s whole self to God and regards itself as the operation and work of justifying, sanctifying, preserving and ruling grace (Psa 73:25., Psa 25:5-7; Psa 19:14 and other passages). There is not wanting an acknowledgement of the innate sinfulness of our nature (Psa 51:7), of the man's exposure to punishment before God apart from His grace (Psa 143:2), of the many, and for the most part unperceived, sins of the converted (Psa 19:13), of the forgiveness of sins as a fundamental condition to the attainment of happiness (Psa 32:1.), of the necessity of a new divinely-created heart (Psa 51:12), in short, of the way of salvation which consists of penitential contrition, pardon, and newness of life.
On the other hand it is not less true, that in the light of the vicarious atonement and of the Spirit of regeneration it becomes possible to form a far more penetrating and subtle moral judgment of one's self; it is not less true, that the tribulation, which the New Testament believer experiences, though it does not produce such a strong and overwhelming sense of divine wrath as that which is often expressed in the psalms, nevertheless sinks deeper into his inmost nature in the presence of the cross on Golgotha and of the heaven that is opened up to him, in as much as it appears to him to be sent by a love that chastens, proves, and prepares him for the future; and it is not less true, that after the righteousness of God - which takes over our unrighteousness and is accounted even in the Old Testament as a gift of grace - lies before us for believing appropriation as a righteousness redemptively wrought out by the active and passive obedience of Jesus, the distinctive as well as the reciprocally conditioned character of righteousness of faith and of righteousness of life is become a more clearly perceived fact of the inner life, and one which exercises a more powerful influence over the conduct of that life.[1]
Nevertheless even such personal testimonies, as Psa 17:1-5, do not
- ↑ Cf. Kurtz, Zur Theologie der Psalmen, III: The self-righteousness of the psalmists, in theDorpater Zeitschrift 1865 S. 352-358: “The Old Testament righteousness of faith, represented by the evangelium visibile of the sacrificial worship, had not as yet the fundamental and primary, helpful position assigned to it, especially by Paul, in the New Testament, but only a more secondary position; justification is conceived not as a condition of the sanctification which is to be striven after, but as a supplementing of that which is wanting in the sanctification thus defectively striven after.
