25. Meantime, while we walk in the faith of his righteousness, he has
patience with the poor, frail righteousness of this earthly life,
which otherwise is but filth in his sight. He honors our human
holiness by supporting and protecting it during the time we live on
earth; just as we honor our corrupt, filthy bodies, adorning them
with beautiful, costly garments and golden ornaments, and reposing
them on cushions and beds of luxury. Though but stench and filth
encased in flesh, they are honored above everything else on earth.
For their sake are all things performed--the ordering and ruling,
building and laboring; and God himself permits sun and moon to shine
that they may receive light and heat, and everything to grow on earth
for their benefit. What is the human body but a beautiful pyx
containing that filthy, repulsive object of reverence, the digestive
organs, which the body must always patiently carry about; yes, which
we must even nourish and minister to, glad if only they perform their
functions properly?
26. Similarly God deals with us. Because he would confer eternal life
upon man, he patiently endures the filthy righteousness of this life
wherein we must dwell until the last day, for the sake of his chosen
people and until the number is complete. For so long as the final day
is deferred, not all to have eternal life are yet born. When the time
shall be fulfilled, the number completed, God will suddenly bring to
an end the world with its governments, its jurists and authorities,
its conditions of life; in short, he will utterly abolish earthly
righteousness, destroying physical appetites and all else together.
For every form of human holiness is condemned to destruction; yet for
the sake of Christians, to whom eternal life is appointed, and for
their sake only, all these must be perpetuated until the last saint
is born and has attained life everlasting. Were there but one saint
yet to be born, for the sake of that one the world must remain. For
God regards not the world nor has he need for it, except for the sake
of his Christians.
27. Therefore, when God enjoins upon us obedience to the emperor, and
godly, honest lives on earth, it is no warrant that our subjection to
temporal authority is to continue forever. Instead, God necessarily
will minister to, adorn and honor this wretched body--vile body, as
Paul here has it--with power and dominion. Yet the apostle terms
human righteousness "filth," and says it is not necessary to God's
kingdom; indeed, that it is condemned in the sight of God with all
its honor and glory, and all the world must be ashamed of it in his
presence, confessing themselves guilty. Paul in Romans 3, 27 and 4, 2
testifies to this fact when he tells how even the exalted, holy
fathers--Abraham, and others--though having glory before the world
because of their righteous works, could not make them serve to obtain
honor before God. Much less will worldly honor avail with God in the
case of individuals who, being called honorable, pious, honest,
virtuous--lords and princes, wives and husbands--boast of such
righteousness.
28. Outwardly, then, though your righteousness may appear dazzlingly
beautiful before the world, inwardly you are but filth. Illustrative
of this point is the story told of a certain nun regarded holy above
all others. She would not fellowship with anyone else, but sat alone
in her cell in rapt devotion, praying unceasingly. She boasted
special revelations and visions and had no consciousness of anything
but that beloved angels hovered about and adorned her with a golden
crown. But some outside, ardently desiring to behold such sights,
peeped through holes and crevices, and seeing her head but defiled
with filth, laughed at her.
29. Notice, the reason Paul calls the righteousness of the Law filth
and pollution, is his desire to denounce the honor and glory claimed
for it in God's sight; notwithstanding he honors before the world the
observance of the Law by styling it "righteousness." But if you
ostentatiously boast of such righteousness to him, he pronounces his
sentence of judgment making you an abomination, an enemy of the cross
of Christ, and shaming your boasted honor and finally casting you
into hell. Concerning the righteousness of faith, however, which in
Christ avails before God, he says:
"Our citizenship [conversation] is in heaven, from whence also we
look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our
vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body."
30. We who are baptized and believe in Christ, Paul's thought is, do
not base our works and our hope on the righteousness of this temporal
life. Through faith in Christ, we have a righteousness that holds in
heaven. It abides in Christ alone; otherwise it would avail naught
before God. And our whole concern is to be eternally in Christ; to
have our earthly existence culminate in yonder life when Christ shall
come and change this life into another, altogether new, pure, holy
and like unto his own, with a life and a body having the nature of
his.