December 24 Daily Devotional

Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you. David here declares that there is none amongst men who could be just before God were he called to plead his cause. The passage is one fraught with much instruction, teaching us that God can only show favour to us in our approaches by throwing aside the character of a judge, and reconciling us to himself in a gratuitous remission of our sins. All human righteousness, accordingly, go for nothing, when we come to his tribunal. In order to obtain a proper view of the whole matter, we are first to note what is meant by being justified. The passage before us clearly proves that the man who is justified, is he who is judged and reckoned just before God, and can only be absolved in the way of acknowledging they might justly be condemned. Had perfection been a thing to be found in the world, he certainly of all others was the man who might justly have boasted of it; and the righteousness of Abraham and the holy fathers was not unknown to him; but he spares neither them nor himself, but lays it down as the one universal rule of conciliating God, that we must cast ourselves upon his mercy.

There is nothing intermediate between these two things, which are represented in Scripture as opposites: being justified by faith and justified by works. It is absurd for the Papists to invent a third species of righteousness, which is partly wrought out by works of their own, and partly imputed to them by God in his mercy. Without all doubt, when he affirmed that no man could stand before God were his works brought to judgment, David had no idea of this complex or twofold righteousness, but would shut us up at once to the conclusion that God is only favourable upon the ground of his mercy, since any reputed righteousness of man has no significancy before him.

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