All of you here once again and we are this morning going to continue our work in the confession and I know that Jonathan did a very able job. I listened last week to his exposition of chapter 12 and this morning we are stepping back and on completing the chapter on justification, chapter 11. And we know that the confession builds one chapter upon the other as it goes through. And unfortunately, I was not around last week to finish chapter 11, but there's a lot of good things to learn therein this morning as we finish chapter 11 on justification. And we just completed just the first two paragraphs last time we met in the confession on this chapter and four more to go. But I'd like to do a brief review so we can have a reminder of where we are at in this important chapter. We spoke last time of the Reformation and the Reformation being a recovery of the gospel. And the gospel is a message that is proclaimed. A message that God saves sinners. that a holy God justifies a sinner. And the central doctrine of that time in terms of Reformation was justification. That is to say, how does God justify sinners? Or another way to put it, what is the nature of that justification that God has for us? It was so important that Luther made this statement. the church stands or falls on the article of justification. When Carol and I came to Tennessee and we're looking for a new church, having spent some 40 years in a church in North Dakota, looking for a new church, it was a new experience for us. And the primary thing that we were looking for is the church true to the gospel? And how is the gospel proclaimed in terms of how we are saved? how we are justified. And so that is an important thing for the church. It's an important thing for Calvary Community Church, that we get the gospel right, and that we get the doctrine of justification right, and that we can understand that. Now the church has always believed that there was a need for righteousness, a need for God's righteousness. And another important thing that we need to review and keep in mind is the distinction that is there between the medieval church and the reformers regarding justification and more specifically righteousness. The church has always held that we have a need for righteousness. We spoke of the two types last time. That which is infused. would believe to be the type of righteousness that is required for justification. And in thinking about that, I came up with an illustration that is pertinent, I think, that we can all understand, but certainly pertinent for myself. If I'm looking to build something and have a piece of metal that is maybe not quite long enough, and I have this other piece of metal that I am going to weld together to have enough of a product there to be able to use it. To weld it together, to fuse it together, that is really the illustration that we have with the way that the medieval church understood righteousness. you have a certain righteousness within yourself beginning in baptism and then God's righteousness is added to that and fused so that now you perhaps have enough righteousness to be justified before God. That's not the biblical view of righteousness. That's right. Rather, it is imputed. It is imparted to us. Man has no righteousness. None. That's right. We have nothing that we bring before God within ourselves that would justify us before God. So our righteousness has to come from outside, come from without, from another. Look at the catechism in the back of our 1689 confession in question 36. The question is asked, what is justification? Answer, justification is an act of God, God's free grace wherein he pardons all sin. and accepts us as righteous in his sight, but only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. Amen. There's a lot of really important words in that one little statement. It is an act of God. It is something that God does. An act is a one-time deal. It's not faith alone. So it's received by faith. What does that mean? Well, faith is, generally speaking, it's just believing God, or more specifically, believing the promises of God. And before we can exercise faith, we must be regenerated. Last week, Fisher began teaching from Exodus, he referenced Genesis as part of the Pentateuch, as part of the five books that Moses wrote, and Genesis, defined means beginnings. Beginnings. And to be regenerated then means that there is a new beginning. It's a story about life. A story about new life, new birth, being born again, made alive spiritually. That's what Genesis is and regeneration is. And regeneration therefore must come before because we must be made alive in order to understand anything of the promises of God. And so faith comes following regeneration. In fact, we must believe God, and that's exactly what John 6 tells us as Jesus is answering the question, what must we do to do the works of God? The answer simply, believe. Believe in the one who sent me. That's the answer. That's what we must do to do the work of God. So we are not justified by works, or at least not by our works, but we are justified unto works. We are justified in it. Our justification changes us. It changes all of our being. It changes how we think. It changes how we respond to things around us, to creation, to the word of God. And we are to respond to the law. And the law says that we are to do these things. And we are, but not meritorious, in a meritorious manner. We are to respond to the law in obedience. We are now new creatures. We are empowered to hear God. We are empowered to hear his calling, and we are empowered to believe, and therefore be justified. And therefore, our life goes forward empowered to obey. In other words, sanctification. As we are more and more conformed to the image of God, which we will hear about next week in the confession in chapter 13. So we are saved by grace through faith, Ephesians 2. Saved by grace through faith, that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Ephesians 2.8 and 9. We probably have that memorized. Do we know what Ephesians 2.10 says? The purpose, therefore, are His work The Greek word there is poema, and I could go into that, and it's just a beautiful story. But we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, not by good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So there we have just a recap of the first two paragraphs of of chapter 11 on justification. And so let's continue on now in paragraph three. We have a lot to cover in the rest of the time we have together. Paragraph three reads, Christ by his obedience and death did fully discharge the debt of all those who are justified and did by sacrifice of himself in the blood of his cross undergoing in their stand the penalty due to them in a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's justice on their behalf, inasmuch as He was given by the Father for them, and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stand, and both freely, not for anything in them, their justification is only of free grace that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. There's a lot there in that paragraph. And we'll just be touching on just the highlights of it. And I'm not gonna go word by word, but I'd like to speak to just the important elements of this paragraph. This paragraph three, we see the purpose and the results of the obedience of Christ, both his active and passive obedience. And the first thing I'd like to point out is twice in this paragraph, it speaks of the debt of all those who are justified, and later, it speaks of the penalty due to them. Let's personalize it a little bit. The debt of you and of me and the penalty that is due to you and to me. This debt is to God, a holy God, a sovereign God, the God of all creation. And we owe obedience and we owe worship to him. simply by the right of creation. He owns them. And he is free to do what his creation as the holy creator so desires. So we have a debt. In Ephesians 2 it speaks of we are by nature children of wrath. That's covenantal language. That's telling us that we are under the headship of Adam. Covenantal head. And so by nature we are children of wrath because Adam sinned, therefore the results of that sin affect us as well by nature. And in Psalm 51, which we'll hopefully get to a little bit later, we are born, we are conceived and born in sin. We are already fit for hell because of our nature. But it doesn't end there. We add to our debt by our own personal sin. That is why it says that there is a penalty due to me, that I have a debt. So that's the first thing that chapter 11 and paragraph three brings out to us. And yet it also says that there's nothing in us that can relieve us of that debt. But Christ can. It says that he discharged the debt and that that there was a sacrifice of himself. There's a proper, a real, and a full satisfaction. A full satisfaction. God demands justice. He is a God of justice. He's a righteous God, and his justice is satisfied in the work of Christ. It's a full satisfaction. It's an appeasement of the wrath of God. The theological term is propitiation. There is a full satisfaction for the wrath of God. Now I'm going to give you a couple of illustrations. You've maybe heard the first one. That is a picture of a gospel where you owe this great debt. Let's say you owe millions of dollars with no ability to pay. And someone comes to hand you a check. and all you need to do is accept that check and then your debt will be forgiven. Is that a picture of the gospel? I'm going to suggest to you that it is not a picture of the gospel. If the same man comes, instead of handing you a check, hands you a receipt for payment in full, of all your debt. That is a picture of the gospel. And that is a picture of our justification. And that is a picture of God's satisfaction with the payment of the blood of Christ for my death, for my sin. So we understand that God is a God of righteousness and justice on the one hand, but also a God of love and mercy. For those who have said that the Old Testament God is a God of judgment and that the New Testament God is a God of love, Do not understand the nature of God. God does not change. He is both a God of justice and a God of love and mercy. And for any to be saved, there had to be a propitiation or a satisfaction for sin. And that is for my sin. Because it says, the sin due to them. The sin that is due to me. that is due to them and to me. And it says there that the satisfaction, the sacrifice of Christ was proper and real and full. It was proper. It was exact. It met the exact needs that we have. That is, righteousness before a holy God. It is real. It's not something that's out there mystical. It is actual. And it is real because it pays the debt for my sin and is a full satisfaction, a complete satisfaction. It is a perfect satisfaction. There's no additional righteousness that can be added to the righteousness of Christ that would justify me before God. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 14 reads, By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. This offering, Jesus given by the Father for them, the confession states, is covenantal language. Again, that there's a divine purpose. And we already spoke in prior months about the decree of God. This is covenantal language. Jesus, given by the Father for them, accomplishes an eternal salvation. And it's free. And it's God's grace. And in this, God's grace is on display. God is glorified because both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. Now we could go to Romans 9 and speak about the purposes of God in electing, and we could refer to a verse that Fisher mentioned last week in his sermon in Exodus, it's referenced in Romans 9 as well. But ultimately, without going there and spending a bunch of time there, it tells us that the purposes of God are to be glorified. Everything he does is for his own glory. Everything he does is for his own glory. And so the purposes of God in election and in saving sinners is to put on display both his justice, because all sin is punished. All sin. Your sin, my sin, has been punished. By Christ, on Christ. And the sins of the anilak, those whom God passes over, shall bear the consequences of their sin in their own body. God is a God of justice. but he also displays that he's a God of love, that he's a God of mercy. Ephesians chapter two, verse four. But God, because of his great love with which he has loved us, and because of his mercy, made us alive, raised us up, and seated us with him in heavenly places. God is a God of justice, God is a God of love. Old Testament and New Testament, God does not change. So that tells us a little bit about the purposes and the end results of this justification that we have. Paragraph four reads, and this talks a little bit about a timeline, if you can speak of time in eternity. For our purposes, and we have a finite mind, we do. God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect And Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins and rise again for their justification. Nevertheless, they are not justified personally until the Holy Spirit does, in due time, actually apply Christ to them. So, what do we have here? It tells us about three different situations. from all eternity decreed to justify some, the elect. Christ in the fullness of time, this would be in history, Christ in the fullness of time did die for the sins of these elect. And rose again and justified them. Nevertheless, They, the elect, are not justified personally until the Holy Spirit does, in due time, apply the Word of Christ to them. That sounds an awful lot like the covenant of redemption. God the Father elects, has a plan. Christ, the Son, comes and accomplishes that plan. Lives and dies and justifies the elect. and the spirit, in due time, applies the work of Christ to the elect person. So, we have here that Christ elects, but the work and the election of those who will be justified really has no value without the accomplished work of Christ. And even with the accomplished work of Christ, until that is applied to the elect person, the one who believes, one who has been regenerated, has been called, has faith, and believes, and is adopted, and begins this process of sanctification, even unto the glory And that's what this paragraph is saying. It's saying that until we are justified, we live and are unjustified and under the wrath of God. Again, thinking of Genesis chapter 2, the first three verses, speaks of our condition before justification. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world. following the prince of the power of air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and the mind, and were, by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. So before the work of Christ is applied to the elect person, he is still unjustified and ungodly until. So we also have Romans and chapter eight that speaks of this work. In verse 30 where it says, and this is a familiar verse, that those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. So we are elected, predestined and elected. And in due time, we are in the fullness of time, we are called and then justified. But these are all in the past tense. They are so certain that they are going to happen that Paul writes them in the past tense. There's a sense of living in the now, but not yet. Are we as saved as we will ever be? I say no. We are as justified as we'll ever be, but we're not as saved as we will ever be. Because we grow in saying, And we grow in conformity to Christ. And we still live in a sinful body. The sin that still dwells in our flesh. But one day we'll be saved even from that. The very presence of sin. We are as justified as we'll ever be. But God is continuing to work. We live in the now, but not yet. So, we are elected in eternity. Christ, God formed us and predestined us. Christ accomplished his work in history, and the work of Christ is applied to the elect in history as well, and therefore we are justified in due time. Yet we still sin. And that's what paragraph five speaks to. In this age. God continues to forgive the sins of those that are justified, and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God's fatherly displeasure. And in that condition, they usually do not have the light of his countenance restored to them, until they humble themselves confess their sin, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance. Oh, and acknowledge that we still sin. We are to confess that sin. We still sin, yet we do not lose our justification, and God forgives our sin. Yet, we sin, and sometimes it speaks of a fatherly displeasure. Have we experienced that? Have you experienced that? I might suggest that when God seems distant, when we sin, God seems distant, and we seem to be experiencing His displeasure. Now, applying this to a family situation. Let's say we have a child, one of our children, wanders away, creates a separation between the parents and the child. What do the parents do? They pursue the child. It's been my experience. You pursue the child. That's right, you do. And until the child then recognizes the error of their way. We still, we forgive them, but we pursue them and bring them back. And for the Christian then, the justified person, when he wanders from God, God pursues him. God might put him under discipline. There are churches that don't teach about sin. There are churches that don't teach about discipline, as if the law had no impact on them in their present condition. They're like the antinomian. Anti, against, nomos, the law. Against the law, as if the law had no impact on us after our justification. The law has many purposes. One is to draw us to Christ, Romans 3. that we might close our mouths and be held accountable to God, and draw us to God, see our need for Christ. Another purpose of the law, once we are justified, is to guide us in the way that we should live. That's called sanctification. We are to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ. The law has a purpose, and we don't want to live as if the law no longer applies to us. Paul writes in Romans chapter six, do we sin that grace may abound all the more? And in the strongest possible terms, Paul responds, by no means. We have died to that and now live unto Christ, live in obedience to the laws of Christ. And so for those who wander from of God, the justified person basically has two options. They continue to sin, wherein God will pursue them, or they humble themselves, confess their sin, beg pardon, and renew faith and repentance. So, if we continue to sin, the confession speaks of the countenance of God is removed, that God seems distant. And I'm going to suggest to you that the vast majority of people who are in that condition, of believers who are in that condition, are not into the word and not into prayer. Because they're not hearing God. How do you hear God? Yes, the Spirit speaks through our conscience, but most often, ordinarily speaks through His words. And as we pray for others, as we pray that God would forgive us, then we return. But if you've lost the compliments of God, if he seems distant, he's likely not into the world. That was the case of David in Psalm 51. in verses 10, 11, and 12. This is what he had lost. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit with a willing spirit. David recognized that in his wandering from God, that he did not have the right spirit. That he was in the presence of God. He did not feel the spirit. Instead, he pleaded for these things. So we could go to Hebrews chapter 12. I don't think we have time. But the gist of that passage in Hebrews 12 is that God pursues the ones He loves. Just like a father pursues their child who is wandering away from the values of the family. Who says, I don't need you anymore. God pursues them. God pursues the ones that He loves. So I'd like to go back to Psalm 51 and hear it from a little bit different perspective. The first part of that chapter speaks of knowing my transgression. God, against you have I sinned. It is right that I be judged and right that you are disciplining me. But now here's David's repentance. His humility, he confesses, begs pardon, and renews his faith. He pleads to God, create in me a clean heart. Renew my spirit that I am in right Relationship with you Cast me away from your presence. I need you Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. I need the Holy Spirit to understand what you have for me Restore to me the joy of my salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit Here's how he renews his faith I will teach transgressors your way. My tongue will sing, my mouth will declare your praise. That sounds like a man who has decided that he will not continue on sinning, that he is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. This is, I think, pretty simple, pretty straightforward throughout the paragraph six. The justification of believers under the Old Testament was, in all these respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the New Testament. How is Abraham saved? How is any of the Old Testament believers saved? By God's grace? They look forward to the coming promised Messiah. We have a full revelation and that we have the new testimony we can look back and see the accomplished work of Christ. And I might add, maybe, I shouldn't say this but I'll go back, maybe we have more There's one divine purpose. We're talking here about a continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament in terms of how people are justified. If there's one divine purpose, I'm going to suggest this, and there's only one way of salvation, Jesus Christ, whether looking forward or... There's only one people of God. In fact, that's what Romans chapter 3... For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Can we agree on that? Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. So what have we learned in this chapter? Paragraph 1 we have learned that justice is equal worthy of not guilty because of Jesus' support alone by his active and passive obedience imputed to the sinner. all the demands of the law. Paragraph 2. This justification is received by faith. And God accepted this work of Christ, this act of impassive obedience. It is an appreciation for the justified sin, an appeasement, a satisfaction of God's will. When we are saved Save from God's wrath. This is a satisfaction, full, complete satisfaction. Won by Christ. Accomplished by Christ and applied in due time by the Holy Spirit. Life, now, is a life of repentance. Continued repentance. Sin still exists in our flesh and we are continuing to humble ourselves and repent, and that all of the elect will come to a new testimony.