Self-Righteousness — a

Self-Righteousness — a Smoldering Heap of Rubbish!

"Who say: Stand by yourself, come not near to me; for I am holier than you. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burns all the day." Isaiah 65:5

The apostle Paul shall be our interpreter here. You remember how in the tenth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans he quotes from this chapter and says, "Elijah is very bold, and says, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he says, all day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people," Isaiah was very bold to speak the gospel so plainly, when a legal spirit prevailed, and very bold to defy the enmity of his own nation by declaring that they would be rejected for their sins, while the far-off heathen would be brought in by sovereign grace. He was bold to denounce hypocrites to their faces, and to smite a proud nation with the threatenings of the Lord. Perhaps it was for this boldness that he suffered a cruel death by the hands of Manasseh. The application of the passage to Israel is just thus. Year after year God dealt with great patience towards his chosen people, but they seemed to be desperately set upon idolatry in one form or another. Sometimes they worshiped Jehovah, but then they did it under figure and symbol, whereas he has expressly forbidden that even his own worship should be thus celebrated. He who said in the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," said also in the second, "You shall, not make unto you any engraved image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them." At other times they altogether rejected Jehovah, and worshiped Baal and Ashtareth, and whole troops of the gods of the heathen, and thus they provoked the Lord exceedingly.

They also practiced necromancy, or pretended communion with the dead, and witchcraft and sorcery, and all manners of abominable rites, like the depraved nations around them. When this open rebellion was given up, as it was after the captivity for the Jews have never been guilty of idolatry since that day they fell into another form of the same evil, namely, self-righteousness: so that when our Lord came he found self-righteousness to be the crying sin of Israel, the Pharisees carrying it to such a pitch as to render it utterly ridiculous. They reckoned that the touch of a common person polluted their sacredness, so that they needed to wash after walking down a street. When they traversed the ways they took the edge of the pavement, so that they might not brush against the garments of the passers-by, and even in the temple in prayer they stood by themselves lest they should be defiled. Their whole spirit is expressed in the words of the text "Stand by yourself, come not near to me; for I am holier than you."

This God declares to be as obnoxious to him as smoke in a man’s nose. He could not bear it. He was no more able to tolerate their self-righteousness than to endure their idolatry. It is this last form of the evil of the Israelitish heart which I am going to speak about this morning, because it is a phase of evil which is now common among us. Self-righteousness is rampant in our own day. There be many who come up to the courts of the Lord’s house and mingle among the followers of Christ who still say, "Stand by, for I am holier than you." Our sermon is meant to be a cannonade against self-righteousness, that righteousness which a man makes proud of his own doings, his own feelings, his own alms, prayers, or sacraments, all such righteousness is to be utterly despised.

I. The first point is this: THE SIN OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS GROWS UP AMONG RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. It is not always the sin of the outside world, for many outsiders do not pretend to any righteousness at all, and I fancy they think all the better of themselves for that. This is an idle plea, which it needs not many words to expose. "I make no profession," says one. This is about as honorable a confession as if a thief should boast when caught at picking pockets, "I do not make any pretense to be honest," or a liar when detected should turn round and cry "I never professed to speak the truth." Would you have men glory in not professing to be honest or true? Yet, surely, they do no worse than one who boasts that he does not profess to fear God. Such a man has gone to a considerable pitch of iniquity before he can brazen his face to make his glory in that which is his shame.

Among those who profess to be religious, self-righteousness very frequently comes in, because they have not truly received the religion of Jesus Christ; if they were true believers they would be humble and contrite, for self-righteousness and faith in Christ are diametrically opposed. He who is saved by grace finds no room for boasting in himself. What says the apostle? "Where is boasting, then? It is excluded." The word is, it is shut out, and it has the door shut in its face. A sinner washed in Jesus’ blood and clothed in Jesus’ righteousness, boasts only in the Lord. He has done once for all with that particular form of sin, which glories in self; it is detestable in his sight. His cry is "God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Many who mingle with Christians, and are religious in a certain sense because they practice the forms of religion, are accustomed to put the flesh into the place of the spirit. With them in baptism the washing in water is everything, but the burial with Christ which it sets forth is quite unknown; with them the partaking of the bread and the wine are everything at the Lord’s table, but the spiritual feeding upon the body and blood of Christ is not understood. With them, the place of worship is everything, but the spirit of worship is lacking. The broken heart, the contrite spirit, the soul that trembles at God’s word, the heart that joys in the Lord, they are strangers to all this, though they can sit as God’s people sit, though they can hear as God’s people hear, and look as if they were all that saints should be.

These people, too, even when they do not join the Christian church, but only worship or seem to worship with Christians, are very apt to think that they must be better than other people because they do so. They are not openly Sabbath breakers. Is there not something in this? Yes, there is something in it, certainly, and we will not say a word against it; but there is not everything in it, and certainly not enough in it to make a perfect righteousness of it. The bed is shorter than that a man may stretch himself on it, and the covering is too narrow for a man to wrap himself in it. "Oh, but I have occupied a seat in an orthodox chapel for many years." Yes, that may be, and if you have not received the gospel, those sermons which you have heard will rise up against you in judgment, to your condemnation. It is true you close your eyes in prayer, but if you never pray do you not mock God with a pretense of doing it, and may it not turn out that your religiousness is only an impudent provoking of God to his face? Avoid the tendency to say, "We are certainly much better than the outside world, and if God is hard with us he will be hard with a great many."

Avoid this, I say, for it is the danger of outwardly religious people, who are not savingly converted, to dream that they are somewhat advantaged by a mere attendance on the means of grace. Should an Egyptian rub his shoulders against an Israelite, would it turn him into an Israelite? Will living near a rich man make you rich? Because the Lord Jesus eats and drinks in your streets, are you, therefore, safe, even though you have never believed on him? Be not deceived by such a notion. Do you forget that cry of our Lord, "Woe unto you, Chorazin. Woe unto you, Bethsaida"? Did he not proclaim woe to the very places where his voice was most often heard, and where his miracles were most often worked? Beware, I beg you outwardly religious people, lest you fall into the sin of self-righteousness, and fancy that you are holy when you are not.

II. THIS IS A SIN, WHICH FLOURISHES WHERE OTHER SINS ABOUND. We read of these people that they did evil before the eyes of God, and chose that wherein he delighted not. They blasphemed God, and polluted themselves with unhallowed rites, communing with demons and the powers of darkness, and pretending to speak with departed spirits; and yet for all that they said-"Stand by yourself, I am holier than you." Self-righteousness is never more ridiculous than in people whose conduct would not bear scrutiny for a moment. See the Pharisee with his phylactery, and his broad-hemmed garment standing there in conscious perfection! See him and feel disgust, for the wretched hypocrite has been secretly devouring a widow’s house, and his heart is full of ravening and wickedness. In his greediness and lust he makes clean the outside of his cup and platter, but within he is full of extortion and excess. Hear how the devil derides him. "Ah, ah," he laughs with satanic glee, "the outside may be as you will. What care I while the inside is foul!" It is dreadful that any man should be self-righteous, but it is monstrous that men of openly evil life should dare to set up such a pretense. Such people know, if they will but think, that they are trying to palm off a barefaced lie; yet it is common enough in spiritual things for those who are naked, and poor, and miserable to declare that they are rich and increased in goods. How are they able to keep up this imposture upon their own consciences? Is it not a part of their spiritual madness? The very blindness which makes them choose sin prevents their seeing how sinful it is, and enables them to fancy that all is well. As men who wear spectacles of colored glass find all things tinted with their own hue, so does a self-righteous heart impart a tint to actions, until the worse appears the better, and sin glitters like righteousness.

Moreover, self-righteous men, like foxes, have many tricks and schemes. They condemn in other people what they consider to be very excusable in themselves. They would cry out against others for a tenth part of the sin which they allow in themselves: certain constitutional tendencies, and necessities of circumstances, and various surroundings, all serve as ample apologies. Besides this, if it be admitted that they are wrong upon some points, yet in other directions they are beyond rebuke. If they drink, they do not swear; and if they swear, they do not steal: they make a great deal out of negatives: if they steal, they are not greedy and miserly, but spend their gains freely. If they practice fornication, yet they do not commit adultery; if they talk filthily, yet they boast they do not lie. They would be counted well because they are not universally bad. They do not break every hedge, and therefore they plead that they are not trespassers. As if a debtor for a hundred pounds should claim to be excused because he does not owe two hundred: or, as if a highwayman should say, "I did not stop all the travelers on the road; I only robbed one or two, and therefore I ought not to be punished." If a man should willfully break the windows of your shop, I warrant you, you would not take it as an excuse if he pleaded, "I did not break them all; I only smashed one sheet of plate glass." Pleas which would not be mentioned in a human court are thought good enough to offer to God. O the folly of our race!

Besides, these people will make righteousness this way- they plead that if they do wrong yet there are some points in which they are splendid fellows. "You should see how grandly I acted on such an occasion. You will think me almost a saint, and quite a hero, if you will but fix your eye on that one particular virtue. Drink, sir? No; I never touch a drop." I am glad you do not; but still, if you live in lying, or in pride, your abstinence is a short piece of stuff to make a garment out of. The mere fact that you are not a drunkard is so far good, but it goes a very little way towards the perfect righteousness which God’s law demands.

Someone thing in which the unconverted man may excel is put in to make up for his deficiencies in a hundred other ways. By hook or by crook a man will make out that he is not so bad as he seems to be; the inventiveness of self-esteem is prodigious. Those who come with the language of repentance but without the spirit of it, are sometimes the most self-righteous of all, for they say "I am all right because I am not self-righteous."

They make a self-righteousness out of the supposed absence of self-righteousness. "Thank God," say they, "we are not as other men are, nor even as these self-righteous people." Hypocrites all the way through. Have you never heard of the monk who said he was a very great sinner, that he had broken all the ten commandments, that he was as bad as Judas and deserved to be hanged as well as he, and when his confessor began to go over the commandments he said about each one of them, "Holy father, I have not broken that; I have kept that." He was a sinner in the gross but not in detail, a sinner by name but not in reality; so he said, and hosts of people virtually say the same. Hear them: "Yes, sir, of course I am a sinner. We are all sinners." But if you bring one fault home to them, immediately they bristle up. Who are you that you should speak evil of them? They have done nothing amiss, they are most excellent people, and you will go a long way to find anybody better than they are, and so on. Oh, this horrible self-righteousness; it is not merely to be found in the man who attends his church regularly and reads his prayers daily; it is found in the man who will not go to his church nor say his prayers.

The harlot has her self-righteousness; the thief, the drunkard, the profane still have their self-justifications. Yes, and it may be seen even in Atheists who have cast off all fear of God, and then stand in an elevation of self-esteem which hardly any other man can match. Hear him: "I have proved my freedom of thought and nobility of mind; I am the model man. As for these Christians, they are cants and hypocrites; and believers in Christ are either fools or knaves. No man has any honest and rational convictions but myself. I can improve upon the Bible and criticize the life of Christ. Stand by yourself. I am holier than you." This weed of self-righteousness will grow on any dunghill. No heap of rubbish is too rotten for the accursed toadstool of proud self to grow upon.

III. As self-righteousness grows among sins to our surprise, so IT IS IN ITSELF A GREAT SIN. One is almost startled to find self-esteem placed after such a list of sins as this chapter record. To the Jew the eating of swine’s flesh and broth of abominable things was a great pollution, but self- righteousness is classed with it; it is even placed with necromancy and witchcraft. Drunkenness and swearing are sin in rags, but self-righteousness is sin in a respectable black coat. It is an aristocratic sin, and does not like to be put down with the common ruck; and if we call it sin, yet many will plead that it is only so in a very refined sense. But God does not think so, he classes it with the very worst, and he does so because it is one of the worst. For a man to be self-righteous is in itself a sin of sins.

For, first, it is blasphemy. Perhaps you do not see that. Follow me, then. God is holy. Here comes this base imposter and boasts, "And I am holy too." Is not that a ludicrous and contemptible form of blasphemy? It is profanity in its very essence. The cherubim are crying" Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts: Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of your glory" and amid it all there is heard this squeaking pretender, whining, "And I am holy too." O wretched egotist, you do at once lie and blaspheme! The heavens are not pure in his sight: he charged his angels with folly, and do you, that are born of woman, and defiled from head to foot, dare to talk about righteousness? Righteousness, indeed! when you are a mass of sin.

More, this self-righteousness is idolatry, for the man who counts himself to be righteous by his own works worships himself. Practically, the object of his adoration is his own dear, delectable, excellent self; all his confidence is in himself, his boasting is in himself; and, though he may sing psalms to God with his voice, yet his heart is really singing hymns to himself, and he is saying unto himself, "You have done well, my soul; there is something great and bright in you; you deserve much of your Creator; you shall surely enter Heaven on your own terms. At your worst you have never been so bad as your fellow-men; at your best you are a right noble being, and a brilliant reward is your due." What is this but idolatry in its worst form?

Then, again, it is profanity, for it gives God the distinct lie. The Lord declares that no man is righteous. He says that he looked from Heaven and surveyed the sons of men, and he saw that "there is none righteous, no, not one." To this divine assertion self-righteousness gives a fiat contradiction, for it claims to be itself holy. God declares that we have gone astray and altogether become unprofitable, and he proves that he believes this, for he sets Christ to bleed and die for the world of sinners, as it is written, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." But he could not lay our iniquity upon Jesus if we had none, nor impute transgression to Christ if there were no sin in us, and thus the self-righteous man virtually declares that God is false, and speaks not the strict truth, since he claims to be an exception to the rule. He testifies that God’s "No, not one," is false, for he himself is one righteous person, and therefore there may be others. Though God says that by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified in his sight, yet this man says, "By the works of the law I shall be justified," and so he profanes the word of the Most High, and questions the truth of God, which is as the apple of Jehovah’s eye. It is clear beyond all question that self-righteousness is in itself a great, God-defying sin. May the Lord deliver us from it, and by the Holy Spirit work in us a humble, lowly faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord.

IV. In the fourth place we would remark that SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS IS THE FRUIT OF MAN’S OWN THOUGHTS. Look at the second verse of the chapter-"I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walks in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts." Those who have high thoughts of them do not walk according to God’s commandments, but according to their own notions. If any man thinks himself to be righteous in himself, he has never derived that idea from God’s law. Read the ten commands, understand their spirituality, and know that they concern not only overt deeds but thoughts and imaginations, and you will see that the law condemns us all without exception. It proves our guilt, reveals our proneness to evil, pronounces a curse upon us, and gives us over to condemnation. It pays us no respect, but shuts us up in hopeless despair. A man who is self-righteous, therefore, did not derive his self-esteem from a true consideration of the law. No Jew that stood at Sinai and saw the mountain on a smoke, and heard the words which sounded forth with noise as of tempest and trumpet, dared to stand there and say, "I am righteous"; but crouching away, moving further and further from the burning mount, the best Israelite besought that these words might not be spoken to him any more, for he could not endure the terror of that thrice holy law.

A Pharisee stands on an elevation raised by his own fancy, for the law would pull him down, and never for a moment set him up. His proud notions come not from the law, and certainly not from the gospel, for the gospel knows no man after the flesh as righteous, but it regards all men as sinners, and comes to them with pardon; it treats men as lost and comes to save them. If there be a man in the world who is pure and perfect by nature the gospel has nothing to say to him, for it was not intended to meet such a case. Its medicines are not for those upon whom the sickness of sin has never come, for "the whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." Our great Lord came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Jesus is the sinner’s friend. Christ came to wash away stains, not to flatter men into a notion of their spotlessness; he came to heal the sick, not to applaud the vigorous. To such as are righteous in themselves there is not a single syllable of promise in the entire gospel: why should there be, for they need it not? Self-righteousness is a child, which neither law nor gospel will own; it is born in the house of folly, and it is nursed by human fancy.

Next Part Self-Righteousness — a 2

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