Believer's Righteousness

Here's one way to look at Jesus' earthly life of obedience to God the Father. Jesus lived approximately 33½ years, or 1,057,157,021 seconds. In every second the average human being's brain has 100 billion neurons all firing around 200 times per second, giving a capacity of 20 million billion firings per second. If we want to know how many conscious decisions Jesus made to obey his Father's will, multiply 20 million billion by the number of seconds he lived: 1,057,157,021. The equation would look like this:

20,000,000,000 x 1,057,157,021 = a very large number!

Jesus Christ never made one decision, consciously or unconsciously, in all those innumerable split seconds that wasn't completely consistent with loving his Father and his neighbor. And his obedience wasn't merely an outward performance. He always did the right thing, and he always did it for the right reason. During his lifetime of constant, unwavering obedience, from infancy all the way to death, he wove a robe righteousness sufficient to cover millions and millions of us. Yes, even you.

In A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café, Leonard Sweet tells the story of the making of a film by two Londoners. In 1971 they began to film street people. The film captured the daily rituals of the homeless—their trials and joys. Some were drunk, others mentally disturbed. Some were articulate and others unintelligible. One of England's leading composers, Gavin Bryars, agreed to help with the audio aspects of the film. During his work, he became aware of a constant undercurrent of sound that appeared whenever one certain homeless man was filmed. At first, the sound seemed like muttered gibberish. But after removing the background noise, Bryars discovered the old man was singing.

Bryars learned that this beggar did not drink or socialize with others. The old man was alone, filthy, homeless, but he also had a sunny demeanor. What distinguished him from the others was his quiet singing. He would for hours sing the same thing over and over. The man's weak voice was untrained, but it never wavered from pitch. He repeated the simple phrases of the song over and over.

One day at the office the composer looped together the first 13 bars of the homeless man's song, preparing to add orchestration to the piece. He left the loop running while he went downstairs for a cup of coffee. When he returned, he found his fellow workers listening in subdued silence, and a few were even weeping. The old man's quiet, trembling voice had leaked from the recording room and transformed the office floor. Here is what he sang:

Jesus' blood never failed me yet
Never failed me yet
Jesus' blood never failed me yet
There's one thing I know
For he loves me so.

Though not a Christian, Bryars created and produced an accompaniment to this homeless person's song of trust in Jesus. The result was a CD entitled Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. The old man died before he heard it.

Years ago when I was a young banker, we used big leather ledgers where all accounts were entered by hand. I remember daydreaming about those ledgers and God's ledgers in heaven. We are told those books will be opened. I imagined my name, David Stuart Briscoe, and God adding up the sum total of my indebtedness against him. I could never cancel the overwhelming indebtedness. In my mind's eye, I saw God take his pen and transfer the sum total of my indebtedness to the account of the Lord Jesus Christ. On the account of the Lord Jesus, he wrote, "Transferred from the account of David Stuart Briscoe."

I thought God was finished. But then I saw him do something incredible. He added up the total righteousness of Christ and against it wrote these words, "Transferred to the account of David Stuart Briscoe." That's love.

A salty pagan, full of the juices of life, is a hundred times dearer to God, and also far more attractive to men, than a scribe who knows his Bible ... in whom none of this results in repentance, action, and above all, death of the self. A terrible curse hangs over the know-it-all who does nothing.

After an elegant evening out, I discovered--to my dismay--that my back collar was unbuttoned, exposing a three-inch triangle of flesh. I realized the parallel between my fashion woes and spiritual life. Despite the care I take with my appearance, I unexpectedly find myself exposed. My "unmentionables"--the sharp word, the critical attitude--show through. I have no more success making myself presentable to the Lord than I have at dressing. But there's hope. Although my own righteousness is like filthy rags, God has "clothed me with the garments of salvation, and covered me with the robe of righteousness." Good thing, too! Otherwise, I wouldn't stand a chance!

He who is not angry at sin is not in love with virtue.