I

RIGHTEOUSNESS

MATT. V. 20.

WONDER if to any of you has ever come an ex

perience of this sort. Steeped in the theological notions in the midst of which you were born, have you, in reading the words of Jesus, ever felt uneasy, from a suspicion-never uttered or breathed of course that they are not exactly orthodox? One theological Scotchwoman is reported to have said frankly that she did not care much for the discourses of Jesus because there was too much morality in them; by which she meant, not that they taught counsels of perfection, but that they seemed to attach salvation to good works in a way repudiated by the Westminster Confession.

The term "good works" has a sinister sound to evangelical ears. We usually feel that an explanation is necessary. If righteousness is needed in order to enter heaven, it is an imputed righteousness only, the righteousness of Jesus, and not our own.

Certainly the discourses of Jesus betray no trace of this doctrine. To suppose Him saying "My righteousness shall be accepted instead of yours" would be to render meaningless the most significant

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of all His utterances, that collection of sayings which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout that sermon He speaks in the plainest and simplest way about a righteousness which consists in actually doing the will of the Father. To introduce the idea of His doing the righteous deeds for us would rob the whole argument of its application.

When a certain lawyer asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not make the answer which would naturally rise to the lips of Churchmen or Evangelicals to-day, but He inquired how he read what was written in the law; and when this very exceptional scribe replied in language like that of Jesus Himself, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . . and thy neighbour as thyself," Jesus said, Thou hast answered right; this do and thou shalt live.1 In the same way, when a rich man addressed the same question to Him, Jesus replied by quoting the five commandments of the tables which bear upon our dealings with our fellow-men, and when further pressed added another, Go sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor.2 And, as if to show that these were not isolated cases, He on one occasion laid down the broad general principle, Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister and mother.3

All this is very unorthodox according to the form which the Christian faith has frequently assumed among us. Nor does there seem any way of maintaining the current form of doctrine, except that which has been adopted-viz., to put the teaching of Mark iii. 35.

1 Luke x. 28.

2 Mark x. 21.

Jesus into the background and to devise plausible methods of explaining it away. And yet intrinsically, as we shall see, Jesus is far from contradicting Paul's doctrine of "the righteousness which is by faith." Between the master and the great apostle there is no collision. But Paul's writings are peculiarly easy to wrest,1 and it cannot be denied that many worthy people, who suppose that they are advocating Paul's views, contradict the teaching of Jesus.

We cannot therefore be too decisive in marking that Jesus demands a real righteousness as the condition of entering into the kingdom of heaven, a righteousness which differs from that of the Jewish law only in being more inward, more intrinsic, more searching and absolute, a righteousness which in one place He does not hesitate to compare with that of God Himself. Ye shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.2 The forgiveness which He offers to men-which we shall see He purchases for men-is free. But as He knows what is in men and searches the intentions of the heart, He only grants forgiveness to those who will make it the starting-point of a new life, to those-i.e., who repent according to Shakspeare's definition of repent

ance

Heart sorrow and a clear life ensuing.

Thus, with the teaching of Jesus before us, and adopting His tests, we may be perfectly sure that forgiveness has not been given, and that the sense 2 Matt. v. 48.

12 Pet. iii. 16,

of forgiveness is simply a delusion of the deceitful heart, where the result is not the type of conduct and character which Jesus Himself prescribes. The principle He enunciates, By their fruits ye shall know them, applies to our self estimate as well as to the estimation which others form of us.

From all this it will be evident that the place of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel literature is not accidental. Necessarily the first task which the Master must take in hand would be to show in detail what is meant by Righteousness in the kingdom of God, and what manner of men consequently they must be who would see life. By a set design, which is accurately represented in the traditional arrangement of the materials of which our Gospels are composed, Jesus began by promulgating a law. Over against the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, which was of an elaborate and conscientious, but not of a penetrating or inspiring, kind, He set-not by any means a doctrine of imputed righteousness-but a sketch of what a faultless righteousness would be which proceeded from the heart, and from a right inward relation with God. The character there depicted has met with general and sincere . admiration. Seldom has it been slighted except by those who have theological systems which are at variance with the teaching of Jesus to maintain. The precepts of this law are very familiar to us all. And it is when He has passed them all in review that Jesus, with an impressive emphasis which no human language could surpass, declaring that He that doeth the will of my Father in heaven shall enter

into the kingdom of heaven, utters a warning which, one would have thought, might have terrified those who deliberately set His teaching aside, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ve that work iniquity, or, as the words imply, ye that violate the Law,1 this new law of the Sermon on the Mount. And then every one which heareth these words of mine and doeth them is likened to a man whose house is solidly built, and every one that heareth these words of mine and doeth them not is likened to the man whose house comes about his ears with the rising of the flood and the downrush of the storm.

It would not be easy for any human language to express more clearly that the actual fulfilment of this searching series of moral injunctions is the condition. of entering the kingdom. Nor can we see how Jesus could more deliberately have excluded the notions which have played so large a part in modern theology. But all this teaching of the Master Himself, different schools of religious thought have managed to make of none effect by their traditions. Evangelical teaching has followed a course so eccentric that at last it makes the teaching of Jesus seem unorthodox. It has come to such a pass that the Law of the New Covenant has been nowhere so discredited as in the house of His friends. As against His express words, every one that heareth these 1 Matt. vii. 23, οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν.