Iain Duguid provides a fitting application of this passage, for not only must Nebuchadnezzar learn something from this experience and be changed, but also Israel and even we ourselves. He says…
“This was an important message for Israel to hear, for the imagery of the once-proud tree that had been reduced to a mere stump spoke to their situation just as much as it did to Nebuchadnezzar’s. When the prophet Isaiah was called to preach a message of judgment to the people of his day, two centuries before Nebuchadnezzar, he asked the Lord how long he would labor with so little response. The Lord’s reply is as follows:
11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12 and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
This judgment was exactly what had come upon the people of Israel in Daniel’s day. Israel itself was like a tree that had been cut down and destroyed, until only a stump remained. Yet that also meant that Nebuchadnezzar’s experience could be a source of hope for them. If Nebuchadnezzar could be forgiven and restored when he humbled himself and looked to the Lord, then Israel too could be forgiven and restored.
The Lord’s promise in Solomon’s day was one in which they could find hope as well: “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). If, in the midst of the devastating experience of their exile, the Israelites took the lesson to heart and humbled themselves before the Lord, they too could expect to see his favor shown to them once again.
The same reality is true for us. The gospel is an intrinsically humbling message. The only way for us to enter God’s kingdom is with empty hands, lifting our eyes to heaven and confessing our desperate need of a savior. By nature, that is hard for all of us. As we survey our lives and achievements, we want to be able to say with Nebuchadnezzar, “See the beautiful empire that my hands have wrought.” We are all inclined to believe that the world revolves around us as its center. Humanly speaking, some of us have many attainments in which to trust. Compared to others around us, we may have lives that look virtuous and noble. But we can receive the gospel only when we stop comparing ourselves with other human beings and recognize that before a perfectly holy God even our very best achievements simply increase our condemnation” (Iain Duguid, Daniel in Reformed Expository Commentary, pp. 72-73).
Jesus points out these two opposite responses to Jesus in Luke 18:9-14, especially focusing on those who were “trusting in themselves.”
10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
In his (so-called) prayer, the Pharisee praises himself, and compares himself to other men. It isn’t hard to have such a high opinion of self when you compare yourself to other people; it often is not difficult to find someone worse. Again, instead of looking up he looked inward at himself and around him at others.
One ancient rabbi (Rabbi Simeon, the son of Jochai) was an example of this kind of Pharisaical pride when he said: “If there were only thirty righteous persons in the world, I and my son would make two of them; but if there were but twenty, I and my son would be of the number; and if there were but ten, I and my son would be of the number; and if there were but five, I and my son would be of the five; and if there were but two, I and my son would be those two; and if there were but one, myself should be that one.” (Clarke)
On the other hand, we see the humility and repentance of the tax collector. Although he wouldn’t lift his eyes to heaven, he continually beat his chest and cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” In the Greek he calls himself, “the sinner,” as if he were the only one, the sinner par excellence, the greatest example of “sinner.’ And this humility “justified” him in God’s eyes.
Remember, we gain nothing by coming to God in the lie of pride, thinking that we are better, stronger, more intelligent, or more righteous than we are. The principle God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble is so important God repeated it three times (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5). We must remember that “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4).
Humility preserves us; pride destroys us. Acting in arrogance is like wearing a placard that says, “Kick me.” Being proud is a prayer to God: “Strike me down.” It’s a prayer He’s certain to answer. (Randy Alcorn)
Paul was one who possessed both a high pedigree and many religious achievements. He mentions these “trophies” in Philippians 3:5-6: “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
Yet, when confronted with the glory of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, he willingly gave it all up.
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
Why make this change? Why place all value in Christ and what He has done rather than on my own pedigree and achievements?
Because Paul wanted to “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:9).
Trying to be righteous on our own is pride. It is depending upon ourselves and believing (wrongly) that we can be good enough to earn God’s approval through our own good and righteous efforts.
You know what Paul had spent his whole life doing? Whole adult life? Doing what he says in the first half of the verse, “trying to gain a righteousness of his own that comes from the law,” or “law-keeping.”
That’s what he had spent his whole life doing. That was the essence of Judaism. That is why he became a Pharisee. He was one of the elite 6,000 Pharisees, who believed that they could attain salvation by perfect adherence to the law of God.
What kind of righteousness is Paul talking about? It’s a righteousness of good works, it’s self-righteousness. It is righteousness produced by self-effort, in one’s own strength (and generally) for one’s own glory.
Righteousness is doing right. It’s doing the best you can. Like the Army commercial says, “Be the best you can be.”
But “the best we can be” is never, ever, good enough.
Paul had tried it. And he wasn’t alone. In Romans 10 Paul’s own heart breaks for Israel. Why? Because they didn’t understand God’s righteousness and they sought to establish their own. That’s their whole problem—life-long effort to establish their own righteousness through good works, traditions, sincerity, ceremony, ritual, etc. Even having a deep, passionate love for God (or Christ) is not enough.
As Philip Melanchthon said:
“If somebody believes that he obtains the forgiveness of sins because he loves, he insults Christ and in God’s judgment he will discover that this trust in his own righteousness was wicked and empty” (Apologia)
Well, from God’s viewpoint all of those things put together is not good enough. Remember Isaiah 64:6? “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags?”
You see, Romans 3:20 says, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight,” not a single one. By the works of the law, by doing the law, does not justify a person, doesn’t make them right in God’s eyes.
As Spurgeon once put it so well, good morals can keep a person out of jail, but only Jesus Christ can keep a person out of hell.
Paul had spent his whole life trying to achieve his own righteousness, but like Martin Luther, it suddenly dawned on Paul that righteousness was not a goal to be achieved, but a gift to be received.
Paul now wanted and gloried in this new righteousness, this “alien righteousness,” which comes not from ourselves, but from God through faith. When Martin Luther was reading Romans 1:16-17 which says
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
R. C. Sproul explains…
He says, “Here in it,” in the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, ‘the just shall live by faith.’” A verse taken from the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament that is cited three times in the New Testament. And Luther would stop short and say, “What does this mean, that there’s this righteousness that is by faith, and from faith to faith? What does it mean that the righteous shall live by faith?”
And he began to understand that what Paul was speaking of here was a righteousness that God in His grace was making available to those who would receive it passively, not those who would achieve it actively, but that would receive it by faith, and by which a person could be reconciled to a holy and righteous God.
Now there was a linguistic issue that was going on here too. And it was this, that the Latin word for justification that was used at this time in church history was—and it’s the word from which we get the English word justification—the Latin word justificare. And it came from the Roman judicial system. And the term justificare is made up of the word justus, which is justice or righteousness, and the verb, the infinitive facare, which means to make. And so, the Latin fathers understood the doctrine of justification is what happens when God, through the sacraments of the church and elsewhere, make unrighteous people righteous.
But Luther was looking now at the Greek word that was in the New Testament, not the Latin word. The word dikaios, dikaiosune, which didn’t mean to make righteous, but rather to regard as righteous, to count as righteous, to declare as righteous. And this was the moment of awakening for Luther. He said, “You mean, here Paul is not talking about the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous, but a righteousness that God gives freely by His grace to people who don’t have righteousness of their own.”
And so Luther said, “Woah, you mean the righteousness by which I will be saved, is not mine?” It’s what he called a justitia alienum, an alien righteousness; a righteousness that belongs properly to somebody else. It’s a righteousness that is extra nos, outside of us. Namely, the righteousness of Christ. And Luther said, “When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost. And the doors of paradise swung open, and I walked through.”
So the righteousness that justifies doesn’t come from ourselves, but from God; and it doesn’t come by the works of the law but by faith.
Now, let’s talk about this word “faith” for a moment. The Greek is literally “through the faith of Christ” and some have taken this to speak of Christ’s faith, or rather faithfulness. His obedience to God is the store of righteousness that is credited to our account.
But I think the “faith about Christ” or “faith in Christ” fits the context better as the counterpart to the works of the law. It is our faith in Christ that receives the righteousness of Christ and we are justified before God.
Now, what is faith? Faith is much more than mere intellectual knowledge, or even emotional agreement. It is built upon those things, but ultimately faith is the decision to place my whole trust in Jesus Christ alone for my justification.
Faith is not a ladder I must climb, but a lifeline extended towards me. We don’t have to climb a ladder or ascend a wall, simply walk through a narrow door.
I love the story of Charles Blondin to illustrate the nature of faith and the importance of making a decision to totally rely on someone else.
Charles Blondin was a tightrope walker who stretched a tightrope across Niagara Falls in the mid-19th century.
He walked 160 feet above the falls several times back and forth between Canada and the United States as huge crowds on both sides looked on with shock and awe. Once he crossed in a sack, once on stilts, once blindfolded, another time on a bicycle, and once he even carried a stove and cooked an omelet!
On July 15, Blondin walked backward across the tightrope to Canada and returned pushing a wheelbarrow.
The Blondin story is told that it was after pushing a wheelbarrow across while blindfolded that Blondin asked for some audience participation. The crowds had watched and “Ooooohed” and “Aaaaahed!” He had proven that he could do it; of that, there was no doubt. But now he was asking for a volunteer to get into the wheelbarrow and take a ride across the Falls with him!
It is said that he asked his audience, “Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?” Of course the crowd shouted that yes, they believed!
It was then that Blondin posed the question – “Who will get in the wheelbarrow?’
Of course…none did.
Nobody really believed that he could carry them safely across.
You might know a lot about Jesus Christ and appreciate that He is both God and man and that historically He did die on the cross and rose from the dead. You might want him to be your Savior because you know that you are a sinner.
But unless you put your faith into action by making a decision to stop trusting in yourself and your own ability to be righteous and instead you put all your trust fully in Jesus Christ, you will not be justified.
Faith is putting all your confidence, all your hope, in Jesus Christ alone to save you. There is no “Jesus and…” this or that, but “Jesus alone.” Anytime you “add” anything to Jesus as a requirement for salvation, you don’t make something better, but destroy what is there. Some elements you can combine to create something new, while other elements when combined create destruction. We believe salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, nothing else. “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.”
“As long as one keeps clinging, even in the slightest degree, to his own righteousness, he cannot fully enjoy Christ’s. The two simply do not go together. The one must be fully given up before the other can be fully appropriated.” (William Hendriksen, p. 165).
Do you want the work of Christ in your behalf, or your own efforts to try to please God? Paul came to realize that one was better by far—having Christ’s obedience and law keeping put in his account.
That happens not by trying but by trusting. Paul had a lifetime of trying. He traded it in for a life of trusting.
Like someone has said, “All the world religions are spelled D-O, do.” “But Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E, done.” It has all been done for us and we just receive it by faith. We have been saved “by grace through faith” (Eph. 2:8), “not as a result of works” (2:9).
In biblical terms, grace includes forgiveness from God that is undeserved, unearned, and unrepayable.
Faith is best described this way: Faith is the confident, continuous confession of total dependence and trust in Jesus Christ for the necessary requirements for entrance into God’s kingdom.
Grace Still Amazes 