You have your Bibles turned with me this morning to Romans chapter five, reading just one verse this morning, verse one. And most of you know by now that I've been preaching a series on God's salvation package and all of the different wonderful aspects and facets of the salvation that God has provided for us. And I think I'm counting correctly, this is today will be the 10th or the 11th sermon in this series. And so I trust that God will bless our hearts from the scripture today. So Romans chapter five, verse one says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. justified by faith. Today we're going to continue this series. The others in the series have been Incarnation, Redemption, Regeneration, Adoption, Imputation, Propitiation, Propagation, Substitution, and Reconciliation. Today we're moving on to justification, and I know there's going to be some of you are going to be wondering why in the world I didn't place this important doctrine at the beginning of the series instead of putting it here toward the end of the series. Actually, a couple of years ago, I preached through the Book of Galatians and I preached one or two sermons on the subject of justification. And so I thought, well, maybe I'll just leave this one out. But as I began to think about it this week, it's one of those important doctrines relating to our salvation that you just can't afford to omit. So I changed my mind and decided to go ahead and preach on it today, and I pray that God will bless it to our hearts. Now, as I was preparing the message this week, I also began to think that talking about these great words that I believe represent our salvation, incarnation, redemption, regeneration, adoption, imputation, propitiation, propagation, substitution, reconciliation, And a lot of people are going to say, that sounds so boring. Those are not words that I understand or that I can relate to. And I think therein lies the problem, because today And I think for the last several decades, we have been seeing the dumbing down of evangelical Christianity where we value experience more than we value Bible doctrine. People today are swayed by an emotional experience instead of by the clear teaching of the Word of God. Every Christian faces a myriad of temptations in our lives. And those Christians who are taught the truth of the word of God will fall easy, who are not taught, I better add the word not, they're not taught the truth of God's word, that they will fall easier and quicker to temptation because they are not grounded in the doctrines and the promises and the truths of the Bible. Teaching and preaching, I believe, produces strong Christians. That is why the Apostle Paul, when he wrote in the New Testament, in many of or perhaps most of his books, always begins the first part of the book with Bible doctrine. You'll find that to be true in Romans, First Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. And then after he presents Bible doctrine, then in the last part of the book, he takes that Bible doctrine and it applies it to our lives. So today, preaching on the subject of justification, and I think that preaching on this subject would not be complete without at least mentioning Martin Luther. Since our church has been celebrating Reformation Day for quite a few years, just about as long as I've been pastor here for the last 12 or 13 years, we have been celebrating Reformation Day every year on October the 31st. And of course, Martin Luther is the center of that celebration. because he was the one who began the Reformation there when he packed the 95 theses to the door of the church. Martin Luther, after receiving his Doctor of Theology degree, was asked to serve as professor at the University of Wittenberg, and he was teaching theology. And during all of this time of his life, even though he had become a Catholic priest and he had graduated from university with his doctor's degree in theology, he was still plagued by the feeling that God's wrath was hanging over his head constantly and he just did not have any peace and any joy in his life. But the turning point in Martin Luther's life came while he was only mission to Rome. And there were stairs in Jerusalem called Pilate's stairs. And those stairs were supposedly the stairs in Jerusalem that Jesus had walked up when he went up to be tried before Pilate. And those stairs had been disassembled, taken apart in Jerusalem, had been carried to Rome, and they had been rebuilt there and placed in one of the churches there in Rome. And they had the conviction that if you would climb those stairs step by step, saying the proper rosary or the proper Our Father or the proper Hail Mary and kiss each step on the way up that for each step you ascended you would receive a 15-year indulgence that would shorten your time in purgatory. And Martin Luther was in Rome And as all the faithful Catholics, he went to that church and he began ascending Pilate's steps. And each step he would say the proper Our Father, and then he would bow and kiss the step. But as he did that, and as he ascended those steps, A scripture verse flashed into his mind, the just shall live by faith. In that moment of time, Luther realized that it was not by crawling, not by kissing, not by going to church, not by any other human effort, but only through faith in Jesus Christ that a man is made right with God. And that flash in his mind became the spark that started the Reformation. And it is still going today, and it is still the foundation of our evangelical Christian faith. The just shall live by faith. This morning, the first point we want to consider is what is justification? Now, we use justify or justification in our common language today, but the way that we use it is completely different and opposite from the Bible meaning and definition. As used in ordinary conversation, it speaks of a person justifying themselves. And what we're talking about is what God does to justify us. When we have done something wrong, we offer some excuse to cause people to forget about what we have done. For us to justify means to give excuses for our behavior or our misbehavior. An example that popped into my mind, President Putin of Russia. We all know that he's been in the news lately. And President Putin justified Russia's annexation of Crimea by saying that international law was on his side. Now we know that that is blatantly false, but that is the way that he, what he used to justify their invasion and annexation of Crimea. That is certainly not what the word justify means in the Bible. And so let's consider the Bible definition. What is justification? First of all, justification is a legal term. It is a forensic term that could be used in a court of law. So imagine that you are in God's courtroom. God is the judge. You have been declared guilty. the evidence against you is irrefutable. The law demands that you be sentenced to eternal condemnation in hell. Then God the judge raises his gavel to pronounce sentence and says, not guilty. Declared righteous because of his faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. A person is justified when they are declared not guilty, and innocent, and righteous in the eyes of the law. It does not mean to make righteous, but by God's divine edict to declare us righteous in His eyes. It means to look at someone who is guilty and declare that they are now not guilty. They are innocent, righteous, free to go. The record has been wiped away. And I love some of those hymns that Richard Ledison sang this morning that spoke about the blood of Jesus Christ and how our record would be cleaned, wiped cleaner, whiter than snow. Justification, therefore, is that divine miracle where God declares righteous the sinner who believes in Jesus, justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the second point we want to consider this morning is how are we justified? How does this come about? Well, first of all, we're justified by the grace of God. Thank God for his grace. Romans chapter three, verse 24, says being justified freely by his grace. Then in Titus three and verse seven says, having been justified by his grace. Today, I say again to you that grace is God's free gift. Grace is God's undeserved favor that he has poured out upon us and the guilty undeserving sinner receives a free and full pardon solely based on the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul was uniquely the Apostle of Grace and better, perhaps, than any other person in history. to exemplify the reality of God's amazing grace. For you see, Saul the persecutor was on that Damascus road that day, and he was dramatically changed into Paul the Apostle. And therefore, to his dying day, He was able to testify in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 10. He said, But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace toward me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me. And if you and I today are saved by the grace of God, if we're justified, if we're cleansed, if we have a hope of going to heaven, it is because of the marvelous, wonderful grace of God. Paul ascribed his miraculous salvation to the grace of God. Paul continued to the end of his life to declare that he was the chief of sinners. 1 Timothy 1.15, I am the chiefest of sinners. But God had declared him not guilty because of his wonderful grace. Therefore, Paul became the apostle of justification by grace, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The same is true for every sinner. Paul is our great example. But every single one of us, we're here, we stand justified in the eyes of God, forgiven, cleansed because of his marvelous grace. But second of all, we consider that we are justified through faith, first of all, because of his grace, through faith. And we continue reading there in Romans 3, verses 24 and 25, it says, being justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith. Faith is the key. Faith is what opens the conduit of God's grace to pour out God's salvation into your life, into my life. Romans 5.1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Time or space does not permit me to read all the scriptures this morning that declare that wonderful truth, that we are saved and we're justified. We stand justified in the sight of God because of our faith. But what is faith? And I know we've got that wonderful scripture in Hebrews chapter one, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But I believe faith, we could say, is a right belief about God. You have many religions in the world today and people who believe in their God and they may have faith in their God, but their knowledge of God, the true God, is inadequate. And so we have to have a right belief about God. Faith rests on God's testimony and revelations found in his word. And so we need to hear the word. The Bible declares that it is because that we have heard the word of God. Therefore, we can have faith in him. And faith is a supernatural gift from God. Ephesians chapter two, verse eight says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. And I thank God that in his marvelous, wonderful wisdom, he made it possible for you and me in our hearts to have faith. That's his gift to us so that we can believe in him, believe that Jesus is our Savior, died on the cross for us. And then we are justified because of the death of Jesus. This is what we love to sing about and talk about. Romans chapter three, verses 24 and 25. being justified by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood. He shed His blood, therefore, today. Because of his death on the cross of Calvary, you and I have eternal salvation. Romans chapter 5, verses 8 and 9. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And it's because of that death on the cross of Calvary that we have been justified by his blood. Thank God for God's wonderful, marvelous plan. We're never justified by our human effort. There's nothing that you and I can do to gain salvation because our God is a holy and a righteous God. And because you and I have the indelible stain of sin in our hearts and our lives, and the two are absolutely, totally incompatible. Human effort. Anything that you can do, good works, church attendance, being baptized, doing rituals, any of those things, can never bring us to be justified in the sight of God. The Roman Catholic doctrine of justification says that we must cooperate with the grace of Christ and do good work in order to be saved. The finished work of Jesus Christ enables us to become better people, and God declares us saved based on the fact that we have become better. When we stand before God, God does not judge us based on what Christ did for us, but based on whether we become personally good by appropriating the grace of Christ. If we are not good enough, we may have to spend time in purgatory getting better before we can be admitted to heaven. Thank God that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says in Romans 3.20, Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. Galatians 2.16, Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ. And not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. Then in Ephesians 2, 8, For by grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And so all our boasting must be about God and His love and His grace and His salvation that He's provided freely for every person through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. What God is telling us in these passages that I have just read is that you aren't going to be justified by anything good that you do, no matter how good you are. And the reason is that nobody has ever been good enough to be justified. I don't know if you've ever thought about it or not, but Do you know how many sins it takes to send a person to hell? Just one. Only one. Because the Bible says if you keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, you're guilty of all. And so if you commit just one sin and then are righteous the rest of your life, that one sin is enough to send you to hell forever. Because God's holy, righteous nature demands it. So if God is going to justify you, it has to be apart from the law. It has to be apart from doing good deeds, being a good person, coming to church, being baptized, doing good works or any other kind of religious ritual. by grace, through faith. What are the results of justification? We want to look and consider this. What are the results of justification? Number one, if you're justified, you are completely forgiven. Through the blood of Jesus, we're cleansed from all of our sins. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7, Scripture that is dear to my heart, it says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. We have forgiveness through his grace. How Great is God's forgiveness. How much can God forgive? You will forgive me. I want to tell you a story about a man in Taiwan. His name was Chen Jingjing, Chen being his family name. He was an evil, wicked person. Committed terrible crimes and atrocities. One of those crimes that he committed on April the 14th, 1997, the daughter of one of the famous, well-known, and popular TV hostesses and actresses by the name of Bai Ping Ping, her daughter's name was Bai Xiaowen, Bai Xiaoyan, I'm sorry. And on that day, Bai Xiaoyan left for school. She disappeared because she had been abducted by Chen Xinxin. The next day, the family received a ransom request of five million U.S. dollars. along with the ransom note was a part of their daughter's little finger that had been cut off, and a picture of the daughter bound with ropes. They were negotiating the payment of the ransom, but on April the 25th, 11 days later, Bai Xiaoyan's body was found in a drainage ditch in the suburbs of Taipei, weighted down with dumbbells, obviously having been tortured, her body mutilated. By this time, the police knew who the guilty person was, and the chase was on. Chen Xinxin was doing everything he could to avoid arrest by the police. And so he went to the home of a plastic surgeon and held at gunpoint the plastic surgeon, his wife, and a nurse and forced the plastic surgeon to do plastic surgery on his wife so that hopefully he could change his identity and he could escape the police. After the surgery, he shot and killed the plastic surgeon, his wife, and the nurse. Then, on November the 18th, and this all started in April, on November the 18th, Chen Xinxin broke into the home of the South African Embassy Military Attaché. His name was McGill Alexander. The Alexanders were devout Christians. Chen Xinxin didn't know that when he went into their home and held them at gunpoint, took that family hostage. It was a father, mother, and their daughter, Christine. The police learned where he was, surrounded the house, and the end result was a shootout with police. And both McGill Alexander and his wife were shot, not fatally, but they were shot and injured. Chen Xinxin was captured. And during that time that he was in the home of McGill Alexander, his wife and daughter, they were devout Christians. They loved the Lord, and they witnessed and testified to Chen Jinxing. And so that was probably the most blessed day of Chen Jinxing's life. He was convicted of kidnapping, rape, and murder. But while he was in prison, the testimony of the Alexander family, and a pastor who went there and witnessed to him in prison, Sun Jin-shin accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. He was baptized there in prison just before his execution for all of those terrible crimes and atrocities that he had committed. The Alexander family. McGill Alexander wrote a book. The title of the book is Hostage in Taipei. I've not read the book, but I've read reviews about it, and it's a gripping story, a fascinating story. If you have a chance, it would be, I'm sure, worth it for you to read it. But the thing that amazes me is that the book was translated into Chinese, and in Chinese, the title of the book was True Love, because in the book, Alexander McGill, I'm sorry, McGill Alexander, I can't get those backwards. McGill Alexander testifies frequently and often about God's grace and God's love and God's mercy and God's salvation. And so, Chen Jingxin was saved by the marvelous grace of God. Now, I have to tell you that today only God knows if Chen Jingxin's faith was real and his profession genuine. However, I can say without any doubt that even as evil as he was, he will stand before God forgiven of all the atrocities and all the crimes that he committed if he truly repented of his sin and received Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. He will be just like all of us. He will stand there before God, justified by his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, forgiven for all of his sins. So we have forgiveness. And then second, if you're justified, you have a new righteousness. Second Corinthians 521 says, For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That's a mystery. How can that be? How can a holy God accept? sinners like us, because his nature is to punish sin. So let me try to explain the mystery. Now, this morning I have two fists. One of my fists represents me. The other fist represents the Lord Jesus Christ. This fist represents me in my sinful state. That is the state of every man, woman, boy and girl born on the face of planet Earth. It's a fist that is blackened by sin, a fist that is raised in anger against God. But what happens the moment the sinner comes to Jesus Christ? What happens is that the Lord Jesus Christ saves him by his marvelous grace. Because we have come to him and we said, Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. I ask you to come into my heart and save me. At that moment, God justifies you. He declares you righteous. my other fist representing the Lord Jesus Christ. God takes it and covers this sin darkened fist so that when God looks at me now, he no longer sees the blackness of my sin, but he sees the perfect and pure and true righteousness of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the mystery And that is the miracle of justification by faith. If you're justified, you are declared not guilty and you can never, never, ever be condemned again. Justification is a miracle of God. It starts with God. It is not something you work up. If you're justified, it is because you have received a miracle of God's grace. And once declared not guilty, you can never be condemned again because God doesn't practice double jeopardy. When we have received his eternal salvation, we're justified by faith, we're saved forever. Justification is not Just an experience. It doesn't matter if you feel justified or not. Justification happens to the believer at the moment you trust Jesus Christ. There is no such thing as someone who is partly justified or halfway justified. And there is no one that is more justified than someone else. Justification happens to every believer, signs sealed and delivered at the moment we place faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification means that your salvation is eternally secure because it does not depend on you, but entirely on God and His work on your behalf. I don't know how this has happened, folks, but I'm at the end of my sermon and it's not even 12 o'clock yet. So let me, and I hadn't planned to do this, but years ago when I was a young pastor, went to a youth camp in Luters, Texas. And one of the older pastors was preaching that day. And he told a story that he said was out of McGuffey's readers. And so let me share that story with you, and I hope that for everyone here, it will bless our hearts. Because the story as he told it, and I think there's other versions of it, but I'll tell the McGuffey readers version that I heard. A boy and girl, brother and sister, summer vacation, they went to visit their grandmother who lived out on the farm. And as boys and girls out on the farm, they had all kinds of animals. They have cows and pigs and chickens and ducks and so forth. And so they were having a ball. And boys will be boys. One day they were down by the pond and there was the ducks over there near the water and the little boy picked up a rock and playfully threw it at the ducks. The problem was his aim was a little bit too good and he hit the duck in the head and killed it. Well, he was scared to death. What is grandmother going to do? I killed her duck. And there was his sister, saw the whole thing. And so he quickly conspired with his sister and said, I'll hide the duck and grandmother will never know. She'll never miss just one duck. OK. Went back to the house for supper that night. Finished supper, the little boy jumped up and said, I'm going outside to play. And the sister said, no, you're not. You're going to stay here and wash the dishes, or I'll tell grandmother. So he had to wash dishes. Next morning at breakfast, same thing. He hurriedly finished his breakfast and jumped up and said, I'm going outside to play. And his sister pointed her finger and said, no, you're not. You're going to stay here and wash dishes. So this went on for several meals. And it was just making a mess of his whole summer vacation. So finally, the next afternoon. Grandmother was sitting on the porch in a rocker. He went and climbed up in grandmother's lap. I said, Grandmother, I've got something to confess that yesterday I was down to the pond and I threw a rock and hit one of your ducks and killed it. And I'm so sorry, would you forgive me? Well, as grandmothers will always do, she put her arms around him and she said, of course, I forgive you. You've probably imagined the rest of that story that night at supper. He finished his supper, jumped up and said, I'm going outside to play. And sister says, no, you're not. If you don't stay here and watch this, I'm going to tell grandmother. And he said, you go ahead and tell grandmother, I've already confessed to her and she's forgiven me. This morning, all of us are lost sinners in the sight of an angry God. And yet, our God is a God of love. And He loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross of Calvary. That every person who will just believe in Jesus as their personal Savior, believe that Jesus died for them, that He bore their sins, that God will declare you righteous. He will declare you justified and saved by His marvelous grace. The devil can come and point his accusing finger at you all day long, but you have the assurance that you've been justified and saved by His grace. So today, I thank God that We have this opportunity. I don't know your heart this morning, but if there's one single person here, young or old, who does not know the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior,