Justification

The Gospel, Personal Witness, and the Turning Point Toward Scripture

A couple of years ago, I was waiting in a bus stand, it was probably around 10 p .m., 11 p .m. I was in graduate school, waiting to go back home. And a man comes up to me, and for the first time in my life, I hear the gospel.

What happened next was, even though he presented the gospel very well, I kind of used... Is it clear? I kind of used logic to destroy his argument. Now, I didn't destroy his argument because the gospel is illogical.

I used it using areas of science, and I kind of destroyed him. But he did win the argument, and I'll tell you how. Two weeks later, the same thing happens where a woman comes up to me in the bus stand, and she shares the gospel.

The same result. She presented the gospel clearly. She spoke about resurrection, substitution. She spoke about how God is a judge. Beautiful presentation of the gospel. But I was very rude with her because I, again, used logic to destroy her argument.

But the difference between the man and the woman was I kind of made her cry, which didn't make me feel great. It was actually horrible. From that point on, I started reading the Bible more, mostly to discredit these people who were coming up to me and sharing the gospel.

But I started listening to the way of the Master. The presentation of the gospel isn't perfect, but they do present the gospel, which is very good. From that point on, even though I may have won the argument with that man and woman, they definitely had an impact on showing through the Bible that God is judge, that man is depraved.

And it was a big turning point in my life. After that, I truly do believe it was shortly after that that God used His word and by His grace saved me. I'm going to talk about justification today. And it's hard to understand justification if you have a low view of God as a judge or if you have an insufficient view of man's depravity.

If you have those two doctrines correct, you love justification. You understand justification. In Romans 1, what do we see of God being a judge? We see Him judging necessarily the non-Jews as being what?

As unrighteous. And He calls out a number of unrighteous deeds. And Paul talks about how God is a judge, one who's able to determine what is right and wrong and one who's able to mete out judgment based on actions of men.

Just when the Jews think they're okay, they're fine, Paul writes Romans 2, where he completely obliterates righteousness by works and how God judges the moral Jews just as He judges non-Jews or Gentiles.

So if you don't understand judgment or God as a judge, reading Romans is a great place to begin. Romans 1, 2, 3, God as a judge is important to understand. Also in Romans 2, we see God, how He meets that judgment out.

He meets that judgment based on man's knowledge, based on what he knows about truth, based on man's guilt, on his actions, on his motives, and how He meets out that judgment is completely impartial. So that is the first thing.

The Depravity of Man and the Need for Justification

Many of us understand God as a judge, but it's kind of important to remember that as we're about to look at justification. What about the next doctrine? That is the depravity of man. In Luke 18, we see the rich young ruler.

Did he consider himself to be good? What was the problem there? Do you remember the conversation? How did he leave that conversation? Did he leave knowing, understanding that he was depraved, that he needed a substitute, that his good works would not save him?

Is that the way he left? No, he did not understand how depraved mankind is. Can somebody open Ephesians 2 and read verses 1 to 3? Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 3. This is a great passage to understand the deadness of man and depravity of man.

Tom? Yes. Thank you. Paul is talking to the church. Paul is talking to redeemed men. What does he say? We were all... What were we? We were all dead. Dead to what? What were you dead to? You were dead to God.

You were spiritually dead. You were dead to truth, right? There's no way that you can be awake from that, apart from God. But he's stating the status of mankind, the status of those who are condemned by God.

To be dead means to be condemned, guilty, guilty as charged. That's what it means to be dead. So what is man's basic problem? Is it a lack of self-esteem? Is it that he's not in harmony with nature? Is it that there's a few tweaks that he needs to make in his relationship with God?

But we see that everywhere, don't we? Nobody understands depravity outside of scripture. And my argument is, you're not gonna understand justification if you don't get depravity right. Man's problem is that he's absolutely dead and incapable of relating to God in any manner.

He cannot understand God's person, God's truth or His commands. That's how dead depravity is. That's how low it is. That's how deep it is. Man is guilty. And just as we saw that God is judge, He is declared guilty by the mighty judge of the universe.

Why am I talking about justification today? It's foundational. It's foundational to understanding the person and work of Christ. It's foundational to what we do as Christians. It, of course, brings us joy, right?

When you know that you're not justified by your works as the Roman Catholics do. You're not pressured into trying to please God by your works. You know it's done once and for all. And we will look specifically at scripture to see what does that mean.

Does it help in evangelism if you get justification right? It does. You can preach confidently. You can preach Christ and His work confidently. Does it bring you joy? Does it help you grow? But one of the biggest things it brings is doesn't it bring humility?

Doesn't true humility come from the fact that despite your wretchedness and depravity, God has declared you not guilty? Martin Luther called the doctrine of justification by faith the article of a standing or falling church.

What he implies by that is if the church is right on this doctrine, it will basically be right on all other teachings. Conversely, if it is wrong on this doctrine, it will be wrong on every other teaching as well.

Talking about man's depravity, man is so lost and so depraved that we can even focus on one doctrine a lot. I have a question for you. What happens if you only focus on justification and forget all the other doctrines, particularly sanctification for instance?

And it has been a problem in certain groups before. And I'll ask you to tell me what the term is. But what happens if you only focus on justification? If that's the only thing you know, the only thing you talk about?

Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. Tom was mentioning the importance of living your life everyday in obedience to Christ. He's not just Savior. In other words, he's also Lord. Excellent. I'll repeat it just for the tape.

I will talk about exactly how Christ's righteousness is imputed to us and what that means from the scripture. But what Andrew was saying was, you can be idolatrous if you only focus on that and just forget that Christ not just paid the penalty for our sin, but he also did what we could never do, and that was obey the law perfectly.

And it is in that respect that he imputes his righteousness to us. Right. That's very good. And also, some of the problem will come when you don't understand what justification is, right? That's important to understand.

That's what I mean. Also, going back to what Frank said, there's a certain group of people, especially the Roman Catholic view of justification is by works as opposed to by faith, which is a gift from God, right?

Understanding that is crucial. Let's look at some definitions. It's important to look and understand what the Bible talks about when it says justified. Can somebody open Deuteronomy 25 .1? Deuteronomy chapter 25 .1, and can somebody else open Proverbs 17 .15?

Deuteronomy 25 .1, Proverbs 17 .15. Justification is a declaration. It's to declare judiciously that a person is in harmony with the law. It's a declaration. It's to pronounce or state that someone is righteous.

That is what justification is. I love that definition because it's simple and it clarifies what is done on the behalf of a person. Anybody else from Deuteronomy 25? 25 .1, yes. Thank you. You can see that there's a term justified used there, again, based on your version.

But the Hebrew word used there is to declare somebody righteous. That is, that person has been made right with the law. There is no condemnation for that person. This is not from a salvific sense, but this is, remember, Judge's Deuteronomy timeframe.

Proverbs 17 .15, Frank? Thank you. That's another term, another area where the term justified is used to show how a person is pronounced as not guilty in accordance with his relationship, his behavior to the law.

That's what this is used primarily, even in the Old Testament. A point to be noted here, justification is not being made righteous. It's declaring righteous. It's being declared righteous. And we'll explain more as we go on, but that definition is important to understand and remember as you think about that.

What does the New Testament say? Jesus Christ, in talking, in giving the parable in Luke 18 .14 about the Pharisee and the tax collector, states this about the tax collector. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

This is a good parable, because it gives you the first, it's one of his first parables where he talks about how man is not declared righteous with God by his actions. But here's this tax collector who is completely depraved and who, to the Jews, is a horrible person, a lawbreaker.

But to God, because of what God has done on his behalf and also because of his humility, he goes to be justified as opposed to the Pharisee who thinks it's his works, it's his prayer, it's his heritage that justifies him.

Paul uses the word justification a lot. It's always used in a legal or a forensic sense. It's always used as an antonym of condemnation. It's the opposite of condemnation. Can someone open Romans 8 and read 33 to 35?

This is one of the doctrines or one of the verses that talk about justification the most clearly. And in my mind, it is a doctrine and a verse that brings a lot of joy. Romans 8, verses 33 to 35. Watch Paul's language here.

Watch the way he talks about this doctrine. Thank you. Many of us know these verses by heart. Many of us recite it maybe when we struggle with sin or when somebody else is kind of pushing how they were saved because of their works.

We remember this. We talk about this verse quite often. But Paul is talking here and clearly saying there's no condemnation for those who have been declared once and for all forensically, legally righteous, not guilty.

It's an action that's done once as opposed to sanctification which is done, which is an ongoing process. It's once, it's done to completion and we look at several verses of that. But this is a good New Testament definition and introduction to the term justification.

But look at it again. Think about it again. It's an amazing declaration, isn't it? It's a forensic declaration. It talks about how you have reconciliation with God. Going back to the beginning of this teaching, if you understand God as judge and you see how depraved mankind is, you take a moment and really understand that this is an amazing declaration.

A righteous, holy, judging God declares a completely depraved man not guilty. A completely lost man not guilty. That's amazing. That should bring us a lot of joy. That should, when you sit down and think about it, it should remind us of what Christ did.

And that's why let's look at what Christ did and exactly how are we declared righteous based on what work of Christ and how is that imputed to us. Romans 5, verses 18 to 19. Romans 5, verses 18 to 19.

What did Christ do? I'll read this one. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Christ's work is twofold. Yes, he had to pay the penalty for Adam's sin. He had to pay the penalty for God's elect, for their present, past, and future sins. There has to be a penalty paid. Is that correct?

Would we agree with that? If it's a righteous judge, if he's a righteous God, he has to punish sin. He has to punish wrong. And we understand that Andrew was talking about the two areas, right? That's the point here.

He had to pay the penalty for our sin. But, when it comes to justification, what exactly is credited to us? If you're declared righteous, you have to be declared righteous based on an action. And what action is that?

What did Christ do specifically? He perfectly obeyed the law. I haven't heard this talked about a lot in other churches, but when I came to BBC, Pastor Mike uses this a lot. Substitutionary death and substitutionary obedience, right?

What we could not do, Christ did. And because of that, we're declared righteous. Because we, when I say we, I mean God's elect. I mean God's people. What was the pre-fall condition like? What was the relationship between Adam and God in the Garden of Eden?

They walked together in the garden. Did that mean they were intimate? Was there... Yeah, excellent. Joni was saying that there was no sin, therefore there was no rift in the relationship. There was no problem in between God and Adam.

It was a wonderful relationship. There was no sin which brought disrepute, which brought discredit to the relationship. It was an intimate relationship. S. Lewis Johnson speaks about this declaration of righteousness being...

And here, listen to this. Hear this carefully. He talks about how God, through the work of Christ, brings man into an almost pre-fall condition. Almost as if there was no fall. That's the power of what the second Adam did.

Think about that for a moment. God looks at you as if you have never sinned because of the fact that He looks at God's death and God's substitution and obedience. If you understand how depraved we are, how sinful we are, this is huge.

This is something that requires more thought, more meditation. Because you're so lost, you're so depraved, you're so separated from God. Yet, imagine this, that the almighty, righteous, holy God looks at you as if you have never sinned because of Christ's righteousness, because of His imputation on us.

But also, He looked at... How did God look at Christ? God the Father looked at Christ, the Son on the cross. What happened there? What happened there? What is one of the reasons Christ died? Excellent.

I will be talking about how Old Testament men and women were justified a little bit because that's an area of confusion as well. And I'll explain how some of those, that imputation worked, especially in the Old Testament.

But it's like Joni said, Christ died on the cross because He bore the sin of God's people. And that's why He died. That's how He paid the penalty for our sin. So just as Christ's obedience makes us righteous and God looks at us as if we have never sinned, God looked at Christ on the cross as if He did.

Not that He did, but as if He did, as He bore the cross on our behalf. So it's something that we often overlook. It's often something we just jump over. Let's go to the next thing. But this is important to carefully think about and think about our status in Christ Jesus.

Often... Sorry, Frank, did you have something to say? So he had to fulfill prophecy. Yes. He had to fulfill prophecy. We talk about Abraham and how he was justified by faith in a way to understand exactly how those promises were made and how they were or are being kept.

Yes. If he's dead, then his obedience was not complete. His obedience was not accepted. Adoption. I know there are people in church who have adopted before. Is it a change in legal status? Can we say justification is adoption?

Does the Bible say justification is adoption? Okay, it does. We'll go into a few texts about that. But what exactly is adoption? If you can quickly walk me through what's the process here in adopting a child into your family.

What is it? Well, I actually didn't know that. You changed the birth certificate. I didn't know that. Okay. That's a big change, isn't it? It's a big status change. You are... You are X. Your last name is X and this is the privileges of being a member of this family when you're born.

But you're adopted. You're taken in and now you become a member of the Y family. Brian. Yes. It's as if you're the blood child of that family, right? There's no difference there. That's exactly the case.

In the New Testament, the word adoption is used only by Paul and he refers to that aspect as God placing His people in the legal status of sonship. So, Brian, I like the word of son because it goes back to what I'm trying to teach here, right?

It goes into the legal status, into God placing His people in the legal status of sonship. And exactly what that means is you become entitled to all the privileges that go with that status. 1 John 3 .1 states, See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God and so we are.

Christ alone is indeed the eternal, natural son of God. We don't argue with that. There are Mormons who do and therefore they think that Christ is just another child of God. But what John is saying in 1 John and what Paul is repeatedly saying in Galatians is that we are children of God by adoption through grace for Christ's sake.

And it is God the Father who adopts us when He justifies us. Can you read Ephesians 1, 5 -6? This is a verse that's often used in many baptismal testimonies. I hear a lot of people who... They use Ephesians 2, 1 -3 and Ephesians 1, 5 -6.

Can somebody read Ephesians 1, 5 -6 where it talks about adoption? Ephesians 1, this verse is talking about the purpose of God adopting us. And what is that purpose? God's eternal decree. It's not our actions.

It's not the actions of our parents. It's not anybody's work. It's God's eternal decree. That's why He saves. That's why He adopts us. And what is the goal of this? The praise of God's glory. The praise of God's glory.

That's why He adopts us. That's why He justifies us because it's His decree and because it brings Him glory. That's the primary reason. That's the root of why He does it. Is justification only something that has present-day benefits or is it something that can have eternal benefits?

I like asking specific questions so we can get specific answers. Do we have anything that talks about justification in an eternal sense in Romans 8 maybe or 1 John 3? Do we have anything there? Is it eternal?

Does it have eternal implications? In what sense does it have eternal implication? Excellent. Excellent. God is unchanging. Therefore, once He's declared somebody not guilty as we saw earlier in Ephesians, there's no condemnation.

He doesn't take that word back. But justification, is it complete? Do you see it completed in every sense in the present sense, in the present life? Is there any more? We're not justified anymore. There's no more work required in that sense.

But do we see all of it done in the present sense, Frank? Yes, that's true. Right. Okay, but I think I'm confusing you. Let's go to 1 John 3. Let's read 1 and 2 because I think I'm confusing you by my question.

And if you look at 1 John 3, 2, you'll see why I'm asking that question. 1 John 3, please read 1 and 2. Thank you. We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Though we are already sons and daughters of God, we eagerly await the total redemption of our bodies from all the results of sin.

Don't we? And there is limitations under which we now groan. And one day, anticipating the delight, and that's what John is talking about, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. There is a completion.

We will be bought to glory. Justification does have eternal blessings or ramifications as well. You can almost see John, he wants to state more. He's trying to explain much more. And I like what J .I. Packer says Our sonship, in other words, looks forward to a future that is too glorious for words.

So it's important to understand that aspect of things as well. It does have present benefits and blessings, but it also has an eternal blessing. Justification by faith alone. I have to say a little bit about this before I move along.

What do you understand or when you tell somebody justification is by faith alone, what are you trying to tell them? It's good because it's faith as opposed to works. That's very good. But isn't it your faith though?

Isn't faith yours? So isn't it therefore by works? Right? Excellent. So is it faith that justifies or is it God that justifies? It's God that justifies. The means that He uses is by faith. Question 61 of the Heidelberg Catechism.

This is what it says. Not that I'm acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, but because only the satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God and I can receive the same and make it my own in no other way but by faith only.

In other words, the ground of our justification is not our virtuous deeds, nor is it the imperfect obedience of our faith. It's not necessarily our faith. It's through the means through which we appropriate it.

But does... What are some of the proponents of... Sorry, opponents of justification by works? Who do they use a lot to state that this man was declared righteous because of his faith and his works and not because of faith?

Brian. Okay. Good. Yes. Yes. Right. And Romans 4 is where I was going to. Abraham, right? You're absolutely right. Abraham was... A lot of opponents by justification, they go to them and say, look, Abraham was justified by faith alone and that is he believed and his belief declared him righteous.

But that's not what's happening. And J .I. Packer, again, states this very clearly. When Paul paraphrases this verse that he's talking about Genesis 15, 6 as teaching that Abraham's faith was reckoned for righteousness, all he intends us to understand is that faith, which is the decisive wholehearted reliance on God's gracious promise, was the occasion and means of righteousness being imputed to him.

There is no suggestion here, there is no suggestion in Genesis 15 and Romans 5 when Paul is paraphrasing it that faith is the ground of any justification. Okay? It's never the case. So, when you do have people coming up to you talking to you that it is by works, understanding Genesis 15 and Romans 4 and Romans 22 helps you defend justification and how it's...

What does it mean to be justified by faith alone? How it's a means and not your faith that justifies you. It goes against understanding total depravity. Just to repeat, the totally depraved sinner is totally reconciled with God through Christ Jesus.

And like I said before, it's not your faith that necessarily justifies, it's God who justifies you. It is God who makes a declaration. I have five minutes to talk about justification in the Old Testament.

My wife told me I had too many slides, but even though I cut ten of them today, I still have a lot. It's good to understand, and I'll just touch upon very few things because of time. Have you heard of this term called theocracy?

What is a theocracy? Is it important to understand what theocracy is in light of the Old Testament, in light of Israel, in light of justification? It is. And I'll state why. But what exactly is a theocracy?

Do we have any theocracies now? Do we? Right? Okay. So let's take a step back. What is a theocracy? Excellent. God is king. It's God is king, and he rules as a government. He's the head of the government, and the government has a set of rules.

So a theocracy is where God is the head of the government, and that's the way the rule is sent out, right? So while I agree with you God is sovereign over creation, and he is king over all things, it's not necessarily a theocracy because we can't really contrast it with a democracy, right, for instance, or a monarchy, which is all governmental terms, right?

We don't have a government necessarily to guide actions in the universe. That's what I meant. I have to check the Bible, but yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. But my point is it's a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as a supreme civil ruler, right?

You don't really have civil law in the universe. That's what I mean. It's a civil law. And there's only been one for the most part, and that's Israel, okay? And also it's interpreted by ecclesiastical authorities.

The laws are interpreted by ecclesiastical authorities. In other words, who was supposed to handle the law in the Old Testament? In Israel. There was a special group of people who were given the law and they were supposed to administer the law.

The judges? Somebody said something else. The priests. The priests, right? They were the main ecclesiastical authority. They were supposed to know the law and they were supposed to administer the law.

That's a theocracy. We don't have any of that here right now. And there is confusion between those who believe in covenant theology and those who believe in dispensational theology as aspects of Israel and the church.

And covenant theologians believe that Israel is a perfect continuation and that everything happening to the church, everything that happened to Israel applies to the church. It kind of muddies the water about justification too.

That's why I'm talking about this. I'm not necessarily giving you a plug for dispensationalism, but there are problems when you say that the church can be perfectly substituted for Israel or Israel can be substituted for the church.

It muddies up justification too. And I'll go into that. I was going to ask a great question. Are there any police officers in the room? But there's none, right? There's none. I was going to ask the question, what is the process?

When you break the law, what's the process that you have to go through to be made right with the law? Right? Caleb? Hmm? That's your response? No, what's the process? You don't have to answer it. I'm just saying, what's the process?

You break the law in the United States of America. What is the process for you to be made right with the law? Sorry? You have to be judged not guilty, right? You have to come before. There's a process which either declares you as guilty or not guilty.

And if you're guilty, what do you do? There's a process. You have to do something, right? You have to go to jail. You have to have bailed out. There's retribution, right? No matter which society you're in, there's a law or a government or a ruling agency by which you need to be made right with.

Why am I asking this question? Because what was the purpose of the law given to Israel? In Deuteronomy 4, chapter 4 and 33, one of the things that really stands out was the law was given to separate Israel from the other pagan nations.

Okay, no other nation was a theocracy. No other nation had as their ruler, as their civil ruler, God Almighty. And one of the things was to separate them from other nations. The other was to bind them together as a nation under God.

One head, God. And also, it's a theocracy, so instructions on how to live were given too. We have instructions given to us by our government, wherever you are. In a theocracy in the Old Testament for Israel, how to live came out of the law as well.

But where's the confusion? That Israel deserved to be God's people Who said no? Why? Chosen. Love it, right? It's chosen. Throughout the history of Israel, what is the relationship between God and Israel usually characterized as?

A faithful husband and a Harlem wife. It's one of unfaithfulness. It's one where the wife or Israel keeps going and sinning and sinning and sinning and sinning and yet there's grace upon grace upon grace given by a holy God.

It's always been that way. Israel never did anything that deserved their being chosen. And even in Galatians 3 and 4 and in Romans 1, 2 and 3, you see that God chose them by His divine will out of love and grace.

Not because they kept the law. Not because they understood the law. Not because they deserved it. And if you look at Isaiah 40, Zechariah 4, Nehemiah 8, dependence on the flesh was strongly discouraged.

Yet they never understood it. And you see that even when the Pharisees talked to Jesus Christ. We're Abraham's children. We have the temple. They were constantly going back to the law, going back to how they were chosen because of who they are and because of what they did.

And that is not the case. Why is this good to understand? Even though the law was given, the law always came alongside grace to accomplish what God sovereignly ordained at the time for Israel. God did not save even the Old Testament saints because of the way they kept the law.

The law was always meant to point to Christ. Some theologians believe they take the whole of the New Testament, they put in the Old Testament and say that all of the Israelites and all of the Old Testament men and women understood perfectly when Christ would come, how Christ would die for them and how this redemption would be complete.

But if you look at the text and you look at the Old Testament historically, grammatically and literally, which is a good hermeneutical approach, you see that even though they did not, they did not understand everything about Christ.

By the way, you can see that clearly when Christ was born and he did walk the earth, most of them didn't understand that he was God. Just a good example, right? But there's no evidence in Scripture that they understood everything, neither did Abraham.

He did not understand everything about when Christ would come, how that sacrifice would be made. But he did understand one thing and you see that in Genesis 15, you see that in Romans 4 with Paul talking about Abraham, that he understood, he believed that God is the only one who can save and that he will, through Abraham's seed, make a provision for that salvation.

Did he understand it perfectly? No, there's no evidence for that. But he knew that is the only way of salvation, that by keeping the law, by walking a certain path, he could not be made right with God.

In that particular sense, salvation in the Old Testament, that is justification in the Old Testament and the New Testament, was always through Christ Jesus. In the Old Testament, they were looking forward to Christ's coming, even though they didn't fully understand it.

In the New Testament, and in where we are today, we look backwards and see the cross and we see what Christ has done. It's an important distinction and a distinction that is muddied, that is fuzzed up, when you bring Israel in church and say they are the same in every respect.

So that is a problem. Again, I'm not trying to plug a certain group of people here, I'm just saying, grace was always given to the people of God by His grace. Let's wrap up because it's time. Oh, I have to talk about Hebrews 10, 1 -4, just to state again that there is no salvation through works and that the Old Testament sacrificial system, the Old Testament sacrificial system was what was used to reconcile man to God in a theocratic sense, in a government sense.

Just as we need to go through certain steps to be made right, pay a fine, go to jail, something like that. The sacrificial system enabled you to do two things. One is to get right with God as a theocratic ruler, but also to those who believed, to those who understood it was also a type of what Christ would do in the future.

But how do we know that? We look at Hebrews 10, 1 -4. I'll read this. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near.