The last description here of the man who begins as a believer and then
advances to being a lover is _righteous_. That is the evangelical order.
That is the great blessing and beauty of Christianity, that it goes an
altogether different way to work to make men good from that which any
other system has ever dreamed of. It says, first of all, trust, and that
will create love and that will ensure obedience. Faith leads to
righteousness because, in the very act of trusting God, I come out of
myself, and going out of myself and ceasing from all self-admiration and
self-dependence and self-centred life is the beginning of all good and
has in it the germ of all righteousness, even as to live for self is the
mother tincture out of which we can make all sins.
And faith leads to righteousness in another way. Open the heart and
Christ comes in. Trust Him and He fills our poor nature with 'the law of
the Spirit of life that was in Christ Jesus,' and that 'makes me free
from the law of sin and death.' Righteousness, meaning thereby just what
irreligious men mean by it--viz. good living, plain obedience to the
ordinary recognised dictates of morality, going straight--that is most
surely attained when we cease from our own works and say to Jesus
Christ, 'Lord, I cannot walk in the narrow path. Do Thou Thyself come to
me and fill my heart and keep my feet.' They that trust and love are
'found in Him, not having their own righteousness, but that which is of
God by faith.'
And love leads to righteousness because it brings the one motive into
play in our hearts which turns duty into delight, toil into joy, and
makes us love better to do what will please our beloved Lover than
anything besides. Why did Jesus Christ say,'My yoke is easy and My
burden is light'? Was it because He diminished the weight of duties or
laid down an easier slipshod morality than had been enjoined before? No!
He intensified it all, and His Commandment is far harder to flesh and
blood than any commandments that were ever given. But for all that, the
yoke that He lays upon our necks is, if I may so say, padded with
velvet; and the burden that we have to draw behind us is laid upon
wheels that will turn so easily that the load is diminished, inasmuch as
for Duty He substitutes Himself and says to us, 'If ye love Me, keep My
Commandments.'
So, dear brethren! here is a very easily applied, and a very
far-reaching test for us who call ourselves Christians: Does our love
and does our trust culminate in practical righteousness? We are all
tempted to make too much of the emotions of the religious life, and too
little of its persistent, dogged obedience. We are all too apt to think
that a Christian is a man that believes in Jesus Christ. 'Justification
by faith alone without the works of the law' used to be the watchword of
the Evangelical Church. It might be so held as to be either a blessed
truth or a great error, and many of us make it an error instead of a
blessing.
On the other hand, there is only one way by which righteousness can be
attained, and that is: first by faith and then by love. Here are three
steps: 'we have known and believed the love that God hath to us'; that
is the broad, bottom step. And above it 'we love Him because He first
loved us,' that is the central one. And on the top of all, 'herein is
our love made perfect that we keep His Commandments.' They that trust
are they also who love Thy Name, and they who trust through love are,
and only they are, the righteous.