Righteousness

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 15, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 46.

Righteousness.—Many professed ministers of the Gospel are extensively engaged in preaching a so-called "civic righteousness." That is, they make it their business to see that officials execute the civil laws, and also to conjure new laws for enforcing their ideas of conducting worldly affairs. The result of such work is the display of their own self-righteousness. In ancient Israel it was called tradition, which Christ said made of none effect the law of God. When Paul became a Christian, he discarded that kind of righteousness, and sought the righteousness of Christ, which is of God by faith, Phil. 3:8, 9. The Gospel of Christ is the proclamation of righteousness by faith, not by human law. How much more effective would be the work of reformation, if the ministry would hold aloft the commandments of God, which constitute "the whole duty of man" (Eccl. 12:13), and the faith of Jesus, by which we are enabled to perform that duty. "It shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us." Deut. 6:25. "The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace" (James 3:18)—not of them that wage carnal warfare upon their fellows by means of civil law.