April
18, 2003
RIGHTEOUSNESS
"I
say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the
kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20, NKJV).
"The
Jewish nation had claimed to be the special, loyal people
who were favored of God; but Christ represented their religion
as devoid of saving faith. All their pretensions of piety,
their human inventions and ceremonies, and even their boasted
performance of the outward requirements of the law, could
not avail to make them holy. They were not pure in heart or
noble and Christlike in character.
"A
legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony
with God. The hard, rigid orthodoxy of the Pharisees, destitute
of contrition, tenderness, or love, was only a stumbling block
to sinners. They were like the salt that had lost its savor;
for their influence had no power to preserve the world from
corruption. The only true faith is that which 'works through
love' (Galatians 5:6) to purify the soul. It is as leaven
that transforms the character.
"All
this the Jews should have learned from the teachings of the
prophets. Centuries before, the cry of the soul for justification
with God had found voice and answer in the words of the prophet
Micah: 'With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands
of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil?... He has shown you,
O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your
God' (Micah 6:6-8, KJV)...
"God
offered them, in His Son, the perfect righteousness of the
law. If they would open their hearts fully to receive Christ,
then the very life of God, His love, would dwell in them,
transforming them into His own likeness; and thus through
God's free gift they would possess the righteousness which
the law requires. But the Pharisees rejected Christ; 'being
ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish
their own righteousness' (Romans 10:3), they would not submit
themselves unto the righteousness of God."--Thoughts
From The Mount Of Blessing, pp., 53-55.
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