A Review (Part 1)

Driving home: A man does not understand the nose apart from its context.

A man studying the human nose in isolation, without understanding its relation to the rest of the face, does not truly understand the nose. This illustrates that justification must be understood within its broader biblical context, not in isolation.

Here's a man who's given to study human anatomy. And he wants to understand the human knowledge. And so he gets charts on the human nose, cross-sections. He may study cadavers and look intently at the various parts of the human nose, the external structure, the nostrils, the septum, the turbinates, etc.

17:53 - 18:15 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He outlines three contextual elements: the nature of God (holy, just, true), the mutual relationship between God and His moral creatures (Creator, Lawgiver, Judge), and God's…

People try to suppress the thought of judgment by constantly distracting themselves with earbuds, iPods, and blaring music. This illustrates humanity's innate, yet suppressed, awareness of accountability to God as Judge.

You can do your best to bin it out of your mind with your earbuds constantly in your ears, with your iPod and your MP3 players and your radio blaring and your CD always on in the car. You can try to bin it out, but it's there as you sit here this morning. You know you're marked for judgment.

25:34 - 25:57 Read in full sermon

Driving home: With respect to the punishment due to our sin, the justified believer can say the day of judgment has come and is past. It came on Golgotha.

Martin critiques modern praise music that portrays God as merely a 'buddy' or a 'fuzzy teddy bear' who hugs and kisses, arguing this diminishes a proper understanding of His holiness and thus the need for justification.

God's the buddy. God's the fuzzy teddy bear. We snuggle up to Him. Jesus is the one who hugs us, kisses us, and strokes us in our times of need.

33:16 - 33:27 Read in full sermon

The point: Preachers have a responsibility to give a proper definition and description of biblical words, and children of God to be concerned about words.

Martin quotes J.I. Packer's definition of 'justify' from Baker's Theological Dictionary to provide a concise and authoritative summary of its forensic meaning as a judicial act of declaring someone just.

It has something to do, everything to do, with what God declares is true of that man and the declaration is made in the court of heaven. Dr. J. I. Packer, in a very helpful article on justification in the Baker's Theological Dictionary, has this little paragraph that gives you the essence of what this word means. The biblical meaning of justify, the Hebrew word, sadaq, and the Greek in the New Testament, dikaya'o, is to pronounce, to accept, or to treat as just. As on the one hand, not liable to penalty, and on the other hand, entitled to all the privileges due to those who have kept the law. ...

38:39 - 39:36 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Our consciences will never be free. We'll never be able to sing with Wesley, no condemnation now I dread.

Justification is likened to a declaration in a courtroom, distinct from the work God does 'in the operating room' (sanctification). This distinction is crucial for understanding that our standing before God is not based on our imperfect internal change.

But to him who works not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness, even as David pronounced blessing upon the man unto whom God reckons righteousness apart from works. Here is the language of reckoning righteousness apart from works. Well, if it's talking about declaring righteousness comprised of righteous deeds, we're talking about something else. And so God, in all of these ways throughout the scriptures, makes it plain that the meaning of the word to justify takes us not into the operating room where God does something in us, but into the cou...

45:00 - 46:18 Read in full sermon

The point: If you do not have the assurance of justification, be restless until you have it by laying hold of Christ who offers himself in the fullness of his grace in the word and promise of the gospel.

Martin recounts the five-and-a-half-year, thousand-session labor of the Westminster Assembly to craft their confessions and catechisms. This illustrates the meticulous precision and theological depth embedded in their definition of justification, which he will use in the next sermon.

And then we began after establishing that meaning of the word in messages 7 through 14 to begin to open up the substance of the doctrine using the definition of the larger catechism as our organizing principle. And that's where we'll go tonight and God willing I will attempt to give a distillation of those messages as we work through the first five elements of justification as given to us in the larger catechism definition. A beautiful, comprehensive definition born out of the wrestling of God's servants over many, many years. I'll just mention this to tease those of you who don't ordinarily a...

47:36 - 49:01 Read in full sermon