God's Free Grace Unto Sinners

A death-row inmate 48 hours from execution receives a letter stamped 'urgent time value' announcing how he may justly and righteously avoid his sentence. He flips it across the cell to read the sports page. Martin uses this to expose the folly of hearers who treat the announcement of justification with indifference.

Please comply. Please comply with the directions. Now get the picture. Here's a man in death row, 48 hours from execution.

2:07 - 2:16 Read in full sermon

A mother leaves a batch of cookies with instructions not to fight or snitch. Returning to find all well, she justifies the children with a candy bar reward. Finding otherwise, she condemns. Children grasp from this exactly what declarative justification means.

To pronounce. To accept. And then to treat a person as just. That is, we regard him as under no liability to punishment and as entitled to all the privileges of a law keeper.

10:57 - 11:14 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is what one theologian said, perhaps the closest thing to inspiration in uninspired literature.

The Westminster Larger Catechism is not the food but the dishes on which the Word of God is served. You don't chew the dishes - you eat the food. So the catechism's long definition helps separate the various courses of justification.

For if we do not think biblically and clearly on this, we will have no foundation for the entirety of our Christian experience. Now what we're going to do this morning is we're going to start in to an examination of what I'm calling the major elements of the biblical doctrine of justification. Having seen the importance, the context, God is creator and judge, man is created and sinner, having looked at the meaning of the word, now we're going to break down the massive weight of biblical teaching into some of its major categories so that you'll be able to think through and appreciate the privil...

14:09 - 15:10 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is what one theologian said, perhaps the closest thing to inspiration in uninspired literature.

Asking for the Larger Catechism's definition to be condensed is like asking someone to shrink the Hope Diamond because it is 'too big.' You would destroy its beauty. The definition must be unpacked, not reduced.

I can do no better than to set before you not a massive verbiage. You know what that long sentence is? It is what one theologian said, perhaps the closest thing to inspiration in uninspired literature.

17:10 - 17:28 Read in full sermon

American jurisprudence has levels of appeal, but once the Supreme Court speaks there is no higher court. So God's throne is the Supreme Court with no appeal beyond it - His justifying verdict cannot be overturned.

It's His law that we've broken. It is His Son that has died as it is His court before which we must all appear. So it is right that He and none other should pass sentence upon us. In the moral government of the universe, God's authority is so supreme and exclusive. He alone is the lawgiver. He alone is the judge. No one has jurisdiction but himself. No one can really or effectually justify or condemn us but this God.

25:47 - 26:22 Read in full sermon

The point: When the accuser assaults your conscience with the memory of your sins, stand on 'It is God that justifieth - who is he that condemneth?' and refuse to dishonour God by disbelieving His verdict.

Picture every demon and the devil himself lining up in perfect cadence to hurl a believer's sins into his ears. If God has justified him, no united chorus of hell can reverse the verdict. On the other side, no chorus of angels or saints can justify a man whom God has not.

But then there is a second deduction from this element of our study that God is the author. First of all, if he is, it's a declaration which none can cancel or alter. Then secondly, it is a declaration which must be founded on truth and on reality. Since God himself condemns the judge who pronounces the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty, God will not be guilty of that sin. God condemns a judge who pronounces innocent people guilty, who pronounces guilty people innocent. In this very epistle to the Romans, one of the scathing denunciations that comes to the moralists, to those who have fu...

31:14 - 32:07 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Justifying faith is the most heroic act of faith in the whole universe.

The publican in Luke 18 does not plead seekingness or sincerity or partial reformation. With nothing but pure unadulterated sinnerhood he beats his breast and cries 'God be merciful to me, THE sinner,' and goes down to his house justified.

The sinner!

49:04 - 49:06 Read in full sermon

Martin says he wishes a pit could be dug outside the auditorium for a burial service, where the people would throw in every remnant of works righteousness and Romanism, kick dirt on it, and kiss it goodbye forever. Would that it were that easy.