Romans 1:14-18a
The Nature of God in Himself
Pastor Albert N. Martin preaches on "The Nature of God in Himself," arguing that a proper understanding of God's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness, justice, and truth is the essential biblical context for grasping the doctrine of justification. He expounds passages from Exodus, Isaiah, 1 John, Revelation, Genesis, Psalms, and Numbers to demonstrate God's attributes, emphasizing that without a profound sense of God's character and His wrath against sin, the gospel of justification will not be received as good news. Martin urges listeners, especially careless sinners, to feel the 'pincer move' of God's holiness and justice, driving them to seek Christ for mercy and imputed righteousness.
Primary Texts
Topics
Outline 12 sections · 59 min
- Introduction: The Critical Importance of Justification and Its Context 0:04
- The Urgency of Understanding Justification: A Matter of Life and Death 7:15
- Why Context Matters: The Interdependence of Biblical Truths 10:27
- God's Nature as the Context: Holiness, Justice, and Truth 16:07
- God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Holiness 18:54
- God's Holiness in the New Testament: Light and No Darkness 22:49
- The Recoil of Holiness: God's Wrath Against Sin 27:04
- God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Justice 34:02
- Justice Demands Punishment: The Pincer Move of God 37:47
- God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Truth 45:08
- The Necessity of God's Truth for Justification 50:38
- Conclusion: Drawing Near Through Christ's Eternal Love 55:01
Key Quotes
“Now when any man, any woman, any boy or girl begins to ask that question because of a present, deep, personal and inescapable sense of the magnitude of the issues bound up in that question, then and only then, will that person be prepared to receive with joy the teaching of the Bible concerning the amazing provision which God has made in Jesus Christ for sinners.”
“The doctrine of justification is what it is, because God is who He is.”
“God cannot be indifferent or complacent towards that which is the contradiction of Himself. God cannot be indifferent or complacent to that which is a contradiction of Himself. And what is an utter contradiction of Himself? Sin. Unholiness. Uncleanliness.”
“We will not find the gospel of imputed righteousness to be good news if we sell out to happy, clappy religion as we heard in the previous hour. Evangelicalism, like people drunk to reality, headlong, plunging into more and more happy, clappy religion, making sinners feel comfy and cozy with their cuddly bear God.”
“Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”
“Have you ever felt God's pincers move in your soul? Not give an intellectual assent to it, but felt it to the point where the only thing that mattered is I must know how I can be right with this God.”
“Romans 3, 4 says let God be true and every man a liar. If the only way God's truth can be established is to prove that every other mouth speak lies, let every man be proven a liar. But God is eternally unchangeably true. He is called in Hebrews 6, 18 the God who cannot lie.”
Applications
All listeners
- Ask the profound and disturbing question: 'If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?' with the deepest thought and most intense personal concern.
- Gird up the loins of your mind and listen to this study on justification as if your life depended on hearing the only cure for a deadly disease.
- Be firmly rooted in the doctrine of justification by understanding its supporting doctrines, to avoid instability and vulnerability to error.
- Take seriously the reality that God is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness, and His wrath burns toward you if you're not covered in the righteousness of God.
- Recognize God's 'pincer move' of holiness and justice pressing in upon you, cutting off complacency and driving you to a sense of need for Christ.
- Feel God's pincer move in your soul to the point where the only thing that matters is knowing how to be right with this holy and just God.
- Do not trifle with God as a God of truth; have heart dealings and honest dealings with Him.
- If you have a sense of who God is and know you're not ready to meet Him, throw yourself upon Jesus as your only hope.
A full transcript is available on the tab. 93 paragraphs, roughly 59 minutes.
Introduction: The Critical Importance of Justification and Its Context
The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, May 7, 2006, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. I would ask you to follow in your Bibles as I read several verses from the first chapter of Romans. We will not be parking on these verses in the way of detailed exposition, but I read them as a framework for our ongoing studies in the doctrine of justification. Romans 1, verse 14 through 18a.
Romans 1, verse 14. I am debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So, as much as in me is, I am debtor to the wise and to the foolish. I am debtor to the wise and to the foolish.
I am ready to preach the gospel to you also that are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein 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 of men. Let us again pray and ask for the help of God as we come to the preaching of His Word.
Our Father, we would confess again that each of us is very slow to unlearn the ways, of creature confidence. And we would together acknowledge that left to ourselves we cannot penetrate the mysteries of Your Word. Our minds are dull and our hearts are slow to respond in obedience and in faith. And so we ask You to look upon us in pity and come by Your Holy Spirit and help both preacher and hearer in this concert, in this concert of felt dependence to cast ourselves upon You, pleading for the aid of Your Spirit. Hear our cry and answer this plea that we make through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In Psalm 130 and verse 4, the psalmist asks a most profound and disturbing question, a question which every man, every woman, every boy, every girl in this place ought also to ask with the deepest thought and the most intense personal concern.
And the question is this, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
The question the psalmist asks is rooted in the reality of his own sense of sinfulness and of God's absolute knowledge of all of his sins. And he asks the question, Lord, if You should mark all of my iniquities, all of those things that have been contrary to Your revealed will and to Your law, and mark them so as to bring me into account for them. O Lord, who could stand? Who could dare lift up his head with any sense of anything other than shame and dread at the impending judgment of God?
Now when any man, any woman, any boy or girl begins to ask that question because of a present, deep, personal and inescapable sense of the magnitude of the issues bound up in that question, then and only then, will that person be prepared to receive with joy the teaching of the Bible concerning the amazing provision which God has made in Jesus Christ for sinners. A provision couched in the biblical language, justification. Justification. That amazing act of God's grace in which He pardons all of our sins and furthermore accounts us as righteous in the court of heaven so that in our substitute and surety the Lord Jesus we have a right and a title to be brought into the presence of God with everlasting joy and blessing. So we come this morning in our studies of this great privilege of redemptive grace called justification. In the initial study several weeks ago
before I left for England, I attempted to persuade you of the critical importance of the doctrine of justification and I sought to do so along two lines. I sought to demonstrate the importance of the biblical doctrine of justification with respect to the glory of God. It is in this provision of redemptive grace that all of God's glorious attributes shine in their most intense way. And if we are jealous for God's glory, we will be jealous both to understand, to propagate, and to defend this wonderful doctrine of justification.
And then secondly, I sought to demonstrate the importance of the biblical doctrine of justification with respect to the good of men. The good of those of us already called and those who are yet to be called. Now this morning I propose to move forward from our consideration of the importance of the doctrine of justification and consider with you what I am calling the biblical context of the doctrine of justification. The biblical context of the doctrine of justification.
The Urgency of Understanding Justification: A Matter of Life and Death
And as we do, let me remind you, this is not an abstract philosophical discussion of some religious ideas. Your sins and my sins are real. Your sins and my sins are many. Your sins and my sins cry to the throne of a just God for righteous judgment.
And your sins and my sins deserve everlasting fasting conscious suffering in hell and if god should mark them and give us what we deserve that would be our portion and therefore to engage in this study that is going to demand that we think and we wrestle with biblical texts it is not an abstract philosophical discussion of some religious idea nor is it an interesting philological discussion that is some people have an interest in words and in old text and they become philologists and they like to study words and the meaning of words no this is not a fascination with ancient text and with obscure words we're wrestling with the most profound of all questions how can sinful man be just with god and so as we embark upon this our second study focusing upon the biblical text biblical text context of the doctrine of justification i urge you to gird up the loins of your mind to listen as men and women boys and girls would listen who had a dread esoteric disease for which
there was just one cure that had recently been discovered and the doctor who discovered it and knows how to administer it to the healing of those afflicted with that disease made an announcement at a given place and a given time he would freely and openly disclose this marvelous cure and would himself administer it if you were afflicted with that disease your presence would not be of academic interest your presence would not be one of peripheral curiosity it would be the visceral commitment of someone who knew he or she was afflicted with a deadly disease and was about to hear of the only cure well that's true with respect to our coming to this doctrine and so again i plead take the loose ends of your mind the imagery peter uses and tie them up and say i am one who if god should mark my iniquity i could never stand and it is in the marvelous you redemptive privilege of justifying grace that the great physician himself comes in his word and says here is the answer to your great need the biblical context
Why Context Matters: The Interdependence of Biblical Truths
of the doctrine of justification first of all i want you to consider with me why it is important to start our study here why is it important to start our study considering the biblical context of the doctrine of justification and my answer is that justification is like all of the other major troops of the bible in that it cannot be understood apart from the other jews to which it is intimately you can't janet lee and structurallyцу or the yields create what i mean isn't that what it was too long scientist do you want to know us do moon case it has been because he is always paying attention in one way or another way that people know tis was Edson Grymeー reloading themitt this thing. So, he goes to a local mortician and says, I want to understand the human nose. So, I'm wondering if you will take a plaster cast of one of your corpses and give it to me. Furthermore, I'd like you, if someone doesn't object, to split the nose open and take some more plaster cast so I can see the turbinates and the septum and understand the internal structure.
And so, he gets all these casts of a human nose and he lines them up and he sits and he observes and measures. He's going to master what a human nose is. Does he know what the nose is simply by isolating that aspect of the human physiology and studying all of its dimensions and all of its chambers and reading about all of its functions? No. He doesn't understand the human nose until
he's based on a human face, lowered in the eyes, between the eyes, above the lips, and between the ears. And it's only when he sees the nose in relationship to the other major features of a human face that he really understands what a nose is. If he pictures it as something that hangs off the right side of the head like an ear, he doesn't understand. The human nose. And so it is with all of the major truths of the Word of God. There is an integration. There is a harmonious relationship. And furthermore, there's an interdependence so that certain truths cannot long stand in the consciousness, in the conviction, in the life of the people of God unless the supportive truths are there to strengthen it and to give it strength. Shape and contours and ongoing life. So with the doctrine of justification, there's an interrelatedness,
an interpenetration, an interdependence between the biblical doctrine of justification and several other fundamental truths. And this interdependence and interpenetration is so intimate and so vital that if those other truths are ignored or denied, the doctrine of justification cannot be grasped in faith nor maintained as the lifeblood of the people of God. Therefore, we must begin by considering together the biblical context of the doctrine of justification. And according to Ephesians 4, one of the stated purposes, for which God gives pastor-teachers to the church, is clearly articulated in verse 14 that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. And the reason so many of God's people are so quickly pushed aside from a firm grasp upon vital doctrine is they were too lazy to think through to grasping the context of the doctrine of justification. And so, in this case,
the supported doctrines to that doctrine. And the price we pay for mental and spiritual laziness is instability and vulnerability to error. And I want to fulfill my role as a pastor-teacher to help you as the people of God to be firmly rooted in this doctrine, and I cannot do it responsibly without taking three Lord's Day mornings to address with you three Lord's Day mornings. Three biblical truths which form the context of the biblical doctrine of justification. Having then given you my reason for doing this, we come secondly to the first of these biblical truths which form the context of the biblical doctrine of justification, and simply stated, the truth is the nature of God Himself. The nature of God Himself. In Himself. To state the matter as simply and succinctly as I know how to, let me state it as follows. The doctrine of justification is what it is, because God is who He is. If we would understand
God's Nature as the Context: Holiness, Justice, and Truth
why the doctrine of justification is what it is, we must have a basic grasp upon the biblical teaching concerning who He is. And if we would understand why the doctrine of justification is what it is, we must have a basic grasp upon the biblical teaching concerning who God is. For justification has essentially to do in the beginning with God. Therein is revealed the righteousness of God. And why do we need a righteousness of God as we read? For the wrath of God is revealed. You don't begin to understand any biblical doctrine starting with man. You start with God. He is the reference point. And this is true with respect to justification. Now, many of you have memorized the answer to question five in our Baptist version of the shorter catechism. What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And my purpose is not to speak on the nature or attributes of God in general, but only those which have a peculiar
and necessary bearing upon the doctrine of justification, namely His holiness, His justice, and His truth. To put it bluntly, if sitting here this morning, you have no idea or very fuzzy concepts of what the Bible means when it says God is infinite and unchangeable in His holiness, in His justice, and in His truth. If it is truth, you can have no appreciation for the biblical doctrine of justification. It's impossible. If you have any notions, they will either be little bits and pieces of half-formed notions, or they will be concocted of the stuff of your own brain and your own emotions and how you would like to think the doctrine of justification should be framed. And so I'm going to ask you to think with me in the remainder of our time, on the fact that God is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness, a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable justice,
and a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable truth. First of all, then, God is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness. This is both the harmonious and consistent witness of both the Old and the New Testaments. And here I ask you to take up your Bibles with me.
God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Holiness
We turn first of all to that song of celebration of the Exodus, when God by mighty power brought His people out of Egypt.
And we read in Exodus 15, 1, And then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spoke, saying, And in this celebration of God's marvelous deliverance of His people from Egyptian bondage, verse 11, Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods? There's the rhetorical question. Among all that men exalt to the place of gods, among all the things and objects that men make and then designate them as gods, among all the things that they conceive in their mind and call it God, Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like unto you? And notice the first element of God's being, the one true and living God upon which Moses focuses. Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like to you, glorious in holiness?
His holiness being the outshining of His very being. Glorious in holiness. And surely, this was the experience of Isaiah the prophet in the familiar language of Isaiah chapter 6. In the year that King Uzziah dies, the prophet has a vision of God.
According to the New Testament, a vision that focused upon a pre-incarnate manifestation of the second person of the Godhead. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high, and lifted up. And His train, that is the skirt of His garment, filled the temple. And above Him stood the seraphim, these strange, sinless, otherworldly creatures.
Each one had six wings. With two He covered His face. With two He covered His feet. And with two He did fly.
And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And at this outshining of the burning, majestic holiness of God, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him that cried, the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Oh, happy, happy, happy am I, for I've seen the cuddly bear God.
No, no, no cuddly bear God. This holy man, this poet, this man reared in the context of the dignity of royalty. He's had this vision of God in His holiness and he cries out, Woe is me. I'm undone.
I'm shattered. I've come apart at the seams because I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And where did this consciousness come from? Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
I've seen Him in something. I've heard the outshining of the glory of His holiness. I've heard the language of the seraphim crying one to another, Holy, Holy, Holy. And He is shattered.
One of God's major designations in the Old Testament, He is the Holy One of Israel. The totally other one. The totally separate one. The totally apart from all that is defiled and defiling in man.
God's Holiness in the New Testament: Light and No Darkness
And then in this fallen world He is the Holy One. Ah, but someone says that's the God of the Old Testament. The God who when He comes down upon Sinai the mountain shakes and there is thunder and lightning and the people tremble. But now God comes to us in the very lovely, gentle, softer hues of His love and His mercy and His pity.
And so there is no shame. There is no shattering vision of God in His holiness but the softer and more comfortable awareness of God as revealed in Christ. Is that so? Let John instruct us in 1 John chapter 1.
1 John chapter 1. Hear the language of the one who lay His head upon the breast of the Savior. Knew Him intimately. Having said that what He writes, comes out of the crucible of first hand experience in the encounter with the word of life that is none other than the incarnate word, our Lord Jesus.
And John says in verse 3, That which we've seen and that which we've heard we declare to you, to the end that there may be fellowship vertically, horizontally with God and with the Father. Now then, what was heard from this incarnate word? Verse 5. This is the message which we heard from Him and announce unto you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
This is the message we heard. This is what we heard that is to form the foundation of the establishment, the establishment of true fellowship Godward and manward. It is the reality of the shattering, blemishless holiness of God. This is the message we heard of Him.
And declare unto you that God is light. Yes, further on in the epistle John will say God is love. He that abides in love abides in God. He that loves not knows not God.
But the verse, the message, the epistle begins with this central foundational truth. This is the message we heard of Him. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. And this same John when on the isle of Patmos is given visions of God and of heaven.
And in chapter 4 of the book of the Revelation, the door is opened. John hears a voice as of a trumpet saying, Come up hither, I'll show you the things that must come to pass. And before He shows him any things come to pass, He shows him a throne. And seated upon that throne there is this majestic being.
And before this majestic being again these creatures with the various faces and forms are found constantly worshipping. And what is the focal point of their worship? Verse 8, And the four living creatures, having each one of them six wings, are full of eyes round about and within. And they have no rest day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.
A celebration of this that many theologians have called the integrating, the foundational attribute of God, that colors all of His other attributes. He is love, but holy love. He is justice, but holy justice. And God is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness.
The Recoil of Holiness: God's Wrath Against Sin
And while truth of His infinite, eternal, unchangeable holiness involves many things, surely a most fundamental issue is one that bears directly upon the doctrine of justification. And it is very clearly and helpfully expressed by Professor Murray when he said these words, God cannot be indifferent or complacent towards that which is the contradiction of Himself. God cannot be indifferent or complacent to that which is a contradiction of Himself. And what is an utter contradiction of Himself? Sin. Unholiness. Uncleanliness.
He goes on to write, His very perfection requires the recoil of His righteous indignation. And this is God's wrath. What is God's wrath? It is the recoil of righteous indignation to that which is a contradiction to all that God is.
And this has tremendous bearing on the doctrine of justification. You see, the reason why some of you sit here today and you're bored silly, and internally you're not on the edge of your seat in your spirit saying, Oh God, I need to hear the answer to the question. If you should mark iniquity, who could stand? Oh God, you know why you can sit there indifferent?
Because you never come to grips with this truth. The God before whose face you live, and the God before whom you'll stand in the day of judgment is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness. And His very perfection requires the reaction of righteous indignation to everything that is a contradiction of who and what He is. And that is called the wrath of God.
And that's why Paul begins his exposition of the doctrine of the righteousness of God that becomes ours in the provision of justifying grace. He starts where? He says in the gospel is revealed the righteousness of God. The righteousness imputed to believing sinners based upon the sacrifice and perfect life of Jesus.
He said these Romans will never fully understand it. The essence of the gospel must start with verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And until you have felt something of the internal trembling at the thought that the God who is is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness who cannot help but recoil in holy wrath from your sin, you will never take seriously the most warm, passionate, tender, clear, illustrative, pleading, preaching on justification.
You'll go through another series of sermons as indifferent as you are sitting there this morning. But it doesn't change the fact that God is who He is. He is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness. And His wrath burns toward you if you're not covered in the righteousness of God.
And it's time you began to take that reality seriously. You will take it seriously if you go to stand before this God uncleansed, unclothed in the righteousness of Christ. We will not find the gospel of imputed righteousness to be good news if we sell out to happy, clappy religion as we heard in the previous hour. Evangelicalism, like people drunk to reality, headlong, plunging into more and more happy, clappy religion, making sinners feel comfy and cozy with their cuddly bear God. The day this pulpit ceases to be true to the biblical message that in Christ we learn this lesson, God is light, and in Him is no darkness. We've not only given up the biblical doctrine of God, we've given up the biblical doctrine of justification.
For the context of that doctrine is the reality of God as a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness. Listen again to Professor Murray. Far too frequently we fail to entertain the gravity of this fact. Hence, the reality of our sin and the reality of the wrath of God upon us for our sin do not come into our reckoning.
This is the reason why the grand article of justification does not ring the bells in the innermost depth of our spirit. And this is the reason why the gospel of justification is to such an extent a meaningless sound in the world and in the church in the twentieth and I would say twenty-first century. We are not imbued with the profound sense of the reality of God, of His majesty and holiness, and sin, if reckoned with at all, is little more than a misfortune or a maladjustment. The prophet Habakkuk said, You are of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. That is to look upon it with favor, to look upon it with indulgence, to look upon it with indifference. No, God has an internal, inevitable recoil toward everything that is a contradiction of Himself. But in the second place, if we are to grasp the essence and the glory of the biblical doctrine of justification, we must not only have a biblically formed awareness of God as a God of infinite, eternal and unchangeable holiness, but, in the second place,
God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Justice
we must have an awareness that God is a God of infinite, eternal and unchangeable justice. As with His holiness, so it is with His justice. The consistent and uniform witness of both the Old and the New Testaments is that God is eternally and unchangeably just. We go way back to Genesis.
Do you remember the incident where Abraham is interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah, in particular, pleading for his nephew Lot and his family? And in Genesis 18, as the man of God is in the midst of this divine argument, wrestling with God on behalf of his backslidden nephew, sunk into the lifestyle of Sodom, this is what we read in Genesis chapter 18 and verse 25. Back to verse 4, here is one of his arguments with God. God, peradventure, there are fifty righteous within the city.
Will you consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? On what basis did Abraham dare to say, O God, surely if there are fifty righteous, you wouldn't consume them along with the wicked? God, you wouldn't do this, would you? And what gave him boldness to pray that way?
Look at verse 25. That be far from you to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. That be far from you. And why would it be far from God?
How can Abraham have such confidence and boldness, almost saying, God, you can't do this. If there are fifty righteous, you can't destroy that city until you do something to deliver the fifty. Notice the foundation of it. Here is the foundation.
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Shall not the judge of all the earth act consistent with his own infinite, eternal, and unchangeable being, which is a being of justice? And again and again in the Psalms, the justice of God is celebrated. Psalm 89 and verse 14.
Psalm 89 and verse 14. Here the psalmist exclaims, Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. All of God's administration of His affairs in all of the universe are from a throne which has as its very foundation righteousness, equity, uprightness, and justice. Take away the leg of justice and the throne of God collapses.
And there is no moral government in the universe. Psalm 99 and verse 14. Psalm 99 and verse 14. Psalm 99 and verse 14.
The Lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of isles be glad. Clouds and darkness surround about him.
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. And because he is a just God, a fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries round about. Again the emphasis, the throne upon which God administers all of His affairs has as its foundation righteousness and justice. And the same is true in the New Testament.
Justice Demands Punishment: The Pincer Move of God
We are told that because of what Christ has done, God's very justice, God's very sense of fairness and equity is now our friend. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, which underscores the fact that even in the conceiving and in the providing of redemptive grace, God did not set aside His justice. He brings justice into play in such a way it is now our friend and not our enemy.
But until we've come within the orbit of those redemptive privileges, which are to be found only in Christ, justice, stands against us because God is a just God, is committed to punish sin. He is committed to punish iniquity. Not only is it the witness of the old, but this passage in the new, but in Revelation 19.1 and 2, we see the celebration of God's justice when He brings final judgment upon all of those structures and societies that are in opposition to Him, and here in the context, it's the great city Babylon.
It is the world and all that is pertaining to the world, and God overthrows the great whore and destroys Babylon. And what happens? All heaven breaks out in celebration. Revelation 19.1, After these things I heard as it were a great voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for truth, true and righteous are His judgments. He has judged the great harlot, her that corrupted the earth with her fornication, and He hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand. True and righteous.
God is being celebrated as a righteous God.
Surely as His holiness results in the recoil of His being from all that is unholy, so His justice demands that He deal righteously, with sin. Listen to the language of Exodus 32, verses 6 and 7. Exodus chapter 32, verses 6 and 7.
Sorry, Exodus 23, Exodus 23, verses 6 and 7.
You shall not rest the justice due to the poor in his cause. Keep far from a false matter, and the innocent and righteous do not slay, for I will, I will not justify the wicked. God is saying, your administration of justice must reflect mine. I will not declare the wicked to be righteous, and treat him as though he were.
You must not do that in your dealings with one another. And again, this text with which I opened the message this morning, if you, Lord, should mark an equity, O Lord, who could stand? And what lay behind that? It was the conviction of the psalmist that God is eternally, unchangeably just, and when He confronts sin to deal with it, He must punish it.
By way of application, again, I assert the gospel will not be good news as long as we conceive of God as a nearsighted, rather benign, indulgent grandfather figure who may occasionally wag his finger at his brattish grandchildren, but they know he'd never lay a hand on them.
And alas, that's the concept of God that is so often promoted in so-called modern hymnody, and song, and forms of worship, that people feel comfortable in their sin to draw near to this benign, nearsighted grandfather figure who only pats them on the head and commends them, and once in a while may wag a finger, but would do them no harm.
In a real sense, the recognition of God's holiness and justice become, to the careless sinner, God's pincer move to shut them up to the sense of their need of Christ. You know what a pincer's move is in the military? There's the enemy. His supply lines are here.
Supporting troops are here. And with at least two flanks or more, you cut off his access both to his support and supplies, and you hope soon he'll raise the white flag of surrender. You know what God's pincer move is upon you who are careless sinners this morning? It's to begin to press in upon you on the one flank, I'm a holy God, don't play with me.
I'm a purer eyes than to look upon your sin with indifference. Every sin you commit, causes recoil in my being. And I am God who can speak worlds into being at my will and could crush you with a word. And the pincer move of the haunting reality of the holiness of God cuts in on one flank.
And the reality of the absolute inflexible justice of God cuts in on the other flank. And then the sinner, conscious that God is holy and I'm unholy. And God is just and I'm unholy. And I stand exposed to His wrath against my sin.
The sinner then is ready to raise the white flag and say, Oh God, I plead for mercy. Have you ever felt God's pincers move in your soul? Not give an intellectual assent to it, but felt it to the point where the only thing that mattered is I must know how I can be right with this God. If there's a way to be right with Him, while He still remains inflexibly just and impeccably holy, oh God, show me that way.
God, show me what the way is that enables you to be just and holy and still do something other than damn this sinner. And that's what the gospel does. That's why Paul can say in Romans 3 in this gospel is revealed a way in which God may be just. And yet the justifier of the one who believes in His Son.
God's Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable Truth
But then thirdly, finally for this morning, the context of the doctrine of justification is not only who God is in Himself as holy, who God is in Himself as just, but thirdly that God is infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably true. Infinite, eternally, and unchangeably true. Most simply stated, it means this. God says what He means. God means what He says. That's it. In a day of double speak, when presidents on national television can look into the eye of a camera and say, I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.
When double speak, half-truths are the order of the day. When in business, one businessman assumes that the one with whom he's dealing doesn't speak the truth and so there's the constant jockeying with words because truth has fallen in the street.
The statistics of how many admit to lying every day in the world are frightening. I've seen some of them. I'd like to know who they asked. I don't know if they ever asked any of you folks.
But it's frightening.
These things called words, these strange things by which we form vocables to communicate reality to one another and apart from our body language they are the God ordained means by which my thoughts become yours and I share them with you. I give them to you and you give back to me and we live in a day when truth has fallen in the street and we can so easily think as the scripture says in Psalm 50, you thought God says I was altogether one like unto yourself. That's what God says. You thought that I was like you.
And in a day of doublespeak and dishonesty, does God really mean what he says? And I say the doctrine of justification rests down upon the fact that God is infinitely, eternally and unchangeably true. Romans 3, 4 says let God be true and every man a liar. If the only way God's truth can be established is to prove that every other mouth speak lies, let every man be proven a liar. But God is eternally unchangeably true. He is called in Hebrews 6, 18 the God who cannot lie. Few things in the Bible where it is said God cannot do something. He cannot lie. Titus 1,
2 affirms the same thing. And it's the witness of the Old Testament in the book of Numbers chapter 23 and verse 19 in conjunction with that whole incident of that strange man Balaam, this mercenary prophet. We read in Numbers 23 and verse 19, God is not a man that he should lie. Neither the son of man that he should repent. Has he not said and will he not do it? Or has he not spoken and will he not make it good? And the answer is yes, he will. He will. In the garden God said in the day you eat shall die. And the liar and the father of lies comes and says God's lying. You shall not surely die. God spoke so dogmatically to you, Adam, and you've passed on God's dogmatism to Eve, but really the liar in this whole mix is not me, whom Jesus called a liar and a murderer and the father of lies.
He says God's the liar. You shall not surely die. God spoke in such emphatic terms but he didn't mean what he said. And all the way through that's the attempt of the enemy when God says the wages of sin is death.
The soul that sinneth it shall die. When the scripture says that in the last day God will judge according to the thoughts of men. Romans 2.16 Every idle word men shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Luke 12.
That the things that are done in secret shall be shouted from the housetops. God has spoken, my dear unconverted friend, and says there is not one transgression of his law in thought, in word, in motive, in action, in reaction, not a one of them that God cannot recall with no strain of his infinite mind whatsoever. And to demonstrate in the last day that his sentence to you if you go to judgment in your present state is just all the evidence will be laid out for the scripture says the books will be opened and they should be judged each one out of the books according to their works.
The Necessity of God's Truth for Justification
And you will not take seriously the biblical doctrine of justification God's way not only, blessed be God not only of scrubbing from the books every charge that has wrapped up in it the sentence of death every sin that says damn him for this one damn him for that sin damn him for that sin but to have my record not only blotted out so no sin can be charged but then to have credited to me a record of perfect obedience to the law of God that demands that I be brought with joy into his presence that Christ's death blots out all of the record against me and his perfect life of obedience culminating in his death is credited to me so I have something more than Adam had in the innocence of Eden he had no marks in his book but he had no positive righteousness of a life of obedience the second Adam has come as we shall see and has provided both but you're not going to take all that seriously you can hear that and hear the preacher get excited and ho-hum why? because you really don't believe God is true if you believe
that God could stretch forth his sovereign finger and touch that ticker and you're done and somebody goes downstairs and hits 9-1-1 and you're carried out of here a corpse in the next ten minutes if you believe if you believe this this wouldn't be ho-hum Sunday this would be a Lord's day when you go home and get on your face and say oh God I've trifled with you as a God of truth no longer will I trifle with you I want to have heart dealings with you honest dealings with you and I say my dear brothers and sisters the day the day this pulpit ceases to thunder and demonstrate and preach the day our hymnody ceases to have a due proportion of emphasis upon and our prayers reflect a deep internal soul grasp upon God as infinitely holy God as inflexibly just God as impeccably true by degrees the doctrine of justification will die in our hearts and it will die in this pulpit why is it
if it is true as J.I. Packer asserts I'm not quite sure I buy his thesis but he knows a lot more than I do that every classic we would call it revival of religion in the history of the church has essentially become a resurrecting and a bringing back into sharp focus the doctrine of justification by faith with all of its supports why is it that we are not we are not we are not that in revivals the pervasive sense of the nearness of God doesn't cause people to get up and do tap dances but fall upon their faces in terror in the presence of God it's because the God who draws near they now know to be holy just and they tremble before him isn't that what Paul meant when he said if there come among you the unrighteousness the unlearned the unbeliever and all prophesied that is speak the word of God the thoughts of his heart will be laid bare and he falling down upon his face will cry God is of a truth among you not oh in God a nice snuggly bear
Conclusion: Drawing Near Through Christ's Eternal Love
no until we're driven back before the rays of his holiness we'll never know what it is to draw near through the blood of the cross of Christ may God grant that these supportive truths of the glorious doctrine of justification will be born afresh in all of our hearts some of this is wonderfully captured in Christian hymnody of the past in closing I quote but one such hymn that is one of my favorites the hymn writer exclaims eternal light eternal light how pure that soul must be which placed within your burning light it shrinks not but with calm delight can live and look on thee the spirits that surround thy throne may bear this burning bliss but surely that is theirs alone since they have never never known a fallen world like this but how shall I whose native sphere is dark whose mind is dim before the ineffable appear and on my naked spirit bear the uncreated being you see the dilemma the hymn writer sees God for who he is and says
how can I draw near to such a God and then he answers that there is a way for man to rise to this sublime abode an offering and a sacrifice the Holy Spirit's energies an advocate with God thee these prepare us for the sight of holiness above the sons of ignorance and night may dwell with the eternal light through the eternal love oh my friend if you've had a sense of who God is and you know you're not ready to meet him right now where you sit say oh God for Jesus somehow I don't understand all the relationships but I've heard enough of the gospel in days past maybe heard much of it that it's all wrapped up in Jesus and throwing myself upon him is my only hope throw yourself upon him even this day let's pray our father we confess with shame that so often we trifle with you we ask you to forgive and pardon all of our light thoughts of you when we contemplate those sinless creatures that veil
face and feet and fly about the throne crying holy holy holy who are we to take your name upon our lips yet we thank you that you have said having a new and a living way made for us in the incarnation the perfect life the substitutionary death the triumphant resurrection the glorious ascension and the resurrection of our blessed Jesus we may draw near with boldness oh lord we do so praying that you would bless your word to the establishment of your saints to the conviction of sinners and that some would even mark this day when they began to take seriously who you are seal then your word to every heart we pray 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
This passage serves as the foundational framework, introducing the righteousness and wrath of God, which necessitates the doctrine of justification.
The psalmist's question about standing before God if He marks iniquities is the central problem the sermon addresses, highlighting the human need for justification.
Texts Expounded
Also Referenced
More from the archive