You will not love God unless you know He loves you first. He will not. love him unless you know a security in which to enjoy him. and therefore justification by faith alone Must be the very foundation stone of healthy Christian living. Martin Luther famously wrote the beautiful line: The love of God does not find.
but creates that which is pleasing to it. And today on Renewing Your Mind, You'll hear how he came to say that. As his mind was renewed according to the Word of God and he finally understood the Gospel, and the truth that Christians I justified by faith alone. If you'd like to dig a little deeper into the truths that were rediscovered and reaffirmed during the Protestant Reformation, Be sure to request Michael Reeves' entire series Reformation Truths. We'll send you the series on DVD, along with digital access to the messages and study guide.
When you give a donation in support of the proclamation of those truths through Renewing Your Mind, at renewingyourmind.org. before this offer ends tomorrow. To continue our time in this series, here's Dr. Reeves. We come now to the wonderful doctrine of justification.
In Ver. Matter of the Reformation, the matter that made the Reformation the Reformation. As John Calvin put it. the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.
Now justification is. Perhaps the ultimate example Of a doctrine that quite different Christian traditions can hold to and understand. in completely incompatible ways. Both Rome. And the Reformers now and then believed and taught Justification in some sense.
Both held that God justifies by his grace. through faith. Which sounds like, and has been taken to mean, real agreement. on this first and keenest subject of controversy. But Justification.
Is a prime example of a doctrine that is susceptible to very different readings. And which therefore needs to be closely defined.
So let's start with the understanding of justification Luther was brought up with before the Reformation. And to get it, you really need to go back to the great fifth century theologian Augustine. Who believed that if you want to understand justification, you need to turn to the book of Romans. which she might have been expecting. But chapter five and verse five.
Which says God has poured his love into our hearts. Through the Holy Spirit, He's given us.
Now that is a lovely biblical truth. But it's not justification. But as Augustine understood it, what happens in justification is that. God pours his love into our hearts, internally transforming us. Making us more and more loving, more and more righteous, more and more just.
They are fied. I'm internally transformed. I am more and more in heaven. Inherently righteous and holy, more and more. personally worthy of heaven as I'm transformed.
And so justification was a process of internal transformation. What do you think that does to you? If you believe that.
Well, the very clear takeaway for Europe was. a lack of assurance. Before a holy God, So, one of the charges made against Joan of Arc at her trial in 1431. was just this. At a trial, the judges Proclaimed.
This woman sins. when she says she's certain of being received into paradise. Seeing, on this earthly journey, said the judges, No. Pilgrim can know. if he is worthy of glory or punishment.
And that judgment made complete sense. Within the logic of the system. If we can only enter heaven because we have, yes, by God's enabling grace, become personally worthy of heaven. Of course nobody can be sure. By that line of reasoning I can have as much confidence.
In heaven, as I have confidence in my own sinlessness. And that is why During a thunderstorm in 1505, the twenty-one-year-old student Martin Luther screamed with fear. When a thunderbolt smashed him The ground it hit so close, he was. knock to the ground the air. was pushed out of his lungs.
And he screamed the words, listen carefully to the words. Saint Anne help me. I'll become a monk. He cried but not to God. But he had never.
In his life. Prayed to God. For he did not dare to speak to a holy God. Poor man. Terrified.
of his fate. He couldn't even cry out to God because he had no idea. No assurance of how he stood before him. And so he puts a good word in with. Anne, who's the mother of Mary, hoping Anne will speak to Mary, who'll speak to Jesus, who'll speak to the Father.
And he thinks that entering a monastery To earn his salvation is going to help. And that's what he did. He did become a monk, and for the next ten years or so, through his monkery.
sought to climb. what he saw as a steep, slippery ladder to heaven, And said After that Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. and I could not believe that God was placated. I did not love. I hated go.
Who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, murmuring greatly, I was angry with God. Because as he saw it, God must be the sort of monstrous being who makes you earn his love. And he started wrestling. with Romans chapter one, verse seventeen. And particularly that phrase, the righteousness of God.
that you find there in that verse. And Lucerne. hated that phrase, the righteousness of God. They couldn't understand how Paul could say that the righteousness of God is gospel. Good news.
For he sought How can that be good news? If God is righteous, That's not good news for me because I'm unrighteous. And if he's righteous, that just means he's going to judge me.
So the righteousness of God is pure bad news for me. And then Hammering away about text in his cell. He wrote, I began to understand. The righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live, by a gift of God, namely by faith. And in that tower experience.
Luther discovered an entirely different God. who relates to us in an entirely different way. A God who loves us first. before we ever love him. He saw.
the righteousness of God. Is something he shares with us The righteousness of God is the right. Is something he shares with failures. Like you and me. What a discovery to explain to the world.
It transformed his life and The next year or so, he he devoted to writing fast to explain this. And when he came to explain his discovery. It wasn't to Romans that he turned. Owes to the Book of Song of Songs. The story of a romance.
Four. He believed you can best understand The Gospel, if you understand it. Like a marriage. And so Luther told the story. Of a king?
A perfect and wealthy king, representing King Jesus. And a pool girl. in fact a prostitute. Representing us. And there is Nothing that girl can do.
to make herself the queen. But the king and his love Woo, sir. And at their wedding day She gets to say to him All that I am I give to you. And all I have I share with you. And so she shares with him what.
Debts Shame. Be so wealthy. He can take all her debts. And then the king turns and says. To her, my darling, All that I am I give to you.
I'm born. that I have. I share with you. And with those words That Poor girl. is the queen.
By status. All the kingdom is hers. All that I have, I share with you. And that is the great marriage swap of the gospel. saw Luther the joyful exchange our great bridegroom has taken all our sin.
Borne it on the cross? and drowned it. In his blood. On to them. He has given to us.
all his righteousness. All his blessedness, all his status before the Father. And so said Luther. The sinner can confidently display her sins in the face of death and hell and say, If I've sinned, My Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned. and all his is mine now.
No mind, my sin. This was. Let go. She had not learned the ways of the court how to be queenly. for she was the queen by status.
Just so the Christian is at one and the same time. sinful in themselves. and their habits and their lifestyle, but by status now, United to Christ in that joyful exchange. Righteous. Sinful in herself and righteous, absolutely righteous by status with the righteousness of Christ.
That is the joyful exchange. And you see how much stronger this is than simply being forgiven.
Sometimes people talk about justification. Saying that it means it's just as if I'd never sinned. Which is half helpful. It's what I believed when I first became a Christian. That's what I was taught about justification.
And I thought it sounded good. For a bit. I thought it was lovely to have my slate wiped clean when I became a believer. but I messed it up again rather quickly.
So What do I do with the sins I've committed since I was justified? Do I have to be rejustified now? What I haven't grasped. Is the justification in involves not only my transferring all my sin to him, But Not only my sins counted, To him. He's positively given me imputed counted to me all Yeah.
Righteousness. I do not just have a blank slate as a believer. My sin is counted to him. His righteousness. This counted to me.
So justification, Luther saw, is a legal term. not a transformational Turn. It fits into the idea that Man stands before God, the judge, in the cosmic courtroom. And we are justified. When God pronounces the verdict.
That we have a righteous status before him. And so in the Bible, the righteous person He's not the person who's never sinned. not the person who's done plenty of good works. The righteous person is the sinner on whom God has pronounced the verdict righteous. Romans chapter four from verse three.
Reads For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, they're his due. This is the most extraordinary verse. Verse five. to the one who does not work. But Believes in him who justifies the ungodly.
His faith is counted as righteousness. It's that amazing language. To the one who does not work, but believes in the one who not justifies the one who sorted himself out. Not justifies the one who's been through a process of internal purification, God who justifies the wicked. The ungodly.
This is our God. And he goes on. Verse 6. Also, speaking of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works. And he quotes Psalm 32.
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are. covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. And so the blessed person here. in Romans is not a person who has no sin.
The blessed person is the one whose sins are not counted. Counted against them. This is legal language. meaning to use Luther's shocking phrase. The Christian is Simul Justus et Peccator.
Simultaneously, at the same time, just or righteous. By status and a sinner. in themselves. And you know In fact, was no support for the use of the word justification as a process. That's not what the word justification means today.
And it's not what it ever meant. That misunderstanding arose because of a bad translation of the Greek New Testament into the Latin that the Roman church was using. Because there is a perfectly good set of Greek words the New Testament could have used. If it wanted to speak of making us righteous rather than God declaring us righteous. There's a set of words you could use.
If that's what you wanted to say. That's not what the New Testament says. And this, in fact, is now granted by many Roman Catholic scholars. Take for example Leslie Rumble, who writes Now it is quite true. That Kaul made use of a word which in the Greek language had the technical meaning of legal acquittal.
And if the word can have no other meaning, than the one, that would scarcely dispute the interpretation of justification as implying no more than to be counted as righteous or not guilty in the sight of God. Which makes it sound like he's saying Luther's right. But he goes on. Alas. Luther had not the advantages of modern scholarship.
Ah modern scholarship. He belonged to an age, he writes, when it was thought that the real meaning of the New Testament could be best ascertained by. By discovering the exact sense of the Greek language in which the books were originally written. Oh, Lucy. But while acknowledging that the meaning of the New Testament supports Luther's understanding, Rumbel rejects this on the basis that, I quote, The whole religious outlook takes precedence over the fine print.
So, the whole religious outlook takes precedence over the actual words of the Bible. Justification was the matter of the Reformation. and through it God was glorified. as utterly merciful. And good as both supremely holy and compassionate.
And therefore, people found they could find their comfort and delight in this God. Here, the reformer saw is a God who loves failures first. Not one who simply approves those who've sorted themselves out. And so the glory of this God became the root of true satisfaction and joy for believers. It became their guiding light.
Their ultimate goal And so Here is how looser Remember the man who once said he hated God? Here's how he would come to speak of God. In his glory and love. Luther wrote. The love of God Does not find.
but creates that which is pleasing to it. The love of God loves sinners even. Evil persons, fools and weaklings. in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong. Therefore sinners are attractive because they're loved.
They're not loved because they're attractive. He's showing how all this still matters. Because you will never love God. and lean into the Christian life. without it.
You will not love God unless you know He loves you first. You will not. love him unless you know a security in which to enjoy him. And therefore justification by faith alone must be the very foundation stone of healthy Christian living. Without it, You will not have a life of joy and integrity before God.
But with it. You can say this with Luther. When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares. that we deserve death and hell. You ought to speak like this.
I admit I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means for I know one who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ.
The Son of God And where he is. there I shall be also. For no sin is greater than the blood of this Lamb. and we are clothed in Him. Justification By fate alone.
This declarative act Means that we who know we are a sea of failures. can approach a holy God With absolute honesty an absolute boldness. Absolute honesty about our failure. and boldness Because of Christ. And not anything we've done.
It's hard to do both, isn't it? to have both honesty About our failures. or sinfulness before a holy God, and boldness. That is what justification by faith alone. Gibbs.
We can approach. a most holy God. Absolute honesty. and absolute boldness because of Jesus. The biblical gospel truly is good news.
And how grateful we should be that this message was rediscovered and proclaimed by men like Martin Luther during the Reformation. and from pulpits to day. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.
These great Reformation truths are explained further in Michael Reeves' series Reformation Truths. Tomorrow is the final day that you can request this eight message series when you call us at 800-435-4343 with a donation. or when you give your gift at Renewing Your Mind dot org. While you wait for the DVD to arrive in the mail, will unlock the series and the study guide in the free Ligonier app. The study guide is designed to help you go deeper and remember what you learned with its discussion and reflection questions, quizzes.
and even prayer suggestions to help you if you lead a small group through the series. This offer ends tomorrow, so don't delay. Give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes while there's still time. Thank you. We'll conclude our time in Reformation Truths tomorrow.
Here's a preview. Christian bookstalls, both Catholic and Protestant, groan under the weight of all the how-to guides. And we feel why not when life is so busy, it's relievingly simple. to follow a Five Steps to Better Spiritual Health manual. Box.
There is such a thing as an outward performance It is spiritually hollow. That'll be Thursday.
So make plans to join us here on Renewing Your Mind.
