■fl The " name " is a brief and pointed censure upon a king whose character was the opposite of that described in these verses, yet who bore a name of almost identical meaning — Zedekiah, " Jehovah is my righteousness." The name of the last reigning
JEREMIAH xxiii. 5, 6 101
Prince of the House of David had been a standing condemnation of his unworthy life, but the King of the New Israel, Jehovah's true Messiah, would realize in His administration all that such a name promised. Sovereigns delight to accumulate sonorous epithets in their official designations — Highness, High and Mighty, Majesty, Serene, Gracious. The glaring contrast between char- acter and titles often serves only to advertise the worthlessness of those who are labelled with such epithets — the Majesty of James 1., the Graciousness of Eichard in. Yet these titles point to a standard of true royalty, whether the sovereign be an individual or a class or the people ; they describe that Divine Sovereignty which will be realized in the Kingdom of God.1
4 Jeremiah's prophecy is a foreshadowing of the fundamental doctrines of the gospel. It is true that we are not distinctly told how this righteousness is to enter individual and national life, but we are assured that God's righteousness is the ground and source and guarantee of our righteousness. We are left in doubt as to whether Jeremiah so far anticipated the teaching of the New Testament as to view this righteousness as conferred through the agency of the same ideal ruler, whose name is designed as the symbol of the fact. The terms in which he speaks, however, do not suggest that he conceived him as the author of justification, in the theological sense of the term ; they imply rather that he pictured him as ensuring, by his wise and just administration, the conditions under which righteousness of life might be maintained effectually among the people.
For us the question is, What are the conditions under which righteousness may become ours ?
(1) A passion for righteousness is rooted in human nature. — It is God who has put the desire for righteousness in our hearts, and with all our carelessness we cannot drive it out. We cannot help reverencing all that is good when once we see it ; even the fact that we are so ready to find fault with one another is the witness to the fact that we have an ideal of righteousness in our hearts. We may put it on one side as far as we can, but we shall find that it comes back, and that as youth and its pleasures pass away, and mature age and its ambitions, we shall realize more and more that righteousness is the one thing that matters. Sorrow may 1 W. H. Bennett, The Book of Jeremiah, 325.
102 THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
leave its mark upon us, or disillusionment may sour us, but there will remain one thing of which we are perfectly sure — that come what may, right is right and wrong is wrong, and nothing can turn the one into the other. We may be in just as much doubt as ever we were whether this or that is the right thing to do in this or that particular case, but we shall be quite sure that there is a right thing and a wrong thing, if only we had eyes to see.
Tf O these words " ought " and " ought not," " right " and "wrong" — how often men, how often we ourselves, would fain have banished them from the dictionary ! Thank God they are not man-made words, and therefore cannot be man-changed. They shine aloft like stars. They are written — as David indicates in that glorious twin song of nature and human nature — they are written with the same ink that catalogues the stars : they are His sign-manual who hung these nightly seals. Eightly seeing one of them, seeing how the moral world lay behind the material :
Thou dost protect the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens by Thee are fresh and strong.
My brother, when next the tempter says " Transgress," " Do the forbidden," " Touch the accursed," " Handle the pitch-stained thing," wilt thou not say, " Dost thou bid me pluck the planets from their courses, cover the spangled heavens with sackcloth ? Bid me as soon pull the strong firmament down. How can I do this great, because abnormal, thing V'1
(2) The attainment of righteousness is beyond man's lest efforts. — Of course men have often fancied they could work out a righteousness for themselves. The Pharisees and the Jews gener- ally imagined they could do so by ceremonial observances; and men commonly suppose it can be done by what are called good works, virtues, philanthropies, religious forms, penitential inflictions and such-like performances. But all these might exist without personal holiness. And since holiness means keeping God's law without defect, without transgression, without inter- ruption, without a fleck or stain of moral defilement, nothing can be clearer than that no man has ever done or can do so.
A righteousness which begins and ends with me, and my efforts to make myself good, and to do so by living up to my own standard, can never really satisfy my best aspirations. The 1 R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 22.