December 12

I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, bestowing wealth on those who love me and making their treasuries full. — Prov 8:20-21 BSB

What is the reason that God causes His people to “inherit substance” by “leading them in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment”? When God first leads them into the way of righteousness by opening up His holy law, it drives away all illusions. We had been toiling to gather chaff, hay, straw, and stubble—things that have no eternal value. We were like the man in Scripture who “dreamed he was eating, but when he awoke, his soul was empty.” We spent our lives in dreams, with an appearance of life, holding to a form of religion, content with rituals and sermons, thinking these would protect us in the day of wrath.

But those were only shadows, just as useless for delivering our souls from the coming judgment as the shadow of a mountain in the morning sun. When the Lord began to lead us in the way of righteousness, those shadows vanished. We needed something real to win the favor of God, something to escape the piercing gaze of His eyes that see everything. Our souls began to crave “substance,” a reality that only God can provide—a voice from the Lord Himself, a testimony of His eternal favor, and a manifestation of His love. Substance became essential.

Our souls began to “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” to long for the manifestation of Jesus’ love, to become restless and unsatisfied with anything short of the work and witness of the Holy Spirit. When our mouths were silenced and we were convicted as guilty before God, we longed for pardon, peace, mercy, and love—nothing else could satisfy us, and we panted for these things with deep, unutterable desire.

When Jesus leads His people in the way of righteousness by revealing His glorious righteousness to them, they begin to “inherit the substance” they were longing for. There is no substance under the law—it only prepares the soul to receive substance. The law empties the soul so it may be filled, strips it so it may be clothed, wounds it so it may be healed, humbles it so it may be lifted up. But when Jesus leads us in the way of righteousness—the way by which the soul is justified through His imputed righteousness—He causes that soul to “inherit substance,” to inherit it even here on earth, with a taste of it, the beginning of it, the pledge of it, and the firstfruits of it.

Oh, how fleeting and empty is mere religious profession! And how deceitful are the pleasures gained by sin! They leave the soul naked, bare, wounded, and guilty before God. We often promise ourselves pleasure in sin, but what do we find instead? Bitterness and regret. All the anticipated pleasure vanishes, leaving us full of guilt and shame.

But when God, in His grace, blesses our souls with sweet communion with Himself, when He draws our hearts to center on Him, when He melts our souls at His feet and pours out His eternal favor and love, there is substance in that. There is weight, power, and the foretaste and pledge of a never-ending eternity.