Righteousness, salvation, glory, are here brought together in
significant sequence. They are but several names for the same divine
gift, looked at from different angles. A diamond flashes varying
prismatic hues from its different facets.
That encyclopaedical gift, which in regard to man considered as sinful
brings pardon and a new nature 'in righteousness and holiness of
truth,' brings deliverance from peril and from every form of evil and
death, to him considered as exposed to consequences of sin both
physical and moral, and a true though limited participation in the
divine glory, even now, with the hope of entering into the blaze of it
hereafter, to him as considered as made in the divine image and having
lost it.
And all this wonderful triple hope, rapturous and impossible as it
seems when we think of man as he is, and of each of ourselves as we
each feel ourselves to be, is for us a sober certainty and a fact
sufficiently accomplished, to give firm ground for our largest
expectations if we hold fast by Jesus who brings that all-sufficient
gift of God within reach of each of us. The divine patience and love
follow us in all our wild wanderings, praying us 'with much entreaty
that we should receive the gift.' Jesus, who is God's righteousness and
love incarnate, beseeches us to take Him, and in Him righteousness,
salvation, and glory.