Some of you have only now joined us for our Wednesday study. This is your first time here with us on Wednesday evenings to go through the confession. So just to catch you up to speed, on Wednesday evenings we've been going through our church's confession, which is the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Basically, the confession is just a summary of biblical doctrine, a statement of what we believe the Bible teaches. And so far we have made it through ten different doctrines in the confession, ten different chapters, and tonight we've come to chapter 11 on the doctrine of justification. So if you look on your bulletin, there's the six different paragraphs of chapter 11 along with an outline on the right side. But before we get to that, I want to open up to Job chapter 25, the book of Job chapter 25. You can turn with me there. We'll read three verses from Job 25. These are the words of Bildad, one of Job's friends and counselors in his suffering, and this is what he says in verse 4. How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean, who is born of a woman? If even the moon has no brightness, and the stars are not pure in his sight, how much less man, that maggot, and the son of man, that worm? So this is God's holy word to us, raising the question, how is it that a man can be right with God? How can a human being, who is not only infinitely less than God, But a human being who has fallen in sin, described as a maggot in these verses, which in our study of the Confession so far, we've seen the sinfulness of man and our complete inability to do anything pleasing to God, the thorough corruption of our hearts, we've seen that we are thoroughly sinful. And so the question of God's Word, the question God poses to us tonight, is how can that kind of man a maggot and a worm in the sight of God, how can that kind of man be just with God, be made right with God? And that's the question that justification answers for us. How is it that sinful man can be accepted by a holy God? For many of us, when we think about the doctrine of justification and we think about theologians or names that come to mind in connection with the doctrine, Let me just ask, what's one of the names that comes to mind when you think of the doctrine of justification in history, in church history? Anybody? Martin Luther, exactly. That's, for many of us, that's the name that comes to mind. Martin Luther. Martin Luther, as many of us know, was a very influential player in the 16th century in the Reformation. But he lived the first part of his life in severe spiritual agony. He was a man who constantly agonized over his spiritual condition, his conscience, his soul, constantly bothered by the reality of his sin. Martin Luther understood, in the context of Roman Catholic teaching even, he was able to understand God is a holy God. He was able to understand God is a righteous judge. And if man's going to be right with God, he must be righteous. So what he couldn't understand, what Martin Luther could not wrap his mind and his heart around, was how could it be that a man like Martin Luther The sinful man that he was could be right with a holy God. He could not make sense of that question. He could not come up with an answer. God is holy, but I'm not. And so how is it that I can be right with a holy God? Martin Luther wrestled with that. He agonized over that question for many years of his life. And he tried everything that he could, Martin Luther tried everything that he could to quiet his mind and his conscience with regard to his relationship to God. He entered a monastery because it was thought by entering into a monastery, taking the vows of a monk and entering into a monastery, you could be restored to your state of innocence. Which is actually why, if you've ever seen a picture of Martin Luther and he has the top of his head shaved, has anyone seen that? He has hair around the side of his head, but the top of his head is shaved. One of the reasons is because that symbolized basically being a baby. It's as if he was starting all over as a baby. His head was shaved. He was new. It was like he had just come out of the womb. It symbolized being restored to a state of innocence. And so Martin Luther thought, well, I'll join a monastery. I'll become a monk. Actually, he made that vow when he was almost struck by lightning. And he was scared to death. And he said, by Mary, I will join a monastery. I'll become a monk. Because he thought, maybe that will quiet my conscience. Maybe that will restore me to a state of innocence. And in the monastery, he often went without food or water for up to three days at a time in order to devote himself to prayer. He thought, maybe if I can practice enough piety, I can quiet the conscience that is guilty and that proclaims guilt against me, that accuses me. Or if he thought his prayers weren't sincere enough, then he would go through all of his prayers all over again for hours on end until he felt like he finally reached a place of sincerity in his prayers. He would often spend up to six hours in the confessional with a priest confessing every last sin he could possibly remember or every sin that came to mind because he didn't want to leave any sin unconfessed because he knew any sin unconfessed is a sin unabsolved. And so he would spend hours and hours and hours confessing to a priest in the confessional in the hopes that his conscience would be quieted. but he never found it. He never found the peace that he was longing for. He never found an answer to the question, in that stage of his life, to the question, how can a sinful man be right with a holy God? How can I have peace with God? It wasn't until Martin Luther opened up the scriptures, began a study through the book of Romans, that he finally found the answer to that question. So if you have your Bible, you can turn with me to the book of Romans, chapter 1. As Martin Luther was studying the book of Romans, he came to verse 17. And it was reading this verse, contemplating its meaning, that he finally understood the doctrine of justification. It says in verse 17, speaking of the power of the gospel, it says, for in it, that is in the gospel, for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. Luther, as he read that, it began to sink into his mind and his heart that righteousness is not something that he accomplishes by his own works. Righteousness is something that is given to him as a gift through faith. And so later in Luther's life, he would having understood the importance of this doctrine of justification and realizing this is what he had searched for his whole life. How can I be right with God? He found it. He understood, I am right with God based on the righteousness God gives through faith. He later said in his life, justification is the doctrine on which the church either stands or falls. Justification is the doctrine on which the church either stands or falls, and that has proven to be true throughout church history. If you look at church history over the last few hundred years, five hundred years since Martin Luther's day, and you look at how they've gone off course, almost always there is, at the root of it, a rejection of the doctrine of justification or a distortion of it. If we lose the doctrine of justification, we lose the gospel. That's what Martin Luther was saying. If you lose this doctrine, you lose salvation. There is no salvation apart from the doctrine of justification. We miss the very heart of the gospel. We have no answer to the question, how can sinful man be right with a holy God? Apart from the doctrine of justification, there is no answer, no solution to that problem. So we're considering then that doctrine, justification, which was so important in Martin Luther's life, which was central in the whole Reformation, and it has been at the heart of every gospel-preaching church throughout the age of the church, this doctrine of justification. You'll notice there are six paragraphs on the bulletin in the chapter on justification. The first paragraph is really an overview of the doctrine. It has all of the main points of the doctrine of justification. And then the remaining five paragraphs work out that doctrine in detail or add to some of those points or clarify some of those points. But essentially the whole doctrine is summed up in the first paragraph. And so what we're going to do tonight is really focus in on the contents of the first paragraph. And then on your own time, you can read through the other five and see the further explanation that's given there on the doctrine. So I'll read the first paragraph, and then as you notice, there are three main headings that we'll work through on the outline to the right. So the paragraph on justification says, those whom God effectually calls, which is what John did a great job of showing us last week, God effectually calls us out of death, he brings us to life. Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies. He does this not by infusing or introducing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything worked in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. God justifies, not by imputing, counting, or reckoning to them as their righteousness, either faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience. Rather, God justifies by imputing to them Christ's active obedience to the whole law and his passive obedience in his death for their entire and only righteousness, as they receive and rest or rely on Christ and his righteousness by faith. This faith is not produced by themselves, but is the gift of God. So there's a summary then of the doctrine, the biblical doctrine of justification. We'll work through it following the three main headings there on the right side in the outline. So first we'll consider the nature of justification. What does it mean to be justified? And you'll notice there, the first point, the nature of justification, it's a legal declaration. Justification is a legal declaration. What does that mean? What does it mean that justification is a legal declaration? Well, think with me for a moment. Consider with me the difference between what happens on the one hand in a hospital operating room and what happens in a courtroom. OK, so two different contexts. You have an operating room on one hand. You have a courtroom on the other hand. What happens in an operating room? If you want to know, ask Jay Clark. He can give you a good description of what happens in an operating room. People are worked on. Something changes in that person's body. Doctors go into that person's body, and they begin to fix things. They clean out infections. They repair broken bones. They fix organs that aren't working the right way. They do all kinds of different things to that person's body. They change them. They fix them. So something happens internally in that person. What happens in the context of a courtroom? Well, in a courtroom, all of the evidence is presented, and after that evidence is viewed and observed and considered, a verdict is announced. And when the verdict is announced, it doesn't change anything in the person under scrutiny. It doesn't change the defendant's status internally. Nothing internal to that person changes when the verdict is announced. Instead, the verdict is simply a pronouncement, it is a declaration of that person's guilt or innocence based on the evidence. And so in a hospital room, in an operating room, something is changing inside that person. That person is being internally fixed. But in a courtroom, it's not an internal change that takes place, it's an external declaration of that person's status. Justification should be thought of in the context of the courtroom, not the operating room. It is a legal declaration. It is something that God declares to be true of you, not something that he does inside of you. So you'll see, justification is a legal declaration, point A, not a moral transformation. It's not about, justification is not about something God does inside of us. Justification is about something God declares to be true about us. I should clarify, as I say that, when I talk about justification happening in the courtroom, the emphasis is on the legal declaration. That's not to say that it's not something done by a heart of love on the part of God. It's not as though he's a cold, stale judge who simply declares something to be true of us without any feeling. So don't get that into your mind when I talk about courtroom. It's still our Heavenly Father who loves us, who's seated as the judge, but the declaration is the kind of declaration that happens in a courtroom. It's the announcement of a verdict. over us. There are a number of places we could go in the Scriptures to see that, that justification is not about a moral transformation, it is about a legal declaration. We could see it by contrasting the way that justify is used in comparison to the word condemn in the Scriptures. So letter B, to justify, is the opposite of to condemn in the Scriptures. There's a verse in Deuteronomy chapter 25 that talks about the judge's responsibility in Israel was simply to justify the righteous and to condemn the wicked. That's Deuteronomy 25 verse 1, I think. It says the judge's job is to justify the righteous and to condemn the wicked. Those two things are opposites, but to justify is in some ways parallel with to condemn. So it raises the question, what does it mean then for a judge to condemn someone, to condemn the wicked? Now imagine for a moment that what that means is that the judge makes that person inherently wicked. Does the judge condemning the wicked mean that the judge makes that person wicked? No, of course not. When a judge condemns the wicked, he's simply saying what is true about that person. He's declaring the truth. He is condemning them because they are wicked. And in the same way, when a judge justifies the righteous, is he making that person righteous? Is he taking a wicked person who enters the courtroom guilty and through his declaration making him, transforming him internally to make him morally righteous? No, he's declaring him to be righteous based on the fact that the evidence shows he's righteous. And so, in the context of Deuteronomy 25, justification is not a moral transformation, it is a legal declaration. Just as condemnation, condemning someone, is a legal declaration. The same thing could be said, if you want to open with me to Proverbs chapter 17, the same thing could be said of a passage there. Proverbs chapter 17. Verse 15. So the whole point I'm making, hopefully you're following, is that justification doesn't have to do with something God does inside of you, making you moral, making you holy. Justification has to do with something God says about you, a declaration He makes over you, a pronouncement He makes. We see that in Proverbs 17, verse 15. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. He who justifies the wicked or he who condemns the righteous, both of those are an abomination to the Lord. So again, let me ask a question. Is it an abomination to the Lord for us to make a wicked person righteous? No, of course not. That would be commendable. If we found a person in their wickedness and then justified them by making them righteous, then that would be commendable. But here it says that to justify the wicked is an abomination. Because the idea is we're not making that person righteous. We are declaring to be righteous a person who is not righteous. And that's what's an abomination in the sight of God. For us to say something, to make a verdict about someone that's not true according to their righteousness or their wickedness. And so justification is a legal declaration. It's not a moral transformation. It's a legal declaration. It is a courtroom verdict. So again, a question. Why is that important? I've spent, I think, seven or eight minutes now trying to prove the point that justification is not a moral transformation, but it's a legal declaration. The question is, why is that important? Why does that matter? What significance does it have in our understanding of salvation to know that when God justifies us, He is not making us holy? He is declaring us to be so. Well, am I suggesting that salvation is not about moral transformation or that moral transformation is insignificant in the gospel? Of course not. Moral transformation is very important in the gospel. God has promised that everyone that he saves, he will fully conform to the image of the holiness of his Son. Moral transformation matters. It's important. All of us are being, if we're in Christ, we are being morally transformed into the image of our Savior. It's not what I'm saying, that's not what the scriptures are saying when it speaks of justification as a legal declaration. But what we're dealing with here in this matter of justification is the question, how am I right with God? On what basis am I accepted before God? What confidence can I have before God to know that I belong to Him, that He has not rejected me, that He has received me as one who belongs to Him and counts me to be right in His sight? That's the question we're dealing with. And when it comes to that question, the question of how can you be right with God, that question does not lead us to an answer involving moral transformation. Because it's not about what God does in you that makes you legally right with him. It's about what God declares to be true of you through Christ. Your acceptance before God is not based on your growth in holiness. It's not based on your progress. in your spiritual walk. Rather, your acceptance with God is based entirely on the once-for-all declaration, the verdict that has already been announced in your life over you because of your union with Jesus. And so that's why this matter of legal declaration matters. Because when it comes to what is my confidence before the throne of God, the place my eyes look is not to me. It's not to my growth. It's not to my transformation. When it comes to the question, how do I know that I'm right with a holy God, we're led to lift our eyes to Christ and to see something that's done outside of us, apart from us, independent of us, but that then determines our righteousness before a holy God. And so that leads us then to the next question, how can God declare us righteous? How is it that we who are sinful can be made righteous and can receive this legal declaration that we are righteous in the sight of God? On what basis can God make that sort of declaration over us? Romans 3 tells us that all of us have sinned, fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3 in another place tells us that there is none righteous. There's not even one. There's no one who does good in all the earth. Ecclesiastes says the same thing, there's not a righteous man in all the earth who does not sin. If that's the case then, if there's no one righteous, if there's not a righteous man in all the earth who does good, then how is it that God can declare over you and over me, righteous, justified? Well, you'll notice the second heading there, the grounds of our justification, the righteousness of Christ. He declares us righteous based on the righteousness of Christ. First of all, we should see that the verdict of righteousness, the justification we receive, it's not by our works. And that's very clear on the pages of the Scriptures. We will not, we cannot be justified on the basis of our own works. You can turn to Galatians 2, verse 16. Galatians 2, I'll start in verse 15, Paul is talking about the way that both Jews and Gentiles alike are justified. He says, we are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles, meaning they're not without the law, sinners in the sense of not having the law of God. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. Since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified." By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. It's hard to get much clearer than that. Are we justified by works? No. By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. We could go to many more passages to prove we are not justified on the basis of our works, our ability to keep the law of God. And the reason we're not justified on the basis of our works that are according to the law of God is because we actually don't have any works that are done in accordance with God's law. We have no righteousness of our own. You jump over two books of the Bible to Philippians chapter 3 verse 9. Paul's talking about having counted all things as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord. And he says, this is what I want, verse 9, that I may be found in him, that is Christ, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. If you were to ask the Apostle Paul, Paul, why do you not want a righteousness that is based on your own works? Why do you not want that? Why don't you try to be justified on the basis of your works according to the law? Paul's response would be, because I don't have any. I, I, he says, not having a righteousness which is according to the law. I don't have it. Any claim to righteousness that we make, if any of us claims to have kept the law of God in our own ability apart from Christ, If any of us claims to have a righteousness that is according to the law, we're making a false claim is what Paul is saying. I don't have a righteousness that is according to the law. To claim righteousness, to claim obedience to God's law as a sinner is a false claim. A couple weeks ago I saw this video of a young man who was being arrested for impersonating a police officer. He had all of the gear of a police officer. He had his own car, he was driving his own car, but he had gotten pulled over and the police officer that pulled him over realized that he was wearing all police gear from head to toe. So he had the vest and the belt and the equipment. I think he even had a badge, the boots, everything. He looked like a police officer for all appearance sake. The problem was, obviously he wasn't a police officer, and the other police officer quickly realized that. It was all a fake. It was a show. It was a sham. He had the appearance of a real police officer. If you looked at him from the outside, he looked like a police officer. But it was all a false claim. It was a false show of police officer-ness. And in the same way, any claim that we make to righteousness, even if our life looks somewhat clean, as if it might be righteous, the reality is any claim that we make to righteousness is a false claim to righteousness. It is an imagined righteousness. It's false. We have none. And so the scriptures lead us then to the conclusion that if we are going to be justified it can't be according to our adherence to the law of God. It can't be by our own works. And it can't be by our own works not only because we have no righteousness, but let's imagine for a second that you did have some righteousness of your own, which you don't, but imagine that you did have some righteousness of your own. Well, the Scriptures make plain that you need all righteousness. You need complete righteousness if you're going to be right with a completely holy God. Galatians chapter 3 We're just going back and forth from Galatians and Philippians tonight. So Galatians chapter 3, in verse 10, the Apostle Paul, again, writing, says, "'For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse.'" Why? Why is it that anyone who trusts in the works of the law is under a curse? For it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them." All there means all. Every commandment of God. Cursed is everyone who is trusting in the law, their ability to keep the law of God, and yet doesn't do every single command that God has ever given in His Word. You are under a curse if you do not have perfect conformity to the law of God. J.I. Packer has some helpful comments I found relevant to my own life. He says, no school I know of requires an overall grade of 100 to pass a course. Usually, an average of 70 is sufficient. D for diploma. Most people naturally assume that God grades in a similar fashion. And what's more, they've probably earned a passing grade, they think. Yet Paul says we must obey all things in God's law perfectly, and anything less places us under God's curse. In the sight of God, a holy and righteous judge, we don't just need a passing grade even if we could get it. We need a perfect grade, a hundred percent righteousness in the sight of a holy and righteous God, and we don't have it. And so the scriptures lead us to the conclusion, if I am to be justified, it can't be on the basis of my own righteousness. It must be on the basis of a righteousness that comes from somewhere else, from outside of me. That's letter B there, not our works letter A, but letter B, because of Christ's obedience, because of his righteousness. And we can think of Christ's obedience from two angles. In theology, it's often called his active and passive obedience, but those terms can be kind of confusing because even in his passive obedience, he wasn't passive. It refers to his suffering. So rather than using active and passive obedience here, I've labeled it his obedient life and his obedient suffering. When we think about the obedience of Christ that is our righteousness, then we must think of it from two angles, His obedient life on the one hand and His obedient death or suffering on the other hand. So first, His obedient life. We need the obedient life of Christ if we're to be justified, declared righteous. The life of Christ was perfectly pleasing to His Father. We see that all throughout the Gospels. In the book of Hebrews, we see he was without sin. John chapter 8, we read Jesus saying, and he who sent me is with me. He's not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him. I always do the things that are pleasing to him, Jesus says. And then the father, speaking of the son, so Jesus makes the claim, I always do what's pleasing to my father. And then the father makes the claim over his son in Matthew 17, the Mount of Transfiguration. The father says of the son, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. The son says, I always please my father. The father says, he always pleases me. There's never a moment in the son's life in which he is not perfectly satisfying to the father and to the father's justice. He lived every moment of his life in perfect conformity to the law of God. And by his perfect life, he has earned, he has gained acceptance and reward with his Father. And it is his life that is the basis for our acceptance and our reward. In justification, God now treats us as if we had lived that perfectly pleasing life of the Son. and he rewards us and he accepts us accordingly. So on the one hand, then, we need the obedient life of Jesus. But on the other hand, we need the obedient death of Jesus, his obedient suffering. Our sins have earned for us an eternal weight of punishment before a holy God. They have accrued to a debt that we cannot pay because of the righteous wrath of God. And it's an understanding of the debt that we owe to God that we could never pay on our own because of our sin. The righteous demands of his law and his justice that cry out against us and demand our punishment. It's an understanding of that, his wrath that's owed to us because of our sin that leads us to see with Martin Luther the necessity of being justified. As Anthony Hokema puts it, unless we realize that God's wrath rests upon the sins that we've committed and still do commit, unless we realize that God's wrath rests upon the sins we've committed and still do commit, we shall never feel the need to be justified. If you have never felt your need to be justified, it's because you have never come to grips with the holiness of God and your sinfulness in his sight. It's only when we see I am a sinner and I deserve death and punishment for my sin, that we are then led to see, I need to be justified. I need to be made right with this holy God. And it is this sin debt that we owe to God that makes it necessary, not only for the obedient life of Christ, but for his obedient death as well. It's only through the death of Christ that our debt is paid. If you're still in Galatians, you can look down at Galatians 3, verse 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." He paid the debt for us. How did he pay it? He became the curse for us. He satisfied the demands of God's justice by becoming the curse that his justice lays on sinners. Then if you turn over to Colossians, three books over, In Colossians chapter 2, there's another statement regarding the obedient suffering of Christ and the payment of our debt. Colossians chapter 2, verse 13. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. He canceled the certificate of debt, nailing it to the cross. so that you can be forgiven and reconciled to a holy God. It's only through the work of Christ on the cross that God's justice can be maintained, that he can rightly punish sin, and at the same time his grace can be displayed. It's through the satisfaction of his justice that he can forgive sins. There can be no forgiveness without satisfaction. it's in the cross where justice is satisfied that sins might be forgiven. As Pastor Mark Sarver puts it, the most intense rays of God's grace and justice find their focal point at the cross. The most intense display of God's grace and justice is in the cross. So then our justification depends on the obedient life and the obedient death of Christ. It's through his suffering, his death that we are forgiven, and it's through his life that we are accepted and rewarded. So the righteousness that comes to us in justification requires those two aspects of Christ's obedience, his active obedience and his passive obedience, his active life of obedience and his suffering death on the cross. And then the question is, how exactly does God do it? What is the method that God uses to count you as righteous or to treat you as righteous? That's letter C, imputation. Justification involves imputation. What does that mean? What does imputation mean? It's a term we are likely familiar with. We've probably used it at times in describing the work of Christ. But what does it mean that God imputes something to us? We can think of imputation in terms of crediting, or accounting, or reckoning, or considering. When something is imputed to us, it's now considered to really belong to us. It's really ours. Not because we have gained it for ourselves, but because it's been imputed to us. It's been credited to our account. It now belongs to us because it's credited to us. And so it's legitimately transferred to our account. And there are two kinds of imputation that take place in justification. Two kinds of imputation. And we see those two kinds of imputation in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. If you want to turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, two different kinds of imputation that take place in justification. We read there in verse 21, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So there are two kinds of imputation or crediting that are taking place in verse 21. On the one hand, there is the imputation or the crediting of our sin to Christ, the imputation of our sin to Christ. And then on the other hand, there's the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. Christ became sin for us. Of course, Christ did not become sinful. That's not what that's saying. It's not as though Christ became corrupt internally on the cross. But he became sin for us in the sense that he took upon himself. Our sin was credited to him. It really became his. He possessed it in his account. And God treated him according to it. That's the imputation of our sin to Christ. He became sin for us. But not only did he become sin for us, we become his righteousness. our sin was imputed to him so that his righteousness could then be imputed to us or credited to us. So now in the sight of God, it's the righteousness of Christ that clothes us. It is the righteousness of Christ that God sees in our account, and he treats us according to that righteousness. Now, how would you respond to the objection to that? Well, you're basically saying God just pretends. You're basically just saying God looks at you and he sees your sin, but he just kind of turns a blind eye to it and pretends like it's not there and just pretends that you're righteous, but you're not really righteous. And that's actually one of the accusations or objections that's brought against the Protestant understanding of justification, particularly by Roman Catholics, is the accusation it's a fake righteousness. It's not real. You're basically saying God is making a judgment based on something that's not really there. And so the way that Roman Catholics would go about fixing that problem is to say we're justified not just because God declares us to be righteous, but we're justified because he actually makes us righteous. And it's our faith and works together, the transformation that takes place in us, that then gives God the ability to actually and truly declare that we're righteous, because there's real righteousness there. How do you answer that objection? Is God just pretending that you're righteous? Does he have no basis for actually declaring you righteous? Well, it's here that our understanding of our union with Christ is central. When we are united to Christ, God no longer sees you and never again can see you as separate from Christ. He can never treat you, see you, think about you as anything other than united to his Son, because there is a real, vital, spiritual, unbreakable union that has taken place and that has been established now and forever between you and your Savior. And you are considered one with Him. And so when Christ sees you, He sees your oneness with His Son. And He sees the righteousness of His Son credited to your account because you are united to the righteous Son. And so it's not a pretending act on God's part. It's not a fake declaration. It is a true declaration. You are one with my Son and my Son is righteous and His righteousness is yours because you are united to Him. It's a real declaration. You are righteous because you are united to the eternal Son of God by faith. Which brings us to our last point on the outline. the means of justification. We've established the grounds. We are justified because of the righteousness of Christ. But what is the means by which we are justified? How can I personally receive the declaration of God that I am righteous? And it's faith and faith alone. I should go ahead and say as we talk through this, when we say faith alone, we're not saying faith that is alone. This was one of the things the Reformers made very clear. When someone is justified by faith, it is only their faith that justifies them. But true faith is never alone. It always comes with the accompanying graces, as the Confession puts it. It always comes with the fruit of faith. Not always in the same degree, but if you have true faith, there will always be a change in your life in some way. It will begin to bear fruit in your life. But it's not the fruit that justifies you. It is faith and faith alone. And we see that in a number of passages in the Bible. We'll look just at Philippians 9 again, which we've already seen. We jump over to Philippians, sorry, not Philippians 9, Philippians 3, verse 9. We're seeing that faith is the instrument or the means through which we're justified. Faith alone. And we read in verse 9, once again, Paul is saying that I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. It's through the act of believing, through the act of resting and receiving the finished work of Jesus that we receive the righteousness of God, justification. So let me ask you a question once again. Why did God choose faith as the instrument of justification? Why is it faith in particular through which we're justified? Why didn't God choose love or some other grace? If you think about it, 1 Corinthians 13 says faith, hope, and love, these are good things, but the greatest of these is what? What's the greatest of them? Faith, hope, love, what's the greatest? Love is. So if love is the greatest, why didn't God require love to be the instrument by which we're justified? What is it about faith that makes it such an appropriate means for justification? Well, as one theologian put it, he says, we are justified by faith alone because it is the only method that is consistent with justification being by grace. Faith is the empty hand that receives the unspeakably precious gift of God's Son. Faith is the empty hand that receives the gift of God's Son. In other words, faith is the means by which we receive justification, not because it's another kind of work. But because it's the very opposite of a work. Faith is the opposite of a work. It is the receiving of a gift. It's the empty hand that stretches out to God to receive the free gift of justification. Faith is the renunciation of reliance upon ourselves. It's the act of looking away from our own ability and resting not on what we can do, but faith is resting on what God does. Faith is a completely outward-looking grace. And so because faith looks away from ourselves and is the empty, outstretched hand to God to receive the free gift of God, apart from anything that we do, it is the appropriate means of justification. But faith, we should remember, is only the means. It's not the grounds. And this is the last point for this evening, letter B, sub-point. Faith is the means, not the grounds. In other words, it is the instrument through which we receive justification. It is not the reason, the ultimate foundation for our justification. God does not see the inherent quality of your faith and then declare you to be righteous because of how good your faith is. In justification, God is not even so much really looking at your faith. It's not as though you failed to keep the law, and so now God has established a new law, which is faith, and if you have faith, God looks at your faith and he says, well, that's good enough, I'll accept that. That's not what happens in justification. He's not even really looking so much at your faith, but he's looking at the righteousness of his son. And it is faith that receives that righteousness. Why does God justify you? Well, in one sense we could say by faith, but really that's, as the scripture does say, we're saved by faith, but really that needs further clarification. You're not saved by faith. That's not sufficient. You're saved by Christ through faith. It is the righteousness of Jesus that is the sole grounds of your justification, and the way that God applies that justification to your life is through the instrument of faith. Faith is just the tunnel, the avenue, through which the righteousness of Christ is delivered to you. And that's important because it reminds us that the strength of your faith is not your confidence. Christ is. We're not justified because of the greatness or the quality of our faith. We are justified because our faith is looking to Christ. If the strength of our faith were the basis of our justification, imagine that for a moment. Imagine that your faith and the strength of your faith from day to day determined your confidence before the throne of God. Imagine that every day you had to base the confidence with which you could draw near to the throne of God on the measure of faith that you had at that particular moment. We'd be all over the place. We'd be up and down. We'd be confident and discouraged. As Donald MacLeod puts it, he says, faith is neither the ground of our justification nor its meritorious cause. We are justified because of the objective and completed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And listen to this. He says, faith is our grasp of that righteousness. It unites us to Christ, but it is not our rock. If it were, then its every inadequacy, every defect, every crack would make us tremble. If your faith were your rock, if that were your standing place, I am a Christian because I have strong faith today, then at its every crack, at its every weakness, you would tremble with fear before the throne of God. I am a Christian because even though my faith is often weak and is prone to fail, I am standing on the solid rock of the righteousness of Christ. And if faith is trembling legs, there's still legs planted there. and the rock is unmoved. And so our hope and our confidence that we are right with God is never based on the strength of our faith. It's based on the strength of the Savior to which our faith looks. Christ alone is our rock, and by faith we stand upon that rock. In conclusion then, I hope we've been able to, at least in some measure tonight, come to a thorough understanding, or be reminded at least, of the doctrine of justification. I hope that we can confidently answer the question posed in the book of Job, how then can a man be right with God? It's only by the justification that comes from God, through because of the finished work and righteousness of Christ. I'll end here with this quote on the bulletin from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a good definition of justification, one that would be worth holding onto and coming back to for your own benefit. Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. Let's pray. Our Father, once again we do confess before you that you are holy and righteous, far more holy and far more righteous than we're able to comprehend or grasp. Your goodness goes far beyond what we've imagined your holiness would cause us to tremble tonight if we fully grasped it. Your righteousness demands perfect satisfaction of your law. And Father, we have fallen far short of that law. We have sinned against you. We deserve your punishment. And yet, God, you have been gracious to justify us through Christ. because of his obedience, because of his righteousness. And tonight we rest as your children, resting on the Rock, who is Christ Jesus in whom we stand. And we know that tonight, because of him, we are counted righteous in your sight. Father, I pray that as we are prone at different times in our life to put confidence in something other than the righteousness of Christ, when we are tempted to hope in our own faith or hope in our own performance. God, would you give us grace to humble ourselves and to rejoice again in the freeness of your salvation based on the accomplishments of Christ alone? Pray for those here tonight who may be without Christ, who are not yet justified through faith. Would you cause them to have a sense, to feel their need to be justified? And would you convince them that Christ is able to make them righteous in your sight. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.