Pastor Albert N. Martin introduces a new sermon series on the chief blessings of salvation, focusing on the crucial importance of the doctrine of justification. He argues that justification is foundational for understanding God's glory, for the evangelization of the lost, and for the spiritual growth and understanding of all other doctrines for believers. Martin uses the analogy of a drunk driver and quotes Martin Luther and James Buchanan to underscore the doctrine's significance, urging listeners to deeply study and appreciate this central truth of the gospel.
Primary Texts
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Romans 3:21-26This passage is central to explaining how God's righteousness is manifested in justifying sinners through Christ's propitiation, making Him both just and the justifier.
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2 Thessalonians 2:13-14This text is used to demonstrate that the gospel is God's instrument for calling His elect to salvation and the obtaining of Christ's glory.
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Romans 1:16-17This passage is expounded to show that the gospel's power for salvation lies in its revelation of God's righteousness, received by faith.
Introduction to a New Series: The Chief Blessings of Salvation0:02
The Complex Problems Caused by Adam's Fall2:06
Justification as God's Foundational Solution4:47
The Importance of Justification for the Glory of God7:37
The Importance of Justification for the Good of Unbelievers21:19
The Importance of Justification for the Good of Believers33:11
Justification as the Atlas of Evangelical Doctrine39:05
Concluding Exhortation and Prayer42:03
Key Quotes
“Now the words of Martin Luther are well known, that justification is the article of the standing or the falling church.”
“Since the most burning, basic religious question that any fallen child of Adam can ask is this, How can sinful man or write with God?”
“Nowhere else is the delicate balance of all the divine perfections operating in perfect harmony and full energy more wonderfully displayed and gloriously demonstrated than in the gospel method of declaring hell-deserving sinners righteous on the basis of the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.”
“It is here in the divine method of justifying the ungodly that love and justice mercy and truth kindness and holiness are displayed in their most clear light and all of them embracing one another in that display.”
“God's honor is more completely staked on the maintenance propagation and reception of this doctrine than of any other doctrine of revealed religion.”
“The gospel is not a call to get your act together the gospel is not take Jesus into your heart the gospel is not come to Jesus that you might have a good marriage that you might have no the gospel is this almighty God has a controversy with you you are an unrighteous sinner deserving of divine wrath because of your unrighteousness but that same God who has a controversy with you and who could consign you to hell forever has in love and mercy sent his only begotten son into the world that in the stuff of the life and death of his son he might construct a righteousness which he can put to your account which gives you perfect standing in the court of heaven not only the pardon of all of your sins but a declaration that you stand as though you had kept every single precept of God a positive righteousness that constitutes a title and a warrant to heaven and it's in the gospel that this is revealed”
“God's way of moving his people to holiness of life and zeal in service is not man's way man's way is to hold out the blessings of acceptance and rewards for faithfulness and then say if you attain you will receive God's way is different God says you have received now pursue and now attain having been justified by faith we have peace with God Romans 12 1 I beseech you by the mercies of God already conferred present your bodies a living sacrifice”
“when Atlas falls everything that rested on his shoulders comes crashing down too”
Applications
All listeners
Put on your thinking cap and plead with God to teach you the doctrine of justification, for a profound and accurate understanding, and for your heart to be inflamed with appreciation.
If you long to behold more of God's glory, determine to deepen your understanding of the doctrine of justification, in which God's glory most brilliantly shines.
Gird up the loins of your minds and be determined to think hard and long about what the Bible says concerning justification.
If you are a stranger to the righteousness found only in Christ, tremble before God and feel the pressure of the law upon your conscience, being driven out of yourselves and into Christ for righteousness.
As a preacher, I must have the ability to say with Paul, 'I take you to record, I'm clear from the blood of all men,' by clearly preaching Christ and this doctrine.
This study in justification should inflame our hearts, deepening our love for God, zeal to serve Him, and passion to pursue Him and be useful in His cause.
Cry to God that the Lord will come with power upon the preacher as he lays out the biblical teaching on justification, that the unsaved would be brought to repentance and faith, and that believers would gain a new appreciation for being justified sinners.
A full transcript is available on the
tab. 41 paragraphs, roughly 45 minutes.
Machine transcription
Introduction to a New Series: The Chief Blessings of Salvation
The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, April 2, 2006, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Those of you who regularly attend upon this ministry will know that last Lord's Day morning, I completed a 14-message series of studies on the subject, Repentance and Faith, the Hinge on the Door of Salvation, with Acts 20 and verse 21 as the foundational text, that text in which Paul said he preached publicly, privately, to Jew and to Greek, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. With that text as the foundational text, I attempted to set before you what the Bible teaches concerning that repentance, which is unto life, and that faith, which is saving faith. We consider the necessity, the nature, and the fruits of these two saving graces. Graces implanted in the heart of every elect sinner who is regenerated by the Spirit of God in the context of the proclamation of the Gospel.
Now this morning we begin a new series of studies, which I have intended, entitled, The Chief Blessings of the Salvation Received by Every Penitent Believing Sinner. The Chief Blessings of the Salvation Received by Every Penitent and Believing Sinner. Now by way of introduction, let me remind you of a very basic fact of spiritual reality. And that fact is this.
The Complex Problems Caused by Adam's Fall
When our first father, Adam,
wantonly, in an act of blatant, open-eyed defiance of God, ate of the forbidden fruit, he plunged both himself and all of his posterity, all of humanity whom he represented, into a vast and complex set of problems. Some of these problems are legal. They have to do with the court of heaven, where God sits as a righteous judge. Some of the problems are personal and internal.
That is, they have to do with effects of sin within Adam and each one of us as the sons and daughters of Adam. Let me illustrate it this way. A man, irresponsibly, gets involved in sin. Let me illustrate it this way. A man, irresponsibly, gets involved in sin.
He gets himself drunk. He gets into his car. And as he's driving his car in a state of inebriation, he jumps a curb, hits and kills a child, breaks off a fire hydrant, smashes into a building, breaks his leg, cracks his ribs, and splits his head open on the steering wheel. Now he's got a complex set of problems.
Some of them are legal. Some of them are legal. They will be addressed in the courts of the land. He's been guilty of DWI, driving under the influence, of involuntary manslaughter or reckless endangerment.
He has been guilty of property damage. He has legal problems that will be addressed in due season in the courts. He has legal problems that will be addressed in due season in the courts. But he has some personal problems.
He needs a physician to set his leg, to stitch up his head. He needs a wrecker to tow away his car. His act of getting drunk and getting into his car and wantonly defying common sense and the law of the land brought a complex set of problems upon him. Well, in a similar way, our fall in Adam has created a complex set of problems, both legal in relationship to the court of heaven and personal in relationship to our own spiritual constitution.
Justification as God's Foundational Solution
However, God from eternity, knowing that man would fall in Adam, has sovereignly, graciously, in love, purposed a remedial course that we call redemption or salvation. And in that purpose of God, executed in time in the person and work of Christ, and applied in time with power by the Holy Spirit, God is committed to address the full complex of the problems created by human sin. And among the facets of that grace, remedial plan, activity of God, no blessing is more foundational than that which is set before us in the biblical word justification or the verb to justify. And therefore, for a number of Lord's days, in the days to come, we will seek to examine the teaching of the word of God on this chief blessing of salvation, received by every penitent and believing sinner. And as we take up our first study this morning,
I have but one major central concern, and it is this. I want to set before you and persuade you of the critical importance of the doctrine of justification. I want to persuade you that it is in your best interest to put on your thinking cap, to put on your and to plead with God that by the Spirit, through the word, God would teach you, perhaps for some of you for the first time, what this great blessing of God's salvation is for others, that He would give you a more profound and deep and accurate understanding of it, and for all of us, that our hearts would be inflamed with tremendous passion, appreciation for what it is to be a justified sinner. And so this morning, in the time allotted, I want to take up with you the critical importance of the biblical doctrine of justification. Now the words of Martin Luther are well known, that justification is the article of the standing or the falling church.
The Importance of Justification for the Glory of God
And what Martin Luther meant was this, that as the professed people of God understand, believe, and live in the light of and clearly proclaim this doctrine, so they will stand or fall as true churches of the Lord Jesus Christ. Since the most burning, basic religious question that any fallen child of Adam can ask is this, How can sinful man or write with God? Since that is the most basic, the most fundamental question any one of us can ask, then the answer embodied in the biblical doctrine of justification is indeed a burning, basic concern to every fallen son of Adam who is in any way alert and awake to the reality of what he is as a condemned and fallen sinner in Adam. Let me attempt to address this issue of the importance of the doctrine of justification under two subheadings. Number one, the importance of the doctrine of justification with respect
to the glory of God. Now I know to speak of the glory of God is to put a lot of people to sleep. If you stand up and say I'm going to give you ten principles for a more happy marriage, people sit on the edge of this chair and they soak it up. If you are to talk about seven principles by which to be more successful as a Christian man or woman, the glory of God, who cares about the glory of God?
What's that have to do with me? Well, that's just the problem, my friend. You're thinking in terms of yourself when the most important verse of the Bible that ought to regulate all of our thinking is the first verse of the Bible. Pick up your Bible and open to Genesis 1 and what are you confronted with?
In the beginning God. You're confronted with God. And you'll understand the Bible only so far as you continue to keep that first verse as your fundamental reference point all the way through. For it is a record of the acts and doings of God by which God is securing to Himself praise and honor and glory.
The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that the great goal of God in all of His works of creation and redemption is the manifestation of His glory. That is, the open display of the perfections of His being. He does what He does that we might see who He is and seeing who He is that we worship Him and love Him. This is true of creation.
You remember the words of Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. They declare, they speak forth His glory. They demonstrate and openly display the perfections of His being.
Paul says the same in Romans 1 in verse 20 when he says that from the creation of the world there are certain things evident about God, even His eternal power and His God-ness. And God is determined that in His creative activity He would reveal the perfections, the perfections of His being. But this is also true in redemption when the Apostle Paul completes his marvelous treatise on the salvation that God has provided for the fallen sons of Adam in Jesus Christ and how that salvation comes to us and how that salvation will be administered in redemptive history. He comes to the end of that whole section in Romans and at the end of chapter 11. What does he say? He says all the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are His ways past tracing out. For of Him, through Him and unto Him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. He cannot contemplate God's gracious works in redemptive intrusion into Adam's fallen race without ending up prostrate and acknowledging that this has been the outshining of the perfections of God.
James Buchanan in his classic book on the biblical doctrine of justification has expressed this truth with unusual precision when he wrote the whole plan of salvation which is revealed in the gospel is simply the unfolding and execution of God's eternal purpose to overrule the fall of man for His own glory by a signal manifestation of all His perfections in the salvation of sinners through the mediatorial work of Christ. Profound words. Very, very densely. The whole plan of salvation revealed in the gospel is simply the unfolding and execution of God's eternal purpose to overrule the fall of man for His own glory. And it is at this point that the doctrine of justification is so crucial.
Nowhere else is the delicate balance of all the divine perfections operating in perfect harmony and full energy more wonderfully displayed and gloriously demonstrated than in the gospel method of declaring hell-deserving sinners righteous on the basis of the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In the whole corpus of God's saving work nowhere is the delicate balance of all the divine perfections operating in perfect harmony and in full energy more wonderfully displayed and gloriously demonstrated than in what we call the doctrine of justification I would rather say in the act of justifying sinners on the basis of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This is Paul's whole argument in Romans chapter 3 after demonstrating that every segment of humanity is under sin and under condemnation fully deserving of the wrath
and judgment of God. Verse 21 of Romans 3 Paul now turns to begin to expound the gospel but now against the backdrop of universal sin and condemnation but now apart from the law a righteousness of God has been manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus now notice whom God set forth a propitiation through faith in His blood why? to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God for the showing I say of His righteousness at this present season that He Himself might be just and the justifier of Him that hath faith in Jesus God has executed this method of salvation through the imputed righteousness of Christ
a righteousness rooted in Christ vicarious curse bearing as well as in His perfect life to the end that God might show something about Himself that He might display that in so doing He has not negated any of His glorious attributes that though He has in love given His Son He has given Him in a way that fully accords with all the demands of His righteousness and His justice He does not cease to be a righteous judge when He chooses to be a gracious Savior and God has executed this scheme of redemption in order to display the perfections of His character it is here in the divine method of justifying the ungodly that love and justice mercy and truth kindness and holiness are displayed in their most clear light and all of them embracing one another in that display it is here that the law and the gospel are seen in their distinct differences in their mutual dependence and in their subservience to the honor and to the glory of God but where there is ignorance or perversion
of the biblical doctrine of justification then God is always robbed of some dimension of His glory where there is ignorance or perversion of the biblical doctrine of justification then God is robbed of some dimension of the glory that is due to His name a bible based spirit imparted understanding and experience of justification will cause us to see and revel in the fact that God is both just and yet the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus the announcement given at the birth of our Lord sets the pattern for the whole of His saving work you remember the announcement of the angels glory to God in the highest and on earth peace glory to God and peace man's peace to the end that God made will be glorified no peace to man at the expense of God's glory God's glory revealed in all that will be manifested in the person and work of our Lord Jesus all of that that brings us peace is to the end that God Himself will be glorified so dear child
of God if you would behold God's glory if you would worship Him in the manifestation of that glory don't be content with dim indistinct and vague ideas regarding the doctrine of justification surely in the light of every true believer here this morning if I ask the question do you long to behold more of God's glory more of the outshining of the perfections of who He is your heart answers yes Lord I do I do well if so then determine your understanding of this doctrine in which among all doctrines that surround the gracious saving work of God in Christ in this doctrine God's glory most brilliantly shines as all of His attributes come to their fullest expression in perfect harmony in the salvation of sinners by means of an imputed righteousness based upon the life and death of the Lord Jesus another man of God expressed this issue with these words God's honor is more completely staked on the maintenance propagation and reception of this doctrine than of
The Importance of Justification for the Good of Unbelievers
any other doctrine of revealed religion let that sink in God's honor is more completely staked on the maintenance propagation and reception of this doctrine than of any other doctrine of revealed religion so it is important for us to gird up the loins of our minds and be determined to think hard and long what does the Bible say concerning this matter of justification but the issue is not only important with respect to the glory of God but it is important with respect to the good of men and I want to open up that thought under two headings the importance of the doctrine with respect to those among us who have yet to be called by the gospel sitting in this place today are only two kinds of people not just male and female but saved and lost in Christ out of Christ under the canopy of what we read this morning of that grace
by which sinners are saved and recreated in Christ under good works or still dead in trespasses in sins lackeys of the devil slaves of the passions of your own corrupt mind as well as your flesh two groups and yet blessed be God we have reason to believe that out of the group of those yet in their sins God purposes to call into the orbit of saving grace and what is God's instrument in calling his elect to himself well his instrument is the gospel look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 2 Thessalonians and chapter 2 verse 13 we are bound to give thanks to God always for you brethren beloved of the Lord for that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth where unto he called you through our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ how did God call those whom he had chosen at Thessalonica he called them
he brought them into the possession of the salvation that he purposed for them procured on their behalf in the person and work of Christ he did it by means of the gospel the gospel was God's magnet to draw out his elect at Thessalonica unto himself and what is the heart of the gospel according to this same writer well he tells us in Romans chapter 1 the heart of the gospel is nothing less nothing more than the setting forth of that righteousness which constitutes our justification Romans 1 16 and 17 I'm not ashamed of the gospel it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek and why is it and how is it the power of God unto salvation for for a logical connective for therein within the gospel is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith as it is written but the righteous shall live by faith for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness against the backdrop of man
under wrath Paul says I have a gospel that is the power of God unto salvation and it is a gospel that is the power of God unto salvation for in that gospel is revealed is made known a righteousness from God a way of right standing with the God of heaven a way in which sinners who have no standing in themselves who are natively and naturally under wrath come under the favor of God they have acceptance in the court of heaven and it is this gospel that reveals that righteousness which is received by faith you see the gospel is not a call to get your act together the gospel is not take Jesus into your heart the gospel is not come to Jesus that you might have a good marriage that you might have no the gospel is this almighty God has a controversy with you you are an unrighteous sinner deserving of divine wrath because of your unrighteousness but that same God who has a controversy with you and who could consign you to hell forever has in love and mercy sent his only begotten son into the world that in the stuff of the life and death of his son he might construct
a righteousness which he can put to your account which gives you perfect standing in the court of heaven not only the pardon of all of your sins but a declaration that you stand as though you had kept every single precept of God a positive righteousness that constitutes a title and a warrant to heaven and it's in the gospel that this is revealed therefore the gospel must be understood and preached with clarity if we are to pray and expect God to attend our gospel and make it the power of God unto salvation now church history teaches this so clearly for hundreds of years this truth that the gospel sets forth a righteousness provided by God that is acceptable to God that gives you a right standing in the court of God that gospel was buried in the rubble of Roman ritual and tradition and though there were individuals here and there and little groups here and there that discovered it in their Bibles embraced it to the salvation of their souls and preached it to others by and throughout all where Rome had extended
its influence and so called Christendom this truth had been buried and when God was pleased to lay his hand upon an Augustinian monk called Martin Luther and caused him to understand this doctrine in the depth of his tortured soul a soul that took seriously what it was to be under wrath something some of you have never done Luther lived after day week after week month after month under the terror of the judgment of God he took seriously what many of you take lightly my sins demand and deserve the judgment of a holy and an infinite God and God was pleased eventually by his word through the spirit as we heard last week using the council and even the instruction of others to bring Luther to see no the gospel is that which holds forth a righteousness which God has in the person of his son provided for guilty hell deserving sinners like me and as Luther began to preach and teach and write of that gospel and God raised up others Calvin and Zwingli and then the English reformers what happened when that gospel of the
righteousness of God provided in Jesus Christ was preached it was a revolution that changed the whole history of western civilization overturned years of the horrible crippling influence of Romish religion and as one author has stated in every single revival basically what happens is this truth comes to birth with fresh power either in the cognitive understanding of it or where it was understood at least in its basic framework it was not experienced so that sin and grace were simply words to people who heard them with their mother's milk but who had never trembled before God who had never felt the pressure of the law of God upon their consciences so they were driven out of themselves and into Christ for righteousness and so if we have a genuine concern if I as a preacher have a genuine concern for some of you sitting here today and it's a horrible thought a horrific thought there's some of you sitting here today if God put forth his finger and touched that ticker you bent over dead you'd drop into hell it's a frightening thought
it's a horrible thought do you believe it you who are strangers to that righteousness which is to be found only in Christ you who know nothing of a savior's blood cleansing you from your sin a savior's obedience put to your account so that the court of heaven has no controversy with you there are periods in church history when there were many who believed the framework of the teaching but God came with power and he used preachers who got inside the conscience of the careless and the indifferent but at the end of the day it was either God restoring in terms of the preaching of this doctrine where there was nothing but ignorance of it or restoring it in its power to the hearts of men where there was no vital experience of it that is the earmark of every true spiritual revival therefore I say the doctrine is important to those who are yet outside of Christ it's important that I as a preacher as I come to that point in my life where I recognize my days are numbered to be a preacher that I have the ability to say with Paul I take you to record
The Importance of Justification for the Good of Believers
I'm clear from the blood of all men it's been years since I preached a topical series focusing upon this doctrine I trusted for the very ethos of my ministry that Christ is set before you week after week after week as the only hope of helpless sinners my conscience does not accuse me that I've not preached Christ but what I'm saying is this doctrine is vitally important not only with respect to the glory of God as it is revealed in this doctrine but it is important to the souls of men those who are not yet called but then also to those of you who are called you have been called into the fellowship of Christ into union with Christ you have been declared justified there is no condemnation hanging over your head in Romans 5 in verse 1 the apostle wrote these words being therefore justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God and not only so but we also rejoice in our tribulations
knowing that tribulation works steadfastness and steadfastness a provenness and a provenness hope and hope does not put to shame because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has given to us in this text Paul says that justification by faith through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ is the basis of peace with God being therefore justified by faith we have peace with God God has no controversy with us he sees us in union with his son clothed in the perfect robe of his righteousness he finds no more fault in us than he can find in his son seated at his own right hand this text says that being justified by faith we have peace with God furthermore because we have peace with God as justified men and women we now have this access of approach to him through whom we have our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and we have confidence that the best is yet to come and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God and what this does is amidst the tribulations of life it enables us to rejoice in them knowing that God is working in us
character traits essential to spiritual stability you see God's way of moving his people to holiness of life and zeal in service is not man's way man's way is to hold out the blessings of acceptance and rewards for faithfulness and then say if you attain you will receive God's way is different God says you have received now pursue and now attain having been justified by faith we have peace with God Romans 12 1 I beseech you by the mercies of God already conferred present your bodies a living sacrifice 2 Corinthians 7 1 having therefore these promises dearly beloved let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and of spirit God's way of drawing us deeper into the life of holiness and zeal is not man's way God's way is to bring us to a new appreciation of what we have and are in Christ you've heard me say it many times God's way is to open our eyes to the grand indicatives of the gospel the indicatives tell us what is what we have who we are and as our eyes are open to see and to appreciate and believingly to embrace
the indicatives then we are called to obedience to the imperatives in the light of who we are and what we have this is what we are to do and to be in our experience and for those of us who are the people of God I trust that this study in the doctrine of justification giving us a clearer more definitive grasp upon what it is will so inflame our hearts that we will find our love for God deepening our zeal to serve him inflamed that we will find our passion to pursue him and to be useful in his cause in Christ's as a result of it and so I say the study is important to us not only for those not called but for those of us who are yet in a state of grace and then there is a third strand that I want to address briefly the doctrine is important to us as the people of God not only because our appreciation of what we are and have in Christ fuels our love and zeal to serve him but our understanding of the doctrine of justification in a very real sense can greatly
Justification as the Atlas of Evangelical Doctrine
advance our understanding of all of the truths that are related to it let me use the illustration that Dr. Packer used in his introductory essay to Buchanan's book on justification by faith he writes the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas remember the mythical figure he carries the whole world on his back he says the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas it bears the world on its shoulders the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace the doctrines of election of effectual calling regeneration repentance adoption prayer the church the ministry the sacraments all have to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith thus the Bible teaches that God elected men in eternity in order that in due time they might be justified through faith in Christ he renews their hearts under the word and draws them to Christ by effectual calling in order that they might justify them upon their believing their practice of prayer of daily repentance of good works their whole life of faith springs from the knowledge of God's
justifying grace the church is to be thought of as the congregation of the faithful the fellowship of justified sinners and the preaching of the word and ministry of the sacraments are to be understood as means of grace only in the sense that they are means to which God works the growth of justifying faith a right view of these things is not possible without a right understanding of justification so that when justification falls all true knowledge of the grace of God in human life falls with it and then as Luther said the church itself falls a society like the church of Rome which is committed by its official creed to pervert the doctrine of justification has sentenced itself to a distorted understanding of salvation at every point nor can these distortions ever be corrected till the Roman doctrine of justification is put right and something similar happens when Protestants let the thought of justification drop out of their minds the true knowledge of salvation drops out with it and cannot be restored till the truth of justification is back in its proper place when Atlas falls everything that rested on his shoulders comes crashing down too
Concluding Exhortation and Prayer
and so as the people of God I long that all of us will be so established in the truth of God Ephesians 4 that will not be like children tossed to and fro and few things will help us more than a grasp upon justification as taught in the scriptures as we see how all of the other truths of God's saving work in Jesus Christ are related to it and are sustained by it so as we conclude our study this morning I plead with you to cry to God that in the days to come the Lord will come with power upon me as I seek to lay out before you in as simple and yet comprehensive way as possible the major lines of the biblical teaching on this doctrine that God would work in the hearts of the unsaved that those who need desperately to come under the canopy of justifying grace would be brought to repentance and faith and that God would so come upon us as his people that a new appreciation of what it is to be a justified sinner will deepen our love to Christ inflame our zeal for the work of the gospel in the days that are before us let's pray and ask God to do this for his glory
our father we thank you for your word we thank you for the provision for hell deserving guilty law breaking sinners set forth in the person and work of our Lord Jesus that marvelous blessing of justification that declaration from the court of heaven that sins are pardoned and that a perfect standing before the law has been imputed we thank you we bless you that there is such a provision of redemptive grace and we pray that it would become the very precious possession of some who this day possess it not and for those of us who do possess it we would grow in our understanding and appreciation of God it to the end that we may love you more that we may be more zealous in your service that we may be more quick to speak to others of such a provision as is set forth in the gospel seal then your word to our hearts we pray to the praise of your grace in Jesus name Amen
This transcript was generated by automated speech recognition and may contain errors.
It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
Romans 3:21-26
This passage is central to explaining how God's righteousness is manifested in justifying sinners through Christ's propitiation, making Him both just and the justifier.
2 Thessalonians 2:13-14
This text is used to demonstrate that the gospel is God's instrument for calling His elect to salvation and the obtaining of Christ's glory.
Romans 1:16-17
This passage is expounded to show that the gospel's power for salvation lies in its revelation of God's righteousness, received by faith.
Texts Expounded
auto_stories
This passage is expounded to demonstrate how God's righteousness is displayed in justification, showing Him to be both just and the justifier.
auto_stories
This passage is used to illustrate that God calls His elect through the gospel to obtain the glory of Christ.
auto_stories
Martin expounds this passage to show that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation because it reveals the righteousness of God, which is received by faith.
auto_stories
This passage is used to explain that justification by faith is the basis for peace with God, access to grace, hope in glory, and rejoicing in tribulations.