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God justifying the believing
We read this passage not too long ago, but it's appropriate for this morning as well. So Romans 8, verses 28 to 30, where we have an order of salvation set before us by the.
Apostle.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. Well, today we want to continue our study of what true conversion looks like according to the Scriptures.
And we're also, of course, attempting to show what false conversion looks like as well. Our Lord taught us that it's so very important, of course, that each of us experience conversion, biblical conversion.
Without doing so, without experiencing conversion, there is no salvation. And so we have read in our Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 18, our Lord's words, at that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
And Jesus called a little child to him, set him in the midst of them, and said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you're converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
That is, you will not have salvation, you will not inherit eternal life unless you become converted. And in becoming converted, you become in some ways like little children, and we've already considered that in previous weeks.
And then the apostle Peter also declared the necessity of conversion, and we read of his response to the reaction of the people upon healing of a lame man. We have this in Acts, Acts 3. Peter responded to the people, Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this, or why look so intently at us as though by our own power or godliness we made this man walk?
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. But you denied the Holy One and the just and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of Life whom God raised from the dead, of which we are all witnesses.
And his name, through faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers, but those things which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets that the Christ would suffer he has thus fulfilled.
Repent therefore, and here it is, repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted.
Out.
Notice, in order to have forgiveness of sins, conversion is necessary. So the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
Now last Lord's Day, or I should say two weeks ago, we began to consider the very act of conversion. Prior to that, we spoke of God's dealings with the soul up to the point of conversion. And so we've been addressing or following the order of salutis, which is a Latin phrase simply meaning the order of salvation, the way God brings people to salvation.
And so we've been progressing through this in order to refresh our thinking on this matter. We've listed once again this order that we understand the scriptures teach. First, of course, in eternity past, there was God's election, God the Father's election of certain ones who would be recipients of salvation.
And of those chosen elect, he predestined them that they would become conformed to Christ. And then secondly, of course, there is the atonement of Jesus Christ when he secured the redemption of his people.
But then when the Lord begins to bring his people to salvation, he comes, of course, to them through the gospel, the general call, which is really extended to all the world, to every creature. And yet because people are sinners, nobody responds to that general call.
They refuse to, they can't. And so in order for salvation to take place in an individual, God must regenerate that individual, cause that person to be born again. And that's when God imparts spiritual life to that sinner.
And the result of that new birth, the working of that new birth, shows forth then in the effectual call of God onto Jesus Christ, onto salvation. And this is what results in conversion, the sixth step, if you will, faith and repentance.
And this is what we addressed two weeks ago, conversion, the action or the act of conversion itself. And then seventh, upon that repentance and faith, we have this grace of justification. This is number seven.
And this, of course, is the declaration of God that the believing sinner is pardoned of his sin and is regarded to be righteous before God. This state of justification, which is through faith alone in Jesus Christ, will deliver the true believer from condemnation on the day of judgment, justification.
And then, of course, following justification, there is sanctification, the gradual progressive work of God's grace, whereby the believer becomes more holy like Christ. It's a work of grace throughout life.
And ultimately and finally, when full salvation is realized, will be our glorification when the Christian passes from this life and is finally and fully delivered from the presence of sin. So that's the ordo salutis, order of salvation.
Again, conversion is the entire action of turning from sin, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, submitting to him in all things. He is Lord. Conversion is something that we are to do, but we can only do it, of course, through the grace of God working upon us and in us.
And so we take action, be converted. We believe on him. We turn from our sin. We yield to him as our Lord and Savior. And we're to give our full effort in that matter. It's not a half-hearted issue matter.
Conversion is surrendering one's whole life, our whole life, unto the Lord. Now sometimes this conversion is a process. It takes a little bit of time, but God sees to it. It does take place. Paul declared that conversion was necessary in order for one's sins to be pardoned by God or pardon like Peter, again, repent, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be blotted.
Conversion is essential to having one's sins forgiven by God. But we want to deal with now this matter of which I hope that we're all informed about. I would hope that there's nothing that we're going to say today with which you're not familiar because this is an important matter, an essential matter.
And if you're not informed about this, woe is you. This is something that all of us should understand and know and should resonate with us even as we speak about these matters of the sinner's justification before God.
Now again, as you look at the Ordo Salutis that we listed, it's listed as the seventh work of God's grace in bringing salvation to his people. We should be familiar with this. We ought to be able to explain what the Bible teaches about justification.
This doctrine of Holy Scripture is essential to the gospel. If you're not right on justification, you are not right on the gospel. You must understand this rightly. And we, again, read in Romans 8 earlier, 28 to 30 of this matter of justification following being called, effectually called, those whom he called, them he also justified.
And then the response is one of joy and really amazement on the part of the Apostle Paul. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
No one.
He who did not spare his son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? He most certainly will. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? That is a legitimate charge that carries any weight.
Nothing.
Why?
It's God who justifies. And if God justifies, then, you know, nobody can condemn rightly, justly before God. He doesn't take into any consideration whatsoever. Although the devil is the accuser of the brethren, the accusations fall flat for the one who is justified by God through faith in Jesus Christ.
And nothing can separate us from that love of God that's in Christ, as Paul expressed in those latter verses of Romans chapter 8. And so we see the matter being justified, being identified as what God accomplishes or bestows upon his people.
It's God who justifies. He first effectually calls his people and then he justifies them. This is a very important matter, again, even a critical issue that we must have right if we are to be regarded as true Christians.
That is, as God defines them and describes them in his holy word. If you're not right on this matter, you are not right with God. Now it's fitting that we address this matter today, isn't it? It's Reformation Weekend.
It was 498 years ago this weekend. It's going to be the 500th anniversary, 2017. We're looking at the Bolton Conference, trying to figure out who are we going to get. Already tried to get Carl Truman.
He's tied up. Some of the big boys are probably already committed for Reformation Weekend for Bolton Conference, but we need to secure someone, some several to come. Four hundred and ninety-eight years, however, ago this weekend, actually yesterday, October 31st, 1517, according to the remembrance of Melanchthon, who was an associate of Luther, in which the Protestant Reformation had its beginning.
On that day, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door to the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, which served, that door served really as a public bulletin board of the day. Actually the 95 Theses did not address directly the doctrine of justification of which we are addressing.
Luther was placing a theological challenge, hoping to correct the corrupt sales of indulgences by Rome, as with the 95 Theses addressed. For a set price, it was claimed you could shorten the term in purgatory of loved ones if you purchased an indulgence, and the Pope had authorized this sale of indulgences in order to build St. Peter's Basilica, which stands, of course, in Rome today.
And so it was a building fund operation, as it were. And so people were promised if you purchased an indulgence at a sufficient price, you could obtain the full release from purgatory of yourself or loved ones, or you could shorten it by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, because some, it was said, would be in purgatory millions of years, taught by Rome, before they came out on the other end and would ultimately be justified and have salvation.
The public posting of Luther was actually in accordance with a letter that he had sent to the Archbishop of that region of Mainz and Magdeburg, and the official title was Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.
And if you read those 95 theses, and they're easily found, in fact, didn't you include a track in our bulletin about the 95 theses? There's probably a reference in there, a website, you can find them.
I read them last night, again. Luther's intention was not to challenge directly the established church. He was a loyal member of the Roman Catholic Church at that early time, but rather his was a scholarly objection to the practice of the church.
But in these 95 theses, as it came to be known, he did rather direct his charges against the Pope in several places. For example, thesis number 82 read, why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?
The former reason would be most just, the latter is most trivial. How do you answer that? You know, Pope, if you have the authority to release people from purgatory, why don't you do it freely out of love rather than requiring money for it?
That would be a tough one to answer. Thesis 86, why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the Basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?
Again, these are the kinds of questions, and so there was a challenge there. And of course, this posting of the 95 thesis was understood as commonly acknowledged as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
But really it was Martin Luther's recovery and publication of the doctrine of justification through faith alone that became the primary issue, which ultimately resulted in separation from Roman Catholicism and the founding of Protestant churches across Europe.
Justification by God's grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone. As one stated for Martin Luther, the doctrine of justification was the main doctrine of Christianity, the scriptural teaching that opened the gate of his anguished soul.
And that's how he saw it. Because he was an Augustinian monk, of course, who went through great efforts for the salvation of his own soul. He beat himself with whips. He denied himself of food and comfort.
He went on pilgrimages. He did everything he could. And he was on Rome crawling up those steps because he was promised to deliver his loved ones from purgatory when, you know, the words, because he'd read the scriptures, the words of Romans 116 came to mind, that just shall live by faith.
If the just shall live by faith, what am I doing here going through these machinations in order to do something that's going to obtain God's favor? No, we're supposed to have faith in Christ for what he's done, not in something that we do.
Well, this, of course, you know, Protestant Reformation swept through northern Europe. And what stopped it, however, really rested in its tracks was a counter-Reformation that was put forth by Rome in the Council of Trent.
And so to counter the Protestants, they had this council where they basically declared that the teaching that we're presenting today is biblical. If you believe it, you have no salvation, is what Rome declared.
Anyone who believes you're justified by grace through faith alone, apart from your works, your anathema, you're cursed. And so they went on record really setting that there is no common ground there, and there hasn't been for all these years.
It's that important an issue. R .C. Sproul described the issue at hand in the final analysis the Roman Catholic Church affirmed at Trent and continues to affirm now. And that's because every council is viewed as authoritative as the Bible, the Word of God by Rome.
You cannot change it. You can modify, you can add to it, but you cannot take it away because that's viewed as the Word of God. And so they affirmed at Trent, continues to affirm now that the basis by which God will declare a person just or unjust is found in one's inherent righteousness.
And that's the issue at hand. When you die, most people are not inherently righteous. That's why you have to go through purgatory to purge yourself of sins. And after, you know, a thousand years, 10 ,000, 100 ,000, a million years, you come out the other side purged.
Now you're holy. Now you're inherently righteous. Then you are justified. They confused sanctification with justification. Protestants rightly, we would argue, recovered the biblical teaching that justification begins the walk with God and sanctification flows from that.
Whereas Rome taught no justification is at the end of that process of sanctification. And the way you become sanctified is through grace given through the sacraments of the church. And so there was a division that took place.
And so R .C. Sproul wrote, if righteousness does not adhere in the person, that person at worst goes to hell. And at best, if any impurities remain in his life, goes to purgatory for a time that may extend to millions of years.
In bold contrast to that, the biblical and Protestant view of justification is that the sole grounds of our justification is the righteousness of Christ, not your righteousness, Christ's righteousness, which righteousness is imputed to the believer so that the moment a person has authentic faith in Christ, underline that, authentic faith, not the shallow faith that so many Protestants argue about, but a true vital living faith is what justifies before God.
An authentic faith in Christ, all that is necessary for salvation becomes theirs by virtue of the imputation, that is, the reckoning of Christ's righteousness. The fundamental issue is this, is the basis by which I am justified a righteousness that is my own?
God forbid, if that were the case. Or is it a righteousness that is, as Luther said, an alien righteousness, the outside of us? A righteousness that is extra nos, Latin word, apart from us, the righteousness of another, namely the righteousness of Christ.
From the 16th century to the present, Rome has always taught that justification is based upon faith on Christ and on grace. The difference, however, is that Rome continues to deny that justification is based on Christ alone, received by faith alone, and given by grace alone.
The difference between these two positions is the difference between salvation and its opposite. There's no greater issue facing a person who is alienated from a righteous God. And so this doctrine of justification is critical, essential.
Probably most believers, I hope, would be able to describe it, but how would we be able to discuss it in detail? It is essential and foundational to the gospel. It's not all the gospel, but it's certainly central to the gospel.
And, of course, what we mean by the gospel is the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. And so the doctrine of salvation in Jesus includes the teaching of justification by faith alone. If you don't have this right, you hold to another gospel, a gospel that does not save.
D. A. Carson wrote an introduction to a book that he edited, which was entitled Right With God, Justification in the Bible and the World. In it, he wrote of the importance of being right with God. Here are his words.
And this is the issue. This is the bottom line. He sets it forth in its very good terms. Is it possible, it is possible to approach the question of justification from many angles, but much can be said for an approach that begins with the widest possible angle, the most fundamental question, how shall anyone be right with God?
Of course, to put the question that way already presupposes that God is of such a nature and we are of such a nature that we are not naturally right with God. It also presupposes that it is desirable and possible to be right with God.
Biblical Christianity leaves no doubt on either point. The God who is there, as Francis Schaeffer used to say, is both personal and transcendent and utterly holy. He is the creator, the sovereign. The basis of our responsibility lies in creation.
He made us for himself. And the wretchedness of our defection must be gauged by his greatness, holiness, and love. But if we were made for him, we shall be restless until we find rest in him, as Augustine rightly observed.
If instead we pursue self-interest and cater to self-will, the heart of all sin, we shall find that this is God's universe still and that we must give an account to him. On the last day, we shall confess him with joy at being forgiven or with terror at being condemned.
But confess him we shall, both for his glory and for our good. The most important thing we can pursue is being rightly related to God. And the Bible insists that he alone lays down the ground rules for such a relationship.
It also insists that because he is a God of grace and mercy, he provides the means of presence that we should not gain ourselves. That, in short, is what the Bible is all about. God pursuing sinful human beings to bring them into a right relationship with himself, both for their good and for his own glory.
That's the bottom line. That's the heart of it. Here is a concise statement of justification taken from the Bible. Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.
Concise, excellent, biblical statement. J. I. Packer, who is a noted Reformed scholar, writer, wrote a little book, very helpful book if you want a simple systematic theology book that sets forth the doctrines of the Christian faith.
It's entitled Concise Theology. And he set forth these words regarding his little chapter, about three pages long, on justification. The doctrine of justification, the storm center of the Reformation, was a major concern of the apostle Paul.
For him it was at the heart of the gospel. And he substantiates his comments with verses, shaping both his message and his devotion and spiritual life. Though other New Testament writers affirm the doctrine in substance, the terms in which Protestants have affirmed and defended it for almost five centuries are drawn primarily from Paul.
Justification is a judicial act of God, pardoning sinners, and that means wicked and ungodly persons. Accepting them as just, as if they were just, so putting permanently right their previously estranged relationship with themselves.
This justifying sentence is God's gift of righteousness, his bestowal of a status of acceptance for Jesus' sake. God's justifying judgment seems strange, for pronouncing sinners righteous may appear to be precisely the unjust action on the judge's part that God's own law forbade.
And that's giving pass to guilty people. You're not supposed to do that. Yet it is in fact a just judgment, for its basis is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who as the last Adam, our representative head, acting on our behalf, obeyed the law that bound us and endured the retribution for lawlessness that was our due, and so merited our justification.
And so we are justified justly, on the basis of justice alone, and Christ's righteousness reckoned to our account. God's justifying decision is the judgment of the last day, declaring we shall spend eternity, brought forward into the present, pronounced here and now.
It's the last judgment that will ever be passed on our destiny. God will never go back on it, however much Satan may appeal against God's verdict. To be justified is to be eternally secure. Thank God for that.
Packer also wrote an introductory essay for a book that was republished by Banner Truth Trust, The Doctrine of Justification. If you want a classic full treatment of this doctrine, this is it. The book by James Buchanan, first published in 1867.
Here are Packer's words, he wrote the introduction. Justification by faith has traditionally and rightly been regarded as one of the two basic controlling principles of Reformation theology. The authority of Scripture was the formal principle of that theology, determining the method and providing its touchstone of truth.
In other words, the source of truth. Justification by faith was its material principle, determining its substance. Scripture authority, justification, the substance, the heart of the matter. In fact, these two principles belong inseparably together, for no theology that seeks simply to follow the Bible can help concern itself with what is demonstrably the essence of the biblical message.
The fullest statement of the gospel that the Bible contains is found in the epistles of the Romans, and Romans minus justification by faith would be like Hamlet without the prince. For those of you familiar with Hamlet, Packer assumes everybody is, I suppose.
Packer then said a word about the ongoing importance of this doctrine for the church, and today even evangelicals are trying to diminish the importance. A document came out in the early 90s, you know, evangelicals and Catholics together, and it was Protestants and Catholics coming together, trying to form a common basis.
It was basically Rome was concerned about all the inroads made in Central and South America by evangelicals, pulling people out of Roman Catholic churches and coming into evangelical churches. And so the effort on the part of Rome was basically, hey, you don't need to evangelize Catholics, they're Christians already.
And so this document was put together, evangelicals and Catholics together. They asserted what we agree on, and there are numbers of things we agree on, things we differ from one another, things we're working together.
But most Reformed leaders objected and saw that as a compromise and a surrendering, particularly of this matter of justification. One of the chief spokesmen against it, James Montgomery Boyce, along with R .C. Sproul, James D. Kennedy, as well as John MacArthur, you know, withstood them.
And Packer, to his discredit, signed onto that document. And Packer's a good man when he's got a wrong conception of the church. And he signed onto that. And I was able to spend five days with James Montgomery Boyce, one of the highlights of my life.
And he came to Germany. We had him as a speaker at our church retreat the weekend before I moved here. And so I spent five days with him. I could have driven from the Munich airport to Mittersill, Austria, in the Schloss, where we had our conference up in the Alps, in about two and a half hours.
But instead I drove through Switzerland. It took us six hours. And we had a nice visit. And he gave me the inside dope on all this ECT business. And he talked about his friend Packer and how Packer was trying to backtrack because he knew he made a mistake in signing it.
Interesting. Well Packer wrote about the ongoing importance of this doctrine. Now this was back, you know, a couple decades before the 90s. He says, A further fact to weigh is that justification by faith has been the central theme of the preaching in every movement of revival and religious awakening within Protestantism from the Reformation to the present day.
The essential thing that happens in every true revival is that the Holy Spirit teaches a church afresh the reality of justification by faith, both as true and as a living experience. This could be demonstrated historically from the history of revivals that we have.
And it would be theologically correct to define revival simply as God the Spirit doing this work in a situation where previously the church had lapsed, if not from the formal profession of justification by faith, at least from any living apprehension of it.
And that's a good statement. I would actually qualify it a little bit because I think the great awakening was brought about not just a recovery of justification by faith, but it was emphasizing the essential need for sanctification or you're lost.
That's what Whitfield and Edwards proclaim. The Bible's teaching of justification really begins with an awareness of the guilt and condemnation of sinners and their inability to bring remedy to their own condition.
And so that's set forth in Romans 3. We're not going to go through that because of the time. But scriptures clearly present sin as a transgression of God's law. God created us. And because God is a holy God, he's got laws that he established for his creatures.
And you and I are required before God to live according to those laws. And one day we'll be judged on the day of judgment as to whether or not we did. And so to break those laws, either failing to keep a law or actually transgressing that law, going against that law, incurs guilt.
And you take a lifetime of failing day after day or transgressing the law of God and things we do and things we don't do, the accumulated guilt accrues over a lifetime. And on the day of judgment, when God deals justly with people, you can imagine the horror of people when they become aware just how condemned they are, guilty before a holy God.
But thankfully, God made a way of salvation through Jesus Christ. He sent his son into the world, the eternally begotten Son of God, took upon himself human nature, and so he came into the world, Jesus Christ, and he alone was the righteous man, the only righteous man who ever lived in history.
And he kept God's law perfectly without failure. He obeyed God completely, his Father completely. He lived a life that is required of you, that you cannot do, that you fail to do, that will condemn you on the day of judgment.
He lived the kind of life that's required of you. But the glory of the gospel is, when you believe on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God confers this gift of righteousness, Christ's righteousness, freely and fully to you.
He credits to you. It's like you had a big debt. Say you owed $10 ,000, and they're coming with the warrant tomorrow to arrest you. And somebody with some money other than myself comes to you today and says, I will pay that debt tomorrow for you.
Paid in full. The debt you owe is fully satisfied. Well, you would immediately experience release, wouldn't you? Or relief, at least if you trusted the guy, that he was true to his word, he had some money.
Well, that's what we do with regard to the day of judgment. We know we could not stand on that day. And so we trust in God's provision, Jesus Christ. And that although my righteousness will never stand the scrutiny of that day, Christ's righteousness will and has.
And therefore, that gift of righteousness is credited as if it were my righteousness through faith alone. Not on a part of any merit or anything that I do, you do, but solely on the merit of Jesus Christ.
And so the gospel is wholly free. And so you can be a guilty sinner one moment, and the next moment you're righteous in the sight of God. He begins to regard you the moment you believe the gospel as righteous as Jesus Christ himself.
In fact, he sees you in union with his son, and so the father loves you with the same love that he loves his son. Can you imagine? And so it's no wonder that there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.
It's no wonder that there's nothing to condemn us when God justifies us. Who could condemn Jesus Christ? No one. Who can condemn the one who is in Jesus Christ? No one. Nothing can. And so the true Christian resorts to Jesus Christ and him alone.
So does Christus. Through grace alone, God's grace alone, through faith alone. And we rest in that. And that's the grace of justification. We don't have time, but we describe the nature of justification.
We've done this in the past. Again, I hope it's something that you all know. I listed ten ways in which to understand justification lest we are errant in this matter. And then we went on to talk about the nature of the faith that justifies.
Just because somebody claims to believe and have faith doesn't necessarily mean they have the kind of faith that the Bible says justifies the sinner. And so we sought to describe that faith as well, the nature of justifying faith.
And so our salvation is secure. We are in Christ. And the reason it's secure is because it's not dependent upon us or anything we do or don't do. But it's dependent wholly and solely upon Jesus Christ, who he is and what he did.
And may the Lord reinforce this, reaffirm this in each of us who believe. And may we go forth from this place with a sense of peace and well-being as a result, and also joy, amen, in believing. And if you're outside of Christ, can you imagine the horror of standing on the Day of Judgment and having the law of God assess, you know, be the standard by which you have to stand before God?
If you're without Christ, you are without hope, without God in the world. Come to Christ, however, and he only accepts sinners. He didn't come to call the self-righteous, but sinners. And the sinner, as defined in Scripture, is a sinner who knows he's a sinner and he's a no-excuse sinner.
He's a sure-enough sinner, as has been described, who knows he needs a Savior. Amen? Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for the glorious heart of the Gospel, this matter of justification, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
And we pray, our God, that you would affirm us in this truth. And may we bask, our God, in the joy and the peace that we enjoy with you because of this. We're in a state of peace, that this was an act of yours, Father, a declaration, a legal declaration of yours with regard to our state.
Whether we feel it or not really is immaterial. You've declared it, and that's all that matters. Help us, our Lord, to believe it, understand it fully, and not ever be confused, deluded, or drawn off from it.
For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.