Are You Righteous? You Must Be To Go To Heaven! Read This To See If You Measure Up. Here, This Righteousness Described! Do You Live Up To These Standards? This Is A Hard Saying?

A Devotional for Tuesday August 11, 2024

From the pen of John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress

Description of the Righteous

Are You Righteous? You Must Be To Go To Heaven! Read This To See If You Measure Up. Here, This Righteousness Described! Do You Live Up To These Standards? This Is A Hard Saying?

“[The LORD] . . . has clothed me with garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as bride adorns herself with her jewels”

Isaiah 61: 10.

The righteous man . . . ought to be thus described:

1. He is one whom God makes righteous by reckoning him so.

2. He is one that God makes righteous by possessing of him with a principle of righteousness.

3. He is one that is practically righteous.

He is one that God makes righteous. Now, if God makes him righteous, his righteousness is not his own. I mean this sort of righteousness: “Their righteousness is of me saith the Lord” (Isaiah 54: 17). God then makes a man righteous by putting righteousness upon him—by putting the righteousness of God upon him (Philippians 3: 6-9). Hence, we are said to be made the righteousness of God in Christ: “For God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5: 21). Thus God, reckons one righteous, even by imputing that unto us which can make us so: “Christ of God is made unto us—righteousness” (1 Corinthians 1: 30). Wherefore he saith again, “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory” (Isaiah 45: 25).

The righteousness then by which a man is made righteous with righteousness to justification of life before God, for that is it we are speaking of now: [It] is the righteousness of another than he who is justified thereby. Hence it is said again, by the soul thus justified and made righteous, “The Lord hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61: 10). As he also saith in another place, “I spread my skirts over thee, and covered thy nakedness”[1] (Ezekiel 16: 8).

[1] “Nakedness” sometimes in Scripture is a metaphor for sinfulness.