TPW #16 | Justification is By Faith Alone, Always and Forever

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Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived.
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The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.
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The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers.
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They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.
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Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture.
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That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation, brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.
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Welcome to the Protestant Church here in Kingsport, Tennessee at Birdwell Heights Presbyterian Church.
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Today I wanted to play the opening talk at the Reformation Solas conference that we did celebrating the 500th anniversary of the great
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Protestant Reformation. And the opening talk was on justification. It was the Friday evening talk, and one of the reasons that I was the featured speaker at our church's conference is every other speaker on earth was already booked to go somewhere else.
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So the church had no choice but to recruit me to be their conference speaker, which was great.
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We had a good turnout, and it was wonderful. We were able to give out some books and have a lot of good conversations, a lot of good follow -up with folks.
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But this issue of justification by faith alone, it's a battleground. It always will be.
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It always has been. Paul the Apostle dealt with this very forcefully in the book of Galatians, and the compromises and the confusion and the subtleties of speech that always surround this great truth will never stop.
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And it is the duty of Christians, and especially of pastors, to defend this truth against all of its gainsayers and to protect the people of God.
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And the idea, of course, being that you want to preach the true gospel so that people can come to salvation through faith in Christ alone.
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And it's glorious to know that all of God's elect will believe and trust in Christ alone, and they will never trust in anything other than Jesus.
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For their acceptance into heaven itself, it's very interesting. I still just chuckle as I walk around and throughout my day once in a while I just think about the stuff that John Piper's saying about yeah, he defines justification, you know, perfectly, biblically, orthodox, but then slides in the idea that it's not what gets you into heaven.
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And a lot of Reformed folks have been duped by that. And I would include among those duped by this, those who say, well,
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I don't particularly like this idea of, you know, final salvation. That's kind of confusing. I don't really like that.
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But we're not gonna say that, you know, Piper's a bad guy. We're not going to denounce this as a false gospel. They've been just as duped as everyone else has been by it.
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When we talk about justification, we're talking about the honor and the perfection of the work of Jesus Christ to save sinners.
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That is holy ground. And that is where we have to stand and defend, alone if need be, against everyone that would seek to confuse or distort that great truth.
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So, I hope that you enjoy. This was the opening talk. This is back in October of last year, and I hope that you enjoy it.
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Our Heavenly Father, we come before you this evening humbled that you would be so gracious to us as to give us your holy word, your saving and divine revelation in the pages of sacred scripture.
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And we pray that you would bless us as we read it together, as we walk through dozens and dozens of passages through this evening on this all -important topic.
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How can I, a sinner, be made right with a just and holy God? And I pray that if there are any here that don't understand this blessed truth, that they would after this evening, and that your word would go forth unhindered, and that any and all who ever hear this might come to know the grace of true repentance and the grace of saving faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, alone, that they too might be justified and declared righteous before you on that great day of judgment.
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We pray in Christ's name. Amen. If you'll take your Bibles, please turn to Romans chapter 4 for our scripture reading for this first talk.
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Romans chapter 4, read verses 1 through 8, and then
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I'm going to give a lot of introductory material, and then we'll eventually walk through verses 1 through 8.
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Romans chapter 4, verses 1 through 8. This is God's word. What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh?
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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
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For what does the scripture say? Abraham believes God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt.
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But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
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Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.
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Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
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Lord shall not impute sin. May God bless the reading of his infallible word.
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In the middle of the 11th century, there was a great schism that took place between Eastern and Western Christianity, which still exists to this day.
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That schism is known as the East -West schism. Now on October 31st of this month, 2017, we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther nailed the famous 95
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Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in Germany. It was October 31st, 1517, that is traditionally marked as the beginning point of the great
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Protestant Reformation. The 16th century was a remarkable century in world history because of the
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Reformation. But there was another schism that is much lesser known to history, that is a very important event for us to be aware of, that took place about one century before the
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Reformation started, between 1378 and 1417, known as the
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Western or Papal schism. During this time, there were two and then at one point three popes who all claimed to be the rightful successors to the chair of St.
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Peter. The incredible sequence of events which followed would shake the credibility of the
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Roman State Church to its core and in some ways began a movement of individuals who began to question the entire
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Roman Catholic system itself. One scholar of church history observes about the great
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Western or great Papal schism of the 14th and 15th centuries before the Reformation these following words, quote, for nearly half a century the church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another so that every
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Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another and in the last analysis no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side.
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The church no longer offered certainty of salvation. She had become questionable in her whole objective form.
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The true church, the true pledge of salvation had to be sought outside the institution.
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It is against this backdrop of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the church, ultimately came to experience the church not as the guarantor but as the adversary of salvation, end quote.
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Now I sincerely hope that the historical credibility of those words will not be called into question by anyone as they come to us from the pen of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger formerly known as Pope Benedict XVI, a man who at the time he wrote that paragraph in 1989 was the current head of the sacred congregation of the doctrine of the faith for the church at Rome which is the modern incarnation of the
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Inquisition. Presbyterians are confessionally bound to the five great solas of the
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Reformation. What this means is that every Presbyterian minister, when they take their ordination vows, are required to affirm that justification before God is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, as revealed by Scripture alone, and all for the glory of God alone.
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We are confessionally bound to all five of the great solos of the Reformation. Question 33 of the
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Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the all -important question. What is justification? Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all of our sin and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.
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The Roman Catholic religion responded very strongly and very negatively to the doctrines of the
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Protestant Reformation. They called a council in the city of Trent in northern Italy, which met periodically between 1545 and 1563.
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A total of 18 years they spent examining the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. And when the hammer came down to close the final session of the
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Roman Catholic religion's Council of Trent, they declared irreversibly and irreformably that the gospel of Jesus Christ, foreshadowed by the law, prophets, and the writings, proclaimed by the apostles and prophets, revealed in and by Christ, was actually heretical.
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The most relevant canons of the Council of Trent's session on justification are the following, and please bear in mind before I read these, that every
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Pope from 1563 until today has had to affirm every single one of these anathemas when they took their oath of office to the chair of Peter in Rome.
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Yes, even Pope Francis. The phrase, let him be anathema, is taken directly from Galatians 1 verses 8 and 9, and it refers to eternal damnation under the curse of God and everlasting hellfire.
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Listen carefully to these. This has never been changed, altered, deleted, and has been affirmed by every
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Pope since the gavel came down in 1563 to close the Council of Trent. Listen, Canon 9, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, let him be anathema.
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Canon 11, if anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, let him be anathema.
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Canon 12, if anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.
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If anyone says that he will for certain with an absolute and infallible certainty have that great gift of perseverance even to the end, unless he shall learn this by a special revelation, let him be anathema.
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Canon 24, if anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and not also increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema.
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Canon 30, if anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishments remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.
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Canon 32, finally, if anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God, that they are not also the good merits of him justified, or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God does not truly merit an increase of grace and eternal life, let him be anathema.
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It was therefore not the Protestant reformers who were condemned by Rome in 1564, but the very gospel itself.
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The good news of the justifying, imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ and the all -sufficiency of his crosswork alone to save sinners was judged by Rome to be so erroneous that anyone who believed it was assured of their own damnation to hell.
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The gospel has always divided true believers from false professors of faith in Christ.
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Indeed, in what is perhaps the most heated letter of God -breathed scripture in the canon, Galatians, Paul describes his opponents as false brethren.
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He uses that term pseudadelphoi, false brethren. Galatians 2 .4, and this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.
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Now, what is the difference between a true brother and a false brother? The difference is what gospel they believe.
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You see, even in the days of the apostles, there were lots of gospels, lots of Jesus's, lots of spirits running around.
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Paul warned the church at Corinth about all of them. He even said, in a very somber warning to them, in 2
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Corinthians 11 .3, he says, I fear lest somehow as the serpent deceived
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Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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For if he who comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.
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Paul and the other New Testament writers were well aware of the fact that false doctrine was on the rise, even in their own lifetimes, in the churches they planted.
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Jude 1 verse 3, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation,
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I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints, to contend for it.
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You're gonna have to fight for the truth. It's always going to have its opponents arising even from within the walls of the church.
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In his letter to the Galatians, Paul, right out of the gate, told them that he was astonished, he was shocked, and marveled how quickly they had lost the one and only true gospel.
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He said in Galatians 1, and many scholars date this letter somewhere between 48 and 52 AD, some think that Galatians was the first book of the
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New Testament to be written. Verse 6, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
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But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.
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As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
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So beloved, listen carefully, other Jesus's, other spirits, other gospels, which mimic
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Christianity are standard fare in every generation of Christians from the time the apostles were alive right down to today.
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We're going to have this problem. It's always going to be there. They were commonplace during the lifetime of the apostles.
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They are commonplace today. Opposing them and fighting against them, denouncing them and protecting the church from them is the task of all shepherds and elders in Christ's church.
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They might be thinking, is that is that really how we're going to have to spend our life on earth fighting, contending, weeding out false teachers and keeping our nose to the wind and our ears to the wind, listening for false doctrine, defending the gospel from all of its false competitors, identifying people as false brethren who say they're
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Christians when they are not. Yes, indeed it is. Commenting on Paul's statement in 2
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Timothy 3 13, Paul warned Timothy in his final correspondence with him before he died that wicked men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving others and being deceived.
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And John Calvin wrote a sentence that I wish every pastor had plastered over the door of their study.
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Quote, it is highly necessary for godly teachers to be reminded of this, to be reminded that wicked men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving others and being deceived themselves.
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And Calvin says that we need to be reminded of this, that we may be prepared for uninterrupted warfare and may not be discouraged by delay or yield to the haughtiness and insolence of adversaries.
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End quote. There are new Galatian heretics today. There are new Galatian Judaizers today.
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The new perspective writers like N .T. Wright and the federal visionists like Steve Wilkins, Peter Lightheart, Rich Lust, Doug Wilson, Steve Schlissel, and many others.
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The names change, the nuances change, but it's always the same rehashing of the same old errors.
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Listen to N .T. Wright in his own words, in his newer book, which I just got on Kindle, The Day the Revolution Began, was reading this in the introduction.
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Quote, we have paganized our understanding of salvation, substituting the idea of God killing
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Jesus to satisfy his wrath for the genuinely biblical notions we're about to explore.
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End quote. The idea that Jesus died in the place of sinners, says N .T. Wright, is quote, closer to the pagan idea of an angry deity being pacified by a human death than they are to anything in either
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Israel's scriptures or the New Testament. End quote. N .T. Wright rejects the concept of Christ satisfying divine justice against our sin at the cross completely.
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He denies that entirely, comprehensively. No substitutionary atonement whatsoever in N .T.
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Wright's theology. He denies that our sins are imputed to Christ and that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us.
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Says Wright, quote, if we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys, or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant.
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Righteousness is not a substance, an object, or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom.
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This gives the impression of a legal transaction, a kind of cold piece of business, almost a trick of thought performed by a
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God who is logical and correct, but hardly one any of us want to worship. End quote.
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N .T. Wright also said, quote, I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what
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Paul means by the gospel. The gospel is not an account of how people get saved.
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Are you hearing this? First Corinthians 15, moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel by which also you are saved.
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As John MacArthur said, N .T. Wright is N .T. wrong. You can clap.
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It's not Sunday morning. And there are
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Protestant ministers today who promote this man's incredible array of false teaching, obfuscations, contradictions, and simple denials, frontal attacks on the core gospel and biblical truths that are the very lifeblood of the
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Christian. How can people do that? Judaizers are back and the church lacks both the discernment and the stomach to denounce them for what they are.
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The federal vision heresy is more of the same. It is a clever way of reinserting works of obedience into the justification equation, something which the apostle
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Paul's pristine law -free doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works simply will not allow.
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Federal visionist Rich Lusk wrote this, quote, justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything.
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It does not force us to reify righteousness into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books.
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I do not need the moral content of Christ's life of righteousness transferred to me, end quote.
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Pretty clear, isn't it? Peter Lightheart, another one, wrote this, quote, the
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Protestant doctrine of justification has been too rigid in separating justification and sanctification.
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I argue below that when examined under a military conflictual metaphor rather than solely under the imagery of the courtroom, justification and definitive sanctification are not merely simultaneous nor merely twin effects of the single event of union with Christ, though I believe that is the case.
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Rather, they are the same act. You hear what he's saying? Justification and sanctification are the same act.
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They're the same thing. It sounds a lot like the Council of Trent to me. Listen to session six of the
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Council of Trent, quote, justification itself, which is not merely remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.
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We've come full circle, right back to it. Why don't they just become Roman Catholics and get it over with? They already accept their doctrine anyway.
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They already wear clerical collars anyway. Why don't they just join it? Steve Schlissel, another one, comments on Paul's statement in Romans 2 .13
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that the doers of the law will be justified. Taking it completely out of its context, says this, quote, this statement is not a theoretical proposition concerning some meritorious method of being righteous before God.
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The presuppositions undergirding Paul's statement include the facts that the law is obeyable, that truly responding to the law and faith does justify us, end quote.
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Rich Lask also said, quote, works of faith -filled obedience cause our final justification and salvation.
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Works are the means through which we come into possession of eternal life, end quote.
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Now, folks, no amount of massaging words is going to change what I just read to you.
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Those are frontal attacks on the Christian faith. Those are frontal assaults on the gospel that was recovered in the
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Reformation. If those are not direct denials of the biblical gospel, then I don't know what one would sound like.
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Paul wrote Galatians with the intensity and the fervor that he did for two simple reasons. The glory of Jesus Christ's gospel, first and foremost, and secondly, the salvation of the soul of every man, woman, and child on earth was at stake.
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Could the stakes be any higher than that? The glory of God and the salvation of souls. There are many doctrines of the
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Christian faith that you can get wrong and still be a Christian. The gospel is not one of them. How sinners are justified before God is not a doctrine you can get wrong and still be a
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Christian. Err on what you trust in for your salvation, and you've lost absolutely everything, your soul and heaven itself.
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Err on the gospel, and it doesn't matter where else you're right. You aren't a Christian.
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The greatest enemies of the Christian faith who have done the most damage to the church have always come from inside, not outside the church.
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The most dangerous men on earth are not secularists, but are usually ordained ministers who proclaim a false gospel.
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You know, Paul warned the church at Ephesus, the Ephesian elders of this very thing. He said to them with tears in his eyes in Acts 20 verse 29, for I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after themselves.
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That is such an important sentence. Where are these bad guys going to come from? Right in here.
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From among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things. And why do they do it? To draw away disciples after themselves.
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Pride and arrogance. Really? It's that simple? Is that what motivates all these bad guys? Yes, it is.
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They want followers. They want people to sit on the floor in front of them and look up into their faces with the sunlight penumbrums coming off from the sides of their head.
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Listen to me, teach you, and feed you poison. That's what it's all about. Pride and arrogance.
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Why is that word alone in the phrase justification by faith alone so important? Why is that worth dying for? I want to give you the background as to why this is so important.
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Who is God? Who is he? Over the years, I've seen people repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.
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I've seen people scoff, curse, swear, and even threaten violence in response to the gospel too.
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What makes the difference? A knowledge of who God really is. You know, long ago,
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R .C. Sproul, who's a Christian theologian, an unbelieving friend of his, and then a friend who was a well -known evangelist went out to play some golf together.
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And that unbeliever who was somewhat hostile to the Christian faith got paired off with this high -profile Christian evangelist.
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And as he rolled his eyes, he really didn't want to go play golf with this guy. When they all got back to the clubhouse after 18 holes of golf,
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Sproul's unbelieving friends said, I can't stand people like that guy being all holier than thou and trying to ram all this religious stuff down my throat.
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And Sproul answered, did he say anything to you the last few hours about sin or religion at all? And after a long pause, the unbeliever said, well, no.
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You see, there's something that disgusts some people merely about being in the presence of true godliness, merely about being in the presence of true holiness.
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When it comes to God himself, his righteous character and his holiness is the reason that we as sinners are in such a great deal of trouble with him.
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And what's remarkable is that throughout biblical history, when God in his full holy presence drew near to sinners, they all believed they were going to die.
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Even believers themselves, even very pious and devout followers of the one true
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God believed they were about to die when God got near them. Just listen to a few examples.
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When Adam and Eve first sinned, when they knew that God was approaching, they immediately hid themselves.
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Why? Because they were afraid of God. He was now a threat to them for some reason, something about his presence and their condition made it.
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We don't want to be anywhere he is. Let's go hide from him. In March chapter four, when
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Jesus and his disciples were on a boat about to be destroyed by a violent storm, the disciples woke him up and they said, don't you care that we're about to perish?
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And Jesus stands up and rebukes the sea and the storm, quiet, be still. And then the wind dies down and it's a complete calm.
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And Mark 4, 41 describes the reaction of the disciples to this. They were terrified.
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When Jesus first meets Peter, after he had been fishing for an entire night and caught nothing,
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Jesus said, put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. And Peter was pretty annoyed by this and said,
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Hey, we've been fishing all night and I haven't caught anything. But because you say so I'll let down the nets. And so many fish are drawn up that the nets begin to break and two boats come over.
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And there's so many fish going into the boat that they both boats begin to sink. And what's Peter's reaction to this?
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I know what mine would have been. I would have been like, Hey, let's give him a fishing contract sign right here.
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But something about Jesus caused a very different reaction from Peter. He said in Luke 5, 8, go away from me, go away from me for I am a sinful man.
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He knew he was in the presence of the Holy. And all I can think is just leave me go away.
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When Moses requested to see the glory of God on Mount Sinai, the divine response was, you cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live.
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When Jacob wrestled with the angel of God all night long and finally realized who it was, Jacob said, for I've seen
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God face to face and my life is preserved. He was shocked to have survived it.
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When Samson's parents speak with the angel of Yahweh, Manoah says, we shall surely die because we have seen
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God. And when Isaiah has his vision of the exalted Yahweh in the temple, the exalted Christ, according to John chapter 12, all he can cry out is woe is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips.
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And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
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See, we normally feel fairly safe, don't we? Don't you feel relatively safe as you sit here right now?
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Do you think God is a threat to you? Every human being he ever drew near to was terrified and struck with the fact that they would soon be dead.
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This is the being that you and I and all mankind will one day stand before.
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And no matter what we say, go away from me. Or if we try to run or try to hide, we will stand there exposed.
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And the word of God teaches one of the most frightening statements in Romans 2 .16, that Jesus Christ will judge the secrets of men.
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Reflect on that. God's holiness is traumatizing and terrifying to fallen sinful human beings.
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And when a sinner first truly grasps the fact that the all knowing and all holy
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God can see right through the facade of pretended goodness into the fornication and the sexual immorality, the covetousness, the depravity, the envy, the murder, the hatred, the revenge, scheming, pride, and arrogance that dwells in the hearts behind what human eyes can see.
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When we finally realize he knows all of this, we are brought to spiritual desolation.
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This is what our Lord taught in the first grand sermon he ever preached. The opening words of Jesus's first glorious, wonderful sermon on the mount are some of the most stirring words that have ever been spoken by a human being on this planet in history.
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The first thing he said was, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Indeed, the Lord Jesus taught that the
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Holy Spirit of God was being sent into the world to convict the world of sin.
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When we see ourselves for what we truly are and see God in all of his terrifying and ineffable holiness, all we can do is proclaim our own spiritual poverty, mourn for our sin, and then beg him for mercy and forgiveness.
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And every Christian in this room that truly knows him knows that's where you spend your entire Christian life. Poverty of spirit, mourning, begging for mercy.
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The mere idea of saving ourselves by obedience and goodness ceases to be on the table as an option. Galatians 3 .22,
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the scripture says, but the scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
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Romans 3 .19, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.
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Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in its sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
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God's holiness crushes all of the false hopes of man's religions in people being good enough to enter heaven.
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And then and only then are men and women ready to understand the one and only true and saving gospel.
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The good news is simply this, all that a man needs to stand before the judgment of almighty
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God is the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ imputed to their account and his blessed crosswork death as their substitute bearing the full wrath of God against their sins.
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That's all a man needs. In other words, the holiness of God and our own horrendous wickedness are what teach us to put our faith alone in Christ, alone for the entirety of our salvation.
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Everyone in this room, it's a terrifying thought, justified or condemned, one or the other.
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It really is this simple. If you repent and trust in Christ alone and your confidence rests on nothing but him, you will be justified.
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If you seek in any way at all to be made right with God, even in part by your good works, yes, even good works that are spirit born and you think are being done with the help of grace, you will be condemned on the day of judgment and spend eternity in hell.
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It is that clear. Justification is by faith alone because justification is by Christ alone because only the righteousness of Christ can meet the standard of God's traumatizing holiness.
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And I guarantee you that if you could have interviewed Adam and Eve or Peter or Isaiah or Manoah or Jacob when he wrestled with God and asked them, so are you going to trust partially in your good works to be right with this being?
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They would laugh at you, just as all of us should laugh at the idea that any of us could do anything at all to merit anything from God.
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It is Christ and nothing else. Why is that word alone so critical? Because the only righteousness that can satisfy the demands of God's holiness is that righteousness that was achieved and performed by Christ alone.
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And anyone who dies relying upon anything other than Christ's righteousness or anything in addition to Christ's righteousness will die in their sins and die under God's just condemnation.
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It's Christ alone, or you save yourself. And that's all there is to it.
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Galatians 5 .2, Paul says, Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised,
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Christ will profit you nothing. The smallest step in the direction of works -based justification, and Christ will profit you nothing no matter how much you say you believe in him.
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No matter how many clerical callers you have, no matter how many conferences you speak at.
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You know, back in the 1990s, a document co -authored by about 20 evangelical Protestants and 20
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Roman Catholics called Evangelicals and Catholics Together came out. For the sake of time,
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I can't go into a whole lot of detail here, but one of the statements that was published in that document that everybody signed together that caused a great deal of controversy was this,
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We are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. And the many evangelical leaders like R .C.
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Sproul and John MacArthur, D. James Kennedy and Michael Horton and many others objected strongly to the statement and said it was inadequate and insufficient.
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Now, one might wonder what in the world's wrong with a statement like that? We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ.
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My goodness, if a statement as true and accurate as that wouldn't unify us, then what would? But you see, during the 16th century
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Reformation, there was a Latin word that emerged as a major dividing line and knowledgeable Roman Catholics and Protestants to this very day recognize this to be the case.
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It is the Latin word sola, which means alone. And you will notice that that is missing from the statement.
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We are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. And R .C. Sproul pointed out repeatedly in articles and talks and books to everyone willing to listen during the controversy, every delegate to the
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Roman Catholic Council of Trent would have happily signed off on that statement. But if you add the word alone three times to that statement so that it reads like this, we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, the
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Roman Catholic person worth their salt will quickly back away and not sign it. Why is that word alone so critical to the phrase justification by faith alone?
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Why would anyone think that the word alone, as I just read it, is not only worth fighting for and contending for and even forming a new denomination for if we had to, but that it is worth giving your life for?
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In order to explain this well, I want to jump right into the heart of what the real controversy was about between Roman Catholicism and evangelical
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Protestantism regarding how sinners are justified before God. The question that's separated and continues to this very day to separate us, and rightly so, is this.
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What is the grounds of the sinner's justification before God on the day of judgment?
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In other words, what is it that God will examine when we are summoned forth to the judgment seat to hear our verdict?
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Upon what grounds are sinners pronounced righteous in the sight of God? The question in the 16th century that came into the foreground was not, does
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God require righteousness for us to enter heaven? The question was rather, where do we get that righteousness?
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Protestant reformers answered that question with this, the only righteousness that has the merit necessary to meet the requirements of the holiness of God is that righteousness which was achieved and performed by Jesus Christ and by Jesus Christ alone.
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That's where the word alone comes into focus. Historic Protestant theology has always acknowledged that what the phrase justification by faith alone really means is shorthand for justification by the righteousness of Christ alone.
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Now the Roman Catholic Church said that the way in which God would declare a sinner to be just is that they have to have a righteousness that adheres within them, an intrinsic righteousness that is brought about by the works of the sinner done in union with Christ and with Christ's help.
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Now the Roman Catholic Church even to this very day would say that you can't be justified without the help of Christ, without the infusion of his power, without grace or without faith.
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But added to that grace, added to that faith and added to that Christ must be the personal contribution of the sinner without which
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God will not declare you to be justified. Now friends, that is all the difference in the world.
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That's the difference between the true gospel and a false one. In other words, Rome believes and teaches to this very day that the grace of God is merely an aid which
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God infuses into our souls through sacraments administered by priests which then enable us to do good works.
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And when those works of charity and obedience are done by the sinner with the help of God's grace, they become meritorious in the sight of God and are in themselves the judicial grounds of our justification before God.
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Listen to the Council of Trent's own words, quote, since Christ Jesus himself continually infuses strength into those justified, which strength always precedes, accompanies and follows their good works and without which they could not in any manner be pleasing and meritorious before God, listen closely to this, we must believe that nothing further is wanting to those justified to prevent them from being considered to have by those very works which have been done in God fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life and to have truly merited eternal life, end quote.
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One Roman Catholic writer, Matthias Prem, in his book Dogmatic Theology for the Laity wrote this paragraph, quote, it is a universally accepted dogma of the
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Catholic Church that man, in union with the grace of the Holy Spirit, must merit heaven by his good works.
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We can actually merit heaven as our reward. Heaven must be fought for. We have to earn heaven, end quote.
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Justification in Roman Catholic theology is a process, not a once for all judicial declaration. And this process has as its goal the sinner becoming righteous enough to be justified before God.
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It is a process that is initiated by baptism, which they believe infuses what they call sanctifying grace into the soul.
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Now, the principle of sanctifying grace can be destroyed at any moment by the commission of a mortal sin, a serious sin of some kind.
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The reason it's called a mortal sin is that it kills the sanctifying grace that was infused into the person at their baptism.
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And thus, after committing a mortal sin, you have to get re -justified. You got to go get justified again.
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And this is where the sacrament of confession and penance comes in. They must confess to a priest who absolves them from the eternal guilt of that mortal sin and thus they're justified again and have their sanctifying grace, which they lost, restored to them.
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But they also have to do penance. That term penance refers to punishments. They have to undergo some punishment, usually in the form of saying a certain number of prayers,
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Our Fathers, Hail Marys, so on and so forth. What this does is it discharges before God what they call the temporal punishments they believe are still remaining because of what they did.
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There's more that could be said, but suffice it to say that in Roman Catholicism, whether or not you're going to be justified before God on the day of judgment depends entirely and completely upon how well you've kept it going with infused grace through the sacraments.
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And the chances are you haven't kept it going good enough and you're going to purgatory. Now, what is purgatory?
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Purgatory is a place that's sort of between heaven and hell. The not yet fully purified sinner who still has some temporal punishments remaining for his venial sins, he has to undergo what they call in Latin, Sadospacio.
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Sadospacio means suffering of atonement. Once you've suffered long enough and atoned for your own sins, you will finally be able to enter into the presence of God.
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I've often wondered if someone tasked me come up with a doctrine that will deny on his face the sufficiency of the work of Christ, I would immediately come up with after we die, we have to suffer and atone for our own sins.
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I can't think of anything that is a more direct denial of the all sufficiency of the cross of Christ to forgive us of our sins.
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There are precious few people in the Roman Catholic religion that they refer to as saints. These are the ones who were able to do all that God's law requires.
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And thus they were able to go straight to heaven and didn't need to go to purgatory at all. And Rome also teaches that there are some like the
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Virgin Mary, like Jesus, and like some of the other saints who actually did above and beyond what
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God requires. And their excess merits are channeled into what they call the Thesaurus Meritorum, the treasury of merit.
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And you can do certain things to have these excess merits transferred to your own and your dead loved ones accounts to shorten the time they will have to spend in purgatory, atoning for the temporal punishments for their venial sins.
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I will never forget the day that I went to the mailbox and I had waiting for me what's called a mass card.
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And I have no idea what this was. And it said, your soul will be remembered in the intentions of such and such a mass that it's this time at this local
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Catholic parish. I didn't even know what this meant. I went and had to look it up on the internet. Someone had paid money to have some of the excess merit from the
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Thesaurus Meritorum transferred to my account through a mass so that I wouldn't have to spend as much time in purgatory.
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Needless to say, I did not appreciate the mass card. What Jesus did is all
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I need. Nothing could be a more convoluted view of what is in the word of God, a judicial act on the part of God as judge, whereby he places our sin in its entirety on Christ on the cross and places
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Christ's perfect righteousness upon us. And upon that basis pronounces us justified before him once and for all eternity.
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The Bible teaches that justification is by faith alone. And that word alone is so critical because it is the righteousness of Christ is the judicial grounds upon which
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God declares that I am right in his sight. And the cross of Christ is the judicial grounds upon which
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God declares, all of my sins are forgiven. And that's why our great shorter catechism says that those at the resurrection who are true believers in Christ will be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment.
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Why will I be acquitted in the day of judgment? It is not because I suffered for my own sins.
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I'm not capable of paying an infinite debt. Only Christ could do it.
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And it was Christ alone who did it. To get this wrong, my friends, is to fatally wound
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Christianity at its heart. Now, if you still have your Bible open, look at it, please, at Romans chapter 4 verses 1 through 8.
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The book of Romans gives us the most straightforward step -by -step approach to understanding the
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Christian faith as a whole, but the doctrine of the gospel as the center. Beginning with sin and moving to the cross of Christ and then into a detailed exposition of the doctrine of justification of the sinner before God, Paul uses
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Genesis 15 .6 sort of as his model and paradigm for his whole discussion of how we're made right with God.
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Look at the first two verses. What then shall we say that Abraham, our father, has found, according to the flesh?
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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. Okay, stop there.
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The first key principle Paul hammers here is this, and you can't miss it. If our works formed any part of the grounds of our justification before God, we would most certainly boast, wouldn't we?
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And yet it's excluded. If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
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That exclusion of boasting is a consistent New Testament theme, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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I remember many years ago, arguing with an elderly woman and she finally came to Christ, but it took weeks and weeks and days and days.
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This was the phrase that did it right here, finally. Listen to it again. Not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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And she finally sat back and said, yeah, I guess if what I'm saying is true, I would be able to boast. I'm like,
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I've been saying that to you for six months. And finally, got it. Romans 3, 26, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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Where is boasting then? It is excluded. Apply this text to what you just heard about the
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Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by grace -enabled works righteousness. Rome is a system that produces boasting.
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Who goes to heaven? Why are they in heaven? Because of what they did because of their own works.
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I'll never forget listening to two debates that took place back in the 1990s between three Protestants and three
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Roman Catholic apologists on the issue of sola scriptura and then sola fide justification by faith alone.
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The last Roman Catholic apologist to speak was a man named Patrick Madrid. His final sentences in the debate on justification literally chilled my bones to hear them.
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He said on that on the day of judgment, he will stand before the holy God of the universe and say the following quote.
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I did know you Lord. I did follow you. I did what you asked of me.
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Now, whatever it is you might be planning on saying on the day of judgment, I hope it's not that what is
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Patrick Madrid trusting in himself, his own following of Christ. He did what
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Christ asked of him. Unfortunately, what Christ asks of all men is be even as God is perfect.
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And anyone who thinks they've done that, even with Christ's help is as Jonathan Edwards would say, miserably deluded.
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I would also ask, how do Christians envision the day of judgment? Christ's cross for my forgiveness,
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Christ's righteousness for my justification. That's it. Abraham, had he been justified by works, then he would have something to boast about.
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And what does the rest of the passage say, but not before God. I'll look at verse three. Here he quotes
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Genesis 15, six for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
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It is here that Genesis 15, six is first cited. What did Abraham do with her great works of charity and almsgiving and piety and personal holiness?
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No, Abraham believed the promise. He believed the gospel that was preached to him.
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Abraham went from being an unbeliever to truly believing the promise God made to him. Yes, Abraham did not have the fullness of the details about Jesus, the cross, et cetera, revealed to him.
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But what he did have was sufficient and Abraham believed it and was accounted as righteous.
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And it was accounted to him for righteousness. Very important phrase here. Here we need to do just a little
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Hebrew and a little bit of Greek. Obviously the old Testament was written in the Hebrew language. The new Testament was written in Greek.
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And so when the old Testament is cited by the new Testament writers, they're translating Hebrew into Greek, often quoting from the
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Greek translation of the Septuagint version. Their choices of words for those translations is very significant.
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The term accounted that's used there is the Hebrew which means to reckon, to consider, or to impute.
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Now the Greek term that Paul uses to translate it is the term, which means exactly the same thing, to consider, to treat, to impute.
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Now to illustrate the way the word is used in other parts of scripture, just listen to this one old Testament passage concerning the law of redemption rights in Israel, Leviticus 25, 31.
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However, the houses of villages which have no wall around them shall be counted as the fields of the country.
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Do you hear that? The houses of villages which have no walls around them shall be counted as the fields of the country.
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The houses and villages without walls were not, of course, actually open fields, were they?
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But they were legally treated as though they were. You see what he's saying? That's the way the term is used.
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Something is accounted as something. It is legally treated that way, even though in actual fact it is not that something.
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Genesis 15, 6, and he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness.
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The great Princeton theologian, Charles Hodge, said this about the concept of imputation as it is used here by Paul in Romans 4, quote, these and numerous similar passages render the scriptural idea of imputation perfectly clear.
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It is laying anything to anyone's charge and treating him accordingly. It produces no change in the individual to whom the imputation is made.
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It simply alters his relation to the law and therefore in the forensic, although not in the moral and subjective sense, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ does make the sinner righteous in the legal sense.
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That is, it gives him a right to the full pardon of all his sins and a claim in justice to eternal life.
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When the repentance center believes God accounts that person as righteous in his sight, it is a judicial transaction that is explained so clearly in the next few verses here.
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Look at verses 4 and 5. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
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But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
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The importance of these two verses can be seen especially in light of our brief review of the
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Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by grace -enabled works righteousness. Verse 4 clearly states that the wages we receive for doing work are not counted as grace but as debt.
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To even talk about grace -enabled works meriting something from God is a contradiction in terms.
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If heaven were given to us on the grounds of our own inherent righteousness produced by our good works, then it would not be grace.
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It would not be grace, it would be debt. Scripture does not allow for a mixture of works and grace when it comes to being justified before God.
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Romans 11 6, and if by grace then it is no longer of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
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And now again, verse 5. Listen to verse 5. The one who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.
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Now I want you to think about how radical these statements are. Who does God justify? Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy and man's religion say
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God only justifies those who work hard for it. Paul says God justifies those who do not work for it.
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Man's religion say eternal life is earned by lifelong cooperation with infused grace and good works.
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Paul says it's a gift. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift, the free gift of God is eternal life.
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Man's religion say that God will only justify those who are inherently righteous. And Paul makes the amazing statement,
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God justifies the ungodly. He justifies the ungodly while they're still inherently ungodly.
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How is that possible? How can God do that and still be holy and still be just? Look at verses 6 and 7 and 8.
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Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom
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God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
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Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. N .T. writes and Rome's great anti -reformation charged against the gospel from the time of the 16th century forward.
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Roman Catholic apologists all the way down to today have had people do this to me this past week. They call the biblical and Protestant doctrine of justification a legal fiction.
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They argue that our doctrine makes God out to be a liar because God is pretending that we're righteous when in fact we're still evil and we're still sinful.
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They believe our doctrine is a libel on God's character for that reason. And yet Paul uses the concept of legal imputation to show how
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God is able to do this and be just and righteous while doing it.
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And our response to that charge is simply to believe the word of God. The justification of sinners before God is anything but a legal fiction.
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You see, if you argue that God cannot impute Christ's righteousness to my legal account, then you likewise must argue that God cannot impute our sins to Jesus on the cross either.
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That would have to be a legal fiction too, wouldn't it? 2
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Corinthians 5 21, for God made Him, Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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Was the suffering of Christ on the cross a legal fiction? Was God lying about Jesus when
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He was nailed to that cross? The one who knew no sin was made to be sin legally in our place, in our behalf.
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Galatians 3 13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, in behalf of us, legally.
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I want to assure everyone here that the death of Jesus on the cross was anything but a legal fiction.
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Our sins were really and truly and in their entirety laid upon Him legally in our place.
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On the authority of God, the Father's rule as judge of the universe, our real sin and real guilt were really charged against Jesus, and He was beaten, scourged, and nailed to a cross to die as the punishment for them.
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The pain and agony and unspeakable horror He experienced under the heavy wrath of His Father against our sins was very, very real.
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So real, in fact, that our Lord cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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You see, He was accounted to be a sinner and yet remained sinlessly perfect through the whole ordeal.
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But He was legally treated as the curse of our disobedience. He was treated as an adulterer, as a fornicator, as a blasphemer, as a liar, as a discontent, covetous man, even though all the way through the whole ordeal
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He is morally, sinlessly perfect. But He was legally treated as though He had done all those things in exactly the same way we are legally treated as if we never did them.
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We're legally treated as if we had the mouth of Christ out of which never came a deceitful word.
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We're treated as if our whole life was done in service to God and neighbor. The imputation, the legal crediting of our sins to Jesus did not change
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Him in any way subjectively. He remained inherently sinless, perfect throughout His whole ordeal on the cross.
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And I'm quite certain that one day we will look upon the scarred hands and the feet, the side, the head, and the back of Jesus and we'll know that His sufferings were not fictitious.
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They were quite real. God held Christ legally responsible for our sins and it was not a legal fiction.
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That phrase, legal fiction, I think personally is one of the most blasphemous things anyone could ever say about the precious doctrine of justification.
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God the Son added a human nature to Himself and entered into the covenant of works.
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He was made under the law to redeem those who are under the law. He legally took the punishment for our sins.
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He legally fulfilled all of its obligations for Rome to say that the righteousness that is imputed to us is making
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God a liar is to spit in the face of Christ. And that needs to be called out for the blasphemy that it is.
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Remember what Dr. Hodge said about the imputation of Christ's righteousness. If the righteousness be adequate and if the imputation be made on adequate grounds by a competent authority,
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I think God is a competent authority, the person to whom the imputation is made has the right to be treated as righteous.
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That's just glorious. Jesus Christ's righteousness is not fictitious, it is real. It is just as real as our unrighteousness and our sin.
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And so God imputes Jesus's righteousness to us when we believe on Him alone for our salvation and justification.
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And listen to that text one more time, Romans 4, 6. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom
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God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
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Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Why would
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God not charge and impute my sins to me? Because Christ has borne them already. Now folks, the legal fiction in charge would be correct if God simply pronounced us justified and forgiven without sending
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Jesus to be born under the law, to obey the law, and then to go to the cross to bear the law's penalty on our behalf.
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But He did do all those things. That's why it's not a legal fiction. It really happened. Because our
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Savior came and did that. He bore the law's curse on our behalf. God has the righteous judicial grounds upon which to pronounce us justified and forgiven.
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Just as our sins were laid upon Christ at the cross, so His righteousness is laid upon us when we believe.
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God is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ alone.
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And I hope you can see the utter folly of believing that our works or our righteousness could ever in any way play a role in our justification before God.
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The whole reason that the incarnation, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ was a necessity for us to be saved was precisely the fact that our works can't play any part in our justification.
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Someone else has to become a human in our place and do all of it. You see how foolish that is?
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No, no, no. I'm gonna help pull this off. You can't do it. That's why the Son of God came into the world to do it for you.
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Paul says in Galatians 2 .21, I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness comes through the law,
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Christ died in vain. Do you know what the real legal fiction is, folks?
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It's the idea that there's anyone who could actually achieve their own justification by their works and obedience to the law of God.
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The real legal fiction is found in Rome's idea that there is anyone who could actually go above and beyond what
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God's law requires so that their excess merit can be sold through indulgences.
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Christians call Jesus their Lord and their Savior because it is Jesus who saved them by his cross and righteousness alone.
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Abraham did not work but believed and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And we're going to talk a lot more about Luther in future talks.
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But in closing, remember good old Dr. Luther? What was it that made it impossible for him to find peace with God?
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You know why he could not find peace with God? Because he was trying to become righteous.
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But for those who have felt even for the smallest moment the full and unbearable weight of the holiness of God bearing down upon them, no system of grace -infused works righteousness is going to bring relief to their tortured consciences.
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The bad news of the Word of God, Isaiah 64 .6, but we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.
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We all fade as a leaf and our iniquity is like the wind of taking us away. That's the bad news.
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Not your sins are as filthy rags, your righteousness is as filthy rags. The very best you have to offer, the noblest of deeds, the most self -denying day of your life, the most self -sacrificial moment, it's a filthy rag in the sight of God.
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And then the good news, Isaiah 61 .10, I will rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my
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God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.
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In the place of my filthy rags, he's given me the perfect and pristine white spotless robe of righteousness achieved by his
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Son. See folks, here's our basic problem. God is holy, God is righteous,
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God is just, and we are not. And no amount of self -effort on our part will ever come remotely close to satisfying the demands of God's holiness upon us.
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How could we ever make it past the judgment day of God when we know that God requires and demands from us perfect righteousness in order for him to justify anyone?
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Our only hope is that the righteousness demanded from us in the law would be given to us, imputed to our account freely as a pure gift, and that the cursed debt that we owe to God for having broken his law would likewise be paid by someone else.
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And to those who repent and believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior, the debt is paid and his righteousness is yours simply by receiving and resting upon him alone, and by pronouncing a curse on all attempts at self -righteousness, abandoning self -righteousness for Christ.
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And because of this truth, Paul can make these triumphant, indicative announcements to all believing
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Christians. Romans 8 .1, there is therefore now, not at the end of life, after a lifelong of cooperating with grace and I sure do hope it goes well.
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He says, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
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He says in Romans 8 .33, who will bring a charge, a legal charge against God's elect?
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It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? No one.
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Listen to the words of John Newton's glorious hymn. Let us love and sing and wonder. Let us love and sing and wonder.
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Let us praise the Savior's name. He has hushed the law's loud thunder.
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He has quenched Mount Sinai's flame. He has washed us with his blood. He has brought us nigh to God.
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Let us wonder grace and justice join and point to mercy's store.
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When through grace in Christ our trust is, justice smiles and asks no more.
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He who washed us with his blood has secured our way to God.
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Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, the gospel is always good news, even to those of us who have been blessed to have known it for a long time.
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We're so thankful for the perfection and the efficiency of the work of Christ to save even us.
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We're thankful that the gospel is a pure and free gift that is given not to those who work for it, but to those who refuse to ever even think of working for it, but receive and rest upon Christ alone as he has offered to us in the gospel.
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We thank you that his righteousness is legally imputed to our legal account, that his cross has fully satisfied divine justice in our place.
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And Lord, it's such an incredible irony and an incredible paradox that the only way that true piety and true holiness and true godliness can exist is by setting people completely free in Jesus Christ.
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We know that we can't obey the law in such a way as to justify ourselves.
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And so now as those who have been born again by your spirit within whom Christ lives, who have their sin forgiven and are justified by the legal acceptance of our persons on the grounds of Christ's righteousness, now we want to obey you because we sincerely truly love you and want to show our gratitude to you.
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Only a true Christian who understands the true gospel can really love another human being, can really love
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God from a pure heart. All false gospels, Lord, we know, produce a self -centered piety, produce legalism, phariseeism, self -righteousness, because they have to.
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And yet your word gives us that precious promise that he who believes in him shall never be condemned and never be ashamed.
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We thank you for the good news and, Lord, we pray that we'd be faithful to protect it, to pass it on to the next generation, and we pray that your church would be built through its faithful proclamation during our lifetime and in every generation to come until Jesus returns.