Jehovah Tsidkenu

It was on the 18th November 1843, while recovering from a bout of the fever that was to cut short his life in its thirtieth year, that Robert Murray McCheyne wrote the words of his famous hymn which serve as a window to his thought in the great matter of his soul's salvation.

McCheyne was an "upright sinner" in the early years of his life and, indeed, he tells us, was often mistaken for a Christian on account of his religious way of living. But, his "righteousness" was his own "self-righteousness," and any thought of needing Christ's righteousness and merits to atone for his sins had not yet manifest itself to his mind and heart.

For all his open religion, McCheyne was "a stranger" both to the grace of God and the God of grace. And the reason he remained a stranger was on account of the absence of any burden of sin such as had lain heavily on the shoulders of old John Bunyan's Pilgrim. He was, as yet, in no sense of "danger" that he was "by nature" among "the children of wrath, even as others;" and where there is no knowledge of any danger from the wrath to come, there is no fleeing from that wrath. His own righteousness – his own works – his own efforts – his own religion – was sufficient for him at this point in his life, and the righteousness of God – "Jehovah Tsidkenu" (The Lord, my Righteousness) as he says, "meant nothing to me."

Oh yes, McCheyne could be "affected" by the Cross and the thought of Christ dying there; and how we need to appreciate this facet of our human nature in our modern-day approach to evangelism, for not everyone who is "affected" by the death of Christ is "saved" by the death of Christ. Listen to what McCheyne tells us:

How "affected", indeed, this hardened sinner was by the general doctrine of the blood-stained Cross of the dear Son of God, but there was, as yet, no particular application of that cross to his own heart. He had yet to learn the truth, "Jesus who loved me, and gave himself for me." He had still to bow under the burden of guilt that it was he who had "pointed the nail, and fixed the thorn."

But, "exalt free grace," McCheyne seems to be saying to us as he comes to the turning point in his hymn, which relates the same truning point in his life. How does the sinner begin to see the "danger" that he is in by nature when under the condemnation and wrath of God? Only when God's most Holy Law begins to shudder and shake the sin-hardened conscience so that we realise that "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after death the judgment." And this "Law Work" – let us never forget it – is the prerogative working of God's Holy Spirit in the lives of those "vessels of mercy … afore prepared unto glory."

"When free grace awoke me, by light from on high," says McCheyne. For the grace that "awakens" the self-righteous sinner to see his need of the righteousness of God in Christ to save his soul is just as sovereign and free as every other grace that comes to him from the Hand of Omnipotence:

This is the course that McCheyne's pilgrimage in salvation took. From the sinner depending on his own self-righteousness, to the saint depending on nothing short of the very righteousness of God itself. This alone underlies the God-honouring life that this choice servant of God lived, and which must motivate every professing child of God that would live righteously in Christ Jesus. Not my own righteousness, but the Lord's righteousness. This alone brings the guilty sinner before the face of the God against whom he has sinned in thought, word, and deed; that he is "accepted in the Beloved," and that the Name of Christ is the password of heaven that gains him entrance at last. So McCheyne discovered.

This Watchword, says McCheyne, for, indeed, he entitled his hymn, "Jehovah Tsidkenu – The Watchword of the Reformers," and, it was that very thing. Ask Luther, or Calvin, or Knox where their hope of salvation lay; ask them as they handle the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God; ask them as they pass through the valley of the shadow of death. Their answer is McCheyne's answer: This Watchword shall rally my flattering breath – Jehovah Tsidkenu, The Lord my righteousness.

As another great hymn puts it:

Not only in this life is there but one true refuge of the soul – one covering for our sin – one shelter in a time of storm, But —

Two other verses of the original hymn which don't appear in the average hymn book also speak clearly the same doctrine of our acceptance before God only through the merits of Christ.