Better here.
Good morning. I would like to ask you to turn with me to the letter of Paul to the Romans. I think all of us know this letter. Let us turn to Romans 3. We will begin in verse 20.
Wherefore by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight;
for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.
But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath 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.—Romans 3:20-26
And then this verse I want you to pay particular attention to: “For the showing forth of His righteousness in the present time, so that He should be just and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus.”
Chapter 4—we will read just a few verses: 21 to 25. This is about Abraham, by the way, and the promise to Abraham and Sarah about an heir.
And being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.
Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned to him;
but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.—Romans 4:21-25
And now some verses in Romans 5. First of all, verses 1 and 2:
Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.—Romans 5:1-2
And then just two more verses, Romans 5:16-18:
And not as through one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment came of one unto condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses unto justification.
For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, even Jesus Christ.
So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.—Romans 5:16-18
Let us stop there, and let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You for Your Word. Where would we be without the Word of God? And where would we be without the Holy Spirit to make real the Word of God?
We need Your Word, Lord. We confess it. Your words are spirit and life. But we need the Holy Spirit to interpret, explain, and unfold the Word of God.
We have no one else to go to. We say, as Peter said, “Thou alone hast the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?” Open Your Word. Make plain to us what the Holy Spirit has forever recorded in these verses, and help us to more deeply know You as a result.
For these things, we ask together in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, we are continuing this morning on the basic lesson series. You know by now that we are sharing on the basic lesson series, and the overall title of that series is So Great Salvation.
You remember, as John Blanchard shared in the introduction, that phrase, “so great salvation,” comes from Hebrews 2:3. Our burden has been simply that we, as the children of God, would have a firm foundation.
If we are going to endure, if we are going to go through to the end as overcomers, we must, in the first place, have a firm foundation.
Now, I want to tell you that foundation is not a thing. The Word of God, and the Apostle Paul, makes it absolutely clear that the foundation is a living Person. First Corinthians 3:11 says:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
—1 Corinthians 3:11
He is our living foundation. Our foundation, in other words, is not just teaching and words. Our foundation is a Person, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the firm and immovable foundation.
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord told a parable. Turn to Matthew 7. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, He said this in verse 24:
Every one therefore that heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock:
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the rock.And every one that heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand:
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall thereof.—Matthew 7:24-27
Now, this is the greatest sermon ever given, ever preached in history: the Sermon on the Mount. At its conclusion, the Lord Jesus had one emphasis: you need to be built upon the right foundation, the strong foundation. Without that foundation, you cannot live the Christian life, and you will have no relationship with God.
I am not going to waste your time with foolishness, but I spent a career doing foundations. So often people would call me out and say, “Look at these cracks in the wall. Look at these problems. The floor is uneven. When I put the kids’ marbles on the floor, they roll into the corner. What is the problem?”
It is almost always the same: the problem is the foundation. So I hope you know that this is the reason we are burdened to do this series. This is the importance of this series. It is a secret to endurance.
You know, at the family conference, we are going to be talking about endurance. You have need of endurance. One thing that will help you endure, in the first place, is having the right foundation and building rightly upon that foundation.
Well, my responsibility is in this matter of justification. That is obvious, I think, from these texts, what we will be talking about.
I think justification is a familiar word. It may be to you just one of those big theological words. It may not have so much meaning to you, but it is a word we need to understand in greater depth.
Now, here is the problem, I think. When we look at justification, I think we look at it always from our side. We need to expand our view of what justification is talking about. We need, first of all, to see justification with a God’s-eye view. If we do not see what He means by justification, we will never understand the depth of this.
Let me make just a few basic points about the importance of justification. Justification is of utmost importance to the Christian. You cannot have a relationship with God without justification. You cannot even have a beginning. You cannot have the Christian life, or live the Christian life, without justification. It is an absolute necessity.
You know, today when you go buy a car, they like to get you. We recently did this after almost twenty years. I was shocked the first time I bought a car after so long. They have all of these optional packages, and oh, they love to sell you the optional packages. “With this package, you can get this and this and this.” I fell for just a few of them.
But this is not an optional package. This is the essential gospel. If we do not, as the people of God, understand the importance of justification, we will not have any relationship with God. We will not have any right standing with God.
Think of the consequences. We will not have any understanding or ability to live the Christian life. Those are just a few things that, maybe in my mind at least, stress the importance. Simply put, without it, we cannot have a relationship with a holy God. It will be, at best, a distant relationship.
It is absolutely required.
What does justification do for us? I think some people have a wrong idea, and that is why I want to expand your view of justification. Some people think justification gives us righteousness.
Now, I want to tread on this very carefully. It does not give you righteousness or make you righteous. It does not change who you are. It is His righteousness.
That is why, when Paul wrote this letter, he was very careful to say, “For the showing forth of His righteousness.” We now, through justification, have a complete right standing with God. It is not because you are righteous. It is not because you do things right before God. It is because of what He did before God.
Now, you must understand that. People think that they have righteousness. We have a Person. We are in Christ, and because He is absolutely righteous, God declares—that is the word in Romans—God declares you righteous.
It is not your righteousness. We need to be absolutely clear that Christ Himself is our righteousness. Before justification, there is no relationship. After justification, Romans says we have full access into this favor wherein we stand.
William Newell influenced me greatly on the book of Romans. If you do not have his book, Romans Verse by Verse, you have cheated yourself in life. Forgo a few meals at McDonald’s and buy Romans Verse by Verse. It is an extraordinary masterpiece.
William Newell said, coming to the subject of justification when he was writing about Romans 3 and explaining it in detail, “We have come to the unfolding of that which Paul talked about in chapter one: ‘The just shall live by faith.’ We have come to the very heart of the gospel.”
Brothers and sisters, that is how important justification is. You cannot begin to understand the gospel. You cannot begin to understand the good news without an understanding of being justified in Christ Jesus.
So this may be a little bit of a shock to most of you, but the word justification, translated in English versions such as the Authorized Version, the King James Version, only occurs three times. Did you know that? In the Bible? That was quite a shock to me. I expected more, I will be honest with you.
But when I began to consider it, I discovered that such an important subject—the basic heart of the gospel—occurs only three times. As a matter of fact, all three times it occurs in the letter to the Romans. We have read all three of those occasions.
Brothers and sisters, although it occurs only three times, it lays the whole foundation for the gospel of God. It is that important. So do not measure it by quantity; measure it by its importance. It is behind everything in the New Testament.
I like to put it this way: all wells in the New Testament spring from this understanding of justification in Christ Jesus.
You know, the English word justification never occurs in the Old Testament. There is a reason it never occurs in the Old Testament: no one in the Old Testament could be justified before the Lord.
You might say, “Well, why did they give all those offerings? Why did they do all of that continuous service in the temple—the blood of goats, the blood of bulls, over and over?” It was only a temporary atoning for sin until the New Testament came and this matter of justification was made real.
The word justified occurs in Romans more than in any other book in the Bible. Justifier occurs only in Romans. Justifieth is only in Romans in the New Testament. It may be that you think this is just a word study, but it is important.
I hope you begin to appreciate some of the importance. I want to take us, perhaps, in three ways to look at this. The brothers have told us that we have one time per subject, so please bear with me as we try to cover this vast subject in one time. I was not given a second opportunity, even if I mess up.
There are three ways, I think, you can look at justification to have a fuller view:
First of all, you must see it from God’s perspective: God is just. Unless you see that first and foremost God is just, you will never understand justification.
The second way we will look at it is Christ our Justifier. If you do not see the Lord Jesus after coming away from this message, I have miserably failed, and you should do the study on your own.
The third thing, and this is a very important point, is that we need to understand the blessedness of justification. If you read Romans, that word blessedness is in Romans concerning justification. Of the three times that word occurs in the whole of the Bible, it has to do with the blessedness of justification.
First of all, God is just. We must look at justification from God’s standpoint. We usually think about justification from our viewpoint, if you are honest and admit it. You say, “What does justification do for me?”
But if you are going to appreciate the blessedness of justification, the depth of justification, and the fullness of justification, you have to see it from the divine standpoint. That is absolutely what Paul does in this book.
Romans 3:26, which we have already read, says, “For the showing forth of His righteousness in the present time.” Listen to this phrase. Write this phrase down, if you underline it in your Bible: “So that He should be just.”
That is the first item. It was so God Himself would be just. Not that you would be just—you cannot be just—but that He would be just, and secondly, that He would “justify him that is of the faith of Jesus.”
So the first thing, brothers and sisters, in understanding justification—in understanding this blessedness of right standing that we have with God—is that you must first understand that God is just.
Now, I believe a lot of people have problems with that. The world surely has problems with it. The world does not believe God is just. How many times, like me, have you been witnessing to someone in the world and telling them about God, and they say, “He is not just. Look at the world. Look at the suffering in the world. Can you say there is a just God upon the throne?”
They always want a God that does not judge. They always want a God that never requires justice. They always want a God that never requires righteousness. I wonder if sometimes we, as believers, are somewhat the same.
If we do not know that God is just, we can never understand this great theme. Justification is God’s reckoning a man righteous who has no righteousness, because God is operating upon another basis—even the work of Christ.
Now, we beat ourselves up all day long as believers about not being righteous. The good news about justification—and I do not want to get ahead of myself—is that we do not need ever to beat ourselves up again because we are not righteous. God has declared, through this great work of the cross, that we are justified, one hundred percent, and we have full access to God.
Justification is not a change wrought by God in us. Some people think that way. It is a change in relationship to God.
You need to take hold of this and do not beat yourself up, always saying, “I am not righteous. I am not righteous. I am not righteous. You do not know the problems I have.” God knows the problems you have, and He is just. That is the point of justification: God is just.
You know, it is hard for us to think that a just God would justify the ungodly. But He does. It is a great miracle. It is the great story of the gospel. It is almost too much to take in.
When you think of 1 Timothy 6:16, it says that He dwells in unapproachable light. How can we have any contact with Him? How is it even possible if He does not do a work of justification?
We think, well, we know we are not perfect. We know we have flaws. You hear people say all that all the time. We have flaws, right? Some people like the more modern word and say, “Well, we have issues.” Indeed we do—more than you know.
If He did not do that work on the cross, you would have no relationship whatsoever with Him. People sometimes say to me, “I know you,” and they really do not know me. Ask her if you want to know me, and bring your lunch, because you will spend time.
But they say, “You are a perfectionist.” I am a perfectionist in my mind only. I tell people who do not know me: I am an imperfect perfectionist.
There is nothing perfect about us. Perfection is a goal that I have often pursued, and it is as elusive as a butterfly. Have you ever run in a field trying to catch a butterfly with your hand? No nets allowed in this conversation. You skip through the meadow, trying to catch it with your hand. That is how elusive perfection is.
The first thing that a just God wants to convince us of as human beings is that no man is perfect.
Look, it is the record of the Old Testament. You remember Job’s searching question, Job 25:4:
How then can man be just with God?
Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?—Job 25:4
What a question. That is a very searching and deep question. And Psalm 143:2 says, “In Thy sight no man living shall be justified.” No man.
God is so different from us. He is so just. He is so holy. He is so righteous. This idea that we can ever satisfy the heart of God and please God in ourselves is absolutely and patently absurd in its argument.
God is just.
If you read the Old Testament, you discover that the word justice never occurs in the New Testament. It is only in the Old Testament, because Old Testament history is a time in which God shows that He is just. He is holy. He is righteous. In that holiness and that just character, He requires justice.
The Old Testament, and specifically the law—this is the part that depresses you, and I hope to hook you in and bring you around at the end and encourage you—the Old Testament is so depressing.
The purpose of the Old Testament is to prove that man is absolutely guilty. You remember the popular, iconic saying, “Guilty as charged.” Usually we make pretty light of it. When I sneak and eat the candy bar downstairs, and Linda comes down and chocolate is all over my mouth, she says, “You ate the candy bar.” And I say, “I am guilty as charged.”
But what the Old Testament, and specifically the law, does is show us an absolutely righteous God, an absolutely perfect God. Then it demands absolute perfection. Did you know that?
That is pretty wild when you think about it, but that is what the Old Testament requires. That is a just God. He says:
Ye shall therefore be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
—Matthew 5:48
That is the requirement of a just God. He can tolerate nothing else. He cannot lower His standard. He cannot diminish His righteousness. He cannot, with a wave of the hand, push off His justice. He must require justice, or the world goes into absolute chaos.
Listen to Leviticus 11:44. This is what the Lord said in that book so devoted to holiness:
For I am the Lord your God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am holy.
—Leviticus 11:44
Think of the demand. If you do not think of the demand, you will not appreciate your justification. If you only think in the beginning, “What do I get out of it?” and miss the fact that “He might be just” is the first tenet of justification, you miss the greatness of it.
All the Old Testament, and the first three chapters of Romans, are for one purpose: to conclude that all men—religious and irreligious, heathen, Jew, Greek—every man is guilty before God.
Look at Romans 3:20:
Wherefore by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.
—Romans 3:20
And look at Romans 3:23. This is the conclusion. This is the absolute and just conclusion to which the Word of God arrives:
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
—Romans 3:23
This is the awful condition of man before a just God. Now let me ask you: are you depressed yet?
You have to look at it. If you do not, you will excuse the inexcusable. If you do not, you will tolerate things that God cannot look upon. You must have a sense of His holiness and see Who He is.
You remember Isaiah 6, in the year that King Uzziah died. Everybody knows the verse: Isaiah saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Then he saw the seraphim who uttered these words:
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts:
the whole earth is full of His glory.—Isaiah 6:3
That is what we need to see. Isaiah goes on and says, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Have your eyes seen the King—the just King?
Brothers and sisters, do we think God is just, or are we somewhat like the world? Do you really believe God is just?
The Psalmist said in Psalm 145:17:
The Lord is righteous in all His ways,
and gracious in all His works.—Psalm 145:17
Do we believe it? If we believe it, we can see the importance. Thank God that the verse does not merely say that He is righteous in all of His ways; it also says He is gracious in all of His works.
Psalm 116:5 says:
Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
yea, our God is merciful.—Psalm 116:5
This just God is able to be both at the same time. He is both gracious and righteous. It is an incredible balance that no man could accomplish. Only a just God could do it. And our God is merciful. Thank God for that.
I hope this did not put you to sleep. I hope you have a new perspective: we have to see that God is absolutely just and right in all of His judgments, and absolutely right in concluding that man is without hope.
That is the first part: “For the showing forth of His righteousness, that He may be just.” Now let us look at the second part of that same verse: that He might be the Justifier of those who are of the faith of Jesus Christ.
Thank God, He is not merely the just God. Thank God, He is the Justifier. That is the good news of the gospel.
He would be right to be only the Judge. He would be right to demand judgment. He would be right for that sentence of death to be fulfilled in all of us. But the Word says not only is He just; He is also the Justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus Christ.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to draw you in here. Something incredible, something unimaginable, happened with God. We cannot even begin to take it in.
God, Who must maintain His righteousness and cannot forfeit it, Who must require justice in order to be just, is compelled by His love and mercy to be the Justifier of this sin-condemned mankind.
Listen to Romans 5:19:
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous.
—Romans 5:19
Now, I want you to understand: this has nothing to do with the acts that follow. You have to get that. They were constituted sinners because they were born of the sinner, Adam, and that nature and character passed down to them.
Paul was very careful in the words he used. He did not say they became sinners. He said they were constituted sinners. God’s great plan of mercy is that, although all of us in Adam are under the sentence of guilt, He has a plan to bring all of us into a new Man, even Christ, where there will be life.
God sees only two men. You may say, “Brother, He calls me by name. I know He sees me.” You are missing the point. God sees Adam and the ruin that followed Adam; then, when He brings in His Justifier, He sees Christ and all that come out of Christ.
That is called federal headship. You have two choices. You do not have any choice about Adam. You are a chip off the old block. You are what you are because you have inherited a fallen nature.
But you have a choice. You can receive the Lord Jesus as your Justifier, and now God sees you in Christ. He does not look at your perfection; He looks at Christ’s perfection. Because Christ did all of His work, God is completely satisfied with what Christ did.
There is now a new humanity. When you read 1 Corinthians 15, the chapter everybody reads at funerals about resurrection, it gives this great mystery. This is the way God justifies.
There was the failure in the garden that led to the ruin of mankind and this just judgment upon all mankind. Then there was the New Testament, when the Lord Jesus was born and came. In His coming, there is the second Man, or, as 1 Corinthians 15 says, the last Adam.
The first man is Adam. The second Man is Christ. The last Adam is Christ.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
—1 Corinthians 15:22
That is the glory of justification.
This is what the Lord must do. This almost seems an impossible task. He must find a perfect Man. Think of it. This is His dilemma.
Not only must He find a perfect Man; He must find a Man who can satisfy every requirement of the law. Thirdly, He must find One Who can pay the unpaid penalty.
I am afraid we often have a wrong understanding of salvation. We often say, when we are sharing, that it is like the president who commutes a sentence. We are guilty as charged, but the president, the chief executive, commutes the sentence.
That is not just. That is just mercy. But God, the just God, requires justice.
So in this incredible dilemma, He must find a perfect Man. Where will He find one? All we see is flawed men. He must find One who totally and absolutely satisfies the law.
You remember the Lord Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount:
Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
—Matthew 5:17
He said not one iota shall pass. I think we often have a different idea of grace. Please forgive me—I know I go off the rails every once in a while—but I think we have a different idea of grace. We think He just commuted our sin. He has not. He has required justice.
That is what is so incredible about justification. He must find One to bear that penalty. We think grace is God lowering His standard.
You know, it is sort of like when I was in high school and we used to have to do the high jump. I do not know what you do in high school anymore, but I could not jump very high. I had lead feet.
They would put up the bar, and they would always start it too high. I would hit the bar, and it would come down. I think they gave us two or three opportunities. They did not ask me to come out for track, by the way—the high jump.
Then they lowered the bar. They kept lowering the bar until I could get over it. “You passed your physical part of PE.” They lowered the bar.
Do you think God lowered the bar? Brothers and sisters, a just God could never lower the bar.
As a matter of fact, when the Lord Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” What does the Lord say? “I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.”
I wish the Lord had not said it that way. I was lightly angry at John the other day. Lightly angry. He amplifies the law.
Every man in this room knows this verse: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ But I tell you, if you look upon a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery in your heart.”
Brothers and sisters, did He lower the standard? Absolutely not. He raised the bar. The reason He raised the bar is, well, you thought it was impossible before—look at it now.
To show the greatness of His justification, our Lord does the unthinkable. He gives us His only begotten Son.
He finds in Christ Jesus the perfect Man. Hebrews says He was made like unto His brethren, with one exception: sin apart. Sin was never found in this Man.
He was truly a Man. People say, “Well, if I were Jesus, that would be easy.” He was altogether a Man. He faced every temptation you face. He had every weakness you have as a man. Yet He never once sinned. Incredible.
More than that, He perfectly kept the law. The Pharisees and the scribes were always coming, trying to trap Him concerning the law. They were masters of the law. “What do You think is the most important law?” He always nailed it because He kept it.
The rich young ruler said that he had done all these things from his youth. Can you imagine? The Lord knew. He said, “Okay. Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and come, follow Me.” It found him out. The lust in his heart was found out.
Here we have not only the One Who was perfect, but the One Who perfectly kept the law. Then, most unimaginable of all, we have the One Who bore the penalty—your penalty, my penalty, the just penalty, the right penalty. That One would be put to death.
That was what He had to have, and that is what the Lord Jesus was.
I love hymns, and there is one hymn that we sing often, “How Great Thou Art.” I know you know that hymn. It was named one of the most popular hymns in America some years ago. It was made famous by George Beverly Shea in the London crusade in the 1950s.
Often this has been a prayer of mine. Verse two speaks of this unimaginable move of God to sacrifice His Son:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take