Apr 1958 - Editorial

Whilst Walking with a friend amongst a hopeless confusion of wooden huts in the over-crowded city of Rangoon, seeking the home of a Chinese Christian whom we hoped to visit, we passed and re-passed four Buddhist nuns with their rice bowls, collecting rice. From one of the huts a woman came out with a bowl of rice and put a spoonful of rice into each of the nun's bowls. I said to my friend, "What does she hope to get for that ? " " Oh," he said, " she hopes to get Merit." I said, "Who takes account of what she has done? " He said, "No one." Then I said, "If no one takes account of what she has done in giving the rice, how does she know that she will get Merit for it ? He replied, "You are too exact and too western in your ideas, the Buddhist does not think of things that way. Somehow he will get Merit, but he does not know how." He added, "The Buddhist has no God in his religion." As I walked on I kept thinking and thinking how the woman would get Merit, and am thinking still.

This getting Merit for human works taints the thoughts of the human mind. Only those who believe, through the revelation of the Scriptures, in the utter corruption of human nature, and have sought refuge through faith in the Person and atoning work of Jesus Christ, can hope to please God by their subsequent service and work.

Rome with its system of works of merit taught by its well-nigh innumerable hosts of priests of all degrees of preferment, its monks and nuns, and its millions of followers, continues blindly seeking the favour of God by works through their Mary (who is not the Mary of the Scriptures), through saints, and to a much lesser degree through the merits of their Christ (who daily becomes, according to their ideas, bread and wine, and who is not the Christ of the Scriptures).

Protestantism too is smeared with this same idea of the meritorious character of human works which commend, as is stated, the sinner in his sins to God. "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God," and, "There is none righteous, no, not one: ... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one" (Romans 3.10-12, 28). These seem to be words that are a dead letter in the religious sermonizing of many blind leaders of the blind. Why do they not tell the truth for which Protestantism stands, even Justification by Faith ?

I chanced to come across in my reading recently some words of Chrysostom which I thought good and forceful. He says, speaking on 2 Corinthians 5.21, and Galatians 3.12, 13.

"This word 'righteousness' the Apostle uses to express the unspeakable bounty of that gift; that He has not given us the operation or effect of righteousness, but His very righteousness, yea His very self, unto us. Mark, says he, how every thing is lively, and as full as can be imagined. Christ, One that had not only done no sin, but that had not so much as known any sin hath God made not a sinner, but sin itself; (as in another place not accursed but a curse itself sin in respect of guilt, a curse in respect of punishment) and why this ? To the end that we might be made not righteous persons, that was not lull enough, but righteousness itself; and there He says not, not every righteousness, but the very righteousness of God in Himself

Luther, as a monk, was seeking divine righteousness by his own works, thinking that the righteousness of God, in Romans 1.17, was an attribute of God and not that righteousness of God which is a gift of God's free and unmerited grace to cover the whole being of a guilty sinner (Romans 5. 17), but he found out the Mystery of the Gospel, that God justifies the believing sinner apart from works (Romans 4.1-5). Note the words, "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness."

This is what Isaiah wrote of old, in chapter 61.10,

"I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness."

It was what God had done for Isaiah and not what he had alone for himself; and what God had done for His prophet, He does for every believing sinner now who has no merit of his own. Woe to the sinner who seeks to merit God's favour by his works and passes by the merits of the crucified Saviour on whose merits alone all believers shall reach the glory of heaven.

unknown | Apr 1958
Editorial