Context

Justification is to be studied with the concern of men afflicted with a deadly disease in the presence of a physician who can cure them. Their interest is not academic but a life-and-death concern.

This glorious doctrine embodies the divine answer to that pressing question, how shall sinful man be just with God? Therefore, with all the concern and interest fitting the subject, the kind of interest that men afflicted with a dread disease would have in the presence of physician who could cure them, as he explained the nature of this cure and prescribed how it is that they might come within the orbit of its influence, their interest, you see, would not be detached. Their interest would not be academic. It would be the involvement of life and death concern. So then, as we come this morning t...

4:36 - 5:28 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin recalls his construction days when the boss would jokingly tell him to hang an unwanted piece of material on a 'skyhook.' No such thing exists, and neither can the doctrine of justification hang unsupported in the air apart from other great doctrines.

May we come in the consciousness that we are dealing with that which is of the highest interest to each one of us. Now, what do I mean by the context of justification? Well, simply this. Justification, like all the doctrines of Scripture, does not come to us in isolation. It comes to us in a relationship of interdependence with other great doctrines, or to use a different word, it comes to us penetrated by other doctrines. And this doctrine cannot be established apart from those doctrines with which it shares this interdependence. Suppose I told you children to go and hang the roof of your dol...

5:30 - 6:28 Read in full sermon

A boy cares only for the Superman emblem on his favorite sweater and dismisses a small unraveling at the border. His mother warns that if the thread keeps pulling, the whole sweater will come apart. So it is when justification is divorced from its supporting doctrines.

It cannot hang on a skyhook. It is vitally dependent upon those truths which are like the supportive walls and the supportive foundation and the very terra firma beneath it all. Or to change the picture, it's like a boy who has a favorite sweater and woven right in with the wool of that sweater in a different color is a Superman emblem right in the front and it's his favorite sweater. Well, he comes in from playing one day and his mama notices that down at the border of that sweater, he got caught something and it's begun to unravel. And she tries to get him to part with his sweater long enoug...

7:24 - 8:21 Read in full sermon

Driving home: God cannot be indifferent to that which is the contradiction of himself. His very perfection requires the recoil of righteous indignation, and that is God's wrath.

A fuzzy black mole wrenched from its hole and set in the burning noonday sun cannot be indifferent. By its very nature it recoils from the light. So God, by His very holiness, must recoil against sin with the reflex of righteous wrath.

Now let me ask you children something. Can a mole be indifferent to the brightness of the noonday sun? If you could find a mole hole in your backyard in the spring and reach in and get a fuzzy little black mole and wrench him out of the darkness of his hole and set him right in the face of the burning noonday summer sun, could he be indifferent to that?

14:27 - 14:52 Read in full sermon

The point: Let the burning reality of God's holiness and justice press on your conscience; without that weight, justification will be at best a riddle and at worst despised.

If you were charged with a crime and heard the judge was a softy who could be bought off for twenty bucks or swayed by tears, your approach to the bench would reflect his reputation. John Owen's point: you must know your Judge before you can grasp justification.

begins to write his treatise on justification that he says in the very opening words where he's giving the rationale, the reason for writing this, and who can read it with any understanding. These are his words. Necessary it is unto any man who is to come unto a trial in the sentence whereof he is greatly concerned, duly to consider the judge before whom he is to appear, and by whom His cause is finally to be determined. Wherefore, the greatness, the majesty, the holiness, and sovereign authority of God are always to be present with us in a due sense of them when we inquire how we may be justi...

24:22 - 25:18 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin recounts Augustine's pastoral rubric: God comes to a dying man as accuser, saying 'You have broken my law.' The man is to answer, 'I put the death of Jesus between thee and my lawbreaking,' offering that same plea to every objection God can bring.

I close with something that was so encouraging to me this past week in doing background reading in preparation for this morning. I read what was part apparently of a pastoral rubric that Augustine gave. And he pictures a person lying on his deathbed. Lying upon his deathbed, God takes the place of an accuser with this man. And he pictures God saying to the man on his deathbed, Now, my creature, you have broken my law. What do you say to that? And Augustine says, Say to God, O God, I have indeed broken thy law, but I put the death of Jesus between thee and my law breaking. But then should God s...

49:01 - 49:58 Read in full sermon

The felt awareness of God's holiness and man's sin is like the table on which a meal is placed. You are not going to chew on the wood to be fed. The table holds the food, but Christ Himself is the bread of life upon whom the sinner must actually feed.

You've lived for years with the painful consciousness, God is holy and I am sinful. God is just and I am guilty. God will not clear the guilty. He must of necessity damn me. My friend, listen. Listen to me. That's not the Gospel. That's one of its corollaries. That's the context of the Gospel. Just as much as that table...

50:57 - 51:24 Read in full sermon