The Consequences of Justification

Today on Renewing Your Mind… Dr. R. C. Sproul continues his series, Justified by Faith Alone.

He taught these lessons in his office to a small group of Reformation Bible college students, and it would turn out to be his final teaching series before he went home to be with the Lord. Let's listen. You know, sometimes when we're dealing with theological issues, it's a good idea to ask the simple question, so what? Or what's the big deal? Why is this so important? When we look at the doctrine of justification and we ask that question, so what? We're asking, so what's the significance or the consequences of our justification?

How important is it for us to be justified, and what results flow from it? And Paul addresses that question in the beginning of the fifth chapter of his letter to the Romans. He ends chapter 4 by the conclusions that he drew from Abraham's example when he says it was accounted to him for righteousness, and then in verse 23 of chapter 4, now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us.

It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. Alright, now having written that, the apostle goes on and says this conclusion, therefore… By the way, anytime you see the word therefore in Scripture, you need to stop and notice that what that word indicates is that you're about to come to the conclusion of an argument or a teaching of some import. That's why it always amazes me that new chapters will begin with the word therefore, because that word therefore depends on everything that came before it to signal this conclusion.

But in any case, whoever put these chapter divisions in here starts chapter 5 with that word therefore, having been justified by faith. That is, our justification by faith is now a fait accompli. It's something that's already occurred.

It is a past event. Now, since we have that past event in place, what does that mean for the present? Well, Paul says, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I'll just pause there in the middle of that sentence so that the first consequence of our justification is peace with God.

Now, Paul and other New Testament writers articulate that with different language from time to time. And one of the most important concepts that is related to this idea of peace with God is the idea of reconciliation. Now, the one thing that is absolutely essential for reconciliation, without which reconciliation can never occur, is estrangement. People who aren't estranged don't need to be reconciled.

And so in order for reconciliation to take place, there has to be some kind of split, some kind of estrangement that requires the reconciliation. And the New Testament makes it very clear that in our natural fallen condition, we are at enmity with God, that our natural state is a state of estrangement from Him. We don't want Him in our thinking. We don't want Him to rule over us.

We want to be rid of Him. I was asked several years ago to give an address at a particular college where they had an atheist club. And they asked me from an apologetic viewpoint to come and give a lecture to the atheist club, and I did that. And I told them in that address that I was perfectly willing to try to give answer to the intellectual objections they had to the truth claims of Christianity and to the assertion of the existence of God. But I said, I want you to know where I'm coming from. I'll do this dance with you, but I am convinced that you already know that God exists, and your problem is not an intellectual one.

It's a moral one. Your problem is that you don't have enough information or convincing argument to know that God exists, but your problem is that you hate Him, and what you need is to be reconciled to Him. Well, you can imagine they didn't take that very well.

They were ready to tar and feather me. How dare you accuse us of hating God? Well, if you go out and you ask people on the street, do you hate God?

You'll almost never find someone who will say, yes, I hate Him. And yet God says that we do hate Him. Every one of us in our natural state are in this state of estrangement, and the image that is used throughout Scripture is one of warfare. And war is not a pretty thing, and we live in violent times, and we are all familiar with the ravages of war. And when a war ends, it is a joyous occasion. I have vivid memories as if it were yesterday in the summer of 1945 where I was living for a brief period of time in Chicago.

My father had fought in the European theater, and when that conflict was over, he was coming back to muster out of the army, but the war in Japan was still going on. And I was playing stickball on the street of Chicago where we played this silly game, but in the middle of this game, I was at bat, and all of a sudden all heaven broke loose. Ladies kept running out of their apartment buildings with pots and pans and beating on them and carrying on with this cacophony. I had no idea what was going on, and they were all screaming, it's over.

It's over. World War II had come to an end. I can still recall the acceleration that was palpable in the air with the announcement of peace. But peace treaties almost never last. Peace treaties are made to be broken.

I could go to three years after 1945 to 1948 and recite to you the terror that I knew during the Cold War, where as children, you know, we were going through exercises in school every week on what to do in the case of an atomic attack, and that sword of Damocles of the atomic bomb and Russia's having it, and the idea that we were that close to World War III again was something that haunted us. But when God declares peace, when God makes a peace treaty, there's no more rattling of the sword. There's no danger that another insult or incident will bring the heat of conflict back again. Jeremiah would talk about the false prophets of the Old Testament who would say, peace, peace, when there was no peace. Luther talked about a carnal peace, a peace that's only in words but not in reality. But when we're justified, the very first consequences of that or consequence of that is peace with God.

The war is over. God is no longer at enmity with us, and we are no longer at enmity with Him. The estrangement has been healed, and we are reconciled now and forevermore. And that is hardly ever discussed, even among Christians today, how important it is to be at peace with God. We have the peace of the Prince of Peace. You remember the legacy of our Lord and His dying words to His apostles. He said to them in His last will and testament, peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

Let not your hearts be troubled. Luther said the pagan trembles at the rustling of a leaf because in his unreconciled state he fears the wrath of God. Now again, I'm going to add to that that that from which we are saved is God. Salvation is principally and chiefly from God. It's by God, but it's from God.

It's from the wrath of God. It's from the judgment of God that we are redeemed. And because we are reconciled and because we have peace, we have nothing to fear from the wrath of God, which is the most fearsome thing that any human being could ever encounter. Well beyond reconciliation, Paul says here, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

So the second consequence is access. It's not simply access into His grace, but it's access into His presence. You recall that the punishment of Adam and Eve was to be banished from the Garden of Eden. They had to live east of Eden, and God placed an angel with a flaming sword at the entrance to the Garden.

For what purpose? To prevent Adam and Eve from coming back into the presence of God. But now that flaming sword has been removed. The curtain in the temple has been rent asunder, and now we have access to the very presence of God. We have the access of children who have been adopted into the family of God.

That's a great part of what justification includes is adoption into the family of God so that now we can call God Father. And to the believer, the Word of God frequently calls us to draw nigh. And this is the Christian life, to come as close as we possibly can to God.

The barriers have been removed. Now we are called to come boldly, but of course not arrogantly. It's not a casual stroll in the park to come into the presence of God. The Bible calls us to prepare ourselves for coming into the presence of God, and we also know that God is everywhere, and yet there are special manifestations of His presence, and the number one special manifestation of His presence is in His house, in church.

It amazes me, frankly, when I look at how people dress today when they come to church, like they were going to a baseball game or like they were going to the beach, and I start thinking to myself, boy, if that person were invited to a state dinner at the White House, they wouldn't think of showing up dressed like that, coming into the presence of the presidents, whatever you think of the president of the office is so honorable that we in our culture and in every culture, people know that there are special times and special events, holy moments where you dress appropriately. And when we come near to God, we're coming into the presence of the holy, from which we had been banished and forbidden to enter. And so now when we come, we should be prepared to come in a spirit of awe, a spirit of reverence, a spirit of joy, a spirit of comfort, knowing that the war is over, and now we have peace with Him. Now I want to add to that the other biblical concept that is in here, that when we are justified and have this access to grace where we can come nigh, we come nigh in Christ. We come because He's imputed His righteousness to us, but we come not in and of ourselves into the presence of God, but we are brought near by our Redeemer. You maybe have already learned in your Greek classes and everything, but you know, to the simple prepositions in Greek are the preposition eis, E-I-S, and the preposition en, E-N is the anglified way of saying it.

But what's the difference? When the Bible tells us to believe in Christ, it tells us to believe into. Now to be in this room right now, we are inside the room, but to be in this place, we had to come through that door. And when we were on the other side of that door, we weren't in here.

We had to move. We had to move from out there to in here, and that movement in Greek would be eis. You move into something, and we are called to believe into Jesus in our justification. Because then when we believe into Jesus, then what happens? We are now, as Paul speaks of again and again, in Christ, en Christo. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us.

And so this is part of the grand consequence of our justification. For everyone who's justified is now brought from outside to inside, and we are in Christ. I am in Christ. And if you're a Christian, you are in Christ. And that defines how we are to relate one to another, because how can I hate somebody who's in Christ if I am in Christ?

How can we hate each other? We've got to be able to love each other because together we have been justified, and we've been brought into this family, and I am in Jesus. He is in me.

You are in Him, and He is in you. It's no wonder, isn't it, that when Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, that when Jesus spoke to him from heaven, he said, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Paul didn't even know Jesus. He had never met Jesus, never seen Jesus.

But he was viciously committed to the destruction of the body of Christ. And so Jesus is saying, you persecute my people. You persecute my church.

You're persecuting me because I'm in them, and they are in me. We have a union between us and among us, which is again part of the consequences of our justification. Then Paul goes on to say, we have this access by faith into the grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Now we could spend six weeks just on that phrase, right? What does it mean to rejoice in hope? The New Testament speaks about hope all the time, that with faith and justification comes hope. And that's a hard thing to get because in our culture, in the way we use the term hope is radically different from how it's used in the Bible. In our terms of hope, we're not sure about something.

We don't know what the outcome of a football game will be or whatever or how our test is going to come when we take our final exams. I say, how are you going to do it? And you're finally going to say, I hope I'm going to pass.

I hope I'm going to do all right. But you're not sure. You don't know. You're not certain.

In fact, you're scared, right? But hope in the New Testament is not a feeling associated with a desire or a wish. It's a certainty of that which is to come in the future that has been promised in the past or in the present.

That's why it's called the anchor of the soul. It gives stability to the believer. And that hope that is there is faith looking forward.

It's trusting that God is going to do what He says He's going to do. And so with our faith and justification comes also this hope, and it's the hope of glory. What I want to see more than anything else is the glory of God unveiled, pure, manifest.

Can you imagine what it's going to be like to look into the face of Christ in heaven, to have the beatific vision of the Visio Dei, to see Him as He is in His glory, to be covered by the glory of God? Well, we have that hope. And that hope, Paul says, make us not ashamed. We'll never be embarrassed by that because that hope cannot fail. This is what provides us the grounds for our sanctification because we're working on our salvation with fear and trembling, not as people who have no hope, as people who are trying to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ, but maybe that won't happen.

No, no, no. We know what's going to happen. Our sanctification is worked out on the basis of the assurance of our justification. That's why Peter says, make your calling and election sure. Have the assurance of your salvation so that you can become conformed to His image in your sanctification. So again, another consequence of justification is our sanctification. And that relationship between justification and sanctification is critical for us to understand. And that's where the debate comes in, for example, in the epistle of James, where he seems to be contradicting Paul's justification by faith alone. But what's going on there is a discussion between the relationship of justification and sanctification. And God willing, we'll look carefully at that relationship that is taught by James and that which is taught by the Apostle Paul and we've looked at here in Romans. We are saved not by our works, even our best works.

We are saved by the perfect work of Christ on our behalf. Thank you for joining us for Renewing Your Mind on this Friday as we wrap up highlights of Dr. R. C. Sproul's series, Justified by Faith Alone. R. C. taught this series in his office at Ligonier Ministries to a group of Reformation Bible College students.

You may have heard him reference their Greek classes on today's program. We've put together several resources for your further study at home, including all ten of the lessons from this series on two DVDs. We'll also include a digital copy of the study guide for the series and R. C.'s classic book, Faith Alone. So contact us today with a donation of any amount, and we will be glad to send you all of these resources. There are a couple of ways you can reach us.

One is online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us with your gift at 1-800-435-4343. I'm joined here at the studio by Ligonier's president and CEO, Chris Larson. And Chris, as we mark 50 years of ministry here at Ligonier, we are indeed grateful for the impact this ministry is having around the world. We are thankful to God because we know that the Word of God never returns void.

God sends it forth, and it accomplishes exactly what He intends for it to do. You, our dear listeners, pray for this ministry and the impact of the work of Ligonier, and I want you to be encouraged with this testimony that came in from Brian, who is a 17-year-old high school student over in Tampa, Florida. He says, I was first introduced to Ligonier Ministries by my uncle, who is a big fan of Dr. Sproul and his ministry. My first real personal introduction to Ligonier, however, was when I first read The Holiness of God, which my uncle lent to me about a year ago. Though not from a Reformed background, I was intrigued by the profound biblical teaching, and I began to look at the other outreaches that Ligonier offers. He said, as I write this, I am listening to Dr. Godfrey's study, Discovering Deuteronomy, my 45th Ligonier Connect course since last March.

I subscribe to TableTalk Magazine. I listen to Simply Put, Luther in Real Time, and ultimately with R.C. Sproul, still taking Ligonier Connect studies and reading books by Ligonier teaching fellows in my spare time. He says, God in His wondrous grace has blessed me and numerous others, I'm sure, with the magnificent teaching and outreaches of Ligonier Ministries, and I'm eternally grateful to him and to all the workers there.

Ligonier has played an integral part in my life. Thanks to everyone who is a part of this great ministry. May God continue to bless you that you may reach so many others in need of a spiritual reformation in their lives that only the Word of God can provide. Thank you so much, Brian, for sending that in. Indeed and thank you, Chris, for stopping by today. Well, next week here on Renewing Your Mind, R.C. will address a question that so many ask in times of difficulty. Where is God when I hurt? I hope you'll be with us Monday for Dr. Sproul's series, Providence, God in Control.