AS FILTHY RAGS

This passage is an earnest prayer by the believing remnant of Israel that God would manifest His glorious presence on earth. They plead that He will miraculously display His almighty power so that the nations will tremble before Him. They ask the God of the Exodus to perform His mighty acts again.

Reflecting on the glory of God led His people to a conscious­ness of their own sins. It was against those that God’s anger was blazing. They express the deepest penitence. All of them had become like lepers, cut off from the presence of the Lord, crying, ‘Unclean, unclean’, Lev. 13. 45. Like fading and dying leaves, they are bereft of spiritual life and vigour. Their iniquities, like the wind, were sweeping them away in judgement. They con­fess their neglect of the Lord. Not surprisingly, He had hidden His face from them.

What of their righteous acts? Did God not count these in their favour at least? Humbly, these repentant believers confess that their good deeds were like ‘a polluted garment’ ESV. Allud­ing to the law, Lev. 15. 19-24, they picture those actions as soiled and defiled. Thus, they recognize that even their best endeavours to please God ‘flow from a fallen nature and partake of its fallenness’, A. Motyer. David confessed that he had been brought forth in iniquity and in sin had his mother conceived him, Ps. 51. 5. That is the universal human condition. Inherited sinfulness defiles all of us and pollutes everything that we do.

This closes the door to any hope of acceptance by the God of infinite holiness on the basis of any of our own actions. It is not by works of righteousness which we have done that God saves us. Rather, it is emphatically by His own sheer mercy and amazing grace, Titus 3. 4-7. We cannot atone for our own sins. only the voluntary offering of the suffering Servant of the Lord can avail to remove our guilt and condemnation. He bears our punishment Himself and thus secures that all who trust Him are counted righteous by God, Isa. 53. 5-7, 11, 12. All boasting in our own spiritual achievements is thus altogether excluded, Rom. 3. 27, 28; Eph. 2. 9. Let him who boasts, boast only in the Lord, 1 Cor. 1. 31. Our righteousness is in Christ alone.