SERVANTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
BY CARRIE F. JUDD
“Ye became the servants
of righteousness,” Paul writes to the Romans, as we read these words it is
with a momentary degree of surprise at the contradictions involved therein. How
wonderfully blessed that it is our privilege and duty to be so bound to
righteousness that we obey its motions necessity, and may be therefore be said
to be its servants, and yet the very thought of being so bound in suggestive of
such perfect freedom that we can recognize no idea of service.
With a glimpse of
this glorious paradox, we readily catch the meaning of the apostle’s next
words, “I speak after the manner of me because of the infirmity of your flesh.”-Rom.
ci: 19.) Because the persons addressed by Paul had so thoroughly known the
servitude of sin, he can find not better way of explaining to them the loving constraint
of righteousness than by comparing it with their former yoke of bondage. And
then he adds, “for as ye have yielded your members servants to
uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your
members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”
What view of
glory this one brief command presents to us! Think for a moment, beloved, what
purity and holiness would be wrought in us by Christ if we obeyed the “even
so” contained in this verse; if we really found ourselves under as much
necessity to serve righteousness as we have been to obey sin; if we were as
unable to resist the power of good as we once were the power of evil. Is the
thought almost beyond our comprehension? and yet we are directly commanded here
to yield ourselves “even so” unto righteousness “as” we have in
the past yielded ourselves unto sin.
But notice our
part, dear ones; it is simply to yield; not to make ourselves
righteous,-that we can never do, but to yield our members unto Christ’s
righteousness and let Him work out in us what He has already wrought for
us.
Then we must be
done with all our struggles to be holy; when we yield to any one or to anything
we simply stop struggling in any way and give up.
In Romans x:3, we
read of Israel, that “being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to
establish their own righteousness, they had not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God.” Oh, dear weary ones, is not this what you have
been doing? Have you not failed to remember that the holiness unto which God has
called you is the righteousness through faith, and that you can only
experience it by submitting yourself to the righteousness of Christ, who “is
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth”?-(Rom. x:4.)
“He that is
entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from
His.”-(Heb. iv:10.) Shall we grieve Him longer by “an evil heart of unbelief;”
by failing to honor this “Sabbath rest” which He hath provided for His
children? The apostle says “even so now yield-;” will you not yield
yourselves this moment a living sacrifice unto God, body, soul and spirit, that
He may sanctify and “present you faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy”? Will you not yield to Him every power of your soul, and
every member of your body, as servants of righteousness unto holiness? And
after yielding thus do not struggle to feel that He accepts what you
yield; simply do your part and rest in the thought that He is doing His.
Continually recognize that you are thus yielded up, soul and body, and
let God do His pleasure in seeming to work, or not work, in what is wholly
given up to Him.
You will thus
know more and more a deeper sinking into His will, and your joy will be, not
merely in this or that manifestation of His presence, but in the thought that
His own pleasure, His own will is being done in you. And we shall grow in an
understanding of His will, as day by day we see His own life and love worked
out through us; and know that hereby we have our “fruit unto holiness an the
end everlasting life.”
***
That ye be
neither barren nor unfruitful. – 2 Peter i:8.
Herein is my
Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit – St. John xv: 8.
Mine is a barren
soil, not fruit doth grow,
and yet Thou, Lord, hast sown good see
in me,
Why, then, do I
not bring forth fruit to
Thee?
Lord, to my
troubled hear the reason show,
For why this
barrenness I long to know!
If hard, and dry, and cold the soil
still be,
Plow it yet deeper, unceasingly.
If tears could
help it, they should ever flow,
And yet to
quicken and refresh is Thine;
Water it by the dews of Heavenly
grace,
And may the Sun
of Righteousness now shine
With His enlightening and warming
rays,
That my poor
barren heart-no longer cold-
May yield
hereafter fruit, and hundred fold.
-Rev. I. Bradnack.
