Received by Faith and Faith Alone

The Universal Need for Righteousness and the Gospel's Provision

0:02 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, July 15th, 2007, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:14 Follow in your Bibles, please, as I read in your hearing a portion out of Romans chapter 3, Romans chapter 3. By now, I trust any of you who have been present for this series of studies would be able to give the basic outline of the first five chapters of Romans, after words of introduction, greeting, and announcing his theme, namely the gospel which holds out a righteousness of God and a righteousness received by faith and leading to a life of faith. Beginning in chapter 1 in verse 18, Paul demonstrates the universal need for this righteousness all the way through to chapter 3. Chapter 3 and verse 20, in which he summarizes his thesis, and that is that before God's holy law, whether the remnants of which are written upon the conscience and the hearts of men, or the codified law of God in Scripture, Jew, Gentile, instructed in the written law or not, every mouth is to be stopped and be brought consciously guilty,

1:33 before Almighty God, and the conclusion is, by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. By human works, there is not a creature on the face of the earth that can stand in God's court and in the light of God's law be declared righteous and worthy of anything other than God's judgment. No flesh shall be justified. Declared righteous in God's sight, but now, and here begins Paul's exposition of the gospel, and I shall read verses 21 through 30.

2:16 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, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, 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 might Himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Where, then, is the glorying? It is excluded.

3:26 By what manner of law, of works? No, but by a law of faith. We reckon, therefore, that a man is justified by faith, apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only?

3:45 Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, if so be that God is one, and He shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. Well, let us once again draw near to God and ask for the help of His Holy Spirit in the preaching and in the hearing of His holy word. Let's pray.

The Vital Importance of Justification

4:16 Our Father, we are conscious once more that left to ourselves we stumble about in the dark, even with the blazing light of Your Word shining on the eyeballs of our souls. So we cry, knowing that it's only in Your light that we see light, and pray with the psalmist, open our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out of Your law. Grant that the Holy Spirit will be present to shine in our hearts, granting us to behold Your glory reflected in the face of Jesus Christ. Amen. The closer we come in our concern and in our thinking to the most vital issues, related to our salvation and our acceptance with God, the more we should expect to encounter the foul work of that great enemy of God and of truth, the devil himself. There is no more vital issue relative to our eternal well-being than that which is addressed in the question, How shall sinful man become right with God?

5:42 Hence, we should expect that the arch enemy of God and of men would marshal all of his fiendish powers of deception and confusion in order to overthrow, distort, or deny the only right answer to that question, How shall sinful man, more personally, I, a sinful man, a sinful woman, a sinful boy, a sinful girl, how shall I be made right with God? If indeed I am part of all humanity, Jew and Gentile, that stand condemned in the court of God, by the law of God, based upon God's total perfect knowledge of who and what I am, how can I be made right with God, in that very courtroom that condemns me? Well, since the right answer to that question is wrapped up in the biblical doctrine of justification, it should not surprise us that from the apostolic age until this very hour, this marvelous provision of redemptive and restorative grace called justification has been under control.

7:10 It is a constant attack. Therefore, it is essential that every faithful pastor in every age of the church seek to preach this doctrine with the utmost clarity and passion. Listen to two of the voices from the past with respect to this very issue. One of them, the fiery German, Martin Luther, who wrote, If the article of justification is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost at the same time.

7:49 Another champion of the 16th century, John Calvin, wrote, The doctrine of justification is the principal ground on which religion must be supported, so it requires greater care and attention. For unless you understand first of all what your position is before God and what the judgment is which He passes upon you, you have no foundation on which your salvation can be laid or on which piety toward God can be reared. And then a champion from our own generation wrote, The doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. You see the pictures of Atlas bent over with the world resting on his back. This author says the doctrine of justification is like Atlas. It bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace.

8:56 There's Atlas, justification, bearing on his back the world, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. 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. And so believing that there is a devil who hates God and who hates men, of course he deceives them into thinking he's their best friend, and therefore they willingly retain their alignment with him, but he hates men as he hates God. He hates, among other things, with a peculiar hatred, this doctrine, because of its unique place in the unfolding of God's redemptive and saving purposes. So we began, some months ago, a series of studies on justification, and I began by underlining the importance of this doctrine, both with respect to the glory of God and to the good of men, and then sought to underscore the biblical context for the biblical doctrine of justification. The Bible's doctrine of justification

The Biblical Context of Justification

10:23 does not come to us hanging on a sky hook. It comes deeply interpenetrated and in order to create an organic dependence upon other truths of Holy Scripture. And it's only when those other truths are held in the understanding, in the consciences, in the religious awareness of God's people, expressed in their prayers, expressed in their hymnody, expressed in the way they speak of their Christian experience, it is only when these truths are retained in their vigor, that the doctrine of justification will be retained in its vigor. And what is that biblical context of the biblical doctrine of justification? I sought to demonstrate by opening up a number of scriptures. It is a three-fold context. The nature of God Himself.

11:20 In other words, justification is what it is because God is who He is. And if we lose sight of who the God of the Bible is, there is no context in which to preach or appreciate the doctrine of justification. It is because the Bible reveals God as our Creator, our Lawgiver, and our Judge. That justification is what it is.

11:50 And the second part of the biblical context of the doctrine is God's relationship to us and ours to Him. Because He is Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, who is in Himself infinitely holy, and inflexibly just, and constantly true, this God who is Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge has put us in a relationship to Him as created, dependent creatures, as morally accountable creatures, and as creatures who are marked out to stand before Him in His court in the final day of judgment. Lose sight of those concepts that are thoroughly biblical, and justification cannot live in the minds and hearts of men. And we have lost these legal concepts. And there are theologians in our day trying to persuade us it is no loss that they are lost. And that to insist upon our relationship to God being one that stands in law.

13:02 This is exactly what Paul does in those opening chapters of Romans. He uses the term guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. That's a concept of having controversy with the judge in terms of the law by which we are bound. And then the third strand of the context of the biblical doctrine of justification is God's ultimate purpose in salvation.

13:32 Justification must always be seen, not in isolation from the broader saving purpose of God. A purpose that not only is committed to form a just basis of reconciling the offending guilty sinner to God in terms of law, justification, imputation, what God does outside of us in the court of heaven, but God in salvation is committed to do with what's wrong in us, our polluted and vile and perverse nature. And God is committed that when His saving purpose is done, He will have a family which no man can number out of every kindred, tribe and tongue and nation that will perfectly reflect the moral likeness of Jesus Christ. The people whose acceptance with God was based totally on what Christ did in His work outside of them, but who wonder of wonders will have experienced such a thorough work in them, both soul and body, that they will be nothing less than what the scripture says conformed to the image of God's Son. And that context must continually be part and parcel of our whole thinking and worship as the

The Meaning and Substance of Justification

15:00 people of God, and when it ceases to be, the doctrine of justification will die, or if not die, it will weakly flourish. And then we moved on to consider the meaning of the word. The meaning of the word to justify in terms of what we are studying is always a forensic, a legal declaration. When the court justifies a man, it doesn't make him just. It does not do anything other than declare that upon examination and testimony, this man is just before the law. It is the opposite of condemnation. In condemnation we don't make a man guilty, we declare him guilty. And so justification is a legal forensic declaration of God, of how we stand before God in terms of law.

16:00 Don't lose sight of that. Justification has to do with how we stand before God in terms of law. And in justification God makes a declaration concerning us. Well then we began to wrestle having looked at the importance, the context, the meaning of the word, the substance of the doctrine.

16:22 And we are using the marvelous description or definition of justification found in the larger catechism justification is an act of God's free grace unto sinners in which he pardons all of their sins, accepts and accounts their persons as righteous in his sight not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ by God imputed to them and received by faith alone. If you grow weary of that definition, let me make a prophecy. You've ceased to be thrilled that you're a justified man or woman. You should be able to milk sweetness out of sitting in some situation where you think you're wasting time in a doctor's office. Just mull over that definition.

17:27 That by the God of heaven showing free grace to me as a sinner nothing I've done or nothing he's even done in me, for the sake of Christ alone, I have the very righteousness of Christ imputed to me. So we've looked then at the author of justification, God himself, the recipients, sinners, the source, God's free grace, the activity, pardon, accepting and accounting, the ground Christ's perfect life and Christ's sufficient substitutionary death and last Lord's day or two Lord's days ago, the method imputation. Not by infusing something into us, but by imputing something to us. And because Christ is the federal head and representative of his people, God can impute a perfect righteousness to us because his son has effected that righteousness by his life of perfect obedience to the law and because he bore the penalty of the broken law on our behalf. Well, so much for review. I had a number of

18:51 additional little snippets that I've culled out in my reading that are thrilling, but in the interest of time I'll pass over them. Let me just quote one of them. When I said these things must breathe in our prayers and find an oozing out in our hymnody, I tried to underscore that in the hymns we sang this morning. Two of them.

19:15 Listen to this one that's not in our hymnbook. Join earth and heaven to bless the Lord our righteousness. The mystery of redemption this, this the Savior's strange design man's offense was counted his ours his righteousness divine in him complete we shine his death his life is mine fully I am justified free from sin and more than free guiltless since for me he died righteous since he lived for me I tell you I get the goosebumps just reading it that's biblically framed hymnody dripping with rich theology do you feel it I hope you do when the hymn writer says free from sin more than free I'm not just a pardoned criminal guiltless yes since for me he died but I have a positive righteousness since he lived for me that's the righteousness imputed to me in my union with Christ well then we come to

Justification Received by Faith Alone: Scriptural Witness

20:40 seek to open up this morning the last phrase of that definition and received by faith alone and received by faith alone what do we call this well historically theologians and biblical exegetes have called this the means of our justification or more precisely the means of receiving God's justifying act when the writers of this catechism said all of these things that constitute the substance of justification how do they come to us they are received by faith alone and these few words received by faith alone are both an accurate embodiment of the pure gospel of grace and an accurate acid test by which to assess any so called gospel does that gospel affirm that whatever Christ has accomplished on behalf of sinners whatever is offered to sinners in the gospel based upon what Christ has accomplished is it received not just by faith with a comma leading to something else

22:09 or a dash leading to something else or is it to be received by faith alone faith alone and there is the dividing line between historic evangelical Protestant doctrine and current present Roman Catholic orthodoxy they do not deny grace they do not deny faith but it's the word alone alone that flushes out the wretched works system of Roman Catholic thinking about the grace of God so in the time that remains I want to first of all consider with you the unmistakable scriptural witness to this fact to the fact that justification is received by faith alone we'll look at some of the explicit witness to this fact and then just a couple of the implicit witnesses to this fact that justification is by faith alone let me ask you sitting here this morning if someone were to deny this and you were sitting with him at a lunch break at work and you had a little New Testament in your pocket where would you turn to demonstrate without any shadow of a doubt that the teaching of the Bible is that justification

23:37 is received by faith alone well I would hope you would turn to the passage read in your hearing and that's one of the reasons I read it when Paul turns from indicting the entire human race in their sinnerhood and now begins to expound how a righteousness of God has been manifested in the gospel in Romans 3 21 to verse 30 in which we have the word justify four times we have two explicit references to the work of Jesus Christ we have the word grace and in that context of justification in connection with Jesus Christ as the manifestation and gift of grace do you know how many times the word the noun believe and the verb justify are found eight times seven times the noun believe one time the verb to believe so when Paul begins expounding the gospel the gospel that holds forth the righteousness of God a righteousness of God that is at the very

25:04 heart of that gospel as he said in chapter 1 verses 16 and 17 he packs into those few verses faith faith faith faith believe you can't miss the message unless you are determined to miss it that this justifying righteousness is one that is received by faith and by faith alone and when we turn to chapter 4 of Romans look at verses 1 to 5 what should we say then that Abraham our forefather has found according to the flesh if Abraham was justified by works he has where of to glory but not toward God for what says the scripture Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness now to him that works the reward is not reckoned as of grace but as of death but to him that does not work but believes on him that justifies the ungodly his faith is reckoned for righteousness here again you see how Paul has packed into those verses this inseparable relationship between believing faith and righteousness and he here begins to contrast this paradigm

26:33 of righteousness received by faith with anything that is of works it is the antithesis of grace if anything we do enters into the picture it is by grace and because by grace it is by faith and we see that emphasis clearly in verse 16 for this cause it is of faith that it may be according to grace if you negate faith alone you negate grace alone and if you negate grace alone you negate Christ alone and therefore those well known watch words of reformation theology sola scriptura the bible alone and then Christ alone grace alone faith alone and you see if you add anything to grace grace plus whatever you add to grace you in reality subtract from grace grace has no commas leading to something else no plus marks waiting for an addition and whatever you would add to grace the pure unmerited favor of God to the ill deserving you negate grace whatever you add to Christ you subtract from Christ in the glory and sufficiency

28:02 of his person and work and whatever you add to faith you subtract from the place that God is assigned to faith in the reception of justification on to chapter 5 being therefore better rendered having therefore been justified by faith Paul does not need to put an asterix and say see the footnote faith yes it has its place but faith operative in this and faith no no no no having therefore been justified by faith that's all the apostle needs to say and when we turn to the book of Galatians we find the same scriptural emphasis there in the Galatian area of Asia the Judaizers had come and said Paul's gospel was alright as far as it went but he put periods where we ought to put semicolons and commas and dashes yes it's alright to say we're saved by grace through faith that not of ourselves but we must also have circumcision and keeping the mosaic law if we're to be full blown Christians that's what they were teaching the council at Jerusalem had to thrash this out there were people who ostensibly were sent from the Jerusalem

29:30 church down to Antioch teaching that unless you're circumcised and keep the law of Moses you cannot be saved full blown salvation needed something more than Christ alone received by faith alone and what does the apostle say 2 16 yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ even we believed on Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified he bounds the positive statement on both sides with the negative not by works it is by faith alone not by works it is Christ alone faith alone Galatians 3 and verse 24 the law as an administration of God in redemptive history the whole mosaic economy is become our tutor unto Christ to what end that we might be justified by faith and then the text we looked at last week the reason God can declare us to be righteous is because he has

30:58 constituted us in union with Christ and in Christ Christ is made righteousness Paul says in Philippians 3 9 that I may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own which is through the law but the righteousness which is through faith of Jesus Christ it is a righteousness of faith and it's very interesting that the Holy Spirit has been fastidious in his choice of prepositions and the case of the words joined to those prepositions so that when one reads the New Testament in the original Greek he will find the prepositions dia and ek through and out of used with the genitive case he will find epi upon or en in with the dated case and kata according to or ice or ace into with the accusative but never dia with the accusative because the preposition dia in the accusative means on account of and there's not one instance in the New Testament where it is said we are justified on account of faith but we're justified by means of faith we are justified upon

32:26 faith in faith all these prepositions in the other cases but never dia with the accusative why because we are justified by means of that faith that uniting us to Christ makes Christ our righteousness well the explicit witness to the fact that justification is by faith alone is profuse in the New Testament and then secondly the implicit witness is also profuse and clear follow me now if justification is one aspect of what the Bible describes as God's saving work which it is the broad spectrum of his saving work if justification is one aspect and God says the whole spectrum is all received by faith then the whole includes all of its parts so when we turn to Ephesians 289 what do we read for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of works that no man should boast for by grace are you saved through faith so the whole of that salvation as it comes into the realm of our conscious experience is by faith now granted

33:54 God's election doesn't come within the purview of our consciousness God's regenerating us is a sovereign monergistic work of God which produces our faith is not a response to our faith so I chose my words carefully as that salvation comes into the realm of our conscious experience which is repentance faith adoption issuing and sanctification the whole of that salvation is said to be by faith well the whole includes all of its parts and therefore justification is by faith alone when the troubled Philippian jailer cried out to Paul in Silas sirs what must we do to be saved what must I do to be saved Paul without embarrassment said believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ cast yourself upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and he didn't have to say but when I get into your house I'm going to explain to you it's not quite that simple faith has a central place has a dominant place but not the exclusive place in enabling you to apprehend the salvation that is in Christ or take all those words in the gospel of John as many as received him to them gave he the right

35:22 to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth into him should not perish Jesus says verily he that hears my word and believes him that sent me is passed from death unto life and shall not come into condemnation again and again it is the unanimous witness of the word of God the unmistakable scriptural witness that when our definition of justification concludes with the words received by faith alone this is an accurate embodiment of the pure gospel of the grace of God now then secondly having sought to give this brief overview of the unmistakable scriptural witness to this fact this fact that justification is received by faith alone should raise this question in your mind why has God designated faith among all the various Christian graces why has he designated faith and not something else as the means whereby we receive God's justifying act when we read our Bibles we find

Why Faith Alone? The Unique Nature of Faith

36:51 that God saves no one who doesn't repent the Bible is clear except you repent you shall all likewise perish Jesus said to the disciples in Luke chapter 24 as you go forth among the nations preach preach what that I must die I must rise from the dead and that repentance unto remission of sins be preached in my name among all the nations why is not the Bible telling us that we are justified by repentance if no one is justified who doesn't repent why doesn't the Bible say we are justified by repentance repentance is central in a saving response to the gospel Acts 20 21 26 20 2 Peter 39 I don't need to labor you with quoting all the text just know a little bit of your Bible and you know if I don't repent I'll go to hell forever you better believe that because that's true that's true likewise the Bible says love is a grace that must be evident in anyone who's a Christian he that loveth not knoweth not God that's what John says and the likewise the Bible says now abideth faith hope in love but the greatest of these is what not faith but love why does God not designate that we're justified by repentance justified by love justified

38:20 by humility well this is not a question that we are the first to wrestle with and a writer of another generation has wonderfully captured everything I want to say on this head listen to him but what's the meaning of the expression we're justified by faith how are we justified by faith why are we never said to be justified by other Christian graces humility is an excellent grace much commended in scripture in putting us where we ought to be in the dust meekness bears with pity and forgiveness outrageous wrongs heaped upon us and forgiveness outrageous wrongs heaped upon us and so makes us like Christ who was brought as a lamb to the slaughter and a sheep before her as his dumb so he opened not his mouth hope that's another grace is an anchor to the soul both sure and steadfast love with her broad mantle covers the faults of others fills the earth with the fame of her deeds and never fails penitent sits at the feet of Jesus and bathes them with its tears the fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death excellent as all these graces are yet it is nowhere said in scripture that a man's justified by fear by

39:48 charity by penitence by hope by meekness or humility but he is often said to be justified by faith God does not put this honor upon faith because it's greater than other graces for it is not love is greater so are all graces which shall flourish forever when we get to heaven faith will no longer be a grace that we exercise all will be sight why then this peculiar place of faith in conjunction with our justification well I want to answer it along two lines first of all because of the unique nature of faith and because of the appointed effect of faith because of the unique nature of faith and I want you to think of the nature of faith in its uniqueness along two lines number one it is primarily follow me now it is primarily a receptive grace in the catechism definition of what is saving faith you have these words it receives and rests upon Christ and his righteousness therein held forth for pardon

41:16 of sin and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation faith is that grace that is primarily a receptive grace professor Murray captured this in his marvelous little book redemption accomplished and applied he wrote faith is entirely congruous with the fact that the ground of justification is the righteousness of Christ the specific quality of faith is that it receives and rests upon another in this case Christ and his righteousness so when God says that we are justified by faith this is not an arbitrary designation of faith as the sole means of appropriating the righteousness of justification that righteousness which Christ has wrought no he has designated faith because of its unique nature number one primarily a receptive grace and it is wholly compatible with grace as opposed to works faith is compatible with a salvation all of grace

42:45 grace means unmerited undeserved unearned blessing then the way of receiving its provision must exclude all sense of merit in us or rewards for things done by us faith is the empty hand of the destitute beggar receiving the donations of a generous and compassionate giver in faith the hand does not go out to do something in order to earn a favor the hand does not go out holding something with which to purchase a favor faith is the empty hand to take the graciously provided favor of God in Jesus Christ and it comes out in good hymnody does it not nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling foul foul I to the fountain fly wash me savior or I die and you see when the scripture tells us in Romans 4 that at the point of our being justified what is our moral and ethical condition God is not embarrassed to

44:12 tell us now to him that does not work the reward is not reckoned as of grace but as of debt but to him that does not work but believes on him that justifies the ungodly his faith is reckoned for righteousness at the point of laying hold of the gift of righteousness that is in Christ and receiving it by faith we are ungodly that's our condition at the point of embracing it now we will not remain ungodly for the same regenerating grace that is enabled us by faith to lay hold of that offered gift of righteousness will immediately begin a moral and ethical transformation in us that will be worked out until we are brought home to glory by death or at the coming of Christ but at the point of believing we believe as ungodly nothing in our hands we bring we have done nothing that could change the record against us in the court of heaven to cancel our sins to elicit from God the pronouncement of acceptance based upon perfect conformity to the divine law there's nothing we can bring to commend us there's nothing we can promise to do

Why Faith Alone? The Appointed Effect of Faith (Union with Christ)

45:41 to earn that faith is primarily a receptive grace according to Paul wholly compatible with a salvation that has nothing to do with our works it is by faith that it may be by grace and therefore works have no place so when we ask the question why by faith alone we answer first of all because of the unique nature of faith its primary receptive nature and it is wholly compatible with grace but then secondly because of the appointed effect of faith Christ united himself to his people in what the theologians would call the covenant of redemption they're just trying to capture what the bible means when it says we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world before we had any being we had being in the mind of God before there was a fall in time there was a fall in the mind of God and we were part of that race of Adam fallen in him and God freely sovereignly for reasons known only to himself set his love upon particular sinners out of every kindred tribe and tongue and nation marked

47:10 them out to be the recipients of his grace gave them to his son and he willingly assumed all the responsibilities of securing a just and righteous salvation for them he gave himself to that posture of being our representative our surety our covenant head in eternity past we use such stupid language what else can we say when we're talking of these things we prattle but we've got to do something to try to define and describe these biblical realities so Christ then could say I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him that sent me and this is the will of him that sent me that of all that he hath given me I should lose none but raise it at the last day he was conscious he had a people given to him in John 17 he said I've given eternal life to as many as you have given me so he was united to us in his commitments but until we are vitally actually personally in our life history united to him we do not have what he purchased on behalf of sinners Paul could say but of him are you in Christ Jesus who is made unto us wisdom from God righteousness sanctification and redemption well it's

48:38 the unique function of faith to be from the human standpoint the band of our attachment to Jesus Christ that's why faith is used is found connected with the prepositions into and upon and an in it is belief in faith in faith upon it is the soul going out of itself to Christ and clinging to Christ faith becomes the bond of our union with the Lord Jesus and once we are united to him in that bond of faith as he has been united to us in his commitments to our redemption when that union is sealed and effected we are then declared in the court of heaven as those who have borne the full weight of God's law in punishing our sin in fully keeping the law thought word deed why because in Christ our federal head the punishment was absorbed and the full demands were kept and that's the righteousness of justification received how by faith alone let me illustrate a wealthy king becomes

50:06 aware that in a certain poor village in his kingdom there is a woman a young woman who has gained a reputation for unusual sagacity of mind and industry of life and in the course of visiting parts of his kingdom he sees her he gets information about her he sets his affection upon her and he desires to make her his bride and his queen and he makes known his interest in a very unusual way without her having any idea of his identity he takes the shabby clothes of the dwellers of that city he chooses to go live in a little hut in squalor rat infested horrible circumstances and from that position of identifying with her in her squalor he proposes to her and he tells her that if she will give herself to him in marriage if she will be willing to be united to him all that he has back in the palace will be hers and she consents to be united to him and in a day she exchanges her posture and position and experience of filth and poverty and squalor with all

51:32 the grandeur of the king my bible says you know the grace of our lord Jesus Christ that being rich he became poor that you through his poverty might become rich the king of glory wrapped himself up in our humanity not in Edenic humanity but the scripture says in the likeness of sinful flesh humanity in sorrow in weariness and weakness and pain and suffering and he did it all to win us and when we say to him Lord Jesus I do he says all that is mine is yours the righteousness of my perfect life the righteous satisfaction of the law of my father by my agony and bloody sweat in Gethsemane and by the darkened heavens of Golgotha all that was purchased and all that was secured is yours if you will be mine and when the soul says I am mine then in union with Christ

Application: Trusting Christ and Living in Justification

53:00 we are justified faith becomes the bond of our union with Christ in summary in final application justifying faith is that spiritual activity by which a sinner regenerated by the sovereign act of God in the context and knowledge of the gospel goes out of himself to Christ trusting only in him as he is presented in the gospel it is the sinner while yet a sinner resting the whole weight of his guilt laid in soul upon Christ alone again our hymnody captures it beautifully just as I am without one plea and that thou bidst me come to thee O Lamb of God I come just as I am and waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot that's the language of hymnody that is grasped the holiness of God the inflexible justice of God the necessity of a righteous dealing with sin

54:28 the wonder of wonders in the God man Jesus son of God a righteousness has been procured for needy sinners and I embrace the savior and all that he offers in himself to be mine so I ask you this morning do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and the acceptance with God do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ if not why not why not why not why does this hour not find you married to Christ joined to Christ believing upon Christ one wise man of God said they either doubt the severity of God's law or they doubt the sincerity of God's gospel think of it you know why some of you are not in Christ you don't believe in Christ you don't really believe you're in any danger in that condition you may clearly say oh I know if I die I'd go to hell no no if you really believe that

55:56 you'd be screaming with terror you don't believe that the God of the Bible is a consuming fire if you believed at the thought that one heart beat and you would stand before that God you'd run out of this building screaming with terror don't believe in the severity of God's law and you're a fool not to I beg you stop treating God in such a cavalier way you're no match for him you're no match for him that's why the Psalmist said oh Lord should mark iniquity oh Lord who could stand that's what you'd say then you'd be prepared to hear the wonderful news that you can stand if you stand in Christ are you still an unbeliever because you don't believe in the severity of the law and the fearfulness of the judgment of almighty God then I call upon you in God's name come out of your fools paradise stop whistling in the dark to yourself it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands

57:24 of the living God but could it be that the reason some of you do not believe as the wise theologian said is because you don't believe in the sincerity of God in the gospel you really don't believe that God almighty who could cast you into hell so loved the world of sinners that he sent his only begotten son who in his life lived out every demand of God's holy law as the representative and head of all who will hide in him so that his perfect obedience becomes theirs in Christ do you really believe that when he marched deliberately and voluntarily into the jaws of the fierceness of divine wrath upon the cross he did that that sinners taking his punishment as theirs might stand in the before the bar of almighty God with head lifted up high and say almighty God you have not one gram of punishment to vent upon me you vented it all upon my substitute and representative my friend God is dead serious when he says this is what my son has done for

58:53 sinners trust me give yourself to me cast yourself upon me what do I require of you nothing but the empty hand that takes what I am committed freely to give even a perfect righteousness that brings you into restored relationship with the living God that clears the way as we shall see in the subsequent series of studies on adoption clears the way for this God to go beyond merely dealing with you in the court room and settling all the accounts of the court room but he takes off his robes he goes into his living room and he says now justified sinner I want to go through another process with you tomorrow morning I sit in court not the judicial court but family court and I am going to take out papers to make you my son I'm going to adopt you and open my heart to you as your father got to settle things in the court room first got to settle them there and that's where the gospel meets you in the court room and when you've done the business there then goes on and God will deal with you in family court and then you have access to his heart and to his knee and to his ear as your father who is in heaven

60:21 why do you not believe could it be you're one who doubts the severity of the law or the sincerity of the gospel stop your doubting God is the God of truth remember I said the context of the doctrine of justification is what God is in himself he is holy just and truthful and when he says he that believes on the son has life he means it and when the son said him that comes to me I'll in no wise cast out he means it God grant that the spirit will convince you he is altogether trustworthy and child of God this reality of justification by faith alone based on the imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone received by faith alone this is not some doctrinal abstraction upon which to meditate once in a while and find a hymn that embodies it you're to live in this reality that's why Paul goes on in chapter 5 of Romans it says having therefore been justified by faith we have peace with God we have access into the theater of dealings with God as a God of grace we rejoice in hope of sharing in the very glory of God and with all of that in our souls we look around and we got a bunch of troubles and a bunch

61:50 of tribulations he said we exult in the very circumstances knowing that God's putting stuff in us that's preparing us for an eternity with him so let's get on with the show and then he comes to chapter 8 in verse 1 and after telling us of his own struggles with remaining sin and oh wretched man that I am he says there is therefore now here and now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus there is the confidence that for him as a believer the day of judgment is come and gone one man said it this way God's justifying decision is the judgment of the last day declaring where we'll spend eternity brought forward into the present and pronounced here and now it is the last judgment that will ever be passed on our destiny God will never go back on it however much Satan may appeal against God's verdict to be justified is to be eternally secure that has all kinds of implications read the rest of Romans 8 Paul says when we are settled in the fact that as far as being condemned for my sins the day of judgment has come and it has passed there is therefore now adverb of time now in the present no condemnation

63:19 and there will be none in the future who is he that condemneth it is Christ that died yet rather that is risen from the dead who is at the right hand of God who also makes intercession for us who shall separate us from the love of Christ oh dear people of God with all of the uncertainties of life with all of the all of the oppressive aspects of life to be able to say in the present moment Christ is mine and I am his and the worst of all fears is forever settled I will never hear God say to me depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire then I'll be able to sing we're back to our hymnody Jesus thy blood in righteousness how does that hymn end when from the dust of death I rise to claim my mansion in the skies even then this shall be all my plea Jesus has lived has died for me there you get it again justification I hope this is doing for some of you that got a little feel for a little more bouncy frilly hymnody when you find in it this kind of stuff come and show me come and show me come and show me it's this

64:47 that enables the soul of the child of God to be stable amidst all the uncertainty of life to pick yourself up again when you failed miserably fallen before that sin that you've confessed a thousand of times all of the controversies of God with me in the courtroom have been settled by my surety and representative I'm going to deal with dealing with ongoing sin in the life of a justified person going to address some of those practical problems but this morning we focused on this simple aspect of the truth it is received by faith alone I trust this hour finds you resting in the savior let's pray our father what can we say when we try to gaze into the brilliant blazing mysteries of the gospel we can only bow our heads and bow our hearts and thank you and say with the apostle thanks be to you for your unspeakable gift we pray that you would take the truths preached and taught this morning

66:15 make them effectual in the hearts of many Lord especially be merciful to those that fight against their highest interest who go on in their willful indifference to the severity of your law or their willful unbelief in the sincerity of the gospel God be gracious to them we pray that this day may mark the day when they flee to Christ seal your word then to the prophet of all for your glory and for our good Amen