“It is the Father’s joy to bless;
His love has found for me a dress,
A robe of spotless righteousness
O Lamb of God in Thee!
“For our robes, so white, so radiant,
Witness as they shine
Of the sacred blood that washed us,
Thine, O Lamb divine.”
BUT how are needy, naked sinners, whom these guests, gathered from the streets and lanes of the city and from the highways and hedges represent, to be made fit to sit down and feast in the presence of God? The parable of the Feast at the Marriage of the King’s Son given in Matthew’s Gospel clearly shows that a garment is needed—there spoken of as the wedding garment, and every man’s conscience tells him that he must have some fitness for God’s presence if he is to be at peace and happy there.
I knew a fine Christian, he was brought into God’s great Supper as a young officer in the British Army. His ancestral home was in the South of Ireland, and as soon as he could obtain leave he went there to confess his faith in the Lord Jesus. He was anxious that all his old acquaintances should find what he had found, and amongst these was his old nurse, a Roman Catholic. “O, Master Eddy,” she said, “don’t you be worrying yourself about your old nurse, sure, she paid half a guinea for a shroud that his Holiness has blessed, and if her old carcass is wraps in it when she dies, she’ll go straight into paradise, and no purgatory at all.” Of course she was deceived, poor credulous old soul, but not more deceived than legions who think that in a garment of their own righteousness they will be able to enter the glory of God.
“We are doing our best,” say they, “we are doing our best.”
One lesson of the parable is that those who enter the feast, being “poor and maimed and halt and blind,” are as entirely dependent upon the Master of the house for fitness to enter as for the invitation to be there. And of this we may be sure, if He invites, He will give the fitness, but only those who know their need are ready to accept His gift of it, the robe of righteousness that He provides.
I had addressed a meeting of Christians in Toronto, Canada, when a happy looking man came forward and said to me, “I have to thank you, sir.” “Have you, and what for?” I asked.
“Well, twenty-seven years ago in St. Helens, Lancashire, you were used of God to the salvation of myself and wife.” “I am delighted to hear that,” I said, “for I was only there once in my life and I remember the meeting well.” Said he, “We were invited to hear you, two self-righteous churchgoers, who never imagined that we could be wrong; and what should your text be but, ‘All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.’ You did not spare us, and we went away from the meeting very angry, but our eyes had been opened, and we saw that we could not trust in ourselves, our only hope was in Christ whom you preached.
“The following evening a lady, who introduced herself as the wife, corroborated her husband’s story of their discovery of the need of a righteousness not their own. Every one who enters the feast must learn what those Lancashire people learned, and what Toplady had learned when he sang,
“Nothing, in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling,
Naked come I, Lord, for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace,
Foul, I to the fountain fly
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.”
There are two things that a man who is honest before God must confess, first, he has sinned, second, he has no righteousness to cover him before God. If any man has not yet discovered these unpleasant but inexorable facts, he should read Romans 3, where we read, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and, “There is none righteous, no not one.” What can we do?
Nothing. What will God do? Everything. His word declares, “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” and, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” How happy are all those to whom these great sayings apply; they have brought comfort and peace to many. And as to righteousness, the same word of God is equally clear. It tells us that God has declared His own righteousness―His own consistency with Himself, and all His attributes― “that He might be just and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” What is it that enables God righteously to justify, or declare righteous all those who believe in Jesus? It is the value that He sees in the atoning blood.
I listened with great interest to an old French missionary, who had labored for many years among the Muslims of North Africa. He said the men delighted to gather round the Christian preacher in the Market Place and ply him with questions and riddles of all sorts. One day they were endeavoring to prove to him that Mohammed and his religion was far superior to Christ and the Christian Faith, when ail old man spoke up and said, “We believe in Mohammed, and have more than two hundred and fifty prophets, and are all in rags; this stranger believes in Christ and has only one prophet, and is well dressed, let us listen to him.” The Christian missionary was better dressed than the old Muslim imagined, and he was able to tell them that he wore a robe, invisible to the eyes of men, but beautiful in God’s eyes―a robe of pure righteousness, which robe is Christ. And every one that comes to God renouncing his own righteousness is arrayed in this same spotless robe.
The great men of olden times longed for this fitness for God’s presence. Moses prayed, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,” David said, “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake, with Thy likeness.” What these men prayed for and hoped for is given to those who believe as a present possession, for Christ “is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” He became what we were when He was crucified, that we might become what He is now, the righteousness of God in Him.
What a glorious time that will be, when God will look upon His assembled guests in His glory, and see them all conformed to the image of His Son, everyone of them having His likeness; but even now the Christian can say, “As He is, so are we, in this world.” This is God’s bright design, the purpose of His love, that the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind, should appear perfect and blameless before Him in His glory to rejoice in His presence forever.
But if any man still thinks that his own righteousness, the works of his own hands, are a good enough covering for him before God, let him consider the parable of the marriage of the king’s son in Matthew 22. There we read of a man who refused the garment provided by the king, and presumed to appear at the Feast in a suit of his own make. But the king came in to view the guests and his eye fell upon this intruder, and searched him through and through; he looked beneath the gaudy rags in which he trusted, and exposed the pride and obstinacy of his heart. To the demand, “Friend, how camest thou in hither without a wedding garment?” he was speechless, without excuse. Could he then plead for mercy and beg for a covering not his own? No, it was too late for that; it was too late. The sentence of the insulted king went forth. “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness.” Immediately that sentence was executed; he was cast out of the Feast and his rags became the fetters that bound his soul in everlasting misery. He was searched, silenced and sentenced. It is divine love that has given the warning. “He that hath ears too hear let him hear.”