We turn from our own RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Before conversion, man seeks to cover himself with his own fig-leaves, and to make himself acceptable with God, by his own duties.
He is apt to trust in himself, and set up his own righteousness, and to reckon his pennies for gold, and not to submit to the righteousness of God. But conversion changes his mind; now he counts his own righteousness as filthy rags.
He casts it off, as a man would the verminous tatters of a nasty beggar.
Now he is brought to poverty of spirit, complains of and condemns himself; and all his inventory is, ‘I am poor, and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked!’ [Rev 3:17].
He sees a world of iniquity in his holy things, and calls his once-idolized righteousness but filth and loss; and would not for a thousand worlds be found in it!
Now he begins to set a high price upon Christ’s righteousness. He sees the need of Christ in every duty, to justify his person and sanctify his performances; he cannot live without Him; he cannot pray without Him.
Christ must go with him, or else he cannot come into the presence of God; he leans upon Christ, and so bows himself in the house of his God.
He sets himself down for a lost undone man without Him; his life is hid in Christ, as the root of a tree spreads in the earth for stability and nourishment.
Before, the gospel of Christ was a stale and tasteless thing; but now—how sweet is Christ!
Augustine could not relish his once-admired Cicero, because he could not find in his writings the name of Christ. How emphatically he cries, ‘O most sweet, most loving, most kind, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovely, most fair!’ all in a breath, when he speaks of and to Christ. In a word, the voice of the convert is, with the martyr, ‘None but Christ!’
Excerpt from Alarm to the Unconverted by Joseph Alleine, 1671
—–
“We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.” – John Calvin
Source: Monergism
Related Posts
The 5 Tests of False Doctrine
It is our sacred responsibility to examine every doctrine to determine if it is true or false. But how can we distinguish sound doctrine from false? How can we distinguish […]
What Calvinists And Arminians Can Agree On
Are you sick and tired of arguing? Maybe it’s been the advent of social media, but I’ve come to the point where I’ve realized that arguing is fruitless. While it […]
THE MAKING OF A HERETIC
Witch trials in Salem. The Council of Toulouse in the 13th century, employing men whose sole purpose was to hunt out human kindling for the flames of the Inquisition. These […]
A Quiet Place and Our Silencing of the Unborn
Nanci and I saw The Quiet Place, a unique and unforgettable film which left us instinctively whispering and not wanting to make noises afterward. If you see the movie, which I […]