The light of conscience will accuse or convince us of any common sin; but the light of natural conscience never did, never will, and never can, convince of unbelief. If it could, how comes it to pass, that not one of the heathens, who improved the light of nature in such an eminent degree, was ever convinced of unbelief? No, natural conscience cannot effect this; it is the peculiar property of the Holy Ghost the Comforter: “When he is come, he will reprove (or convince) the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment.”
We have heard how he convinces of sin: we come now to shew,
_Secondly_, What is the righteousness, of which the Comforter convinces the world.
By the word _righteousness_, in some places of scripture, we are to understand that common justice which we ought to practise between man and man; as when _Paul_ is said to reason of temperance and righteousness before a trembling _Felix_. But here (as in a multitude of other places in holy writ) we are to understand by the word righteousness, the active and passive obedience of the dear LORD JESUS; even that perfect, personal, all-sufficient righteousness, which he has wrought out for that world which the Spirit is to convince. “Of righteousness, (says our LORD) because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more.” This is one argument that the Holy Spirit makes use of to prove CHRIST’s righteousness, because he is gone to the Father, and we see him no more. For, had he not wrought out a sufficient righteousness, the Father would have sent him back, as not having done what he undertook; and we should have seen him again.
O the righteousness of CHRIST! It so comforts my soul, that I must be excused if I mention it in almost all my discourses. I would not, if I could help it, have one sermon without it. Whatever infidels may object, or _Arminians_ sophistically argue against an _imputed righteousness_; yet whoever know themselves and GOD, must acknowledge, that “JESUS CHRIST is the end of the law for righteousness, (and perfect justification in the sight of GOD) to every one that believeth,” and that we are to be made the righteousness of GOD in him. This, and this only, a poor sinner can lay hold of, as a sure anchor of his hope. Whatever other scheme of salvation men may lay, I acknowledge I can see no other foundation whereon to build my hopes of salvation, but on the rock of CHRIST’s personal righteousness, imputed to my soul.
Many, I believe, have a rational conviction of, and agree with me in this: but rational convictions, if rested in, avail but little; it must be a spiritual, experimental conviction of the truth, which is saving. And therefore our LORD says, when the Holy Ghost comes in the day of his power, it convinces of this righteousness, of the reality, compleatness, and sufficiency of it, to save a poor sinner.
We have seen how the Holy Ghost convinces the sinner of the sin of his nature, life, duties, and of the sin of unbelief; and what then must the poor creature do? He must, he must inevitably despair, if there be no hope but in himself. When therefore the Spirit has hunted the sinner out of all his false rests and hiding-places, taken out the pitiful fig-leaves of his own works, and driven him out of the trees of the garden (his outward reformations) and placed him naked before the bar of a sovereign, holy, just, and sin-avenging GOD; then, then it is, when the soul, having the sentence of death within itself because of unbelief, has a sweet display of CHRIST’s righteousness made to it by the Holy Spirit of GOD. Here it is, that he begins more immediately to act in the quality of a Comforter, and convinces the soul so powerfully of the reality and all-sufficiency of CHRIST’s righteousness, that the soul is immediately set a hungering and thirsting after it. Now the sinner begins to see, that though he has destroyed himself, yet in CHRIST is his help; that, though he has no righteousness of his own to recommend him, there is a fulness of grace, a fulness of truth, a fulness of righteousness in the dear LORD JESUS, which, if once imputed to him, will make him happy for ever and ever.
None can tell, but those happy souls who have experienced it, with what demonstration of the Spirit this conviction comes. O how amiable, as well as all-sufficient, does the blessed JESUS now appear! With what new eyes does the soul now see the LORD its righteousness! Brethren, it is unutterable. If you were never thus convinced of CHRIST’s righteousness in your own souls, though you may believe it doctrinally, it will avail you nothing, if the Comforter never came savingly into your souls, then you are comfortless indeed. But
What will this righteousness avail, if the soul has it not in possession?
_Thirdly_, The next thing therefore the Comforter, when he comes, convinces the soul of, is judgment.