Justification by Faith Alone: An introduction (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Pastor Steve is here. Steve, it has been, I don�t know, a few weeks since we�ve done a show together, �Shame on Us. Yeah. It�s been a while, Mike. Yeah. I know.

Well, too bad we don�t videotape these because they could see your svelte figure and you have no glasses anymore.

Hmm. Well, you know, they say that glasses make you look heavier, so I got rid of them and lost, you know, lost weight.

Well, with this back issue and then the knee surgery and all that other stuff, I probably gained 10 pounds that I haven�t lost yet. And then when Ben comes in to film, you know, they say, �You�re 10 pounds heavier on film.

I go, �Oh, here we go. Well, and it�s the glasses too. Glasses make you look heavier. The other day, I did the Christmas Eve service in Matthew 1 and 2, and these are my readers. They�re just like 2 .5s maybe or something, yeah, 2 .5s for magnification, and I just preached with them on and it basically means I can�t see anybody.

Hey. So if you�re ever afraid of the crowd and you�re more nervous because you see them, just wear readers. Little insight there. Little preaching hint. That�s right. Before we get into our topic today, I just was showing Steve some accoutrement that�s sitting on our table here, our recording table.

We�ve got the Joel Osteen Cube with daily affirmation inspiration sermons. We�ve got a little Helper Angels and stuff like that, books, Bibles. We probably have a couple Bibles on the table, yeah? A few.

Yeah, yeah. And then I got this the other day. I was walking to the gym and there�s a place that sells older stuff, a Salvation Army kind of store, and they had free books, and so I got a couple free books, and this is one of them.

The New Saint Joseph Sunday Missal, M-I-S-S-A-L, M-I-S-S-I-S-S, and Hymnal. And I just said to Steve a few minutes ago, �They�ve got songs about Mary and he said, �They do And here�s one, Immaculate Mary, thy praises we sing, who reignest in splendor with Jesus our King.

In heaven the blessed thy glory proclaim, on earth we thy children invoke thy fair name. We pray for our Mother, the Church upon earth, and bless dearest Capital L Lady, the land of our birth.

You know what? Here�s what I was saying. That really doesn�t sound very Christian to me.

Justification, Mary, and the Reformation

Which leads us into our topic today, because really at the center of the Reformation, of course the bondage of the will was a big issue, indulgences was a big issue, but really, you know, how are you made righteous, how are you declared righteous, and is it imputed, is it infused, and what role does Jesus have as intercessor, mediator, friend, and advocate?

Do you need kind of the nice Mary, because Jesus is so mean?

I don�t even know where that concept comes from.

Well, could it be this, and I don�t know either, probably somebody has studied it, in the old days, of course, people couldn�t read very much, and so they go into a church building, a Roman Catholic church building, they have all the frescoes, they have all the stained glass, and so there are things that were teaching them the story, right?

And you�d have, you know, the creation story, and you know, the Sistine Chapel, and there�s God and creation, and you work your way around, and maybe they were thinking about Jesus in such a way that they�d draw His face, paint His face in a mean way, and then people would walk in and just go, that�s the mean Jesus, He�s the judge, because He is the judge.

And there will be a time where there will be the justice for the nations, but He�s come because He loves sinners, and He loves His Father, and He went to rescue them.

Yeah, I mean, I don�t know, I mean, you just read John 3, you know, 17, 18, I just don�t think you come to those kind of conclusions that Jesus is mean. You know, He didn�t come to condemn the world, you know, and I�m like, I don�t know, I don�t know.

Well, before we talk about justification and being declared righteous and mean Jesus, what do you think, I don�t know, I don�t think I�ve ever thought of Jesus as mean until I did think of some of the ways Mary has been portrayed as the advocate, for the advocate.

Well, Matthew 7, �Depart from me you know, and so if you think that�s His attitude.

Toward everyone, then. Right. And it could be, right, if we looked at just the justice of God, and we think of Revelation 19, and He�ll come back, and this week I�m preaching in Nahum, and the justice for Nineveh and the Assyrians is really just a precursor for the justice of any nation that wants to rebel against God and His people.

But the idea, I guess the idea, you know, where is the idea that Mary is the intercessor with Jesus? Where does that come from? And you know, it�s just human logic run crazy.

Sola Fide and Why Evangelicals Need to Know It

So Steve, how about this, for this show and the next show, let�s talk about justification by faith alone, that is sola fide, and we can kind of just talk about it generally maybe to start, and then we can kind of zoom in closer to a few passages.

Do you think most people in evangelicalism, if you ask them to define sola fide or justification by faith.

Alone, do you think they could do it? At our church? Maybe. I mean, I think it depends on the church. I think when you talk about evangelicalism writ large, I think the answer would be no. I mean, I think of a few churches that I�ve watched online over the last year or two, and I can tell you right now that the pastors don�t talk about those things.

And if they don�t, then how could the people possibly know about them?

Good. So, we�re kind of starting big picture, like I said, and then we�ll narrow the funnel some, but it�s important to talk about these preliminary matters, because if you�re a pastor, and a Bible teacher, and a parent, or an evangelist, and you just assume people know this, and you just say, �Well, I taught that several years ago and therefore God as judge, and Jesus as legally under the law for not himself, but for others, and earning righteousness, credit to us, all those kind of things.

If you just assume you taught it quite a while ago, and everybody knows it, I think people are going to forget.

And I think you�re right. I just think, you know, I was thinking even more broadly. I mean, I�m sure that there are churches that would claim to be evangelical, and like I said, I�ve watched a few of them.

I�m thinking of one in particular where the guy basically, he does what you say. He�s a life coach. He, you know, will give, he has a ton of great quotes, and they could be from like John Wooden, right?

They�re wonderful quotes, and I think they�d be great if you�re, I don�t know, a coach, right? But not so great if you�re a pastor, and you�re trying to teach people the Bible and proper theology and how to think about their own.

Souls, right? If you had to ask, sorry, answer the question that someone asked you, what would be a good book to read on justification? I pulled out a few here, but if somebody wanted to be introduced to the doctrine of justification outside of Romans and some Bible passages, what would be a book about the Bible to teach the doctrine of justification?

Well, that�s a good question. I hadn�t really thought about that.

But while you�re thinking, I brought one out that I think is a must-read, and it�s called The Doctrine of Justification, Banner of Truth Book, written by a man named James Buchanan. And one of the things I do, Steve, when I write a book, I underline things in pencil, and I just open it up to a Merrill Controversy quote there.

And I also say when I finish the book, and I give it a grade. And so I finish the book, I don�t know if that�s 2010 or 2018, but I gave it an A with a star. I thought it was 2016. Oh, could be. I bet you better get those glasses back.

And you will notice this book, if you see the cover of it, because it�s orange, bright, bright orange. It really sticks out. I mean, maybe more than any other book in my library. And I call James Buchanan the orange man when it comes to the doctrine of justification.

Well, I mean, that�s really going to stick on your shelf, right? Seriously. I mean, it doesn�t get to the, what�s the word I�m looking at, fluorescent orange. It�s not there, but that is a bright orange.

That�s exactly right. Okay, how about this? There�s a need to talk about this because the regularly talks about the doctrine of justification, or we might call it sola fide. What would you give for kind of an intro definition of justification?

Someone said, Pastor, what does justification mean?

Well, I�ll tell you what I wouldn�t say, just as if I never sinned. But is that to any degree true? Yes, it�s to a degree true, but it�s not enough because it�s just as if I never sinned. I need, so that I�m innocent, well, that�s fine, but I need righteousness.

So, to be justified, to be declared innocent by God would not be enough. I need to be declared righteous. In other words, I need the righteousness with which no one will, or without which no one will inherit the kingdom of heaven, right?

I need that righteousness and it�s only available through the perfect life of Jesus Christ, it�s double imputation.

And while if you don�t have it, it�s tragic to say the least. And if you do have it, that is Christ righteousness in your account, spiritual account. I�m looking at another book by Robert Trail, T-R-A-I-L-L, Justification Vindicated, and he said, is a doctrine savory and precious to all serious godly persons.

To think that no matter what we do, and this is not a license to go sin, it should be making us reject sin because of what the Lord has done. But we do sin as Christians and yet God sees us through the lens of the Lord Jesus and we are acceptable because of the Lord and we are his children forever.

You can�t unchild yourself.

I mean, can you imagine kind of a justification that comes and goes, you know, well, you�re righteous, no you�re not. I mean, which is kind of, if we treated it like the Roman Catholics do, because we talked about Mary, then we would have that sort of ephemeral, temporal justification that does, we possess it, then we don�t.

Then we have it, then we don�t. And we�re almost there, and then we�re not.

Petey. So, when I think of justification, I think, Steve, of a courtroom, right? There are certain settings in the Bible, and I know this is not a one-to-one correlation, but if you look at the names for a church, and it could be family, it could be church, it could be assembly, it could be a body, a building, there�s all kinds of things for a church and different ways to look at things.

Well, and of course, the salvation that Lord provides is so great, we can look at it through different lenses, right, through the wrath of God in the doctrine of propitiation. But when it comes to justification, I usually just think judicial.

This is a place where there is a bar of justice, there�s a judge, there�s a gavel, that kind of thing. Why is that important in our modern-day therapeutic relational world?

Because it goes against the grain, right? Instead of going to church and hearing about how we�re all broken, and we need to be reassembled, right?

Petey Don�t! Petey I declare big things over your life. I declare you will pray bold prayers and expect big and believe big. Oh, I believe big.

There you go, see, that is important. I just hit stop and it said goodbye. Goodbye, Joel.

We are sinners, right? And we stand, here�s a term, condemned, right? And if you think about condemned in a judicial sense, the sinner, the prisoner walked in with his hands bound and just sentenced to the gallows, that�s us, right?

That�s what we all deserve. And justified, I was thinking, wouldn�t it be great, you know, we talk about names for churches, how about Church of the Justified? Jared. Ooh, uh-huh. Petey. You know, because now we�re talking, I mean, that is, that would be like loaded with theology and imports.

But, you know, when God looks at us and we stand condemned and

Jared Oh, thanks. Yeah.

Petey. Good, good way to go. Jared. A mental theft. And if we think about that, which is right, hopeless, convicted, having, you know, no ability to redeem ourselves and our advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous, right, obeys perfectly, which we can never do, and then goes as an innocent and willing sacrifice to the cross, pays for our sin, and he takes upon us, or upon himself, our sin, and then grants to us his righteousness.

And that�s, you know, double imputation. He made him who knew no sin to be sin that we might have the righteousness of Christ in. Anyway, it�s a double imputation, you know, 2 Corinthians 5, 20, 21.

Petey. So, what we�re doing in this show is kind of basic, you know, this is not Matthew Barrett kind of, you know, Latin words and other things, you know, like that. We�re just Jared. Why not? We�re talking about the doctrine of justification because soon enough, next show, or maybe in a couple shows, there are all kinds of errors that come into play with this doctrine, and errors that could hurt you, errors that could take away your assurance, errors that could draw you into Roman Catholicism.

So, we�ll get there. But right now, it�s just kind of lower level, bottom rung stuff. Let�s talk more about the courtroom setting, Steve, and the judge. And I thought what you said was good and accurate.

May I also add that when I think of a courtroom, the divine judge, of course, the just and righteous judge of the universe who never makes a wrong decision, he expects us, since we�re creatures, and he�s the creator, to obey his law.

And when you were talking about righteousness credited, I just, bringing it down to somebody, maybe it�s a new Christian who�s listening, if you hear the word righteousness, just think of the root word, and it�s right when you do the right thing.

So, what I don�t want to lose in this discussion of doctrine is the discussion of the doctrine of justification is law and merit, and Jesus is the law keeper. And would you think it�s fair to say, Steve, that when you think of law, there�s a positive aspect, you�re supposed to do it.

And then if you don�t do it, there�s a penalty aspect, right? So, there�s positive rewards for doing it and there�s negative consequences for disobeying. Is that the right way to think.

About the law? Well, if it wasn�t the right way, then I wouldn�t have given so many tickets.

I know, I just, but did you ever commend someone, Romans 13 -like, for doing something good? Oh, sure. Pull them over and say, hey, you did a good job. Oh, you mean, in that? Mmm, I guess you don�t pull them over to say good job, but you could say

Yeah, probably not, because I just, you know, scare somebody to death so that I could tell them, hey, nice job. I�ve seen videotapes where people do things like that. No, but I mean, I would commend people in other ways, you know, maybe parents for taking charge of their kids and, you know, doing good things like that.

Okay, good. So, when you think about justification by faith alone, it is a doctrine that we use words like reckon and credit. And what would be another, impute, right? The legal language, we�re not talking about moral transformation yet.

Why do we want to keep moral transformation out of the category of justification?

Um, well, that sounds like sanctification.

Yes, and you know what I was thinking, Steve, as I was going through the book of Romans, how much moral transformation does Abraham have to have before God says, you�re justified? Isn�t this a wonderful doctrine for people that are just scoundrels and scallywags and sinners to the nth degree?

Well, I mean, this whole idea of cleaning yourself up, you know, well, I just have to improve myself a little bit, then I�ll start taking church seriously. Well, it�s not about taking church seriously, it�s about believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And guess what? At the moment you do that, God doesn�t say, well, you know what, as soon as you complete these 12 steps, I just made the 12 steps up out of the ether, as soon as you complete this program, as soon as you do this or whatever, then I�ll declare you righteous.

God doesn�t wait for us to somehow turn ourselves around, get pointed in the right.

Direction, if I may. Mm, a new direction. One direction.

Yes, and then come alongside. That�s not how it works. That�s synergism.

Steve just gave me an inside joke and it took me 10 seconds to get it.

That�s us working together with God. God transforms, God changes, God does the work. It�s God alone doing the work. That�s salvation from a biblical perspective.

To confirm what Steve said, it is written in Romans 4, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. In other words, no moral transformation, nothing on the inside had to be done. Oh, it would be done.

That�s a different category.

But did Abraham have to believe first before God could act? Is that what happened? That seems to be what�s indicated by the text. You know, well, it just says and. Yeah. So, as a consequence.

Well, I�ll just keep reading a little bit. That always helps. If you never know how to answer a question, you�re stumped. You just keep reading the Bible. Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

And the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith, he�s talking generally, he�s talking with shorthand here, his faith in God is counted as righteousness. So, what was your question again?

Well, I�m saying is, you know, Abraham�s faith, is that what caused God to act?

Yeah. Well, you know, God is a master of getting people with their own free will to do things in such a way that he�ll never violate them and they can, with their own deterministic will, do things so that God can react so he makes sure he never turns the king�s heart wherever he wills.

He wouldn�t want to do that.

Like Jesus appealing to Saul�s free will. Saul, what do you think? Let me put before you a choice today. Would you like to follow me.

Or persecute the truth? Right. Sometimes you do this to me, Steve. I�m going to do it to you this time. Yeah. Let�s stick with regeneration proceeding faith for 1 John 5 verse 1. Good. Let�s do that. Yeah, let�s do that.

So, back to justification, it�s courtroom language and we would both admit there are other realms or reflections of the light that go through the prism of salvation. So, reconciliation is a different kind of scene or redemption is a slave market scene.

But this particular scene, it�s a courtroom and so laws have been broken. We broke them. Jesus has kept them, right? I never want to lose that. Why would Jesus come and be born, Galatians says, under the law, born of a woman and it says that he might redeem us from the curse of the law.

I don�t like it, Steve, when people say Jesus had to obey the law to prove that he was worthy to be the Savior who could be the substitute.

Yeah, that�s just false. I mean, he was worthy. He was inherently worthy. When was he not worthy? Right. I mean, the amazing thing and we just having celebrated Christmas, the amazing thing, one of the most amazing aspects of all history is that Jesus Christ, the eternal God, the second person of the Trinity, would enter into his creation as a baby, as a helpless baby, right?

Philippians 2, laying aside the exercise of all his deity and everything else and just be a helpless little baby dependent on his parents and everything else and then live life normally, right? Well, why did he do that?

The answer is because he had to be tempted in all ways, he had to live it through everything that we do and show that he did obey and perfectly obey. Why? Because we need that. We need that righteousness.

We need that perfect life counted to us. He didn�t need it.

And if he, since he obeyed perfectly and we got credit for that, what does that do for our assurance and our eternal security, if you want to call it that?

Well, I mean, it�s because here�s the defeat of the Christian life, right? I sin and I feel awful about my sin and I feel this estrangement from God. But the truth is, I mean, the reality is this is how I look upon it and it�s right for me to grieve over my sin and everything else, but the truth is my position with God never changed because my righteousness is not mine, right?

I didn�t earn it. I didn�t get to a point where God says, okay, that�s good enough, Steve. Good job, right? It was all of Jesus Christ. It�s his righteousness. I stand in Christ, not in Steve, for which I�m very thankful.

Assurance, Romans 3–5, and the End of the Series

Petey. We�ll talk about this more next show. Yet, for now, this doctrine will lead you all the way to your deathbed with confidence and assurance. Remember J. Gresham Machen on his deathbed in North Dakota, pushing the limit for these small little churches, gets pneumonia and writes the letter to telegraph to John Murray.

And when people say, well, I don�t need to know about justification, that�s a three-syllable word. Let�s see, justification, five syllables, sorry. And we don�t want to learn that language and make it simple and Jesus saves sinners.

Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. What about Machen? Petey. The righteousness of Christ, no hope without it. Jared. We could have a duet going here. Petey. It was in harmony. Jared.

So, it�s a very important doctrine. And so, you�d like to have some homework, we�d like you to read Romans 3, 4, and 5 and you�ll see justification by faith alone, the example of Abraham, and then the fruits of the benefits of justification by faith alone.

Petey.

Which are security and so many, anyway, that�s the show. Jared. See you next week.