He goes on to present some of the consequences which follow on his
gaining Christ and being 'found in Him,' and before all others he names
as his aim the possession of 'righteousness.' We must remember that Paul
believed that righteousness in the sense of 'justification' had been his
from the moment when Ananias came to where he was sitting in darkness,
and bid him be baptized and wash away his sins. The word here must be
taken in its full sense of moral perfectness; even if we included only
this in our thoughts of his life's aim, how high above most men would he
tower! But his statement carries him still higher above, and farther
away from, the common ideas of moral perfection, and what he means by
righteousness is widely separated from the world's conception, not only
in regard to its elements, but still more in regard to its source.
It is possible to lose oneself in a dreamy mysticism which has had much
to say of 'gaining Christ and being found in Him,' and has had too
little to say about 'having righteousness,' and so has turned out to be
an ally of indifference and sometimes of unrighteousness. Buddhism and
some forms of mystical Christianity have fallen into a pit of immorality
from which Paul's sane combination here would have saved them. There is
no danger in the most mystical interpretation of the former statement of
his aim, when it is as closely connected as it is here with the second
form in which he states it. I have just said that Paul differed from men
who were seeking for righteousness, not only because his conceptions of
what constituted it were not the same as theirs, though he in this very
letter endorses the Greek ideals of 'virtue and praise,' but also and
more emphatically because he looked for it as a gift, and not as the
result of his own efforts. To him the only righteousness which availed
was one which was not 'my own,' but had its source in, and was imparted
by, God. The world thought of righteousness as the general designation
under which were summed up a man's specific acts of conformity to law,
the sum total reached by the addition of many specific instances of
conformity to a standard of duty. Paul had learned to think of it as
preceding and producing the specific acts. The world therefore said, and
says, Do the deeds and win the character; Paul says, Receive the
character and do the deeds. The result of the one conception of
righteousness is in the average man spasmodic efforts after isolated
achievements, with long periods between in which effort subsides into
torpor. The result in Paul's case was what we know: a continuous effort
to keep his mind and heart open for the influx of the power which,
entering into him, would make him able to do the specific acts which
constitute righteousness. The one road is a weary path, hard to tread,
and, as a matter of fact, not often trodden. To pile up a righteousness
by the accumulation of individual righteous acts is an endeavour less
hopeful than that of the coral polypes slowly building up their reef out
of the depths of the Pacific, till it rises above the waves. He who
assumes to be righteous on the strength of a succession of righteous
acts, not only needs a profounder idea of what makes his acts righteous,
but should also make a catalogue of his unrighteous ones and call
himself wicked. The other course is the final deliverance of a man from
dependence upon his own struggles, and substitutes for the dreary
alternations of effort and torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of
imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes
painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which
is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found,
would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God,
is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers
blessedly know is more than they dreamed of.
But Paul looked for this great gift as a gift in Christ. It was when he
was 'found in Him' that it became his, and he was found 'blameless.'
That gift of an imparted life, which has a bias towards all goodness,
and the natural operation of which is to incline all our faculties
towards conformity with the will of God, is bestowed when we 'win
Christ.' Possessing Him, we possess it. It is not only 'imputed,' as our
fathers delighted to say, but it is 'imparted.' And because it is the
gift of God in Christ, it was in Paul's view received by faith. He
expresses that conviction in a double form in our text. It is 'through
faith' as the channel by which it passes into our happy hands. It is 'by
faith,' or, more accurately, 'upon faith,' as the foundation on which it
rests, or the condition on which it depends. Our trust in Christ does
bring His life to us to sanctify us, and the plain English of all this
blessed teaching is--if we wish to be better let us trust Christ and get
Him into the depths of our lives, and righteousness will be ours. That
transforming Presence laid up in 'the hidden man of the heart,' will be
like some pungent scent in a wardrobe which keeps away moths, and gives
out a fragrance that perfumes all that hangs near it.
But all which we have been saying is not to be understood as if there
was no effort to be made, in order to receive, and to live manifesting,
the 'righteousness which is of God.' There must be the constant
abandonment of self, and the constant utilising of the grace given. The
righteousness is bestowed whenever faith is exercised. The hand is never
stretched out and the gift not lodged in it. But it is a life's aim to
possess the 'righteousness which is of God by faith,' because that gift
is capable of indefinite increase, and will reward the most strenuous
efforts of a believing soul as long as life continues.