A Devotion from George Whitfield

This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.
—Jeremiah 23:6

Self-righteousness is the last idol that is rooted out of the heart. And we have contracted such a devilish pride by our fall from God that we would, in part at least, glory in being the cause of our own salvation. It is true we disclaim the doctrine of merit and are ashamed to say we deserve any good at the hands of God. Therefore, as the apostle observes, we seek to establish a righteousness of our own and, like the Pharisees of old, will not wholly submit to God’s righteousness that is through Jesus Christ.

The righteousness of Jesus Christ is one of those great mysteries that the angels desire to look into and seems to be one of the first lessons that God taught people after the Fall. For what were the garments that God made to put on our first parents but types of the application of the merits of the righteousness of Jesus Christ to believers’ hearts? We are told that those garments were made of skins of beasts, and as beasts were not then human food, we may fairly infer that those beasts were killed in sacrifice, in commemoration of the great sacrifice, Jesus Christ, to be offered later. And the skins of those beasts thus killed being put on Adam and Eve, they were by this taught how their nakedness was to be covered with the righteousness of the Lamb of God.

This is what is meant when we are told Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. In short, this is it of which both the law and all the prophets have spoken, especially Jeremiah in the words of the text: “The Lord Our Righteousness.”

The person mentioned in the text under the character of Lord is Jesus Christ. By “righteous Branch” (Jer. 23:5), all agree that we are to understand Jesus Christ. He it is who is called “the Lord” in our text. If there were no other text in the Bible to prove the divinity of Christ, that is sufficient. For if the word Lord may properly belong to Jesus Christ, he must be God. For as you have it in the margins of your Bibles, the word Lord is in the original Jehovah, which is the essential title of God himself. It is plain that by the word Lord we are to understand the Lord Jesus Christ who here takes to himself the title of Jehovah and therefore must be very God of very God, or, as the apostle devoutly expresses it, God over all, forever praised.