Tuesday, December 8, 2009

God Sees Your Righteousness Because It Sits at His Right Hand

In my study time this morning I came across this fantastic excerpt from John Bunyan's book Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and it really ministered to me.
One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: "Thy righteousness is in heaven." And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. "There," I said, "is my righteousness!" So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, "Where is your righteousness?" For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This takes my breath away. Thank you.

Matthew said...

Thanks for sharing that, Jared. Really needed that this morning.

richard said...

I used this to close the sermon 2 weeks ago - Advent 1. Preaching on "The Lord Our Righteousness" Jeremiah 23. Rich stuff, that.

Blessings,

R.