Faith Accompanied in the Believer

The Centrality of Justification by Faith Alone

0:03 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, July 29th, 2007, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:14 Now may I encourage you to turn with me in your own Bibles to the second chapter of the letter of James, the book of James, and chapter 2.

0:29 And I begin the reading at verse 14 and conclude at the end of the chapter. James 2 at verse 14.

1:10 James 2 at verse 14. If God is one, you do well. The demons also believe and shudder. But will you know, O vain man, that faith, apart from works, is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? You see that faith wrought with his works. And by works was faith made perfect.

2:14 And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. You see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. And in like manner was not also Rahab the harlot justified?

2:40 By works, in that she received the messengers, and sent them out another way. For as the body, apart from the spirit, is dead, even so faith, apart from works, is dead. Well, let us again pray and ask God the Holy Spirit to enable us to understand his word. Our Father, we have sung together.

3:13 Our conscious need of the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we now come and plead with one mind and heart, remembering your promise, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? We ask that he may be granted to us at preaching. Teacher and listener alike, that together we may be conscious that your word is coming to us, not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. Hear our cry and answer us, we plead, for your glory and for our profit. Amen. Martin Luther, that once spiritually tortured Augustinian. Monk, who became the great Christian and mighty preacher of the grace of God, said that the biblical doctrine of justification, that is, justification in Christ alone and received by faith alone, was the article of the standing or falling church.

4:42 What he meant, stated simply, is this. Since the church is...

4:49 Is both formed and nurtured by the gospel, and since the heart of the gospel is the proclamation of justification in Christ alone, received by faith alone, the place this doctrine has in the understanding and in the experience of the members of the professing church of Christ, will be the most accurate index of the true state of that church, either standing or falling. Standing in the wonderful reality of justification and all that flows out from it, or falling from that central truth and moving in the direction of apostasy. Well, there was a man greater in gift and...

5:49 And office. Formerly a self-righteous Pharisee and persecutor of the church named Saul of Tarsus. He was changed into Paul, the bond slave of Christ, and an apostle of Jesus Christ. And he stated this issue of the central place of justification even more powerfully, shockingly, than did Luther.

6:18 Sure. And I read his words from the opening chapter of Galatians. He has received word that there in the Galatian area that the Judaizers had come and were telling people who had embraced the gospel of justification in Christ alone, received by faith alone, to a gospel that said, well, Christ is not quite enough. You need to be circumcised.

6:46 And you need to eat kosher food. And you need to become full-blown Jews. And Paul writes to them, saying in verse 8, But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach any other gospel than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema, let him come under the curse of Almighty God. And what was that gospel?

7:13 Well, Paul says, I marvel you were so quickly removing from him that called you, in the grace of Christ, unto a different gospel, which is not another gospel. They had moved away from a gospel that was a gospel of pure grace, the unmerited favor of God to those who deserve nothing but his judgment, a gospel in which God makes all the provision for our acceptance with him, and he requires, he requires nothing at our hands, but that we should, with the empty hand of faith, embrace the offered righteousness in Jesus Christ. Well, in seeking to understand this biblical gospel, this atlas-like truth of justification, I have been using the definition of the larger catechism in the Westminster Standards, and thus far have preached, 18 sermons, on this wonderful theme. I likened that definition in the larger catechism to a large and beautiful house with seven well-furnished rooms that constitute a beautiful,

Faith Alone as the Means of Justification, and the Devil's New Battle Line

8:35 comprehensive, and biblically accurate definition of the biblical doctrine of justification. Room number one, we saw, is the author of justification, in God himself, and God alone. Justification is an act of God's free grace, in which he pardons, he accepts, and he imputes perfect righteousness to us. The recipients of justification, it is sinners.

9:10 Justification is an act of God's free grace unto sinners. Paul says he is the God who justifies the unmerited, ungodly, at the point that he justifies them, they are ungodly, they will not remain ungodly, but at the point of their justification, they are sinners, sinners objectively defined in the scripture, sinners in the subjective consciousness of their own guilt and hell-deservingness. Then the source of justification, it is an act of God's free grace, taking the language right out of Romans 3.24, being justified freely by his grace. And then the fourth room, the activity of God in justification. It is an act in which God does two things. He pardons all of our sins, and he accepts and accounts our persons as righteous.

10:14 He cancels our guilt, but he credits us with a perfect, perfect obedience to the law, so that all of the penal sanctions of the law are done away with because of Christ's death. And all of the perceptual demands of the law have been fulfilled in our substitute and representative. And that brings us to room number five. What is the ground or the basis of our justification?

10:44 Negatively, not for anything done in us, by God, nothing done by us in our own works, but positively for the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, and for the full satisfaction he has made on our behalf. And then the method imputed to them, that is put to our account by uniting us to Christ, by constituting us in Christ, God can then impute to us the very righteousness of his Son. And then the seventh room was the means of receiving the blessing of justification received by faith alone. Two Lord's days ago, I sought to open up the biblical witness to the fact that faith alone is the appointed means of appropriating God's justifying grace. We looked at the explicit and implicit testimony of Scripture, and I sought to answer the question, why is it faith alone? And we saw because of its unique nature, it receives and rests upon Christ alone, and because of its appointed effect, it constitutes us into union with Christ,

12:12 so that in Christ he has made unto us righteousness. Now these truths are of supreme importance with respect to that most crucial question, how can sinful man become right with God? How can all of the claims of God's law against me be met? And the gospel of imputed righteousness tells us that one has met those demands on our behalf.

12:46 To be unclean, clear or uncertain in these things, a man can have no rest of heart, no peace of conscience, if he's realistically facing his own sin, realistically facing God's inflexible law and unbending justice, and the infallible sentence of the court of heaven. Now the devil knows this, hence he's done his diabolical best to silence, to silence, to silence, to blur, to confuse, to distort, to overthrow the testimony of the word of God on these things. And when he has been successful, vital, saving religion has languished, or it has ultimately died. However, when the devil's work in smothering the truth of justification by faith alone, based on the work of, Christ alone, when the devil's work has been overturned by faithful, accurate, spirit-empowered preaching of the biblical doctrine of justification, the devil retreats and he sets up his battle lines in another place. When he has failed to obscure or pervert the major issues involved in the doctrine of justification

14:16 by faith alone, based on the imputation of the perfect righteousness of Christ, then he seeks to pervert the biblical doctrine relative to the inevitable fruits and necessary accompaniments of justifying faith. He changes his teaching from justification by faith alone plus something else, or his efforts to change it, to one, that says, all right, I'll give you the ground. The Bible is so clear that justification is received by faith alone, I'll give up trying to persuade you that the Bible means anything other than justification by faith alone. I will no longer try to deceive you that you need to be baptized, that you need to undertake the sacraments, that you need to be circumcised, that you need to become kosher Jews, that you need to do, do this or that. I'll give up the ground. The testimony of Scripture is so clear.

15:23 Justification is received by faith alone. I give up the ground to you. Take it. Then he sets up his battle lines with his horrible damning doctrine that the faith by which we receive justification can exist alone.

15:43 That it can exist without the accompanying graces, that God says always accompany justifying faith. And it is for this very reason that the framers of the Westminster Confession and subsequently our London Baptist Confession in the chapter dealing with justification, which ends with the statement, it's received by faith alone. Listen to the second paragraph. Faith, thus receiving, and, and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification.

16:26 Yet, listen carefully, yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but a faith which works. And it is by love. Now, why did they add that? Because they had seen in the history of the church the devil setting up his armament and his minions from hell to oppose justification by faith alone.

17:05 But when he had been driven from that ground, he set up his battlements, he set up his armor, I'm sorry, he set up his artillery to say, all right, fine. But you can be justified by faith alone with a faith that is alone. And they said, no, that is not the teaching of the word of God. Yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever, ever, ever, without exception, is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. And so this morning, it is my burden that we would go after the devil where he's most likely to set up shop in your conscience and in your life after 18 messages expounding the biblical classic Protestant reformed doctrine of justification in Christ alone. Based upon the imputation of his righteousness received by faith alone, the devil does not retreat and go out of business, but he will do his nefarious best to try to persuade some of you,

18:33 if he has not already done so, that you can claim to be justified because you believe in Christ, but your so-called faith exists alone. And so, it is my pastoral burden that as much as I have given myself with all of my energies of mind and soul to re-preach this grand glorious doctrine of justification in Christ alone, it is my faith alone that with equal clarity and biblical substance I would establish in your understanding and in your conscience that that faith which alone lays hold of Christ and his righteousness is never alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but a faith which works by love. It is precisely at this point that the contrasting dominant emphasis of Paul and of James is both

Paul and James: Two Armies Against a Common Enemy

19:59 vital and necessary. On the one hand, the great task of the apostle Paul, in the will of God, was to establish very clearly and to guard most passionately the truth of the gospel. of justification by faith alone apart from the works of the law. He does this primarily in two letters, the book of Romans and the book of Galatians. In the book of Romans, he does it in a more positive pastoral manner with a great passion that the Jewish and Gentile segments in the church at Rome would be brought into the deepest, most intimate spiritual fellowship around this glorious truth that since there is no difference in their sinnerhood, which he proved in the first three chapters, there is no difference in their justification. It is in Christ and it is received by faith alone. And so in the book of Romans,

21:10 we have that most powerful statement, the most thorough statement of this doctrine. But then in the book of Galatians, in a more defensive or polemic way, some had been attacking the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And so Paul's pen is white hot when he writes or when he dictates the book of Romans, the book of Galatians, bringing down the curse of God on anyone. Who would put dashes or commas where he in his gospel put periods. We are saved by grace through faith alone, period. Along came the Judaizers and they put dashes and commas and semicolons. We are saved by grace through faith and circumcision, obedience to dietary laws, etc. And Paul, in a very passionate, polemic way, defends the doctrine of justification by faith.

22:21 But James was also given a very vital and necessary task. His task was different from Paul's. And his task was this, to establish and guard the great truth that justifying faith is never, a dead, inactive, merely notional thing. That justifying faith will always give birth to works of righteousness. That justifying faith in the language of Paul, Galatians 5, 6, is a working faith, a faith that works by love. And so James is just as passionate in the passage read in your hearing to make it abundantly clear that if people say, oh yes, I have faith, I'm trusting in Christ, I'm justified. And that profession is not accompanied by the other graces that God says will always accompany justifying faith. James says it's a dead faith, it's a vain faith.

23:35 It puts you in company with demons, not saints. James says it's a dead faith, it's a vain faith, it puts you in company with demons, not saints. Not saints, but demons. Now at first sight, and I'm sure some of you felt that when I read that passage in James and gave emphasis, were they not justified by works? You say, wait a minute, it looks like there's a contradiction. Paul again and again says a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. And James comes along and says, we are justified by our works. And it looks like they're saying diametrically opposed things. Well, they're not. They're like two sections of an army coming from two different directions upon a common enemy. The enemy is there in the valley. And one of the armies is approaching from the left. For you, the left is over here, from the left. And the other is approaching from the right. And it looks like

24:36 the two armies are going to line up and confront each other. And it looks like the two armies are going to confront one another in battle, when in reality, if you get closer to the battlefield, you'll see that they are aimed at a common enemy down below in the valley. And so you have Paul saying, we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law. What is Paul fighting? He's fighting that theater of the devil's attempt to damn men's souls, where people think that what they do can't be done. And they're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not.

25:10 They can commend them to God, that they do not need to throw themselves in the utter helpless state of sinnerhood upon God's grace in Christ. They want to add something to Christ. And Paul is going after the devil's attempt to damn men by works righteousness. But James sees that the devil has persuaded a number of people who name the name of Christ, in whom they have been there is no pervasive, radical, moral, and ethical transformation of life. If you read the book of James, you see the things he has to castigate. They are guilty of spiritual harlotry with the world. They are fighting and warring. They are showing partiality. There is little of those

26:01 graces that accompany saving faith. And so James is going after not the truth that we are justified by faith alone, but he's going after the error that we can be justified by a faith that remains alone. And he is fighting the devil on this flank, and Paul is fighting the devil on this flank, and he needs to be fought from both flanks in your heart. Because by nature, every one of us is both a Pharisee on the one hand, and an antinomian on the other.

26:40 Every single one of us has the seeds of both a Pharisee who wants to commend himself to God on the basis of what he does, or the antinomian who says, since salvation is all of God, it doesn't matter what I do. That's the antinomian. And so these two great leaders of the host of God are fighting this common enemy in the valley, and I want to fight him there, as well. With that as a background, let's turn to James 2 for a brief exposition of this pivotal passage in the book of James. James chapter 2. Now, his major concern should be evident to us as we read the passage. His major concern is what is the nature of the kind of faith that truly brings us into God's love.

James's Concern: The Nature of Saving Faith

27:43 God's saving mercy and grace. In this passage, there are 11 uses of the noun faith, pistis, three uses of the verb pistuo, 12 uses of the noun works, ergos. Now notice verse 14, what his concern is. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man say he have faith, but have not faith?

28:13 Not works. Now notice, can that faith save him? We could render it, can that kind of faith save him? Here's a man that says, oh yeah, I'm a believer. I'm trusting in Jesus. Oh, I believe the wonderful doctrine of justification by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. And I can even tell you that that righteousness is comprised of what the theologians call his active obedience, his obedience to the perceptual demands of the law, his passive obedience, his suffering under the penal sanctions of the law. Oh yeah, I believe that. I've embraced it with all my heart.

28:59 But you look at the man's life, and there is not a pattern of works consistent with being a new creature in Christ Jesus, inconsistent with being united to Christ Jesus. And there is not a pattern of works consistent with being a new creature in Christ Jesus. And there is not a pattern of works consistent with being a new creature in

29:27 Paul says in Romans 6 if we are linked to Christ, we have entered into the virtue and power of his death and resurrection". We have died to sin's dominion. We have risen to newness of life. Sin shall not exercise This man says, James says, if a man says he has faith but has not works, can that kind of faith save him?

29:48 You see, there's the issue. James is not undermining the truth that we lay hold of God's provision of justification by faith alone. The issue is, what is the nature of that faith by which alone we lay hold of Christ and His saving grace? Can that kind of faith save him?

30:14 Look at verse 17. Even so, faith, if it has not works, is dead in itself. He's going after a faith that is called a dead faith. Not a living principle.

30:29 A principle which, imparted by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, has its first actings in going out of itself to lay hold of Christ, but is always inseparably joined to repentance. That repentance unto life, in which a sinner out of a true sense of his sin, and an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it. Unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. Oh no.

31:06 He knows nothing of that. He knows nothing of that faith that laying hold of Christ always, always results in the gift of the Holy Spirit being given. And when the Holy Spirit is given, He is never a dormant power within the heart and life of one into whom He comes, but He will begin to manifest His fruit. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.

31:37 He will, in the language of Romans 8, begin to produce a lifestyle dominated by the Spirit and not the flesh. He will enable us in the language of Romans 8, to enter into a pattern of putting to death the deeds of the body, that we might live for as many as are led by the Spirit. The Spirit of God, these and these only are the true sons of God. So James, you see, is going after this notional faith.

32:08 This faith professed, but unaccompanied by works. Look at verse 20. He uses the term, Will thou know, O vain man, that faith apart from works is barren? So he moves from a dead faith, in verse 17, to a barren faith, in verse 20, to a dead faith, in verse 21, to a barren faith, in verse 22, to a barren faith, in verse 20, and then in verse 23, notice, And the Scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.

32:39 James has no quarrel with Genesis 15, 6, and the fact that Abraham's initial, actual justification was based upon his laying hold of God's promise, and in that, he was reckoned righteous. So he has no argument with Paul. Then verse 26, Even so, faith apart from works is dead. So he's speaking of a barren faith, a dead faith, a vain faith, that kind of faith that cannot save.

33:16 Have I persuaded you that James' subject is not works? It's faith. That's his subject. The subject is, but what kind of faith is that?

Exposition of James 2:14-20: Dead, Barren, and Demonic Faith

33:28 That faith alone, by which we lay hold of the righteousness of Christ. Well, look at the major development of the argument. Section number one is verses 14 to 17. I've swept through the passage, trying to persuade you with your Bibles open on your laps, that James is not pushing salvation by works.

33:52 He's going after the error of defective faith. He's going after the error of defective faith. He's going after the error of vain faith, dead faith, what he calls at one place, demon's faith. That's James' burden.

34:07 And it's my burden as I preach to you this morning. So let's make a quick trip now through the passage, going back over it. The first section is verses 14 to 17. He begins with a question.

34:20 What does it profit my brothers, if a man say he have faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him? The question is raised, rhetorically, the answer is assumed. Of course not.

34:36 If a man's faith is just a matter of words, it stops short of being true faith. Then he gives a parallel that is suggested. If a brother or sister be naked in lack of daily food, and one of you say to him, go in peace, be warmed and filled. And you give him not the things needful to the body.

34:58 What does it profit? What profit comes from saying to an indigent man or woman, boy or girl, hey, be filled, be warmed, and you don't do anything? You say nothing. Why?

35:12 Because it's just words. Just words. And what's the conclusion? Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself.

35:21 It's just a bunch of words. Anybody can take the words, I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus.

35:28 I believe I'm justified. You can say the words. If you can't say them verbally, you can say them with the proper signs, like our brothers do. I believe I'm justified.

35:40 Say it for me. All right. See, he said it. Anybody can say it.

35:49 That's the point James makes. It's easy to say, I have faith. Section number two, verses 18 to 20, begins with a challenge. Yea, a man will say, you have faith?

36:03 I have works. James says, here's the challenge, show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. There's the challenge. Again, it comes down to what you say and what you manifest in your lifestyle.

36:21 Then a comparison is suggested in verse 19. You believe God is one. That was the great foundational confession in verse 19. You believe God is one.

36:30 In the Shema, from Deuteronomy chapter 6, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. He says, you believe that. That's a foundational tenet of orthodoxy. You believe God is one?

36:44 Well, that's very nice. You do well. However, all it does is put you in the company of demons. The demons also believe, and furthermore, they tremble.

36:58 What do the demons believe? The demons believe every orthodox truth revealed by God. The demons confess the identity of Jesus before Peter did. Early in Jesus' ministry in the synagogue, the demon-possessed man cries out, What have we to do with you, Son of God, Son of the Most High?

37:19 Have you come to torment us before the time? Later on, the Gadarene demoniac, they believe in coming judgment. They believe in hell. They believe Christ is the judge.

37:32 They believe every tenet of orthodoxy, including the doctrine of justification by faith alone, based upon the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. The demons believe it. That's why they fight it. Because they know it is the only balm for a sin-convicted soul.

37:55 It is the only life and power of the church of Christ. They believe it. The demons also believe, and they even have an emotional reaction. They shudder.

38:06 They tremble. So the challenge he gives in verse 18 is followed up with this comparison, and then the conclusion in verse 20. Look at it. Will you not know, O vain man, that faith, apart from works, is barren?

38:26 It's barren. And because it's barren, it's not saving faith. And then in section number 3, verses 21 to 25, he gives two historical examples to demonstrate his case. First of all, Abraham.

Exposition of James 2:21-26: Abraham and Rahab's Declarative Justification

38:42 Notice what he says. And, sorry, verse 21, was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Now let's stop right there. When did Abraham offer up Isaac upon the altar?

39:08 When Isaac was a young man. When was Abraham justified according to the text of Scripture? Genesis 15.6 says, He believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.

39:26 Abraham was justified in Genesis 15.6. He doesn't offer up Isaac until Genesis 20.6.

39:33 When was Abraham justified according to the text of Scripture? Genesis 15.6 says, He believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Genesis 21-22.

39:37 But the text says, Look at it, was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? You see that faith wrought with his works and by work was faith made perfect, and the Scripture was fulfilled, and Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God. Why? initial justification rested solely upon faith in the promise of god paul develops that in romans chapter 4 before circumcision before anything other than naked faith taking hold of god's promise that focused upon the seed who would eventually be christ abraham is justified that was his actual justification what happened when he offered up isaac and it says was he not justified by his works this was not his actual justification this was his declarative justification he was declared to be the real deal god says now i know that you fear me

40:59 now i know that you fear me that you fear me that i have the place in your heart that i have in the place of every truly believing heart i'm number one not your son and so abraham was justified that is vindicated in this act of offering up his son and his faith came to this expression his faith was made perfect in its manifestation and he is called called the friend of god there's a thirty year difference between his actual initial declaration of being justified and the event that james is identifying here you see then verse twenty four that by works a man is justified and not only by faith he is not saying we enter man's works into the ground of his justification no our actual justification justification rests upon christ and christ alone but our justification can be validly declared as it will be in the last day

42:14 when our judgment will be according to works all the passages dealing with the last day say we'll be judged on the basis of our deeds Why? Because our deeds then will justify, that is, will declare that our faith was the real deal. That's why Jesus will say, I was sick, you visited me. I was in prison, you came to me.

42:44 What are those but works that flow out of justifying faith? And that God will justify his declaration that we are truly justified by faith. He will use the works of his people to vindicate the justness of his justification of his people who trust him for that blessing. And this is what he says here with regard to Abraham.

43:16 And then he brings in Rahab, and in like manner was not Rahab. Rahab the harlot justified by works in that she received the messengers and sent them out another way. Her works demonstrated what she confessed when she told those spies, Look, we've heard about you Israelites. We've heard what your God did in judging Pharaoh, opening the Red Sea.

43:40 We've heard about your God, and I cast myself upon that God and his mercy in faith. And how did her faith manifest itself? By protecting those messengers, send them out another way, verse 26. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.

44:04 These things demonstrate the reality of faith. They do not teach an opposite doctrine that we are actually declared righteous on the basis of our works. No, our actual justification. Justification rests upon Christ and Christ alone.

44:24 Our declarative justification rests upon those works that always accompany justifying faith. The works of Abraham and Rahab were not a cause procuring their right standing with God, but they were effects declaring their right standing with God. Not a cause. Procuring, but in effect, declaring.

The Harmony of Paul and James: Lightning and Thunder Analogy

44:54 So then, when we think of Paul's emphasis, and we think of the emphasis of James, I found this very helpful comment in John Stone's commentary on the book of James, and this may be helpful to you. The apparent opposition and real harmony between the declarations of James and Paul may be illustrated by an analogy. Suppose a thunderstorm by which lives and property have been destroyed, and that an intelligent child in the desolated district whose ears had been stunned by the peals of thunder, and his eyes dazzled by the glare of the lightning, should ask a friend, was it the thunder or the lightning that caused all of this devastation? The answer would be, terrible as the noise of the thunder is, yet the destruction is caused by lightning alone without the thunder. But if the further question be proposed, is all lightning of a destructive kind? Then the answer will be no.

46:13 Destruction is not caused by lightning alone without thunder. The noiseless, summer lightning, as it is sometimes called, which we often see playing near us in sheets of flame at the close of a sultry day, being harmless. The two answers, when we look at them simply as isolated statements, flatly contradict each other. But when we regard them in connection with the respective questions which elicit them, they are both true, and both fitted to help the person to a full view, to a full view of the subject in which he is interested.

46:52 Similarly, to him who asks, is it faith that justifies or works? Paul replies, faith alone justifies without works. To him who knowing and believing this, asks further, but does all professed faith justify?

47:17 The answer of James is, faith alone without, without works does not justify. For in inoperative faith is dead, powerless, unprofitable. Both statements looked at in connection with the questions they are respectively meant to answer are true, and both of vast importance. Faith alone justifies, but not the faith, which is alone.

47:45 You see the difference? That's a vital difference. That's not playing with words. That's the only way to understand what James is doing, fighting in that valley, what Paul is doing in fighting in that valley, that neither one of these devilish errors would damn us.

48:06 The error of Phariseeism, of Judaism, thinking we can add something to Christ, or that we can appropriate Christ on the basis of God's work in us, some grace, some grace infused into us, rather than going to a Christ and a righteousness outside of us, and laying hold of it by faith alone. Anything other is damnable, Paul says. And on the other hand, and this is the great danger in our day, and it's the great danger of those of you reared in the context of Orthodox teaching in your home, in your schooling, in this church, to say there's nothing I don't disbelieve. There's nothing I don't disbelieve. There's nothing that I don't believe. Nothing that I knowingly disbelieve. Well, surely I must have saving faith.

Questions for Self-Examination

49:00 And yet there is not love to the person of Christ. There is not a passion to walk before Christ with a clear conscience. There is not a yearning to know Christ. These are the accompaniments of all true saving faith.

49:21 And as Paul would go after and slay the Pharisee in us, so James would slay the antinomian that is in us. As I come to conclude the message this morning, I want to press several questions on all of you who've been making a good effort to follow me this morning. Let me ask question number one. Have you seen your sin and inability to recover yourself and cast your anchor into the ocean of God's justifying grace in Christ Jesus alone?

50:06 Have you seen your sin and your inability to recover yourself and cast your anchor into the ocean of God's justifying grace, not looking for something to be done in you that will give you the right to cast your anchor in the ocean of his free grace, certainly not seeking to find something done by you, but Christ himself, Christ alone, to put it in biblical language. Have you felt the publican's pain? Jesus said that publicans stood afar off, would not look up to heaven, beat upon his breast. What's that? It's just describing the inner pain of his undoneness. He had come to see he had nothing, could do nothing, could commend nothing to God.

51:09 Have you felt the publican's pain? Have you assumed his posture, humbled before God? Have you made his plea, God be merciful to me, the sinner? He didn't say the convicted sinner.

51:23 The seeking sinner. The yearning sinner. He says, Oh God, I'm nothing but a plain old unqualified sinner. That's what I am.

51:31 Oh God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Is that you? Is that you today? Is that your posture?

51:40 If not, why not? Do you doubt the severity of God's law? Do you doubt the sincerity of God's gospel? Answer the question in the deep recesses of your heart.

51:55 And if your answer is yes, I have. I have cast the anchor of my confidence in the sea of God's gracious offer of mercy in Jesus Christ. That being so, do you seek with all your heart to obey Christ? To please Christ?

52:17 To do works mandated by his word? Are you grieved when you fail? Do you give evidence to those around you that there's anything different about you that has no explanation but that almighty God has made you a new creature in Christ Jesus? Then I ask another question.

Comfort with Paul and James's Emphases

52:44 Do you feel comfortable with Paul's emphasis? When you read your Bible and you read, By grace he is saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Are you comfortable with a salvation? It's all of God.

52:57 All of grace. All in Christ. As Paul says, Let him that glorieth, glory in the Lord. You don't dare talk about the faithfulness of your church attendance or your devotions or your prayers or your witnessing or anything else.

53:15 You know that anything you do is riddled with the stain of your own sin. Are you comfortable with Paul's emphasis? It's by faith. It's by faith alone.

53:27 Are you comfortable with James' emphasis? That the faith alone that lays hold of Christ is never a faith that is alone but is accompanied by other graces. Are you comfortable with James' emphasis? I remember a preacher years ago when I was in the traveling ministry who was honest with me and told me whenever he came through reading his Bible and came to the book of 1 John he was always uncomfortable and he skipped it.

54:02 Because John has those tests of real spiritual life. If we say we know him and keep not his commandments we lie and we do not the truth. He that saith I know him and does not obey him is a liar. We know we've passed from death unto life because we love the brethren.

54:22 In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested. He that does not practice righteousness is not of God but is of the devil. Are you comfortable with the emphasis of James and of John as well as the emphasis of the great apostle? May God give us grace to embrace with equal tenacity all of these vital truths of the gospel.

Preaching the Whole Counsel of God

54:50 Having no sympathy with any gospel but free grace. No gospel that in any way deviates from the fact that there's no ground of acceptance but in Christ. No method but imputation. No means but faith.

55:07 Oh may that gospel ring from this place till Christ returns. No preaching of conditions and qualifications and additional revelations but an urging of sinners to come as sinners and throw themselves upon a mighty savior. But then with equal clarity and urgency may there be no sympathy with notional or merely emotional faith that does not issue in practical obedience to Christ. No grief for sin.

55:43 No ethical conformity to Christ. And no preaching to comfort any who do not strive for universal holiness. Today anyone who is not set upon following after the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord can sink down in comfort in this place. God have mercy on all of us.

56:11 You see it's no easy thing to preach the whole counsel of God. And to keep in balance these truths that desperately need one another. Without either we eventually lose the gospel. Because where there is mere notional faith and no transformed life and all the other graces you don't have vital Christianity you have nominal Christianity.

56:42 And where you've got nominal Christianity it isn't long before people who don't love the Savior are ready to give up the Savior's words. And then nominal Christianity becomes liberal Christianity that bleeds away the supernatural and the offensive parts of Scripture. And then all you've got left is a house of synagogue where people play church. And on the other hand if pressing the necessity of a vital faith that uniting us to Christ brings us into the path of a serious pursuit of holiness and righteousness if that is not suffused with the preaching of God's free grace then you see a people in bondage who know nothing of the liberty of the sons of God who cannot sing from the heart Jesus thy blood in righteousness my beauty are my glorious dress. And you have a people constantly picking over their hearts and looking for their evidences and their spiritual noses are stuck in their own ugly navels. And there's nothing attractive about such a Christianity. The world needs to see a people strict in their ethics determined to live a holy life in an ungodly world and yet marked by righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The Power of the Gospel in a Transformed Life

58:07 A people who when they get in their cars to go to church Sunday morning look like they're going to a ball. They're happy. I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord. And the neighbors say you know those people actually look like they're going to something they're enjoying.

58:24 That's what awakens in people a desire to ask a reason of the hope that is in us. It was a humbling thing. One of my many doctors one day he said to me Al or maybe he calls me Mr. Martin he's one of these young enough to be my son I think he calls me Mr. Martin.

58:48 He said you know my staff said today I said no. When they looked over the list of those coming they say oh we're so glad Mr. Martin's coming in today. I said they're glad why do they want to see me I ain't handsome.

59:02 He said because they say you're always so pleasant. I wasn't trying to be pleasant I was just being me. I come through that door I'm a saved man. The old saw bones got to work on me to patch me up so I can preach a few more sermons but I'm on my way to heaven.

59:24 I'm going to get a resurrection body eventually. Won't need the surgeon's knife and won't need the doctors. And surely if we're living in the presence of our realities in Christ there's going to be something about our countenance about our demeanor our bearing that speaks the power of the gospel. But you see veil this doctrine of free justification based upon what Christ has done and you will have a joyless tentative kind of Christian experience.

60:03 So may God help us by his grace dear people to be perfectly at home with Paul and with James and with the statement of our confession that is so accurate that wherever there is that justifying faith there will always inevitably be if I can find my first page of notes here it is it is ever accompanied with all other saving graces and is no dead faith but works by love. Let's pray. Our Father how we thank you for your word that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our pathway and how we earnestly pray that you would help us to understand and to internalize the things we've reflected upon today. We thank you for the clarity of your word that we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law any works we can perform and that our justification has nothing to do with the grace you infuse in us though when you bring us

61:25 to lay hold of your Son external to us and the virtue of his righteousness you do work in us all those other graces that accompany salvation. So we pray that you will teach your people that their experience will mirror the word of God. Help us our Father we pray in Jesus name. Amen.