us to consider how we obtain that perfect righteousness,
without which we can not enjoy the blissful presence of God.

Paul's teaching in regard to the personal righteousness of the saints,
makes salvation by a mere reformation of life, an impossibility. The
importance of this fact can not be over-estimated. Many people seem to
think that a reformation in regard to moral conduct, is all that is
necessary to prepare to meet God. If they can only break off their
sinful practices, and practice morality, they think they have done all
that is really essential. In this there are two fatal mistakes. First,
no reformation is perfect. The best of men whose lives have been
moulded into the divine image, and are most conformed to the divine
nature, have their imperfections. The ripest saint upon the earth feels
that if his salvation depended on his perfect sinlessness in conduct
for the rest of life, the chances of heaven would at once become dark
and hopeless. The cheerfulness and bright assurance of the child of God
are not because he hopes to live a perfect life, but because his
imperfections will be taken away in Christ. And second, the most
perfect reformation would avail nothing. Could one so reform his life
as to never sin again, and practice virtue in place of the former vice,
it would fall far short of securing the end. However free from sin one
may live in the future, the sins of the past are upon him. These will
forever condemn him, unless they are removed. Our ceasing to sin will
not take away the old ones. The fact that a man refuses to contract any
more debts, will not pay a dollar of his old ones. So no amount of
reformation will make amends for the past. Our past sins must be taken
away, else they will condemn us in the day of eternity. We can not
remove them ourselves; we can not atone for our own sins. Here we are
utterly helpless. To what source, then, shall we go? Christ is the only
refuge. He alone can take away our sins; His blood alone can cleanse
from sin. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son,
cleanseth us from all sin." This is the "fountain opened in the house
of David for all manner of sin and uncleanness." "Though your sins be
as scarlet, he will make them white as wool." "He will put them as far
from us as the east is from the west, and remember them against us no
more forever." Thus it is that Christ is our righteo