“I will clothe thee with change of raiment” (Zech. iii. 4).
For Paul every exercise of the Christian life was simply the grace of
Jesus Christ imparted to him and lived out by him, so that holiness was to
put on the Lord Jesus and all the robes of His perfect righteousness which
he loves to describe so often in his beautiful epistles. “Put on
therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,” he says to the
Colossians, “bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
long suffering”; and, “above all these things, put on love which is the
bond of perfectness.” None of these things are regarded as intrinsic
qualities in us, but as imparted graces from the hand of Jesus. And even
in the later years of his life, and after the mature experience of a
quarter of a century we find him exclaiming, “I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord; for whom I
have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but refuse, that I
might win Christ and be found in Him.”
Lord, enable us to-day to go out, clothed in Thy robes of perfect
rightness and with our hearts in adjustment with Thy perfect love.