner every good gift and grace is from above; they are fruits of righteousness, which could never have grown in our barren hearts, unless Christ had sent his Spirit from on high to plant and to water them with the continual dew of his blessing. When he withholds his influence, they immediately wither and die. When he rains and shines upon them, then they flourish.
This is the beautiful illustration in the text. "Let the heavens drop down the righteousness of Christ from above, like the dew, and let the skies pour it down, like fruitful showers upon a thirsty ground--"Let the earth open, let man open his heart, and then they shall bring forth salvation;" they, i.e. the righteousness which is from above, poured down upon and received into man's heart, shall therein take root, and shall enable it to bring forth fruit abundantly, even present and eternal salvation. Salvation is not of man. It belongeth unto the Lord. It is one of the infinitely perfect works of God: for there is no Saviour besides him--none that can deliver man from the enemies of his peace, but the same Almighty Being who created the heavens and the earth, and who still supports them by the word of his power. And when he, by whom all things were made, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, then his name was called Jesus, because he was to save his people from their sins. Salvation on his part was finished, when, having fully satisfied the demands of law and justice by his obedience and sufferings, and thereby wrought out an all-perfect righteousness for us, he ascended with great glory to his kingdom in heaven.
But he did not leave us comfortless. The Holy Ghost the Comforter has now the conducting of the work of salvation. And when he humbles the sinner under a sense of his unrighteousness by nature and life, and enables him to wait at the throne of grace for a free pardon, when God the Father accepts him through the merits of his Son, and justifies him, then it is the office of the Holy Spirit to bear his testimony with sinner's spirit that he is a child of God. With the act of justification thus evidenced and applied, he receives justifying faith, and is brought into a state of salvation; for the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. There is no salvation without righteousness, and it is of the Lord's free grace that he is received as righteous, through the righteousness of Christ imputed to him by faith. Christ's righteousness can be made ours only by imputation. As our sins were actually imputed to him, so his righteousness is actually imputed to us. The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all, and therefore he was wounded for our transgressions, and was bruised for our iniquities. As he thus took our sins upon himself, so we by faith take his righteousness upon us, and by it are saved.
And when the heavens have dropped down righteousness, and the barren heart of sinful man has opened and received it, and with it salvation, then together with salvation, the prophet says, "righteousness shall spring up together." Until righteousness and salvation be in the soul, nothing good springs up, it produces no good works, any more than the earth brings forth fruit without the rain and dew of heaven; but when righteousness comes from above, it manifests itself by its effects, as rain does. It does not remain in the man, as an inactive barren principle; but it is mighty in operation, to enable him to bring forth fruit. As soon as it is poured down from on high, and received into the heart, it takes root and springs up with every fair blossom, and produces all the ripe fruits of holiness. He that before was dead to God, and to the things of God, having received justification to life, hereby glorifies his heavenly Father, that he bears much fruit. Righteousness changes him, as much as rain does the dry barren ground. As it makes the wilderness and solitary place to rejoice, and to blossom like the rose, to blossom abundantly, and to rejoice even with joy and singing, so does righteousness act in the barren wilderness of the sinner's heart, bringing with it the reviving streams of grace, and causing every sweet and holy temper to spring up. The grace, which flows from righteousness, renews and sanctifies the heart, makes it dead to sin, and alive unto God. The grace enables us to put off the old man of sin with his corrupt deeds, and to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This new man is created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and he produces them daily more in number, and of a richer kind--watered with the fruitful dew of heaven, they are continually springing up, and growing to the glory of God, and to the good of men, and they are continually administering that comfort to the justified soul, which the prophet had described in these sweet expressions -- Isaiah 32:17 --
- "The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever,"
If any man has peace with God it must arise from righteousness, from being justified by faith; and if any man has quietness and assurance forever, it must be the effect of the righteousness which God has created. It must not arise from going about to establish our own righteousness, but from submitting ourselves in the righteousness of God, of which he says in the last words of the text. "I the Lord have created it." I Jehovah, who created all things, have created this righteousness for the unrighteous and the ungodly. It is a new creation. And to create is my incommunicable attribute. You may as soon create a world out of nothing, as create that righteousness, with which sinners must be clothed, if ever they stand before me without spot of sin unto salvation. No righteousness but what is of my creation can present you unblameable and unreprovable in my sight. This is the immutable decree of Jehovah. He that cannot change in himself, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his mouth, has determined, that the righteousness by which we are accounted just before him, is not our own righteousness, but the righteousness of God. It is a righteousness which comes from heaven, and does not grow out of this earth. It is the free gift of God, and not attained by the work of man. It is a righteousness of God's own creation, an infinitely perfect and unspotted righteousness.
When a man is able to create a planetary system, then he may create such a righteousness for himself. If the one would be the height of presumption and blasphemy, so is the other. That man never saw the corruption and plague of his own heart, who dreams of working out for himself a righteousness, in which he may appear faultless at the bar of justice. Sin and pride have so blinded his eyes, that he knows not himself. He sees not how corrupt his nature nor how corrupt his life is, nor yet how corrupt his very best duties are. He is also ignorant of the perfect nature of God's law, which is as holy as God is holy, and which will not receive sincere for uninterrupted obedience, but cuts off all claim to legal righteousness for one single offence, even in thought; and he is not acquainted with the gospel method of salvation, which discovers to us, how sinners, corrupt in nature and life, and under condemnation, may be pardoned and justified by the righteousness of the God-man Jesus Christ, imputed unto them by faith. If scripture authority could convince, and scripture images could explain this important doctrine one might hope the text would leave no doubt in any serious mind.
I shall endeavour to remove the common difficulties concerning the doctrine under my second general head, wherein I proposed to make some practical remarks upon the words of the text: but the time will not permit me to enlarge upon them at present. And therefore leaving them for the subject of another discourse, I would only observe how beautifully these great truths of the gospel are illustrated in the text.
First, we read the righteousness of Christ is an heavenly gift. "Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness." And then the sinner has only to receive it as a free gift, he has no merit in bringing it down. "Let the earth open" and receive the heavenly gift. And when this righteousness is received by faith, then it brings the sinner into a state of salvation--" and let them bring forth salvation." And when he is placed in this state, then he will bring forth the fruits of the Spirit in all goodness and righteousness, and truth--"And let righteousness spring up together. I the Lord have created it" to justify the unrighteous, that being made free from sin, and become servants to God, they might have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
