Who’s your Righteousness?

"The Lord our Righteousness" was the sermon preached March 20, 1757 at St. Mary's Church in Oxford. The preacher, William Romaine, so offended just about everyone that he was invited to never preach there again. Preaching about a righteousness that is not our own - about God's kindness to the ungrateful and the wicked (Lk 6:35) -  “their righteousness is of me, declares the Lord” (Isa 54:17) - is the last thing someone wants to hear who lives for the treadmill of good works. There are two kinds of righteousness, according to Martin Luther: union with God that happens on that eureka day when someone is righteousness enough to stand before a wholly righteous God, or we are never righteousness enough (Rom 3:10), not innately and not in this life, and therefore our only hope is Christ's own righteousness to clothe us with the garments of salvation and cover us with the robe of his righteousness (Isa 61:10). Either we push ahead on this very steep road of becoming righteous enough, or “we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by faith” (Articles of Religion, XI).

William Romaine understood this:

“Consider your state. You are a pardoned sinner, not under the law but under grace, freely, fully saved from the guilt of all your sins. There is none to condemn, God having justified you. He sees you in His Son, washed you in His blood, clothed you in His righteousness, and He embraces Him and you, the head and the members, with the same affection.”

The English reformers preached this central message of the Bible, that our salvation depends on God and not on our moral improvement:

“The righteousness whereby we shall be clothed in the world to come, is both perfect and inherent. That whereby here we are justified is perfect, but not inherent. That whereby we are sanctified, inherent, but not perfect” (Richard Hooker “Laws”).

“Justification is not the the office of man, but of God. For man cannot justify himself by his own good works neither in part nor in whole . . . But justification is the office of God only, and is not  a thing which we render unto him, but which we take of him, by his free mercy, and by the only merits of his most dearly beloved Son” (Thomas Cranmer “Homily on Salvation”).

"We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies…” (Thomas Cranmer, Book of Common Prayer)