Justification by Faith (Samuel Blair) | The Whole Counsel

Welcome back to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me is Chuck Baggett, and we're looking again at the book, Salvation in Full Color, 20 Sermons by Great Awakening Preachers. And again, the theme of the book is the entirety of the work of our salvation.

So we're not merely looking at these wonderful aspects of the kindness of God to us as sinners and the completeness of the provision that we have in Christ, but we want to remember with each sermon that we're looking at, we are also looking at the different facets of the astonishing wisdom and love and power of the triune God.

So every aspect of these truths is important, not just because it touches our own salvation, but because it does touch upon the honor of God. And so we want to be careful with these truths, not because knowing them perfectly guarantees our rescue, but because these are the truths that are like, you know, these are the beams of the sun, the rays of the sun.

These are the expressions of God's greatness seen in our rescue. And so we that love the Lord, we want to love the truths of the Lord. Now, we're looking today at the doctrine of justification by faith.

And it is a theme, of course, that was at the heart of the Reformation, along with things like sola scriptura, that the Bible is the only authority and the final authority for all Christian life and belief.

And sola Christus, you know, it's only through Christ. But also sola fide, it's through faith alone in Christ that a person receives justification. And we were talking earlier before the podcast that really this is a great place to be reminded of a kind of a fundamental truth, and that is each generation of Christianity has to, in a sense, rediscover these great truths for themselves.

I mean, so our forefathers passed them down to us, of course, and we have great teachers, written, you know, documents. We have the Scripture. We have the Spirit of Christ. But every individual, in a sense, has to have, you know, a Protestant Reformation in their own heart.

I see that the Scripture is trustworthy. I see that Christ is the only way. And I understand justification by faith for myself. And so there is that, you know, that personal grabbing hold of that. And what we want to do today is kind of pull the doctrine out, dust it off, fall in love with it again, and, you know, and look at ways that we might live on this, or how we might understand this more carefully.

And our helper today is a man named Samuel Blair. Samuel Blair was a godly minister, blessed, very effective in the Second Great Awakening. He was not only a minister, but he was also a teacher of ministers.

And so at this point in time, many of the evangelicals didn't want to go to Harvard and Yale because of a kind of a moral and spiritual decline. So sometimes pastors who had the academic ability would turn their homes into little seminaries.

The Log Cabin is one, you know. These were names that were kind of given as a nickname, as a slur. The Tenets had it. Samuel Blair had one. And one of the, I guess, the most famous of Samuel Blair's pupils was Samuel Davies.

Blair was a very intellectual man. As Chuck and I worked through the sermon, we noticed that it is very different than, like, a George Whitefield sermon. Whitefield sermons are extremely simple, full of pictures that kind of stick with you.

Blair is much more like you're listening to a professor explain precisely. Also, Whitefield was much more gripping, you know, personal application, exhortation. Yeah, I think if you measured the application section of Whitefield sermons compared to the doctrine section, you'd almost be, like, half and half, you know.

Whereas Blair is, like, 90 doctrine, explaining very carefully, and then just the last page is, like, application. So different ways, you know, different gifts that God gives men. But you can see why Whitefield was so popular with the masses, and Blair was a man that taught preachers.

So really good things here that we need to be reminded of, so we're going to do that.

The Sermon's Text and Three Main Points

Today. Chuck, why don't you give us the overview? The sermon is actually entitled The Gospel Method of Salvation, and his text is Romans 10 .4, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.

He has three points with lots of sub-points. The nature of true faith in Christ is the first point, and he spends probably half the sermon on that. Second is the necessity of faith in Christ for justification.

Third, the glory and excellency of God's method of justification. And then, as you mentioned, some short application. So that's just a brief overview of how he's going to approach the sermon. As he sets out to talk about this and demonstrate these truths about faith, he first gives us a definition of faith, and to do that he goes to the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession and answers that faith is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation as he is freely offered to us in the gospel.

So that's, I think, a helpful definition for us.

The Nature of True Faith in Christ

Yeah, and basically that kind of lays out the outline for a sermon. He sticks very close to that. When he talks about the nature of faith, he says that it includes two great matters, the ascent of the mind.

That is that we agree wholeheartedly, you know, without reservation, that God is true and that what he has said about us and about our sin and about the way of redemption through Jesus Christ alone, his life, his death, that these things are trustworthy.

So the ascent. We might say the brain, you know, the intellect. Okay, I believe with my mind. He says there's also the free conduct of the will where we gladly lean all on him. We gladly turn away from other hopes, refusing to add anything to Jesus Christ.

We turn from all of our righteousness, all of our resolutions, and we lean all of our hope on Christ. Now, this sermon has so many sub points. We've decided that we're just kind of hit some of the points that we feel are most needed for today.

So I think this is one of them. When we look at the scene with evangelicalism today, we find, you know, some extremes. One would be easy believism, where mental ascent would be all that there is. So someone says to you, Chuck, if you want to go to heaven, you just need to know these facts and say, do you agree?

And you would say, well, sure, I accept those as true, or I agree with those. And so kind of a nod of the head is all that's required. Whether the life is transformed after that is maybe not even expected or looked for.

So that would be an extreme example. And we don't want to paint people who use the sinner's prayer, you know, as all with that brush, but that would be an extreme example. The other example would be, though, a hyper-Calvinism, which, amazingly, there are versions of hyper-Calvinism that would teach that because God made choices in the past, his choice to elect is all that's required.

So no faith or repentance are actually needed for justification to be received, and we.

Feel that that is equally unbiblical. Perhaps even arguing that those two things are works, and you can't add to your salvation, so how would you bring those along? Yeah, and I remember.

Asking a person that said that, and the idea was that, well, once you see Christ in heaven, because you're elect, you end up in heaven, and because you see—when you see Christ in heaven, then you'll believe then.

But that doesn't really match the Scripture, does it? I mean, it matches a logic. If God has made choices in the eternity past, and God being God, all of his choices will come to fruition, then, really, the abuse of that is that all the means that God has chosen to bring us to that end are ignored or thought of as unnecessary.

With that logic, you could say that the life and death of Christ are unnecessary. Well, God made an electing choice, and his determinative decree is all that's required. Well, then why did Christ come?

Why must the gospel be preached? Why must men believe and repent? And I think the simple answer to that is, well, the King, who is sovereign, has declared that this is the way that this will be accomplished.

So, let's think a little bit about the nature of faith. So, Chuck, how can we steer a course between the ease of believism, where we just give a person a list of the most basic facts, and they agree to them, but on the other end, maybe kind of a legalism, where we say, if your faith doesn't have, and we give this long list of fruits of faith, and say, well, if those aren't all there at the beginning, then you don't have real faith at all.

How can we steer a course between those two deadly, slippery slopes?

One way that we would try to balance those two things or to steer that course would be to understand the difference between faith and its product, the fruit that it produces. So, if faith is genuine, it must necessarily produce some fruit, but the fruit itself is not faith.

So, that would be one thing to keep in mind. Yeah, I think that really is a critical one. One example of young preachers that didn't do that would be the earliest days of Whitefield and Wesley. They taught that assurance of faith, which is definitely a fruit, they taught that it was actually part of the essence of faith, that being assured that you are a Christian is essentially the same as trusting God, and therefore, anyone who lacked assurance, who had a shaky assurance, whose assurance might ebb and flow, they said, well, then you must not be a Christian.

How could you be brought into God's family? How could you be born again and not know it? Now, to be fair to them, they were in the Anglican system, which offered no real assurance, you know, today. It was based more on, you know, a bit of a kind of a Roman Catholic view, perhaps back then, of working out your salvation, and assurance would come at the end.

So, they're reacting against that error, but their reaction was equally erroneous. Years later, they said that they understood that they were wrong, and partly through reading the Puritans, they realized that assurance was a fruit, not part of the root, and it could, like all fruit, it could be, you know, in season, out of season, so to speak, you know, it could be there more or less, and doubting yourself at times was not evidence that you were not a Christian.

So,.

They went back and corrected it. There are some who still take that kind of view, though maybe for different reasons, but the answer to lack of assurance is, well, just, you know, get saved.

Yeah. Another way we could steer a course between those two dangers of kind of an easy-believism versus kind of a legalistic lumping everything together into faith, and saying, you have to have all of this, and it's almost as if it does become a work, is understanding, again, the nature of regeneration.

In regeneration, if the whole of our soul is awakened, is made alive to God, made responsive, then faith naturally would include all the faculties of the soul, though not perfectly. You know, we're not talking about a perfect faith.

We're not even really talking about strong faith versus weak faith. We're really just talking about the existence of real faith, but what is real faith? It is the response of the mind, but also the heart and the will to the great truths of Christ, and so we would say, like he says, there is the ascent of the mind.

I believe what God has said to be true. I agree with that, but then you can't imagine a person really agreeing with that and not also delighting in it. Now, I love the Christ that God has shown me, the Savior that is so perfectly suited to me and so wonderfully willing, and so it's not just an ascent.

There's a change of heart toward Christ, and then the will, I cast all my hopes upon Him. So I think if we understand those things, we can have a fully developed biblical view of faith, avoiding kind of the easy believism of our day without sliding over into, like you mentioned, expecting someone to have all the fruit of faith and saying, well, that all has to be there in order for you to be declared right with God.

So the nature of faith, mental ascent, but also involves the free conduct of the will. So another issue regarding faith is.

Faith as the Instrument of Justification, Not a Work

Whether or not faith is essential to justification, and if it is essential, then does it become a work? Well, faith, the scriptures describe faith as being essential to justification. Justification by faith is how it refers to it often, and we're told that without faith, we cannot come to God, we cannot please Him.

He that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. So faith is repeatedly shown as necessary, essential. And yet, is it a work? Well, if it's a work, then are we justified by faith?

Have you just been justified by your work? So how do we distinguish between it being essential, necessary to justification, but not as something that earns justification?

So is it a meritorious condition? No. It is not a condition that once it's fulfilled, it has earned anything. But by the very nature of how God saves us, by placing us in His Son, and being in His Son, we have all that the Son has purchased and constantly provides in the new covenant.

God has determined that that would be accomplished through faith. And so faith uniting us to the source of our salvation, the person of Christ, faith is essential. And Blair talks about the beggar reaching out an empty hand.

No beggar reaching out an empty hand would have any right to think that that has earned the kindness of a benefactor. But if the beggar holds his hand in, in pride, and will not stretch his hand out, hoping only in that person's kindness, he'll receive nothing.

It hasn't earned anything, but it is essential to receiving that he stretches it out. For the Christian, faith is a gift from the Lord, like repentance. But it is a gift that you must exercise. And in turning the heart and the mind and the will away from all else to Christ, and being united to Christ through that faith and the work of the Spirit placing us in Christ, we receive all that we call salvation.

One of the things Blair mentioned about the activity of faith being essential, he gave an illustration of a man that's drowning and a board floats by him. And he says, you know, so let's say the board is the great realities of Christ, you know, and we're drowning in sin and in the false hopes of our righteousness.

If we look at that board and agree that that's a board that would hold us, you know, that would save me if I would grab that. That's one thing. And you'd have to believe that to even make an effort. But if that's all you do is agree and intellectually kind of process that, if you don't reach out your arm and wrap it around the board, you know, you drown.

And it's just a really simple illustration, but good. These are great facts that I'm reading about. You know, these are things I'm hearing about from the ministers' sermons, the books that I read. But if I don't lay hold of them, if I don't receive them, take them in, you know, all those wonderful metaphors we have of faith in Scripture, if I don't lean upon them, then it does me no more good than the board floating by the drowning man.

Another great thing that he points out is that when we say that faith is the ascent of the mind, that leads us to something that's pretty important, especially for our day. And that is that there must be what he calls a distinct knowledge of the doctrines of Christ in order to be saved.

If a person has only a vague idea of religion, and he's kind of hoping in this vague idea of religion. And he, in his day, he points to the Roman Catholicism. He says, well, you kind of had this superstitious faith in your church, or in my priest, or in whatever my church has said is true.

Okay, well, if my church says it's true, I'm one of them, therefore I must believe it. He says, without distinct understanding of what the Scripture says about Jesus Christ, what are you believing? Well, you're not really believing anything, are you?

You're kind of, you just kind of believe in like a basic hopefulness, like, well, I'm going to be okay because I'm this. So, it is essential, as we look at Scripture and the Scriptural definition of faith, it is essential that we become people who acquaint ourselves with what the Bible itself says about the work of Christ.

If not, we might end up at the end of time, so to speak, standing before a Lord, telling Him, trying to, you know, in a sense, trying to convince God that we're believers. But what have you believed in?

Yeah, faith has its object. Yeah, and that is much more important, what object your faith grabs hold of, than the amount of faith. We tend to think big faith, little faith is the importance. Actually, little faith, in the right object, is faith.

Big faith, in a wrong object, is not biblical faith. So, when we say that faith is more than assenting,.

We're not saying that you don't assent. There is doctrine to believe, and you need to believe that doctrine. There are essentials that must be believed, and those essentials ultimately lead.

To a person. Certainly, and that reminds me of a statement that Spurgeon made. Spurgeon talked about the fact that we are never called upon to embrace or to believe a plan of salvation. We are called upon to embrace the Savior, and if you think about that, that really does rescue us from so many of the kind of the pitfalls that people find themselves in.

If you're embracing a plan of salvation, that's one thing, but if you're embracing a Savior, the whole Savior, then you have the Lordship of Christ. You know, I've embraced a King, so my life is ruled by Him.

You have, you know, the righteousness of Christ. I've embraced one who has kept the law for me. You have the free forgiveness that comes from Christ. I embrace the one who actually became the sacrifice whose blood washes me.

You know, in taking the whole Jesus, and with mind and heart and will, embracing, turning to Him, away from the things we used to hope in, you know, that's the biblical picture of faith and its object.

The Glory of God's Method of Justification

One of the things so beautiful about the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ alone is that it is perfectly suited to every aspect of our spiritual need. I mean, there just isn't anything that you or I need as sinners that doesn't come from Christ.

He's the great treasurer of heaven and isn't received through this faith, this dependence. But the other thing that makes it so beautiful is that it gives us this perfect rescue in a way that most exalts the King that we now love.

I mean, would we really love a salvation that got us out of hell, so to speak, and then we turn to the one that got us out of hell, and we realize that this way of salvation dishonored Him, you know, made Him look less than He is, and that would grieve us now that we love Him.

So it's a double delight for us to study the doctrines of salvation because we do see in this that God has given us the clearest displays of His perfections. So we know that every knee will bow and confess that He's Lord, and we'll see in some fashion that He is better than we can describe Him to be.

Now, one thing I think that it would be helpful for us to look at before we close it up is that the Bible does describe justification from some different angles, and it can be confusing if a person doesn't understand that we're looking at the same thing, but we're looking at it from different aspects.

And so, for example, the Bible talks about justification by grace, the unmerited love of God. It also talks about justification by faith. It also talks about justification through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but it also talks about justification in works.

So, how can we get the right picture of all of those, weave those together in a way that keeps us from pulling them out of context and getting a wrong idea? Because, obviously, we have whole denominations under the banner of Christianity that would say, well, I believe in justification by faith plus my good works, and the reason is because of this single verse here.

And we say, well, actually, you've misunderstood that verse. And then another man says, I believe in justification through the grace of Christ alone, and faith is optional. And we say, well, you've misunderstood that passage.

So how do we get the whole picture?

One answer is hermeneutics, reading context. But there are logical categories that we could, that these various verses or phrases fit into to help paint a full picture of justification by faith, but do not take away the fact that the way we receive it is faith.

So,.

There are a number of those categories, right? Yeah. If we use logical categories, I mean, some of the old writers used Aristotelian language, and this might seem a little weird to you, but hang with us.

It'll seem clear at the end, I hope. When we think of the causes of justification, there are five different causes that we can kind of say. The scripture talks about it from five different angles, and we'll kind of move it from the foundation to the fruit.

The originating cause, and we could, there's different ways we could say that, but what is originating cause of your justification? Why is Chuck Bagot right with God? And the originating cause is grace.

An undeserved divine affection was directed toward you in eternity past. You know, we can call it election. We can call it foreknowledge, you know, predestination. There are many wonderful words. They each carry different flavors.

I think foreknowledge is the sweetest, you know, because it's a relational term. So it's not just a term of a decree, a royal decree, which is wonderful. It's powerful. It will be accomplished, but it's a sweet thing to think that the decree was actually at the heart of it is God initiating a relationship with a rebel before the rebel was even created in a way that guarantees the rebel will be made a friend.

So that's the originating, or that's like, you know, that's the ultimate cause of justification. Another category, though, is the meritorious cause. What would you.

Say the meritorious cause of justification is? The work of Christ. Christ's mediatorial work.

Yeah, and in two ways. We have a perfect life, which not only satisfies the law, but is attributed to us, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But then you have the death, which pays the penalty and removes the offense between us and our God.

So yeah, the meritorious cause is the death of Christ. And then we have the instrumental cause. What is the instrument? What is the tool? What is the mechanism by which this happens? And that is faith.

Faith does not earn it. Faith doesn't start it. You know, so there wasn't a day in Chuck Baggett's life where he got up and said, you know, I would really like to be right with my creator, so I'm going to go ahead and trust him.

And then God looked at you and said, I will respond to that. So it's not the originating cause. It's not the meritorious cause. It's the instrumental cause. It's the way God has provided. It's the empty hand that God provides.

Now, strangely, I think we could say that Roman Catholics and Protestants would have been agreed up to that point. God's love is what provided this. Jesus' death, life and death, is what earned it. Faith is, you know, how we turn to him.

Here's where the great divide comes. The fourth category. Now this is a strange name, but this is an Aristotelian phrase. The formal cause. What gives us the quality that we're talking about? So, simple definition.

The formal cause of something. It's a logical way of saying, this is the category that describes what creates the quality. So if we say, I have boiling water. I have a pot of boiling water here. And if I were to say to Chuck, what's the formal cause of this?

And Chuck would say, well, the formal cause is heating creates boiling water. When we talk about being right with God, this may sound like, well, this isn't really important. This is very important. Even though we're not using a biblical phrase, we're using a logical phrase.

The formal cause. What makes me actually right in the eyes of God is the imputation of someone else's righteousness. The legal declaration that this man has the righteousness of Christ applied to him.

This man is united to my son. So it is that great legal declaration. We call it a forensic transaction, you know. God the judge looks at Chuck Bagot and doesn't say, I'm going to make you right with me by slowly transforming you.

In a sense, that would be kind of the Roman Catholic view. That an infused grace, that something God's doing inside of you justifies you. But instead, we believe the scripture says, it's what God did for you.

The judge looks at the work of Christ finished, attributes it to your account, and declares you as righteous as his son. So that's the formal cause. That's what's actually making me right with God. Final category.

Some call it the declarative cause or the evidential cause. What would that be? What's the declarative or evidential cause of justification? Good works. Yeah. Well, why would we say that that's in that category, though?

It's the fruit of.

The faith. It's the fruit of justification. It is the evidence that it has occurred.

Yes. Book of James. A man says he believes in Christ. Well, in a sense, you could say it this way. Use a play on words. You need to justify your profession of faith. I mean, there are a lot of people that say they follow Jesus Christ where we live.

How does someone justify that kind of claim? Well, by your works. You demonstrate the internal reality of faith by an external change of life. It hasn't earned it. It didn't start the process. It's not what makes me right with God that I obeyed this morning.

It's what demonstrates to a watching world. At the end of time, it will be there that there was a real change in me that gave evidence to my profession to be united to Christ by faith. I mean, there's no other way for us to show people our faith, really.

I mean, we can talk about it, but the only way to really demonstrate it is works. Works are important. They are an important part of justification, so important that we can read passages that say faith without works is just dead, but keep them in the right perspective.

They are the evidence. They are the fruit on the tree, not the root. Well, he gives a great warning to those who foolishly refuse to really embrace Christ. You want to read that? Sure. Chuck,.

Page 230. Such of you as have closed with Jesus Christ have great ground of comfort, for he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. But you who have not so received Christ are yet in your condemned state.

This moment you are under the wrath of God. All your numberless sins stand in force against you unforgiven. Not one of them is pardoned. Divine justice is every day ready to take vengeance on your guilty heads.

There is nothing that stands between you and its dismal strokes but the mere longsuffering and forbearance of the gracious God. Even this will be worn out in time, and his fiery wrath being once kindled against you, the Lord will pursue you in his fury and precipitate your ever rebellious and stubborn souls into the deepest hell forever.

And then you shall see, but alas, too late. What a dreadful thing it was that you did not come to Christ. He that believeth not, says Christ, shall be damned.

Encouragement to Exercise Faith and Look to Christ

And his final word to the believer to encourage an ever-growing, strengthening faith. He says this, Father, you that believe in Jesus Christ, let me entreat you, dear brethren, to be much in the exercise of this precious grace of faith, so that you may say with the apostle, the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.

Galatians 2 .20. This is the way to honor God and to get comfort in your own souls. You should be frequently looking by faith to Jesus, the captain of your salvation, and leaning your souls upon him. You should endeavor to strengthen your faith.

How? By considering that he that believes on him shall not be confounded. He is an able and all-sufficient Savior, able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing that he ever lives to make intercession for them.

Hebrews 7 .25. So many wonderful things here by Mr. Blair on the nature of faith. If you haven't taken time to consider those, get Salvation in Full Color, dust off that great doctrine, love it afresh, and live on it.