Jeremiah 23:5-6 Behold, the days come, said the LORD, that I will raise to David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper… I. The Lord is "our Righteousness," because He is OUR PARDON. "We have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." Our amendment — our often too partial, superficial amendment — is not our pardon; for how can amendment cancel the past? Neither is our repentance our pardon; it neither is nor can be the meritorious cause for which God pardons. In the words of one of our greatest saints: "Our repentance needs to be repented of, our tears want washing, and the very washing of our tears needs still to be washed over again in the blood of our Redeemer." II. He is "the Lord our Righteousness" in the sense of OUR ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD. It is solely through His merits that we are first received, and are afterwards continued in the favour of God. Just as His righteousness is the meritorious cause of the remission of those sins which we repent of, so His righteousness is the meritorious cause of the acceptance of our service, notwithstanding its imperfections. III. In ordaining His Son to be "the Lord our Righteousness," God has also ordained in His wisdom that He should be the SOURCE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN US. He, our great Head, our second Adam, is the Lord, our "renewal in righteousness." 1. We partake of an evil nature, because we have naturally transmitted to us Adam's weak and sinful nature, and those who are savingly in Christ have had, and yet have, supernaturally transmitted to them Christ's nature, as the seed in them of spiritual and eternal life. 2. He is "the Lord our Righteousness," inasmuch as He is the Lord our strength to serve God and subdue Satan. IV. IN WHAT RESPECT CHRIST IS NOT, AND NEVER CAN BE, " OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." He never can be our righteousness, so as to supersede the necessity, in any one particular, of our own personal holiness and righteousness. Righteousness is the order, the harmony, of God's intelligent creation, just as sin is its disorder, its confusion. "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, because He loves order, He loves harmony, He loves to see His creatures truly and permanently happy, which they only can be so long as they understand and fulfil the conditions of the particular place in His creation which He, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, has assigned to them. The love of God is righteousness. It is our inmost heart and affections being disposed towards God, as they should be when we consider who God is, and what He has done for us, and what claims His goodness has on us as spiritual beings redeemed by His Son's blood. Reverence to God is another branch of righteousness. It is our souls knowing and realising their place in the presence of so great and terrible a God. Obedience to rulers is righteousness; it is acting in accordance with the requirements of the place in which God has set us in human society. Obedience to parents, honouring and reverencing our parents, loving our brothers and sisters, is righteousness; it is realising the duties of our condition as members of families and households. Feeling for, assisting, judiciously and generously relieving the poor, is righteousness; it is fulfilling our position in a world left by God full of inequalities of estate and condition; which God has left full of these inequalities, in order that those servants of His to whom He has lent some superfluities, may grow in the grace of Christian charity by lessening the misery they see around them. Bearing distress with patience is another branch of righteousness; it is our hearts not revolting under, but submitting to, the dispensation of a God who always orders all things for the very best. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. |
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