Original righteousness

“ To acknowledge this, then, both with our heart and lips, that is, to disclaim our own righteousness, "the righteousness which is of the law," is to act according to the real nature of things, and, consequently, is an instance of true wisdom. ”

“ But we dare not let go the truth that the holiness, the justice, the goodness, the righteousness, which the Eternal Moral Law imposes on us as a supreme command, are identical in essential substance in our minds and in His. Indeed, the more we keep before us the true character of that law, the more clearly do we see that the Moral Law is not His command but His nature. ”

“ My mind was opened to show the great and essential difference there is, between the righteousness of man, as comprehended in, and tolerated by the laws, customs, edicts and traditions of men, and the righteousness of God, which is altogether comprehended in pure, equal, impartial and unchangeable justice: showing that every act of man, which is not in conformity to this pure and impartial justice, is sin ”

“ It must be the same, because there can no more be any medium between sin and righteousness, or between being right and being wrong, in a moral sense, than there can be a medium between straight and crooked in a natural.”88 This is applied to the first man as he came from the hand of the Creator, and is designed to show that he was created with true holiness or virtue in his heart. ”

“ And equally vain is the confidence of the self-righteous in Christian lands, who look for salvation to morality, charity, amiability, or good works. Let us be thankful that we have a better righteousness to present before God, even the righteousness that is by Jesus Christ, who “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” ”

“ Before long each of you shall also come up before the Eternal. Then and there it will not avail you to have compromised truth, justice, love, but to have kept them. Righteousness only is the salvation of a State ”

“ In viewing the traditions of the Christian world, so far as I have been acquainted with them, before I knew anything of the Gospel, and before it was revealed from heaven, I have seen men who thought they were as full of grace, faith, and sanctity as possible, in fact, full of self-righteousness, which they considered the righteousness of God ”

“ Every good man will cheerfully ascribe to God the praise of his (the good, man’s) virtue. God gave him his constitution; God’s Spirit brought to bear on him the motives of a holy life. Had there been no Spirit, there would have been no holy life. Yet there is a sense in which the personal righteousness of the good man is his own righteousness. ”

“ In all ages, in all religions, men have turned away from this simple righteousness of God, which is created in justice and truth, and have sought some righteousness of their own, founded upon anything and everything save common morality and honesty. ”

“ Both books are wrought out with extreme care and finished to the minutest detail, and both deal with the cardinal matters of human history—sin, righteousness, and the final result of their conflict. Underneath all that appears on the surface in the life of the individual and in the history of the race there are just these abiding elements—sin and righteousness. It is the moral value of things which in the long run proves of consequence, the moral element which ultimately determines all else. ”

“ The fact is attested by Scripture. By His own words: 'My meat is to do the will of My Father'; 'For thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness'; 'I came down from heaven not to do My own will.' By His servant's words: 'Obedient unto death'; 'Made under the law'; 'He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.' It is involved in the belief of His righteous manhood. It is essential to true manhood. The highest ideal for humanity is conscious dependence on God, and the very definition of righteousness is conscious conformity to the Will of God. ”

“ After describing the state of a justified Christian, he rises into the following strain: “And now what has this happy person to do in this world any longer, having his debts paid and his sins pardoned, his God reconciled, his conscience quieted and assured, his accusers silenced, his enemies vanquished, the law satisfied, and himself justified, and his Saviour glorified, and a crown of Immortality, and a robe of righteousness prepared for him? ”

“ I intend to persevere in the path of righteousness until I overcome; and, with the help of God and the Saints, I will out-general the wicked. And I declare to-day that every person endeavouring to do right shall have his rights in due time, and rejoice in the God of freedom ”

“ There is an inexorable law of God that requires from His professed followers the principles of virtue, honor, truth, integrity, righteousness, justice, judgment and mercy, as exhibited in the following Scriptures:
"Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face."—Psalm lxxxix, 14.
"Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."—Psalm xlv, 7. ”

“ For the passage of Scripture decides the question in itself, seeing that it does not say, Then shall men stand, but "Then shall the righteous stand;" and they shall stand "in great boldness," because they stand in the power of a good conscience.
42. But in this world no one is righteous by his own righteousness,—that is, as though it were wrought by himself and for himself; but as the apostle says, "According as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." ”

“ To this new life in the affections, duty becomes a pleasure. The conscience, no longer perplexed and overborne by evil desires, becomes able to assert its rightful authority. The will attains its rightful freedom and power to control efficiently in the domain of righteousness, and to hold the life in the harmonies of right and duty. ”

“ Slowly then it dawned on men’s minds that righteousness was what Christ and His Apostles alone desired and sought to establish on earth. This new spectacle of men devoting their lives to the advancement of [221] righteousness, and confident they could establish a kingdom of righteousness and actually establishing it—this spectacle penetrated men’s minds, and gave them a new sense of the value of righteousness, and quite a new conviction of the possibility of attaining it. ”

“ It is upon the self as free-will, as the self-determining and directive power, that the responsibility for the conduct of life is thrown, and through it, if at all, the responsibility is to be met.
And this authority becomes supreme not by any arbitrary right of one subjective faculty over another or over all the rest, but from the fact of the supremacy of what the conscience discerns and discloses, the authority of right over wrong, the obligation to eternal righteousness. Righteousness is king. ”

“ For if man’s righteousness is not essentially restored in him, as it was essentially in him at the first, has he not less of God in him, by his redemption, than he had at his creation? Is it to the happiness of man, and the glory of God, that God has not obtained that dwelling in man, for which he alone created him? ”

“ The righteousness of God, the infinite rectitude and perfection of his nature. As he is what he is, so he is what he should be, and in every thing acts as becomes him; there is nothing wanting, nothing amiss, in God; his will is the eternal rule of equity, and he is righteous, for he does all according to it. 2. The righteousness of his government. He rules the world by his providence, according to the principles of justice, and never did, nor ever can do, any wrong to any of his creatures: Upright are thy judgments, the promises and threatenings and the executions of both. ”

“ Even upon your own theory, you begin with sin, and therefore you cannot be justified by the law.
This, then, is a conclusive reason and ground for the declaration of our Lord, that the one great work which every fallen man has to perform, and must perform, in order to salvation, is faith in another's work, and confidence in another's righteousness. If man is to be saved by his own righteousness, that righteousness must begin at the very beginning of his existence, and go on without interruption. ”

“ But in spite of all imperfections and contradictions, the voice within, without vouchsafing to give us any solution of the perplexity, or any sanction but its own authoritative command, imperatively requires us to believe that holiness is supreme over unholiness, and justice over injustice, and goodness over evil, and righteousness over unrighteousness. ”

“ In other words, unless there be a rightness in connecting sin with misery, and righteousness with blessedness, looking at individual cases simply in themselves, I cannot see that there is a rightness in connecting them as a rule of moral government. ”

“ If you ask, Whence such a disposition? I answer, it naturally springs from human righteousness. For every individual who professes human righteousness, and knows nothing of Christ, holds that efficacious before God. ”

“ Its prophets inaugurated in the world the idea of righteousness, the revindication of the rights of the weak—a revindication so much the more violent that, all idea of future recompense being unknown to them, they dreamed of the realization of the ideal upon this earth, and at no distant period. ”

“ If any one shall say, that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or by the sole remission of sin, to the exclusion of that grace and charity which is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and which inheres in them, or shall say that the grace whereby we are justified is merely and only the favor of God: let him be accursed. ”

“ We would look upon two sorts of righteousnesses, the natural man's, and the converted man's, upon the one's civility and fair profession, and upon the other's real or true grace in discharge of duties, and we shall find good reason to conclude both the one and the other under filthiness, so that there is no ground of boasting, no inherent righteousness can make us accepted before God. ”

“ Standing, therefore, between these, and being neither good nor bad nor unjust, he can be called righteous in a sense proper to him, as the judge of the righteousness that corresponds to him, and that god will be lower than the perfect God, and his righteousness lower than His, because he is begotten and not unbegotten. ”

“ This is the description of all those that are interested in this privilege—they act from spiritual and not from carnal principles; as for others, the righteousness of the law will be fulfilled upon them in their ruin. ”

“ He that goeth about to establish his own righteousness, cannot receive the righteousness of God. The righteousness which is of faith cannot be given him, while he trusteth in that which is of the law. ”

“ He will judge righteous judgment (v. 5) : Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins. He shall be righteous in the administration of his government, and his righteousness shall be his girdle; it shall constantly compass him and cleave to him, shall be his ornament and honour; he shall gird himself for every action, shall gird on his sword for war in righteousness; his righteousness shall be his strength, and shall make him expeditious in his undertakings, as a man with his loins girt. ”

“ For real moral character in God we must go even further and regard Him as loving righteousness, not simply as good in Himself, but as good in itself, good by the immutable quality of its own nature. For a moral government we must have a moral governor. ”

“ No, But if you would, through a principle of covetousness, seek to sap the foundation of another's happiness, by trying to wrench from him those sacred rights which pertain to his interest in the eternal world, how much greater will be your condemnation? Nothing but truth, integrity, virtue, honor, and every pure principle, will stand in the great day of God Almighty. ”

“ By its distinct connection of the favor of the deity with conduct it has tended to fix attention on the latter and to strengthen the feeling that righteousness is the sovereign thing. Though such regard for right-doing is at first mainly egoistic, it easily becomes an ideal, reverenced for its own sake, and more powerful because it is identified with a person and colored by the sentiments of gratitude and love that religion calls forth. ”

“ I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has combined to praise. ”

“ However high the benevolent feeling may be as a motive, all its purposes and the activities through which these purposes are accomplished need the guidance of the law of righteousness, if they are to be maintained in harmony with essential virtue, holy character and human welfare. Their function must therefore be held subordinate to the authority of conscience as the capacity through which the law of rectitude, with its obligation, is presented and kept before the mental view. ”

“ And you know, lastly, that the observance of this common law of righteousness, commending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly in this venerated Scripture of ours, connected with some distinct hope of better life, and righteousness, to come. ”

“ Having laid down the rules of the righteousness toward men, which is really a branch off true religion, he comes next to give some directions for their religion towards God, which is a branch of universal righteousness. ”

“ And as the course of the world is perpetually establishing the pre-eminence of righteousness, and confounding whatever denies this pre-eminence, so, too, the course of the world is for ever establishing what righteousness really is,—that is to say, true Christianity,—and confounding whatever pretends to be true Christianity and is not. ”