THE WHITE GARMENTS OF BELIEVERS.
By Arthur T. Pierson
WE may almost say that the figure of the white garment, as representing the righteousness of God investing the believer, is the favorite method of showing forth this truth. White garments stand for purity of heart, unworldliness of life, and bridal relation to Christ. They represent our separation from all defilement, our renunciation of the world, and our espousal of the heavenly Bridegroom. Very exalted are the scriptural conceptions of the purity which the disciple should cultivate. God causes our iniquity to pass from us and clothes us with priestly robes instead of filthy rags. The father says in behalf of the returning prodigal, "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him"—probably that was the priestly robe connected with birthright privileges. The wedding garment furnished for the guests at the marriage of the king's son is another reference to the same truth. "Christ's righteousness" is a phrase often used by even ministers of the gospel; but it is not scripturally warranted. Great exactness is the only law of scripture quotation; and it is very noticeable that Paul is very particular in phraseology. It is always "the righteousness of God," by faith unto and upon all that believe. Compare Rom. 1:17; 3:21, 22; and Phil. 3:9. Christ was the second Adam, the representative man. He was a medium, the mediator, in whom the righteousness of God passes over to us and becomes ours. As he delivers God's message and executes God's will, so he invests us with God's righteousness. We are regarded as clothed with this immaculate white garment. All believers are so invested, and this constitutes, as well as assures, justification. But it is to be carefully observed— First, that while nothing is so beautiful and in itself immaculate, nothing is so easily soiled. It comes to us without a stain or spot; but in proportion to its celestial delicacy and purity is its susceptibility to take defilement. Like the newly fallen snow, nothing is so faultlessly white; and nothing shows so readily the least touch of contamination. Secondly, defilement may come to this heavenly garment, as to any other, either from within or without. This garment is worn by a believer who is yet in the flesh—and it comes in contact with the flesh—and from that may take fleshly corruption; or being worn in the midst of the world may take its stains from contact with its surroundings. This double danger seems to be referred to constantly and in many forms in the word of God. For example, the Old Testament laws concerning leprosy, Lev. 13:47, et seq. Leprosy was a disease of blood and skin. It seems to be the peculiar type of the unregenerate, carnal nature—evil beginning in the heart and developing in the whole fleshly nature, and imparting its contamination to everything it touches. And then this defilement is in the world as well as in the flesh, and the believer must not only "cleanse himself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, but he must keep himself unspotted from the world." Peter uses another figure: girding up the loins—gathering up our garments about us, with care, least we defile it with dust or even tear it by the thorns along our pilgrim way! Compare James 1:27; 1 Peter 1:13. Here lies the double danger of disciples: first wickedness remaining in themselves and working outward; secondly, wickedness remaining in the world and working inward. Either may cause the white garment to be soiled and contaminated, spotted with the leprosy of sin, that greenish tint that has so long been associated with the gangrene of mortifying wounds, and that reddish hue, inseparable from inflamed and feverish sores. To drop the figure, God calls his disciples to be separate from the sins of the flesh and from conformity to the world. Many who are on their guard against the uprisings of sin within are not equally careful to avoid needless contact with a world that is, and always has been, the foe of godliness and spirituality.