BY THE LATE REV. CHARLES J. BROWN, D.D., EDINBURGH.*
“This is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”—JER. xxiii. 6.
* This sermon is taken from a volume entitled “The Word of Life.” Dr. Charles Brown was one of the most godly and gifted ministers of the Free Church of the Disruption. He was ordained in 1831, his first charge being Anderston Church, Glasgow, where he succeeded the eminent Dr. John Love. In 1837 he was translated to the New North Church, Edinburgh. He died on 3rd July, 1884, aged seventy-eight years.—ED.
IN the opening verses of the chapter God had pronounced a woe on unfaithful pastors—referring probably to rulers, both civil and ecclesiastical—who had destroyed and scattered the sheep of His pasture. He had promised to gather His flock in due time together, and set up faithful shepherds over them. Then He passes, at the fifth verse, by a natural and beautiful transition, to that prediction of Messiah, the great Shepherd of the sheep—King and Priest of His Church both—of which the text forms a part: “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. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord (Jehovah) our righteousness.”
You will easily perceive that, in this great title of Messiah, there is a party introduced as if speaking, and giving it to him—“our,”—“The Lord our righteousness.” Beyond doubt this party is the ransomed Church of God—the true Israel and Judah—the body of Christ—consisting of believers of all countries and ages of the world. Of the members of this body it is in effect declared that they shall be found addressing Christ—humbly, believably, joyfully—by the name, “The Lord our righteousness.” And what I purpose, accordingly, is to inquire a little into the leading thoughts and feelings which the title, as thus given to Christ by His Church, implies and expresses.
I.—And, first, I remark that when the people of Christ address Him by this name, “The Lord our righteousness,” it implies a contrite acknowledgment that they have no righteousness of their own—that they are destitute of all personal righteousness in which to appear before a holy God.
“The Lord our righteousness,” they say, confessing in the very utterance that “all their righteousnesses are as filthy rags”—that they have none in which they can for a moment venture to appear before the Holy One of Israel. The more narrowly they search the inspired Word, and view their own characters in the light of it, the more is this humbling conviction borne home on them. They find the Lord prescribing to man at the first a perfect rule of righteousness. They find Him pronouncing His curse on every one who continueth not in all things which it requires. They find Him declaring that in this fallen world “there is none righteous, no, not one”; that “the carnal mind is enmity against God”; that “as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse”; that “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Once, indeed, the people of Christ did not—any more than the world around them—obtain the knowledge of sin by the law. “They were alive,” as Paul writes of his former self, “without the law once.” Blind to the extent and purity and spirituality of the law, they fancied themselves in their own righteousness sufficiently good and secure. But “when the commandment came” at length to them by the Holy Ghost, “sin revived, and they died; and the commandment which was ordained to life, they found to be unto death.” They found that, while a single sin was sufficient to bring the curse, their entire lives had been one continued course of sin—of rebellion. They saw that even since the time of their conversion to God, with some goodness—the fruit of His Spirit—there had mingled imperfections and defilements innumerable. And still, as they continue to search their own hearts—rise in their thoughts of the breadth and purity of the law, and see its requirements reaching to the most secret motives and principles of action—they find that their very best deeds have not only nothing in them meriting heaven, but much, very much, deserving wrath. Every way the conviction is borne home on them that they are without a righteousness of their own in which to stand before God; and they give expression to this in effect when they call Christ by the name, “the Lord our righteousness.”
II.—But, secondly, I observe that when the people of Christ give this name to Him, they declare their solemn persuasion that they require a righteousness, though they have none of their own, in which to appear before the Holy One of Israel.
They not only confess their entire destitution, but acknowledge their indispensable need of a true and perfect righteousness: “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.” O yes, they do not profess to regard as superfluous what they have found to be wanting. They do not so renounce the hope of life by the law as to despise and trample on the law. They believe it to be none the less “holy, and just, and good,” that they have fallen beneath its curse. While they own themselves to have broken and dishonoured it, they acknowledge that kept it must be—”magnified and made honourable”—or they must perish. The same Spirit of grace that has “convinced them of sin,” “convinces them of righteousness”—teaches them to know that their standing in need of forgiveness does not lay God under any obligation to bestow it; to know that mercy can never require anything at His hand which justice forbids; to know that justice does forbid pardon without satisfaction—favour without righteousness; to know that even mercy itself—considered in relation to the whole scheme of things—requires that the threatenings of truth be executed, and the rights and claims of justice respected and maintained; to know that all the divine perfections conspire in forbidding that that law which required a perfect righteousness of unfallen man, shall be lowered and set aside to admit of the sinner’s acceptance without righteousness; to know, in a word, that if they are to be saved, it can only be in some way (if such can by possibility be found) of reconciling and harmonizing the desires of mercy with the demands of justice—the integrity of the law with the blessedness of its transgressor—his utter destitution of righteousness with his acceptance before God as righteous, and capable of being restored holily to the favour and fellowship and image and everlasting enjoyment of God.
III.—And thus, thirdly, I observe that when the people of Christ address Him by this name, “The Lord our righteousness,” they express and profess their faith that Messiah—being in one person God and man—has brought in a righteousness in their behalf, which is by God accepted for them and imputed unto them for their justification—“This is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness.”
They profess their faith that Messiah is in one person God and man. As for His humanity, it is implied in the very idea of His becoming the righteousness of His people, since a creature alone is capable of fulfilling the righteousness of the law. But the same blessed truth they find expressly in every prophetic announcement of Christ, from the first promise of the seed of the woman that should bruise the head of the serpent, down to the prediction which introduces the text, “I will raise unto David a righteous branch”—a son—even as Isaiah had written, “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Well, but of what avail could be the righteousness of a man, however sinless, for the salvation of his fellow-men? To yield such a righteousness had been but His duty for Himself—more than which He could not yield, nor less, without falling beneath the curse. Accordingly, see how the title which God puts here into the mouth of the ransomed Church, proclaims Christ God as well as man—“This is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness.” From the beginning the Church knew sufficiently this mystery, as witness the words of Jacob on his dying bed, “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk; the God which fed me all my life long unto this day; the Angel”—manifestly the same God—“which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.” But as the stream of prophecy widened, advanced, and fell at length into the tide of the Gospel revelation, the Church grew more and more familiar with such titles as “Emmanuel,” “the mighty God,” “the fellow of the Lord of hosts,” “the first and the last and the living One,” “God manifest in the flesh,” “God over all, blessed for ever.” Nor has she ever for a moment regarded this as some theological dogma or speculation, but has gloried in it ever as a truth wherewith her dearest hopes and interests are inseparably bound up—”Jehovah our righteousness.” As man, she beholds Him able to suffer; as God, able to save: in His humanity fulfilling all righteousness; by His divinity rendering that righteousness available for the lost: as man, made under the law, obeying its precept, enduring its curse; as God, imparting to the obedience and sacrifice a value, merit, sufficiency, strictly infinite.
In the counsels of eternity—in the everlasting covenant—she beholds Jehovah constituting our Lord Jesus the Head, Representative, Surety, of His people—as it is written, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one”; “I have laid help on one that is mighty”; “By the knowledge of him shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.” She sees the Son, in the fulness of time, coming into our world, taking our nature up into His divine Person, and discharging in it the entire debt of obedience and suffering due by His people—”finishing transgression, making an end of sins, bringing in everlasting righteousness.” She sees the Father, “well pleased for his righteousness’ sake,” raising Him from the dead, in testimony of the acceptance of His sacrifice; acquitting and glorifying the Surety, and in Him the people whom He represented, when their debt was paid. In a word, she beholds the Father, on His intercession within the veil, sending the Holy Spirit into their hearts, uniting them to Christ by living faith, imputing His righteousness to them, setting them for ever free from the curse, accepting them in the Beloved, making them heirs of everlasting salvation—as it is written, “He hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”; “David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works”; “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous”; “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness”; “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”; “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.”
IV.—But, once more, I observe that when the people of Christ call Him by the name, “The Lord our righteousness,” they are seen in the act of embracing, appropriating, and rejoicing in Him as the Lord their righteousness.
“Our,” a word of possession—of appropriation—”the Lord our righteousness.” Do you ask what the ground is on which this all-important embracing—appropriating—proceeds? I answer that assuredly it is not any kind of price paid by the sinner—any kind of equivalent sought or given—for a possession which in fact is beyond all price, even as the Church has no price to pay, being in herself “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” And what is the ground, therefore, save the free and unrestricted offer of Christ and His glorious fulness in the Gospel to sinners of mankind—to sinners simply as such—to them all, without exception or distinction? Thus, “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.” “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.” “Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness: I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry.” “Now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe.” “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Listening to such blessed offers—taught by the Holy Ghost effectually to listen to them—the Church flees for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before her; no longer “going about to establish her own righteousness, submits herself to the righteousness of God”; embraces, closes with, Messiah as the Lord her righteousness—like some drowning man laying hold of the plank that can alone sustain and save him—exclaims, “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.” Nor is this her exercise once only or a second time, but constantly—even as often as she discovers new defilements deserving wrath, new sins needing forgiveness, new glories of purity and spirituality in the law, making manifest her own vileness. Entering daily into the spirit of the title, “the Lord our righteousness,” she lives by the faith of the Son of God; comes up from the wilderness leaning on her Beloved; runs the race set before her, looking unto Jesus—“This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.”
But there is a further ground on which the “our” of the text—this word of property and rightful possession—proceeds. I refer to scriptural evidence of being already in Christ; evidence of having already embraced the Saviour; evidence, in the fruits of faith, of the existence and reality of faith; evidence of union to Christ in communion with Him, and some measure of conformity and obedience to Him. More and more thus ascertaining that Christ is hers in possession, the Church comes to mingle, you will observe, a new element of thought and feeling with the our, “the Lord our righteousness.” It is the language of joy and triumph, as well as of reliance and faith. It is not the spirit only of the drowning man laying hold of the plank, but of the safe and happy, rich and joyful man, realising his safety, and rejoicing in his treasures. “My Beloved is mine and I am his.” “Surely shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory.” “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.”
Let me add an inference or two before I close.
1. First, see here how wondrous a provision the Gospel has made for at once humbling the sinner and exalting him—laying him low in his own eyes and yet gloriously ennobling him.
Utter destitution of righteousness; possession of an everlasting righteousness—we have found both elements together in the title, “the Lord our righteousness.” And you will carefully observe that not only is the believer both humbled and exalted, but—such is the admirable contrivance of divine wisdom—it is the very same blessedness that elevates which also lays him low. The dignity of having Jehovah for his righteousness, whereby he is raised above angels, does, in the very act of his claiming and rejoicing in it, proclaim him “a child of wrath” by nature—”dead in trespasses and sins”—”wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Ah, the men of this world are proud of unreal, imaginary dignities. The Christian learns to be lowly amid royal, celestial honours. This is what the Apostle James means in his remarkable words, “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich, in that he is made low.” Think not, brethren, that when God so much insists on laying the creature low, it is that He may debase and degrade him. O, no, no. He desires only to abase the pride which is his real degradation; to lower him in his own eyes, that He may elevate him in reality; to strip him of a glory that is visionary, that He may invest him with a crown of glory that fadeth not away. He desires only to change the object and ground of his glorying—transferring it from himself to God, from earth to heaven, from vanity to wisdom, from the “filthy rags” of his own righteousness to the robe of a righteousness divine and everlasting. “Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord.” “In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever.” “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
2. Again, see what a ground of security, of peace, and of everlasting blessedness, the believer in Christ enjoys.
As to his security, he is clothed from head to foot with the “righteousness of God.” Unlike to Adam at his creation, who was sinless, indeed, but mutable and liable to fall, the believer stands, not in his own righteousness, but in that of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven—”Jehovah our righteousness.” “This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is of Me, saith the Lord.” Then, as to his peace. Well, surely may that be as a river—a peace which passeth all understanding—when, in the view of death and judgment and eternity, he can meet every challenge of conscience and the law by pleading the obedience unto death of the God-man, exclaiming, “This is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness.” “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever.” “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” As to the believer’s eternal blessedness, behold it the fruit and crown and reward, not of any merits of his, but of the righteousness of God’s own Son. And thus think it not incredible, but rather natural, certain, necessary, that it should be all that the Scriptures describe it—a blessedness not exaggerated when set forth as an “inheriting of all things,” “inheriting of God,” “sitting down with Christ in his throne,” an “exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” What purity, glory, happiness shall be deemed too great to reward Messiah’s obedience unto death—to be the fruit of the travail of His soul—to express the Father’s boundless, eternal complacency in it. “He that spared not his own Son, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
3. Finally, let me beseech you to use the subject in the way of self-inquiry, and of direction, according to the result of it.
Dear hearers, have you ever truly seen yourselves destitute of righteousness? Have you seen that you need a righteousness, though you have none of your own, in which to stand before God? Have you beheld the Lord Jesus, God manifest in the flesh—the surety of the lost—made under the law, obeying its precept, enduring its curse—“made of God,” to all who put their trust in Him, “righteousness”? Have you fled for refuge to lay hold on this offered Saviour? Have you laid the weight of your whole eternity on Him as the Lord your righteousness? If so, then blessed are ye. Then is He your righteousness in actual possession, as well as in the offers of the Gospel. “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.” And not content with confiding in Him, rejoice and glory in Him, exclaiming, “This is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness.” But if you have never built on this foundation laid in Zion—if either you are quite conscious that you have not, or the absence of the fruits of righteousness prove that you have not—then I beseech and implore you, trifle no more with the concerns of eternity. Ponder well the relations you stand in to God, His justice, His law. Think what that load of unforgiven guilt is which even now presses on you, and presses all the more fatally that you do not feel it. Behold the sword of divine justice ready at any moment to descend on you! But I beseech you to behold the same sword as it entered the bowels of Emmanuel, the substitute of the guilty. “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts; smite the Shepherd.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.”
In place of my usual closing word to the young, I cannot resist reading a sentence or two from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim”—from the deeply-precious dialogue held between Christian and Hopeful, lest they should go to sleep on the Enchanted Ground:—
“CHR.—And what did you do then?
HOPE.—Do! I could not tell what to do, until I brake my mind to Faithful, for he and I were well acquainted. And he told me that unless I could obtain the righteousness of a man that never had sinned, neither mine own nor all the righteousness of the world could save me.
CHR.—And did you think he spake true?
HOPE.—Had he told me so when I was pleased and satisfied with mine own amendments, I had called him fool for his pains; but now, since I see mine own infirmity and the sin that cleaves to my best performances, I have been forced to be of his opinion.
CHR.—But did you think, when at first he suggested it to you, that there was such a man to be found, of whom it might justly be said that he never committed sin?
HOPE.—I must confess the words at first sounded strangely, but after a little more talk and company with him, I had full conviction about it.
CHR.—And did you ask him what man this was, and how you must be justified by him?
HOPE.—Yes, and he told me it was the Lord Jesus, that dwelleth on the right hand of the Most High. And thus, said he, you must be justified by Him, even by trusting to what He hath done by Himself in the days of His flesh, and suffered when He did hang on the tree. I asked him, further, how that man’s righteousness could be of that efficacy to justify another before God? And he told me He was the mighty God, and did what He did, and died the death also, not for Himself but for me, to whom His doings, and the worthiness of them, should be imputed if I believed on Him.
CHR.—And what did you do then?
HOPE.—I made my objections against my believing, for that I thought He was not willing to save me.
CHR.—And what said Faithful to you then?
HOPE.—He bid me go to Him and see. Then I said it was presumption; but he said, No, for I was invited to come. Then he gave me a book of Jesus’ inditing, to encourage me the more freely to come; and he said concerning that Book, that every jot and tittle thereof stood firmer than heaven and earth. Then I asked him what I must do when I came; and he told me I must entreat upon my knees, with all my heart and soul, the Father to reveal Him to me. Then I asked him, further, how I must make my supplication to Him. And he said, go and thou shalt find Him upon a mercy-seat, where He sits all the year long, to give pardon and forgiveness to them that come. I told him that I knew not what to say when I came. And he bid me say to this effect: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner, and make me to know and believe in Jesus Christ; for I see that if His righteousness had not been, or I have not faith in that righteousness, I am utterly cast away. Lord, I have heard that Thou art a merciful God, and hast ordained that thy Son, Jesus Christ, should be the Saviour of the world; and moreover, that Thou art willing to bestow Him upon such a poor sinner as I am (and I am a sinner indeed). Lord, take therefore this opportunity, and magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul through thy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.’