Righteousness not of Us, but in Us.
In every age of the Church, not in the primitive age only, Christians have been tempted to pride themselves on their gifts, or at least to forget that they were gifts, and to take them for granted. Ever have they been tempted to forget their own responsibilities, their having received what they are bound to improve, and the duty of fear and trembling while improving it. One of the first elements of knowledge and a Christian spirit is to refer all that is good in us, all that we have of spiritual life and righteousness, to Christ our Saviour; to believe that He works in us, or, to put the same thing more pointedly, to believe that saving truth, life, light, and holiness are not ofus, though they must be inus.
I. Whatever we have is not of us, but of God. This is that great truth which is at the foundation of all true doctrine as to the way of salvation. All teaching about duty and obedience, about attaining heaven, and about the office of Christ towards us, is hollow and unsubstantial, which is not built here,in the doctrine of our original corruption and helplessness; and in consequence, of original guilt and sin.
II. While truth and righteousness are not of us, it is quite as certain that they are also in us if we be Christ's; not merely nominally given to us and imputed to us, but really implanted in us by the office of the Blessed Spirit. Let us never forget this great and simple view, which the whole of Scripture sets before us. What was actually done by Christ in the flesh eighteen hundred years ago is in type and resemblance really wrought in us one by one even to the end of time. Christ Himself vouchsafes to repeat in each of us in figure and mystery all that He did and suffered in the flesh. He is formed in us, born in us, suffers in us, rises again in us, lives in us; and this not by a succession of events, but all at once; for He comes to us as a Spirit, all dying, all rising again, all living. We are ever receiving our birth, our justification, our renewal, ever dying to sin, ever rising to righteousness. His whole economy in all its parts is ever in us all at once; and this Divine presence constitutes the title of each of us to heaven; this is what He will acknowledge and accept at the last day. As the king's image appropriates the coin to him, so the likeness of Christ in us separates us from the world and assigns us over to the kingdom of heaven.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. v., p. 128.
References: 1 Corinthians 1:30; 1 Corinthians 1:31. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 991. 1 Corinthians 1:31. Ibid.,vol. xx., No. 1178; Saturday Evening,p. 260. 1 Corinthians 2:1; 1 Corinthians 2:2. W. Morley Punshon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 168; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1870, pp. 448, 465. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Ibid., Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 148; W. Baxendale, Ibid.,vol. xxviii., p. 364, vol. xxx., p. 168. 1 Corinthians 2:1-7. F. W. Robertson, Lectures on Corinthians,p. 36.