You probably already have on your mind enough embarrassing incidents that you have gone through without me trying to add any more to the list; but still, I would like you to think about how you would feel if you were in the horrendous situation that I am about to describe.

Imagine, just for a moment, that you got all dressed up in the most expensive outfit in your wardrobe. Someone who loved you very much gave you that clothing; you could never have afforded to buy it yourself. And now you were going to the park to meet that someone whom you also loved very much. However, just as you arrived there, you came under an attack from a group of people who ripped off your clothing. There were several onlookers but no one wanted to offer you any assistance. You were able to break away from the attackers and, needless to say, you left in a big hurry! But where would you run to? And think how humiliating it would be to be running down the street naked!

When you escaped, your attackers did not chase after you, because they had accomplished what they wanted, and that was to make you naked. The reason they assaulted you in the first place was not that they had anything against you personally; what bothered them was the garment you were wearing.

By now you may be wondering why I would want you to consider going through such a terrible experience. You may be thinking that the possibility of something so repulsive happening to you is too remote even to think about. Still, I must tell you that this actually did happen to a man in the Bible, and, in a sense, it is happening right now to countless Christians. And you may be one of them.

This incident is so unusual, such a strange occurrence, that it cannot go unnoticed; therefore, it must have an important meaning. This is the account given according to the Gospel of Mark: "A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind" (Mark 14:51, 52 )

The spiritual meaning of this bizarre event will begin to unfold as we take a look at the only garment this young man was wearing, the one that caused such a ruckus, the one others were so anxious to strip off him. It was a linen garment. The word "linen" in Greek means "fine" and in Hebrew it means "white." An angel who appeared to Daniel was dressed in linen (Dan.10:5) as well as the ones that John saw in a vision (Rev.15:6). In the Old Testament the Hebrew priests' garments were made of linen. Being clothed with linen represents being covered with purity. It is a type of a spiritual covering that cannot be earned; it is altogether a gift from God. There are specific instructions in the Bible for the Hebrew priests concerning linen garments: "And it shall come to pass, that when they enter in at the gates of the inner court, they shall be clothed with linen garments . . . they shall not gird themselves with any thing that causeth sweat" (Ezek.44:17, 18).

An opposite type of material from linen is wool. Wool represents something that makes you sweat, and it was forbidden by divine law to mix linen and wool together in the same garment. A priest entering the inner court wearing a garment made out of linen and wool would be like us trying to get into Heaven by a mixture of God's grace and our works. The children of Israel were also forbidden to wear a garment that was made of both wool and linen. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together" (Deut.22:11) and ". . . neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee" (Lev.19:19).

Figuratively speaking, there are Christians who, by faith, wear the pure linen garment, which symbolizes living a life that is free from guilt. There are others who, by trusting in their own works, wear a garment of wool and are sweating under their own fleshly condemnation. And there are those who wear a garment made partly of linen and partly of wool: one moment they will be trusting in the grace of God, the next they will be trusting in their own works. They cannot understand why they are so unstable. Their spiritual lives resemble a roller coaster ride, going from the mountain tops to the deep valleys.

Trying to combine these two garments is awfully hard; they just do not match. For a child of God who lives in the freedom of God's grace to have real fellowship with a child of God who lives under the bondage of the law is next to impossible.

The fine linen mentioned in the Scriptures was extremely expensive; it was worn by royalty. It is a symbolic picture of the most costly item that was ever purchased in the history of the universe, which is the robe of righteousness woven by the Son of God on the cross at Calvary!

Wearing fine linen is the heavenly assigned dress code for every child of God; it is the magnificent garment for the Bride of Christ. The Bible says, "Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints" (Rev.19:7, 8).

The garment of righteousness is given to all the moment they receive Christ and are united to Him by the mighty power of God. To own such a gift from Him is certainly a cause for rejoicing. The Bible says, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels" (Isa.61:10).

The reason the man in the Bible who was following Jesus was under attack is because he was wearing nothing but a linen garment. This is a picture of a Christian who covers himself with nothing but the righteousness of Christ, which is the only covering that is acceptable to God: "And their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord" (Isa.54:17).

Do you dare--by faith--to wear the garment of righteousness for your only covering? If you do you also will come under attack, for there will be many who will try their best to strip it off you; and I am sad to state that most of them will be brothers and sisters in the Lord. Always remember that God has given this garment to you, and no one, including Satan, can strip it from you unless you let them.

When you come under attack for wearing it, will you stand by Christ in His righteousness, or will you leave your garment and run away from Him in nakedness as the young man in the Bible did? There are great benefits for standing firmly in the right- eousness of Christ; it will do wonders for any child of God. The Bible says: "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever" (Isa.32:17).

What God's people need most as they pass through this insane world is "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Phil.4:7) and the assurance that they can never be separated from Christ (Rom.8:38, 39). Once you have been born again by the power of God, don't listen to anyone who tells you that you will be cast into hell if you don't line up with their doctrinal standards! If you are wearing the robe of righteousness, you will not be intimidated by legalistic brutes who want to attack the Bride of Christ.

You may greatly desire to be wearing the right kind of spiritual clothing, but, due to all the different teachings coming forth in these latter days, you may find it difficult to know what is real and what is false. It is like a woman going into a clothing store wanting to purchase a pure linen dress, and she finds a large display of dresses that look like they are made of linen but are synthetic. To get what you want when you purchase an article of clothing, you have to read the label!

Do you know what kind of spiritual garment you are wearing? Are you willing to examine it by pondering a few of these questions? Speaking about yourself, can you say, "I am a righteous person"? Do you find that hard to say? Do you think, "I will be more righteous when I get more serious about going to church, or reading my Bible or being kinder to others"? If so, regardless of how good your intentions are, your linen may be mingled with wool.

Do you ask Christians for their doctrinal statement before you will associate with them, or are you loving and enjoying the whole family of God? Perhaps your garment has a denominational label attached to it.

If I had the nerve to suggest that you simply follow Jesus and drop some things; such as, baptism, confirmation, church membership . . . yes . . . and even holy communion . . . would you be ready to throw something at me? If so, I wouldn't try to defend myself, but I would suggest that it is possible you are all wrapped up in religious ceremonies and traditions rather than the robe of righteousness.

If you try to wear a woolen garment in the warm love of God, you are going to sweat and you will not be able to enjoy His love the way you should. Wearing wool is symbolic of trying to establish your own righteousness by obeying rules and regulations. It is like trying to follow Moses in the wilderness while living under the Old Covenant. Being clothed in fine linen represents following Jesus, and believing that your righteousness is secured by the finished work that He did for you on the cross.

You cannot go in two directions at once. You cannot follow Moses and Jesus at the same time; you must choose one or the other. Law and grace do not mix; wool and linen cannot be mingled. You must put on one or the other. Are you willing to put on the linen? Are you willing to come all the way into the New Testament? Are you willing to plunge all the way into the grace of God?

The Bible portrays our Lord's grace as a deep, wide river. If we want to know the reality of being eternally secure in the arms of our Heavenly Father, we must believe that His grace completely covers us. That means to be willing to jump in the river and swim in the grace of God, which is not as easy to do as it sounds because our flesh is terrified of that deep water.

An angel showed the prophet Ezekiel this river of grace in a vision. Living water was flowing eastward from the altar of the temple. The angel took a measuring line in his hand and went forth to measure the water. He took Ezekiel into this river a distance of fifteen hundred feet and the water was to the prophet's ankles; the same distance again, the water was to his knees; another fifteen hundred feet and the water was to his waist. Then the angel, using his measuring line, took him fifteen hundred feet further into the river, and this is how Ezekiel described it: "And it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over" (Ezek.47:5).

Oh, the depths of God's grace! It cannot be measured; it is bottomless and reaches higher than the clouds. There is no lack of supply because it is endless; there is plenty for everyone who wants it.

The lovely Bride of Christ has been saved by God's grace. She is in the river, but it seems like she is only standing in it with the water level somewhere between the ankles and the knees. She longs to be secure in the love of God, but is afraid to get wet. There she is, in near the shoreline, clinging to the flimsy branches of religion, hanging onto the coat tails of some pastor or evangelist, holding on to man made doctrines and traditions, and screaming out for someone to throw her a life preserver that has been manufactured by the world's system. Oh, if she would only be willing to let go of those things and learn to swim in the deep water!

The Bible goes on to describe what Ezekiel saw in the vision of the river when the angel brought him to a place where he was able to see the effects of the river of grace. It went into the dry desert and into the sea. It brought life to everything it touched: ". . . which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed" (Ezek.47:8). (Often in the Scriptures the sea represents humanity.)

The prophet also saw in the vision fishermen who cast forth their nets and caught a multitude of fish, which is a picture of the fishers of men casting out the gospel net. (Notice that these fishermen were working in the grace of God.)

There was an area that the river did not heal: "But the miry places thereof and the marshes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt" (Ezek.47:11). Don't expect God to cater to your fleshly desires. His river of grace will flow into your heart (spirit) but not into the swampland of your old adamic nature that has been crucified with Christ on the cross (Rom.6:6).

At the end of the vision, the prophet saw trees growing on the banks of the river, which had leaves that did not fade and had new fruit that remained. The fruit was for food and the leaves were for medicine. In the Bible God's people are sometimes referred to as trees. It says, ". . . that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified" (Isa.61:3). If our roots are deep in Christ and we are growing in His grace, that description will apply to us; also, this one: "And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper" (Ps.1:3).

The condition of a tree is shown through its leaves. A tree with bright, fresh-colored leaves shows that it is well nourished, while one with faded leaves reveals a lack of moisture and nourishment. It is so delightful to be around people who are in good spiritual health. You can easily tell the ones who are feeding on the word of God and living in His grace from the ones who are chewing on something else. It doesn't take long to know if someone has had the grace of God flowing into his heart, or if he has had the law pounded into his head.

The Bible says that the leaves of the trees planted by the Living Water are for the healing of the nations (Rev.22:2). Can you imagine what healing and spiritual life would come to this nation and world if all Christians would live in God's grace?

How about you? How far into the water will you go? To your ankles . . . your knees . . . your waist? Do you insist on keeping your human reasoning above the water, or will you venture out where it is over your head? Are you willing to let go of the rope of organized religion and simply walk with Jesus? Will you come all the way into the New Covenant? In other words, are you willing to plunge into the deep water where you will be totally submerged in the grace of God?!

When the Lord's sheep are out there in the water, there will be many legalistic wolves dressed in sheep's clothing, lurking on the shoreline. They will not go into the water, so they will try to lure the sheep out where they can get at them to rip off their linen garments, bind them with the rope of the law, and then devour them. If you hear them calling you, don't go after them. Stay in the river. "Keep yourselves in the love of God . . ." (Jude 21).

There were Christians in the church of Laodicea who did not cover themselves with fine linen. They felt very smug under their synthetic garments of worldly riches, and the Lord rebuked them for indecent exposure by sending this message to them: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent" (Rev.3:15-19).

Many evangelists, pastors and Bible teachers who have a complete misconception of God will say that being spued out of the mouth of God is to lose your salvation and be cast into everlasting damnation. Spued out of the mouth of God is being in a position where one is not able to hear or speak His words. Some of God's kids have chosen to stay in the swamp of humanism rather than the river of grace, to dress in the filthy rags of their own righteousness (Isa.64:6) rather than the fine linen robe that their Heavenly Father purchased. They may be in a terrible place, but they still belong to God. He may have spued them out of His mouth but not out of His heart! When God's children are miserable, blind, deaf and naked, they are still in His family; He has promised not to cast them out (John 6:37).

There is a wonderful gift that God has available for all. It is called "repentance." The unsaved may use it to come to Christ and receive eternal life, and the saved, who like sheep have wandered away from the Shepherd, may use it to come back to a close relationship with Him. It could be called the vehicle that brings you to the river of grace.

True repentance is not just being sorry for our sins. It also is turning back to Jesus. Peter sinned: he cursed and swore and denied the Lord three times in one day. Then he went out and wept bitterly (Mat.26:74,75). Yet he did not allow his depression to keep him away from the Lord.

Oh, how kind the Good Shepherd is to His sheep when they go astray. Peter was the first of the twelve disciples the Lord appeared to after His resurrection (1Cor.15:5). That encounter was so personal that nothing more about it is recorded in the Scriptures. However, there is another time when the Lord appeared to Peter and six other disciples that is mentioned in detail.

They were in a boat close to land, and Jesus spoke to them from the shore. Peter was the first to get to Him; he did not even wait for the boat to get to land. But at first Peter did not recognize who was speaking. (We, too, sometimes have a problem identifying the Lord's voice when He speaks to us.) But when John told him who it was, Peter immediately put on a garment (for he was naked), cast himself into the sea, and hurried into the presence of the Lord (John 21:7).

This is a beautiful illustration of a child of God putting on the robe of righteousness and thrusting himself into the grace of God. One man in the Bible was dressed, but left his garment and ran away from Jesus; another was naked, but put on his garment and hurried to Jesus.

If you try to wear the robe of righteousness on your flesh, you will soon discover it will not fit. It is a spiritual garment made for the new man; it will not cover the old human nature. The Bible says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2Cor.5:17). Trying to fashion righteousness to our fleshly desires is like putting a piece of new cloth onto an old garment, or like putting new wine into old wineskins (Mat.9:16,17). The Bible tells us to ". . . put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph.4:24). That is what wearing the linen garment represents.

Many Christians gauge their righteousness by how they feel. It is only natural to think you should feel good if you are covered with a beautiful garment; but feelings have nothing to do with faith, and the Scripture says, "The just shall live by faith" (Rom.1:17).

There is a parable in the Bible that tells about two men who were praying in the temple: one a self-righteous pharisee and the other a sinful publican. The pharisee felt so good in his own religious works that he thanked God he was not like other men, especially that he was not like the publican who was there with him who felt so miserable he would not raise his head, but beat upon his breast as he cried out for God's mercy (Luke 18:9-14). The one who went home wearing the garment of righteousness was not the one who had that "good feeling" in the temple. (Sometimes in the Scriptures the word "temple" represents our body [1Cor:6:19].) Our spirituality simply cannot be evaluated on the basis of how we feel.

While we, who belong to Christ, are still in these bodies on this side of the curtain of Heaven, we are not going to feel righteous (even though we are by the declaration of God). This old miserable flesh will often cause us to feel awful, but it will not always be this way--there will be a big change up ahead. The Bible says, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1John 3:2).

The terrible agony that Christ went through in the Garden of Gethsemane, where His sweat was as great drops of blood falling to the ground, was not due to the physical suffering He knew lay ahead (as terrible as that would be); it was from knowing He was soon to be made sin. All your sins, and mine and the sins of all mankind were to be placed on Him. For the first time, the holy, spotless Son of God, who is from everlasting to everlasting, was to feel all the sin and guilt of all humanity and be separated from God as He was being punished in our place! In the garden He knew He would be crying out, "E'li, E'li, la'ma sa-bach'-tha-ni? . . . My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34).

Don't you ever believe that His suffering on that cross was not enough to pay for your complete salvation and for your total righteousness! Don't you ever believe you must add some of your own works to that!

Please read this carefully. Just as our sin was imparted to Him to be punished, His righteousness is imparted to us the moment we repent and receive Jesus into our hearts! The Bible says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2Cor.5:21).

We children of God who are still here on earth in our physical bodies know, by faith in the Word of God, that we are already seated in heavenly places, that we have already been delivered from the power of darkness, and are already translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son (Col.1:13). We claim it now by faith, not by feelings; but there will be a time when we will have our glorified resurrected bodies and we will then enjoy the "feelings." Just as Christ felt our sin and guilt on the cross, we will feel His righteousness when we go through the change. But, as for now, we have it through faith.

The robe of righteousness is worn by faith, strictly by faith. Abraham is called the father of all them that believe, and just as righteousness was imputed unto him, it must be imputed to us (Rom.4:11). How did he get it? "Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God" (Jas.2:23).

Consider for a moment how valuable you are to God. He did not purchase you with corruptible things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ (1Pet.1:18). It is the sacrifice of His Son on the cross that blotted out your sins forever. It is Christ in you that makes you righteous in the sight of God. Your Heavenly Father loves you, and He wants to take good care of you. Don't run from Him; run toward Him.

There are many distractions in this world to prevent you from keeping your priorities straight. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything you need will be added to you (Mat.6:33). Your calling is not to a church, or to a lot of rules and regulations, or to follow a man or a denom- ination, or to a lot of ceremonial pomp--your calling is to God. When you are securely established in His righteousness, you can understand His instructions and know how to do first things first.

We must begin with loving God with all our hearts (Mat.22:37). Now that is not hard to do, and if we do that first, the rest will come easy. It is the same way with our work for the Lord: it is easy if we put first things first. The disciples asked Jesus, "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" Jesus answered, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John.6:28, 29).

The Lord instructs us to let our light shine in a way that will glorify God. That is also easy and enjoyable if we do it in the right way. Want to turn your lamp up a notch? If you do, just switch onto brightness by believing in the finished work of Christ for your complete righteousness in the sight of God.

Not only can you brighten your light, but you can help others to shine out for the Lord, too, by telling them about the righteousness of Christ that is available for them. The Bible says, "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever" (Dan.12:3).