A man's righteousness.
"Righteousness" has come to be a sort of exclusively religious word; a theological word, with a connotation fitting to a particular creed, over which learned men long have wrangled. Why cannot we let common sense win it for common, everyday uses? "Righteousness" is rightness. It is being right—right with God, and right with man, and doing right because we are right. How to become right, and how to be right, are the supreme questions for all moral beings. Every great teacher who has arisen in any age or any nation has set himself' to answer these two questions; and our Lord Jesus Christ, with Divine authority, answered them in his Sermon on the Mount. He did a prophet's work in recalling men to the spiritual conception of righteousness as heart-rightness inspiring life-right-ness, i.e. rightness of conduct and relations. Possibly, in our text, the main idea of the word is beneficence, kindness to others. But this only presents righteousness on its side of relation to man; it has also a side of relation to God. Both have to be included.
I. A MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AS MAN CAN ESTIMATE IT. We have a human standard of rightness. It varies in expression; it is really everywhere the same. It is the standard of the best man of our nation or race. The psalmist said his goodness could stand the test of the "saints that are in the earth," but not the test of God. Man's idea of rightness includes purity, energy, and charity.
II. A MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AS THE MAN HIMSELF CAN ESTIMATE IT. There is a consciousness of rightness, a conscious will for the right and love of the right, which are a man's dignity and strength; which a man has a perfect right to cling to as his chief treasure. Job firmly says, "Till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold last, and will not let it go." David said, "Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me." And our Divine Lord, as a man, said, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." A man's rightness is no sufficient basis for his acceptance with God, but it is good so far as it goes.
III. A MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AS GOD ESTIMATES IT. He knows the distinction between its accidental and its essential features. He distinguishes the thing which appears from the foundation on which it rests. Rightness, judged by human standards, may rest on a basis of self—self-pleasing and pride. Some men respect themselves too much to do a wrong thing. But the highest type of rightness is built upon the recognition of God as the standard righteousness, who requires those who would do right to be "all glorious within." He asks for "truth in the inward parts"—R.T.