May 24

Surely they will say of Me, ‘In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.’” All who rage against Him will come to Him and be put to shame. — Isa 45:24 BSB

Have you learned yet that you are a sinner in the sight of God? Have you felt the full weight, breadth, and spirituality of His holy law? Do you feel deep in your soul that without Christ’s righteousness being imputed to you and His blood cleansing your conscience, you will die in your sins and never reach heaven’s shore? Has this ever been a matter of great concern for you? Have you ever sighed and groaned over it? Has the spirit of prayer ever been stirred up in you to plead with the Lord for the forgiveness of your sins through the merits of the crucified Savior? Do you have any hope beyond His blood, His righteousness, and His finished work?

If the Lord has exercised your soul in this way, even if He has not yet fulfilled the deepest desires of your heart, He will, in His time, reveal His Son to you as the God-man who has saved you from death and hell. He will apply His atoning blood to your conscience, draw near with His glorious righteousness, pour out His dying love, strengthen your faith, and give you assurance of your saving interest in the Son of His love.

Even if your spiritual experiences are not particularly bright or clear, He will still give you a good hope through grace—an anchor for your soul, sure and steadfast—and He will lift your affections to that blessed Lord who sits at the right hand of the Father in power and majesty. As He does this, He enables the believer, so favored and blessed, to say with confidence, “In the Lord have I righteousness.”

Before this, the believer cannot say it. He may know that there is no righteousness apart from the Lord. He may have renounced all hope in his own righteousness and sunk deep into guilt and bondage. But until the Holy Spirit brings him into liberty, until the witness of the Spirit testifies in his heart, he cannot truly cry, “Abba, Father.”

When the Lord brings near His righteousness, reveals His dying love, and sheds it abroad in the heart by His power, then the believer can confidently say, “In the Lord have I righteousness.” And when he has this righteousness, he needs no other. It is complete—nothing else can be. It is acceptable before God, it has power in the courts of heaven, and it will uphold him through the storms of life, give him peace on his deathbed, and land him safely in eternity.