Neither doing nor knowing but Being. And Love is the Test
What is the righteousness which is of God by faith?
It is simply the thing that God wants every man to be,
wrought out in him by constant obedient contact with God himself. It is not an
attribute either of God or man, but a fact of character in God and in man. It
is God’s righteousness wrought out in us, so that as He is righteous, we too
are righteous.
It does not consist in obeying this or that law, not even
the keeping of every law, so that no hairsbreadth did we run counter to one of
them. To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind, and will, as would
recoil with horror from the than lightest possible breach of any law of God. It
is to be so in love with what is fair and right as to make it impossible for a
person to do anything that is less than absolutely righteous. It is not the
love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a
love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come in contact, that anything
less than fulfilling, with a clear joy, our divine relation to him or her, is
impossible.
More powerful than all powers is being. To be is more
powerful than even to do. Action may be hypocrisy, but being is the thing in
itself and is the parent of action.
If by neglect of its wings an eagle should sink to become a
sparrow, it would then recognize only the laws of sparrow life. For the
sparrows of humanity do not generally believe in a consuming fire and an outer
darkness, where all that will be left is an ever renewed “alas!” The “alas” is
that they neglected their wings, neglected to try to see beyond their own
horizons, neglected to do the words of Him who alone is life.
It is truth and not serenity that a man’s nature requires of
him. It is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as
the test. It is love, and no amount of flattery, that will prosper. Differences
as wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hairsbreadth
in that day. The customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go
together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and less knowledge.
Liars the most gentlemanly and the most rowdy will go as liars just the same.
The first shall be last and the last first.
Selah.
