"Bring Forth the Best Robe and Put It on Him"
Kshere must surely be some very special suitability in the symbol of a robe since that so beautiful and so impressive symbol is employed so often in the Holy Scriptures. For from the opening chapters of Genesis down to the closing chapters of Revelation this symbol of a garment and a robe comes forward continually. ‘And Adam and his wife,’ so we read, ‘ hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said to him, Where art thou? And Adam said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.... And unto Adam, and unto his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.’ Now after reading that so suggestive Scripture you will be pleased to know that all our best mystico-evangelical interpreters find in that far-off Scripture the original introduction to all the fully developed
Scriptures of the New Testament, such as the Romans and the Galatians. Notably so Archbishop Trench has an exquisitely beautiful sermon in which he makes us see the whole gracious mystery of the coming gospel of substitution and imputation already involved and so far revealed in that early text. And when we come down to the evangelical prophet we find the Gospel symbol of a robe both adorning and enriching the whole of his beautiful book. As for instance this passage: ‘We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags: But I will rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall be joyful in my God. For He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, and He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.’ And when we come to Paul, he is by far the greatest and by far the best of all the apostles to us, because he is so full of Gospel imputation both in his own personal experience and in his apostolic doctrine. ‘ Touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. ‘That I may be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. And so on through all the Epistles of that great Apostle; in all of which the justifying righteousness of Jesus Christ is written as with a sunbeam. And so is it in its own dramatic and symbolical way in the whole of the Book of Revelation. As thus for one example: ‘ I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. And so on, to the end of that apocalyptical and heavenly book.
Out of their own bitter experience both Adam and Eve and Isaiah all foretell us what our bitter experience also is sure to be. Adam our fallen father speaks to us from among the trees of the garden and says to us: ‘ My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. Mine iniquity hath taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up!’ And from beside him the mother of all living sobs out this self-accusation to all her offspring: ‘ Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. How then can any man be justified before God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?’ While Isaiah prophesies out of the temple to all our preachers especially and says to them: ‘Woe is me! ForIamundone! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.’ And startling and stumbling to many unspiritual men as these strong words of Isaiah are, they have all been subscribed to by all God’s best servants down to ourownday. ‘ Rags’
is the prophet’s strong word; while ‘ dung’ is the apostle’s still stronger word. And the penitent readers of the Holy War will remember Mr. Weteyes who always saw so much impurity in his own tears, and such great stains at the bottom of his best prayers. And in his Private Thoughts we find the saintly Bishop Beveridge saying: ‘I cannot pray but I sin. I cannot preach a sermon, or hear a sermon preached, but I sin. I cannot receive the sacrament but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins but my very confessions are still so many aggravations of my confessed sins. So much so, that my repentance needs to be repented of; my tears need washing; and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again in the blood of my Redeemer.’
Yes; but after reading and hearing all that we still feel sure that there never can by any possibility have been ‘rags’ like our righteousnesses in all the world. Such a ragged obedience of God’s holy law, such a ragged repentance, such a ragged faith, such ragged communicating, such ragged preaching, and such ragged praying is ours. We feel certain that neither Beveridge, nor Bunyan, nor Paul, nor Isaiah could come near us in the raggedness of our righteousnesses. Only, Blessed be their God who so accepted them in all their rags and wretchedness; and who said over them: ‘ Bring forth the best robe and put it upon them!’ And He will still more exalt and magnify His saving grace in saying the same thing this day concerning us. Yes, concerning us the raggedest and the least deserving of all His servants.
Now the communion-morning pulpit is surely the very last place in the world in which to give vent toacontroversial temper. But all the same, I must be permitted in this connection to say this in the interests of truth. For the life of me I cannot conceive how any Christian man can take this ‘ best robe’ to be in any sense whatever his own righteousness. Great names: yes, it saddens me to say it, some of the greatest names, could be quoted in support of that absolutely impossible interpretation. But for myself, were all the interpreters that ever wrote, and all the preachers that ever stood in a pulpit, to take that side, I would be compelled to stand alone on the other side. For I am as sure as I am of my own existence, aye far more sure, that my best righteousness can never, in whole, or in part, in any sense, or in any measure, justify me. My own righteousness can never, in life, or in death, or on my resurrection day, or on my judgment day, afford me one single inch of a footing on which I can stand before God, or even before my own conscience. But I thank God that I am not alone in my absolute despair of myself and in my interpretation of the text. For if I may put it in this way, I have Adam, and Eve, and Abel, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and Micah, and Paul, and a whole Pauline succession down to this day standing beside me and I beside them. An evangelical and an apostolical succession down to Chalmers, and M‘Cheyne, and Spurgeon, and Maclaren, and all subscribing with their tears and their blood to the all-justifying and the all-covering and the all-adorning righteousness of their Redeemer-surety Jesus Christ. ‘A review of my life,’ writes John Foster — the famous essayist, ‘back through all these years brings bitter reflections to me of the wretched deficiences neglects and vanities — he should just have said ‘ filthy rags’ — ‘ of a life that ought to have been wholly devoted to God. But, since that has not been so, my daily and almost hourly prayer is this — God be merciful to me a sinner! I do think,’ he adds, ‘ that if there be any one thing that I am fully clear of — it is self-righteousness.” Intending communicants, is that your mind about yourselves? Because, if so, this morning’s text will be spoken from heaven over you as you approach the table. ‘ Bring forth, it will be said, ‘the best robe, and put it on him.’
No. This is no robe of ours that we can ever bring with us, or could ever weave for ourselves on any loom of our righteousness to all eternity. This is the ‘best robe’ in all the rich wardrobe of heaven itself. Even had Adam and Eve stood to the day of their death or of their translation, and had all their righteous seed gone on working out their own righteousness to the day of judgment: Curist is better: Christ the Son of God is far far away better. As Paul so like himself has it: for his part he counted all his best blamelessness to be but the most ignominous thing he could think of, that he might be found in Christ. And many of you have by heart the masterpiece and immortal passage that is not unworthy to stand even beside the third of the Philippians. That glorious passage can never be more opportune than it is at this moment. Listen to it: ‘Christ hath merited righteousness for as many asarefoundin Him. In Him God findeth us, if we be faithful: for by our faith we are incorporated into Christ. Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man which in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin: him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance; him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto, by pardoning it; and accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law. Shall I say more perfectly righteous than if he had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I say: but the Apostle saith, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us: that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Such, then, we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort: we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered: that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that sinful men are made the righteousness of God.’ For my part, let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, or whatsoever, I think I would rather have written those heavenly lines than all the rest of the English language taken together. Do you feel with me in that this morning? I am sure many of you do. Many of you must do.
Dr. Pusey, the best Hebrew scholar of the last generation in the English Church, holds firmly that in that great justification-passage which we read together this morning, where it is written that Joshua the high priest stood clothed with filthy garments, till the command came forth that he was to receive change of raiment: that great Hebraist holds that both the Hebrew verb and the New ‘lestament doctrine agree in this that Joshua always stood clothed with his own filthy garments, and with those of the people of Israel, and as such was always receiving change of raiment. I cannot speak with such authority on matters of Old ‘Testament grammar and exegesis, but I am quite sure that the thing is true both.of New Testament doctrine and New Testament experience. Paul puts it once for all when he says that ‘God always justifies the ungodly.’ And Hooker but expatiates on Paul when he says (I will give you what he says again): ‘ Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man which in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin: him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance: him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereto by pardoning it: and accepteth him in Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous’: as Paul has it, ‘ accepted in the Beloved.’ To gather it all up in the ever-blessed words of the text, we are always returning home from the far country, and we are always saying, ‘ Father, I have again sinned” And our Father is always saying over us, ‘ Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.’
Now, communicants, young and old, are you like that? Do you do that? Have you humbled yourselves so as to submit to Gospel imputation always and without ceasing? ‘I am always sinning,’ said Luther, ‘and I am always reading the Epistle to the Romans.’ ‘I come back as a prodigal son every half-hour,’ said Luther’s greatest disciple. And one who is not always counted among Luther’s disciples was wont to say every morning when he put off the garments of the past night, ‘I will put on His righteousness and it will clothe me; it will be to me for a robe and for adiadem.’ Be like them, my brethren. Be sure to be like them. Be like them if you would live in liberty of conscience and in peace with God and in assured preparation for death and judgment. Every morning you rise put on again the best robe. And every returning night lie down again in it. Go out to your day’s work always wearing it. Make it your
E morning coat and your evening dress. Be married in it, if you would be married in the Lord; and make it your winding-sheet, if you would die in the Lord. Die in it and awake in it and go up to judgment in it. Stand at the right hand of the great white throne in it, and enter heaven shining like the sun in it. ‘ What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
O great Absolver! Grant my soul may wear The lowliest garb of penitence and prayer, Till, in the Father’s courts, my glorious dress Shall be the garment of Thy Righteousness.
And then —
When I stand before the throne
Dressed in beauty not my own:
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love Thee with unsinning heart:
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.
Meantime:
Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace, Thy blood, Thy righteousness, O Lord! my God!