Justified by God #2

How does salvation pertain to this recognition of the judgment of God? Justification resolves our guilt before a holy God.

Our guilt is resolved in the justification that we find in Christ. Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Welcome to The Truth Pulpit. I'm Bill Wright, and we're very glad to have you along today as Don continues teaching God's people God's Word. In today's lesson, we'll bring our series Declared Righteous to a close with a final look at justification in the life of the believer.

Right now, here is Don with part two of a message called Justified by God from The Truth Pulpit. You can only congratulate yourself on your self-righteousness. You can only harbor the thought that I don't really need a Savior.

You can only harbor the thought, I think I'm good enough to go to heaven. You can only do that by closing the Bible and casting it away from yourself. And it only takes one sin to make you eternally guilty before God. It doesn't take a million, although we have a million sins against our account and more. It only takes one, Scripture says, one lie to puncture your righteousness, one sexual sin, one angry thought, one outburst of temper.

It just takes one in the course of a lifetime. Yes, that's the testimony of Scripture. James chapter 2 says this, "'For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. For he who said, speaking of God, do not commit adultery also said do not commit murder.

Now if you do not commit adultery but you do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.'" You see, this whole idea that God's going to grade us on a curve and as long as we're a little bit better than someone else, we're going to be okay, that is a lie from the pit of hell. That is the spirit of worldliness giving you a sense of assurance that it's false. It's not a question of whether you're better than some other person, as if God graded you comparatively on a horizontal level to everyone else. The question is, are you perfect as God himself is perfect? Matthew 5 48.

You are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And if you're not, the fact that others have sinned in different ways does not provide you with any comfort before the bar, the judgment of God, because you're a transgressor and transgressors will be judged. We have all broken God's law, we are all transgressors, the law condemns us all before our judge. And sinners like us have no claim on God.

Men are not basically good. God does not owe anyone salvation. He does not even owe anyone the chance to be saved. He owes nothing to humanity but punishment for sin and guilt. And that is what we all were partakers of before our salvation.

And God's punishment is not brief, it's not a slap on the wrist, it is eternal condemnation in the lake of fire. Beloved, what I want you to see as we gather together as we come to communion is that if we are in Christ, if God has saved us, if our sins are forgiven, mark this clearly in your mind, that if we are in Christ, Christ saved us even though we did not deserve it. In fact, we deserved his judgment. We are on the receiving end of mercy from our judge.

And what does that have to do with the term justification? How does salvation pertain to this recognition of the judgment of God? Well, salvation has a legal dimension.

The gift of eternal life carries with it a judicial verdict that we all need. Salvation, justification more specifically, resolves our guilt before a holy God. Our guilt is resolved in the justification that we find in Christ. Justification is a legal term, which means this.

I'm going to give it in two steps, the definition. It's a legal term, which means that God has declared us not guilty under his law. All of that guilt is declared forgiven. That's one aspect of justification. There's really a fuller dimension to it, the second, fuller stage of justification.

Stage is a very bad word to use. A second aspect of justification. It's not simply that God declares us not guilty, although we were sinners. Justification goes further and says this, God has declared us righteous in the sight of his law. Justification declares us as individuals who have fulfilled all of the requirements of God's law to utter perfection, that there is no defect, no charge to be brought against us because all of the demands of the law of God have been fulfilled. That's what justification says. You have been declared righteous by your judge who could have condemned you. Justification means the demands of the law have been fully satisfied and God will no longer hold our sins against us.

That's what justification is. That's what belongs to every true Christian. And the question then is this, how can a holy God do that? How can a righteous judge declare us righteous if in fact we are guilty as we have seen from God's Word? You see, beloved, that declaration, the means by which God declares us righteous, that's what we remember at communion.

That's why this is such a precious time. That's why communion is not an ordinance to be rushed through. It is to be approached with meditation, to be approached with remembrance, to be approached with a clarity of thought of the centrality of Christ, the centrality of cross in the eternal well-being of our soul. To be remembered with reverence, to be remembered with love, to be remembered with gratitude deep in our hearts.

Because what we remember at communion is this, that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead, incarnate, walked on earth, that one, that Jesus Christ, that Lord became a man and stood in our place. He represented us before the law. He represented us before a holy God.

He lived a life over his 30 plus years of perfect obedience to that law which you and I had repeatedly violated. Christ was without sin. Christ lived in perfect obedience to answer the demands of the law and he did it for us. The law which condemned us, the law which cried out for justice against us, the law which cried out for punishment, Christ answered that when he suffered on the cross. Look at 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21.

2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 opened our service with this text. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, God made him, referring to Christ, God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Who is it that survives the righteous judgment of God?

Only those who have a perfect righteousness on their account. That's what Christ has done, that's what Christ has provided for us in our justification. Christ went to the cross and stood in our place as our representative, as our substitute received the judgment that we deserved. God imputed our sin to him, treated Christ as though he had committed all of our sins and punished Christ for them even though he was innocent. So that our sin, your sin, my Christian brother or sister, your sin with all of its guilt, with all of its shame, was charged to the account of Christ and the stroke of God fell upon him.

Your guilt reckoned as if it was his even though it was not. That's how great the love, the mercy, the kindness, the grace of Christ is. How great his love for his people that he says, I will take responsibility for all of their sin, I will pay all of their debt with my righteous life even though there is no judgment, no sin in me, I will gladly take it all. He describes it in John chapter 10 verse 18 as something that he did voluntarily.

He voluntarily laid down his life for sinners. And that death, that death of Christ on the cross, that sin, wrath-bearing death on the cross satisfies the justice of God, satisfies the death penalty we deserve for our sin. The curse, Galatians 3 says, that should have fallen on us, Christ bore the curse of God on our behalf in order that the justice of God might be fulfilled and that a righteous judge could be satisfied on our behalf. Go back to Romans chapter 4, if you will.

What does this mean? This means that our lawless deeds are forgiven. It means that God will not take our sin into account when he judges us.

Oh, beloved, hear it again, that is such a blessed truth. God will not take our sins into account when we stand before him. Look at Romans chapter 4 verse 5. It says, to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works, verse 7, blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. This is what justification is.

This is what justification does. It is a legal description of how God deals with our guilt. He assigned your guilt to Christ and punished him on the cross. And for those who turn to Christ and receive him by faith, God does a second imputation and takes the righteousness of Christ and says, I will consider you as though you had lived the perfect righteousness of Christ. He accepts the righteousness of Christ on your behalf. He regards you as having fully satisfied every demand of the law because Christ fulfilled it for you.

You go to heaven not on your own merit. You stand before a holy God not in your own righteousness. You stand in the righteousness alone of someone else, and that someone else is our Lord Jesus. God graciously accepts Christ's righteousness to meet the demands of his law, the requirement you could not meet.

Sinclair Ferguson summarizes it this way. In justification, I quote, before God I stand as though I were in Christ's place so that I may receive Christ's righteous judgment which is really his. End quote. We stand before God as Christians in the place of Christ, in his righteousness, clothed in his perfection, not our own. And rather than receiving judgment, you receive a gift of eternal life. Look at Romans 6 verse 23. Romans 6 verse 23. Romans 6 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The free gift, not that which is earned, not that which is given as a reward for behavior, a free gift.

How do you receive that gift? On what basis does that become our personal possession? How does that righteous declaration become ours? Not through what we do. Received through faith alone. One writer says this, faith, true faith is all that is required to be justified by the righteousness of Christ. Faith trusts sin and lays hold of a righteousness that is not our own.

End quote. So when we come to communion, we realize that Christ has answered the greatest need of our souls. The law is no longer a threat. God, the judge has been reconciled to us. You are reconciled to the judge who could have condemned you. You are reconciled through the saving mercy manifested at the cross of Christ. You have been rescued, you have been delivered from sin, guilt, and wrath by grace alone. There's...

I would suggest to you a couple of different responses to that. One is this great sense of relief that the whole burden of the law on your conscience has been satisfied. This great sense of peace, a subjective sense of peace resulting from an objective peace and objective reconciliation with the God who would otherwise have judged you in condemnation. A great sense of love.

We're not talking about a matter of just some kind of transaction that has taken place. Christ did this out of love for your soul. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Gratitude, peace, relief, love in response to a love given first to us.

Love initiated by God toward us, not that we loved him first. And a recognition that the grace of justification came at a cost, came at a price that we could never have paid, came at the price of the precious blood of Christ shed at the cross, that cross of which we have sung. So what do we remember at communion? We remember that we have been justified, that we have been declared righteous before a holy God on the basis of what someone else did for us. What Christ did for us. Fulfilling the law and paying the law's penalty for us.

That's what we remember. The bread, the cup, giving us a physical picture of the spiritual reality that took place when Christ shed his blood as the price for all of our sin. Christian, as you come to the table today, remember it with wonder, remember it with praise, remember it with gratitude, remember it with humility.

We are on the receiving end of the greatest gift that we had no claim on. Christian, as you come to the table, come to it with a sense of repentance, forsaking any sin that you have perhaps been holding onto, come in a spirit of confession. If you're not a Christian with a sin, you've heard the message of the gospel today. The good news about how you can be reconciled to God. You know what would be really wonderful about this communion service would be if you, as a Christian, previously trusting in your own works, your own religious behavior, your own righteousness, if you would forsake that and come to Christ and ask him to save you, to come to him by faith alone and say, save me in the way that I have heard described to me today.

That would make that great. But if you refuse Christ, if you know you don't belong to him, we would ask you to let the elements pass. There's no shame in that in one sense. It would be better not to take the elements rather than to play the part of a hypocrite pretending to participate in something which really isn't yours. Just let the elements pass if you don't want Christ reigning over you, if you don't know him. But as Christians today, as gathered corporately as Truth Community Church, we rejoice in what we're about to do. We rejoice in this remembrance with a holy gratitude. We say, in light of all that we've heard from God's Word today, hallelujah. What a Savior.

Let's bow together in prayer. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you for paying the price of all of our sin at Calvary. We thank you that you came to earth, that you lived in perfect obedience to your Father, that you fulfilled all of the demands of the law in your life and in your death. And we know that God has accepted your sacrifice on our behalf because you are now resurrected. The resurrection is the testimony to the world. It is the testimony to the people of God that the Father has accepted the sacrifice that you made on our behalf.

We no longer have fear of the judgment of God. As Christians, we will pass safely through because you have covered us in your righteousness. Your blood has paid the price for all of our sin, and that which once was the greatest threat to our soul has been satisfied. We will live eternally with you. As you are raised from the dead, so also shall we. Oh, Christ, our hearts are full of thanksgiving toward you. We are satisfied in you. In you, we have our call, and we thank you for that. And now as we come to this table which you have appointed, bless us as we remember you in this way that you have appointed. In the name of Christ, I pray.

Amen. It's Don Green with the conclusion of a message called Justified by God. Tune in for more in-depth study of God's Holy Word next time. Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit TheTruthPulpit.com.

Once again, that's TheTruthPulpit.com. And now before we go, here's Don to offer some closing thoughts as he brings our series to a close. There are more than 7.5 billion people living on our planet. You'd think there'd be no room for anyone to be lonely. Sometimes the weight of isolation can make you wonder whether it's worth the effort to keep living. Jesus Christ speaks kindly to you if you are in that condition of heart today. He said, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Know this, Jesus Christ graciously receives guilty sinners and offers mercy and love to them who have nowhere else to turn. My friend, read the Gospel of John, and as you do that, ask the Lord Jesus Christ to make himself known to you. He has promised that he who seeks will find. There is hope for you in Christ today, and I pray that the Spirit of God would lead you to that one who loves your soul and freely offers his kindness, mercy, and care to you even today. Thanks, Don. And thank you, friend, for joining us today. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you to join us again next time when Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word here on The Truth Ballgame.