What is "The righteousness meant" Here 2/2

1. Here is the efficient, or workman—the Holy Spirit.  Hence it is that the several parts of holiness are called ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ Gal. 5:22.  If the Spirit be not at the root, no such fruit can be seen on the branches as holiness.  ‘Sensual,’ and ‘having not the Spirit,’ are inseparably coupled, Jude 19.  Man, by his fall, hath a double loss; God’s love to him and his likeness to God.  Christ restores both to his children —the first, by his righteousness imputed to them; the second, by his Spirit re-imparting the lost image of God to them, which consists ‘in righteousness and true holiness.’  Who, but a man, can impart his own nature, and beget a child like himself? and who, but the Spirit of God, can make a creature like God, by making him partaker of the divine nature?
2. Here is the work produced—a supernatural principle of a new life.  (1.) By a principle of life, I mean, an inward disposition and quality, sweetly, powerfully, and constantly inclining it to that which is holy; so that the Christian, though passive in the production, is afterward active, and co-working with the Spirit in all actions of holiness; not as a lifeless instrument is in the hand of a musician, but as a liv­ing child in the hand of a father.  Therefore they are said to be ‘led by the Holy Spirit,’ Rom. 8:14.  (2.) It is a principle of new life; the Spirit’s work was not chafe and recover what was swooning, but to work a life de novo—anew, in a soul quite dead: ‘You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses,’ Eph. 2:1. The devil comes as orator, to persuade by argument, when he tempts; the Spirit as a creator, when he converts. The devil draws forth and enkindles what he finds raked up in the heart before; but the Holy Spirit puts into the soul what he finds not there—called in Scrip­ture the ‘seed’ of God, I John 3:9.  ‘Christ formed in you,’ Gal. 4:19, the ‘new creature,’ Gal. 6:15, the ‘law’ put by God into the inner man, Jer. 31:33, which Paul calls ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ Rom. 8:2.  (3.) It is a supernatural principle.  By this we dis­tinguish it from Adam’s righteousness and holiness, which was co-natural to him, as now sin is to us; and, had he stood, would have been propagated to us as naturally as now his sin is.  Holiness was as natural to Adam’s soul as health was to his body, they both re­sulting ex principiis recte constitutis—from principles pure and rightly disposed.
3. Here is the soil or subject in which the Spirit plants this principle of holiness—the child of God.  ‘Because ye are sons, he hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,’ Gal. 4:6.  Not a child in all his family that is unlike his Father—‘as is the heavenly, so are they that are heavenly’—and none but children have this stamp of true holiness on them.  As the apostle, Rom. 8:9, concludes, we ‘have not his Spirit’ if we be ‘in the flesh’—that is in an unholy sinful state—so he concludes, we are ‘not his’ children if we ‘have not his Spirit,’ thus transforming and sanctifying us.  There is indeed a holiness and sanctification, taken in a large sense, which may be found in such as are not children.  So all the children of believers are ‘holy,’ I Cor. 7; who are not all children of God.  Yea false professors also gain the name of being sanctified, Heb. 10:29, because they pretend to be so.  But that which the Scripture calls righteousness and true holiness, is a sculpture the Spirit engraves on none but the children of God.  The Spirit sancti­fies none but whom Christ prays his Father to ‘sanc­tify,’ and they are his peculiar number given to God of him, John 17:17.
4. Here is the efficacy of this principle, planted by the Spirit in the heart of a child of God, whereby he endeavours.  As the heart—which is the principle of the natural life in the body—from the infusion of natural life, is ever beating and working, so the princi­ple of new life in the soul is ever endeavouring.  The ‘new creature’ is not still-born; true holiness is not a dull habit, that sleeps away the time with doing noth­ing.  The woman cured by Christ ‘arose’ up presently ‘and ministered unto them,’ Matt. 8:15.  No sooner is this principle planted in the heart, but the man riseth up to wait on God, and act for God with all his might and main.  The seed which the sanctifying Spirit cast into the soul, is not lost in the soil, but quickly shows it is alive by the fruit it bears.
5. Here is the imperfect nature of this principle—as it shows its reality by endeavouring, so its im­perfection, that it enables but to an endeavour, not to a full performance.  Evangelical holiness makes the creature rather willing than able to give full obedi­ence.  The saint’s heart leaps when his legs do but creep in the way of God’s commandments.  Mary asked ‘where they had laid Christ?’ meaning, it seems, to carry him away on her shoulders; which she was not able for to do.  Her affections were stronger than her back.  That principle of holiness which is in the saint, makes him lift at that duty which he can little more than stir.  Paul, a saint of the first magni­tude, he gives us his own character, with other emin­ent servants of Christ, rather from the sincerity of their will and endeavour, than perfection of their work. ‘Pray for us; for we trust we have a good con­science, in all things willing to live honestly,’ Heb. 13:18.  He doth not say ‘In all things we do live hon­estly,’ as if no step were taken awry by them; no, he durst not say so for a world.  But thus much he dares assert for himself and brethren, ‘that they are willing in all things to do what was holy and righteous.’  Where ‘willing’ is not a weak listless velleity,  but a will exerted in a vigorous endeavour, it weighs as much in an impartial ear, as that of the same Paul, Acts 24:16, ‘herein do I exercise myself.’  He was so willing, as to use his best care and labour in the ways of holiness, and having this testimony in his own breast, he is not afraid to lay claim to ‘a good con­science,’ though he doth not fully attain to that he de­sires: ‘We trust we have a good conscience, willing,’ &c.—he means in the favourable interpretation of the gospel, for the law allows no such good conscience.
6. Here is the uniformity of this principle in its actings—‘to God and man.’  True holiness doth not divide what God joins together: ‘God spake all these words,’ Ex. 20:1, first table and second also.  Now a truly sanctified heart does not skip or blot one word God hath written, but desires to be a faithful executor to perform the whole will of God.
7. Here is the order of its actings—as ‘to God and man;’ so, first to God, and then to man; yea, to God, in his righteousness and charity to man.  Paul saith of the Macedonians that they first gave ‘their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God,’ II Cor. 8:5.  God is first served, and man, in obedience to the will of God.
8. Here is the rule it goes by—‘what the word of God requires.’  Apocryphal holiness is no true holi­ness.  We cannot write in religion a right line without a rule, or by a false one.  And all are false rules be­sides the word—‘to the law, and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them,’ Isa. 8:20.