"No righteousness nor merit, no beauty can I plead."

“No righteousness nor merit, no beauty can I plead.”

Hymn: “I Saw the Cross of Jesus” – Frederick Whitfield (1829-1904)
Common Tune: WHITFIELD

 “How do you plea?” the judge asked as he peered over the top of his reading glasses from what seemed at that moment twenty feet above the accused. That imposing presence from the bench is one of the strongest tools at any judge’s disposal. Taking a deep breath and swallowing almost audibly, the accused answered: “According to what the cross of Jesus tells me, I’m a vile and guilty creature saved only through the Lamb. So I can plead no righteousness; there’s nothing beautiful. upon which to base my case. I have no merit – no excellent argument. I guess I’ll just say that I glory in the cross. I am now entitled to be called one of  his own. Is that a good enough answer? Can that be my plea?”


The response of the here accused is basically what we plead as we sing the second stanza of this great old hymn:
    I love the cross of Jesus, it tells me what I am:
    A vile and guilty sinner saved only through the Lamb.
    No righteousness nor merit, no beauty can I plead.
    Yet in the cross I glory, my title there I read.

We have no excuse for our sinful behavior; we simply claim the cross… or the blood of him who died there in our place.

Our blood-bought salvation is not easily understood… theologically speaking. It’s what the French would call tres complique! But for me to understand it, I have to rely on pictures or circumstances – and the courtroom is one of those for me. I stand guilty, but my sentence has been dismissed. Therefore, in the sight of God, my bold, grateful plea can be “not guilty.”

Think you’re righteous? Think you deserve your salvation? Think you’re too creative to be omitted? Think again.

Hear Lloyd Larson’s setting of this text