Union with Christ V: The Objective Result, pt 1

Union with Christ and the Objective Result of Justification

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is A .C. Floyd and we're looking at the doctrine of Union with Christ. It is a vital union like a branch to the vine. It is a union of love like a husband and wife.

It is spiritual and mysterious or mystical, but it is the context of the application of all the grace of God in redemption. This is how all of this becomes ours, either objectively ours, you know, the work of God for us, regardless of our ups and downs, or the work of God in us subjectively ours.

And we're going to talk about the objective, probably the objective result of union with Christ, and that is justification. So we want to, even though this is a pretty, you know, it's kind of that, in some ways, it's such a sweetly simple doctrine, the doctrine of justification by union with Christ.

And yet, in other ways, it's so wonderful. You know, it is again like climbing the mountain and you reach the cloud bank and you think, well, how can we really understand all that there is of the kindness of God in His justifying the sinner?

So we could probably make that simple today by asking a couple of key questions. So, A .C., why don't you start us off? What question is being answered when we think of the doctrine of justification by union with Christ?

How Can a Person Be Made Right with God?

The first question would be, how can a person be made right with God? And when I think of that question, the first place in the Scriptures that come to my mind is Job chapter 25. When Job's friends come to him, they begin to try to counsel him.

And in Job 25, Bildad the Shuhite begins to speak of God and His righteousness to Job. And this is what he writes,. And here's the question.

Yeah, pretty strong words. And there's another passage in Job that asks the same question, different words. What is man that he should be pure? Or, he who was born of a woman, that he should be righteous, behold, God puts no trust in His holy ones.

You know, when you think of the gap between God and the angelic hosts, the essential gap, the uncreated and the created. He goes on to say, So, like water, water goes down easy. But, sadly, sin goes down easily with humanity.

Now, that brings us to the issue of a righteous God. When we think about, how can a person be right with God? Well, you know, it is easy to get such inadequate views of justification and the result being then inadequate response from us to the God that justifies.

And, you know, that really is at the heart of holy living and so much, you know, that we need to talk about in the coming weeks. We don't want to allow that to be. We want to get a right measure of justification.

The Righteousness and Justice of God

So, we have to start not with how sinful we are, but how righteous God is. When we think of the righteousness of God or the justice of God, it's the same word. There is something so infinitely beautiful about that that we feel like, you know, in this doctrine, we're coming up to God and we have to cover our faces like the angelic host in Isaiah 6.

You know, in the pictures of God and in the revelation. How can we look on this perfection? There is one being who is essentially right. And so, you know, in writing down some thoughts about this, how do we summarize this?

And I wrote some things down, but I feel that, you know, they fail more than they succeed. But this is my best attempt. When we say that God is righteous, we say that he is morally good. But his goodness is a goodness without any flaw.

He is purity without any contamination. He is morally complete. There's nothing lacking in his moral character. He is not just a being that has nothing lacking, but he has no strong points. You know, we think of people that are very good.

Maybe that we admire and we say, Mr. So-and-so is known for this. Mrs. So-and-so, she's known for this. But when we think of humans who seem to really shine in some area morally where they have strengths, we notice those strengths because there are other areas where they're not as strong.

But God has no strong area and weak area. He is a moral being whose perfection has no imbalance. He's not strong in certain areas, but then sometimes that becomes unbalanced. He is moral straightness without any bend.

He is fairness without exception. The righteousness of God, we could say, is also there is this moral beauty without deformity. Excellence beyond comparison. That means everything about God is right. He is essentially right.

He doesn't work at this. It's what he is. He is rightness. He is righteousness itself. The thoughts of God are blameless. The desires of God are always pure. The motives of God are above suspicion. The actions of God are just.

The words of God are clean. The decisions of God are always equitable. And it's not that God is keeping rules like we think of a person. We say that is a godly man or a righteous man. What we're saying is he adheres to a code of right and wrong.

And when we look at God and say he is righteous, that is not what we mean. It is not that God is conforming to his own word and so therefore he's right. It's that he is himself righteousness. And if we have any doubt about that, there's a couple of eyewitnesses that we could call attention to.

Let me give one. An eyewitness who was considering the kindness of God to a sinner. And so in Psalm 89, the psalmist who's not David is writing about God's covenant with David years later. And thinking about how God treated a sinful man, David.

How does a holy God treat him? And he speaks of God's actions and he says this in Psalm 89 and verse 14. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Loving kindness and truth go before you.

So the paradox. If we ask Moses, a man who knew God well, what do you say about the righteousness of God? Is he fair? Are his motives above suspicion? Is he moral beauty without imperfection? And let's ask Moses at a dark time.

Deuteronomy 32. After 40 years of wandering, you know, being guided in the desert until that generation that rejected God in unbelief and were not allowed to go into the promised land, they're dead. Moses is not allowed to go into the promised land because of the righteousness of God.

And because of this unflinching righteousness, Moses at the end of his life, he writes this. In Deuteronomy 32, verse 3 and 4. I proclaim the name or the character of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God, the rock.

His work is perfect for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright as he. So we have a God who is infinitely, completely, timelessly perfect. Who is perfect in every way and who is straight and perfect in every moment and in every place that he that he dwells.

He is omnipresently righteous. So that leads us to a problem. How can, as you mentioned, how can a man be right with God? Or we could tweak that question. How can a sinful person be made or become right with a pure God?

The Problem of Divine Justice and Human Sin

Yeah, the question that you just asked, how can a sinful person become right with God, is a most important question. Because we need to think rightly, just stop, realize, consider, and think rightly about God as the righteous one.

We can't think about him in vague notions, like he's a cosmic grandfather who's somehow indifferent toward our sin, neutral toward it. Like he winks an eye at it saying, oh, well, you know, it's just, it's just something you do.

It's okay. I'm going to know that's not how God looks at sin. Because of who he is as the righteous one, as the just one, he has to respond. And he has to respond with perfect righteousness, perfect justice.

We might call it strict righteousness or strict justice. He can't leave any sin unaccounted for or undone. He has to deal with it perfectly.

Yeah, and, you know, if we think of justification as flowing out of kind of a vague, our vague sense that God is such a good God, you know, we think of morally good, not necessarily in the sense of righteous, but in our culture, the goodness of God tends to be primarily focused on benevolent.

He's a kind, good, loving, gentle, you know, forgiving God. And so God is so kind and loving and gentle that somehow he will declare sinners to be right with him. And, you know, the idea is, well, it's because he loves us so much.

You know, how could he do anything else? You know, we couldn't with someone we loved. We would have to find some way to maybe bend the rules or, as you say, kind of wink at sin, treat it as if it's a small matter.

So, you know, if God is aware of every sin against him and he never becomes forgetful, and he is aware of the nature of every sin, that it is grievous and heinous, then how can he look at us and say, you are right with me?

And that's where this whole issue of the paradox of mercy and justice together. If God were to forgive us in a way that doesn't include justice but only is merciful, then he would be a God that is different than the being that we read about in the Bible.

And he would be a God that while we would appreciate the free gift of forgiveness, we would not be able ultimately to love and worship that being because he would be the kind of being that, well, we would despise if he were here on earth.

Two illustrations. Imagine a judge who declares a guilty person innocent. Well, we despise that. Now, if we're the guilty person, we may say, man, you know, I'm glad that I was friends with that judge.

So the judge is there. A young man comes before him. You know, he got drunk. He drives home from a friend's house. He's inebriated and he hits a person and, you know, kills them. And he goes before the judge and he's being tried for manslaughter.

And the judge looks at him and recognizes, I know that boy's dad. We went to school together or we do business together. It's a prominent family in a small town. And so the judge kind of bends the rules and lets the young man off with a slap on the wrist.

The next man that comes, another young man, similar scene. He stands before the judge, but he comes from a family that perhaps is poor. And the judge has never met his parents, has no friendship with this boy's family.

And he throws the book at him. If we were in those two scenes, one after the next, we would leave that courtroom highly offended. How can a judge declare a wrong man right? If a judge looked at a man that was innocent, but because he despises, maybe he's a racist, maybe he doesn't like that man's race.

And he says, well, that man obviously is guilty. He's one of those kind of people. And they always act that way. And he doesn't wait for the facts. He just declares an innocent man guilty. We are incensed at that.

And rightly so. And God in the scriptures over and over says, any judge that declares a bad man good or a good man bad is an abomination to God. So how can God be a judge that looks at a bad man and says, you're right with me.

You're good with my law. How can he do that and not be a judge who has to sacrifice righteousness? And that's where this whole doctrine of justification needs to be clarified. Paul knows that. Paul speaks about it in Romans 3.

And we're going to look at next week how that is connected to union with Christ. But today, let's just clarify this word justify as it's used in scripture or justification.

Justification as a Legal Declaration, Not an Internal Change

In thinking about justification, the first thing that we need to think about is what justification does not do. So the first thing that justification does not do is make a person good internally. It doesn't change them.

So we don't need to think about justification in the same terms we think of like the new birth, when there's a new creature, a new creation, a new heart put in. That's not what justification deals with.

It deals with a change of standing before God, how the person is seen or accepted before God, and not in how they are fundamentally different internally.

Yeah, let's look at how the Bible uses this word. In Deuteronomy 25, verse 1, we read this. If there is a dispute between men and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.

So to justify the righteous or to condemn the wicked, it's not a moral alteration. So a man doesn't come into court accused of wrongdoing, and the judge hears the facts and says, this man is not guilty.

That man doesn't leave the courtroom morally transformed. A better, kinder, purer man. He simply leaves the courtroom with, as you mentioned, with his legal standing. He is not guilty. He is not under the wrath of the law or the condemnation of the law of the land.

He is right in the eyes of the law. Not in every area of life. It doesn't mean he's a better husband, better dad, better worker. It means that in this area, he legally stands acquitted of the charges.

So if a man goes into the courtroom and he's a bad man, and he's done bad things, and the judge listens to the facts and says, you are guilty, that man doesn't, at that moment, become a worse man. He doesn't become a more befouled man on the inside.

He doesn't morally go down with that declaration. He is the same man morally as he was when he walked into the room. The difference is that there has been a decision and an alteration of his legal standing in the eyes of the law.

He is now at odds with the law of the land. He is under the law's curse. So when we think of justification as a legal declaration, a legal alteration of a man's standing with the law that is objective, it's the position the man has before the eyes of the law.

Think of it this way. It is wicked, God says, in Proverbs 17. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. We mentioned that God hates this.

False judges, he hates them. But if justification or the flip side, condemnation, are a moral alteration in a person, how would that make sense? So, he who justifies the wicked. If a judge had the power to look at a wicked man and say something that would alter the man's moral condition to make a man go from being a wicked man to a good man morally, would that be an abomination to God?

Well, no. I mean, the Christian, you know, when we think about taking the gospel to the world and when we think about praying for people and living and speaking in such a way as to be a part of the great work of God, we're looking for that very transformation.

We want to see people who live against God become people who live for God, with God, by God. So that moral transformation is a beautiful thing and God does it all the time. To do something in a person that takes them from wicked living to godly living is a wonderful thing.

So, when God says, if a judge justifies the wicked, it's an abomination. It cannot mean if a judge does something that changes the inside of a wicked man and makes him a good man, it offends God. Now, all of this may seem like overkill, but when we get further on in the doctrine of justification, it is so important that we understand this.

Justification is rooted in something that God does outside of us or for us. It is Christ for us. And our union with Christ allows that to actually be experienced. But it is not what God is doing in a person that transforms us, that touches the issue of justification.

That's, as you mentioned, regeneration or sanctification. And we'll be talking about the doctrine of union with Christ and sanctification in coming weeks. But we need to limit ourselves here. What does God do that takes a man who is wrong with him and makes it so God can declare that that man is right with him?

It is a forensic legal declaration. It is a positional change, not moral. And next week, we're going to look at how union with Christ is at the heart of the positional or legal change that occurs when the sinner is justified or declared right with God.