My Treasure is Christ, I Need Nothing More

As we conclude our preaching series from the book of Galatians, Sola Gratia, I’ve been struck by how many times in his letter Paul loops back around to the vital necessity of finding our righteousness in Christ. As we’ve sat under the preaching of the magnificent book, it is undeniable that all our confidence in this life and the next is bound up in the righteousness of Christ made ours through the cross.

So it is fitting to mark the close of our series with a quote on the righteousness Christ for us. Here’s a great one (gleaned from www.firstimportanc.org) that comes at us right out of the experience of John Bunyan. You can taste the joy in his words!

“One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. ‘There,’ I said, ‘is my righteousness!’ So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, ‘Where is your righteousness?’ For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.”

From Bunyan’s Autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners