Was this ever the language of your hearts? and, after these inward conflicts, were you ever enabled to reach out the arm of faith, and embrace the blessed JESUS in your souls, so that you could say, “my beloved is mine, and I am his?” If so, fear not, whoever you are. Hail, all hail, you happy souls! The LORD, the LORD CHRIST, the everlasting GOD, is your righteousness. CHRIST has justified you, who is he that condemneth you? CHRIST has died for you, nay rather is risen again, and ever liveth to make intercession for you. Being now justified by his grace, you have peace with GOD, and shall, ere long, be with JESUS in glory, reaping everlasting and unspeakable fruits both in body and soul. For there is no condemnation to those that are really in CHRIST JESUS. “Whether _Paul_ or _Apollos_, or life or death, all is yours if you are CHRIST’s, for CHRIST is GOD’s.” My brethren, my heart is enlarged towards you! O think of the love of CHRIST in dying for you! If the LORD be your righteousness, let the righteousness of your LORD be continually in your mouth. Talk of, O talk of, and recommend the righteousness of CHRIST, when you lye down, and when you rise up, at your going out and coming in! Think of the greatness of the gift, as well as of the giver! Shew to all the world, in whom you have believed! Let all by your fruits know, that the LORD is your righteousness, and that you are waiting for your LORD from heaven! O study to be holy, even as he who has called you, and washed you in his own blood, is holy! Let not the righteousness of the LORD be evil spoken of through you. Let not JESUS be wounded in the house of his friends; but grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our LORD and Saviour JESUS CHRIST, day by day. O think of his dying love! Let that love constrain you to obedience! having much forgiven, love much. Be always asking, What shall I do, to express my gratitude to the LORD, for giving me his righteousness? Let that self-abasing, GOD-exalting question be always in your mouths; “Why me, LORD? why me?” why am I taken, and others left? why is the LORD my righteousness? why is he become my salvation, who have so often deserved damnation at his hands?
My friends, I trust I feel somewhat of a sense of GOD’s distinguishing love upon my heart; therefore I must divert a little from congratulating you, to invite poor christless sinners to come to him, and accept of his righteousness, that they may have life.
Alas, my heart almost bleeds! What a multitude of precious souls are now before me! how shortly must all be ushered into eternity! and yet, O cutting thought! was GOD now to require all your souls, how few, comparatively speaking, could really say, the LORD _our_ righteousness!
And think you, _O sinners_, that you will be able to stand in the day of judgment, if CHRIST be not your righteousness! No, that alone is the wedding-garment in which you must appear. O christless sinners, I am distressed for you! the desires of my soul are enlarged. O that this may be an accepted time! that the LORD may be your righteousness! For whither would you flee, if death should find you naked? Indeed there is no hiding yourselves from his presence. The pitiful fig-leaves of your own righteousness will not cover your nakedness, when GOD shall call you to stand before him. _Adam_ found them ineffectual, and so will you. O think of death! O think of judgment! Yet a little while, and time shall be no more; and then what will become of you, if the LORD be not your righteousness? Think you that CHRIST will spare you? No, he that formed you, will have no mercy on you. If you are not of CHRIST, if CHRIST be not your righteousness, CHRIST himself shall pronounce you damned. And can you bear to think of being damned by CHRIST? Can you bear to hear the LORD JESUS say to you, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Can you live, think you, in everlasting burnings? Is your flesh brass, and your bones iron? what if they are? hell-fire, that fire prepared for the devil and his angels, will heat them through and through. And can you bear to depart from CHRIST? O that heart-piercing thought! Ask those holy souls, who are at any time bewailing an absent GOD, who walk in darkness, and see no light, though but a few days or hours; ask them, what it is to lose a sight and presence of CHRIST? See how they seek him sorrowing, and go mourning after him all the day long! And, if it is so dreadful to lose the sensible presence of CHRIST only for a day, what must it be to be banished from him to all eternity?