again express my personal gratitude as well as that of my wife and two boys who have been able to be here at the General Assembly. I really enjoy this group of men. I'm sorry that such distance across the pond between here and you. Maybe you're not, but I really enjoy the fellowship we enjoy and the freedom in discussing these great truths. I also want to thank Michael Renaghan for the book ministry that some of you men contribute towards. There are upwards of 70 people in Ireland who receive upwards of 10 good books every year. We all know the benefit and blessing of a book. I remember when I was in my late teens someone bought me A.W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God. I wasn't long converted and this came wrapped in paper and I said, what? A book? Anyway, it lay on the shelf for a very long time and one summer's evening I was at home and I was rooting through the shelves and I took it down and A.W. Pink blew my mind. So you do not know the end result of the book ministry that you men are kindly involved in in our country. Before I address the subject of justification and Roman Catholicism, I feel a bit like I have a sympathy for old Mrs. Hubbard. Old Mrs. Hubbard went to the cupboard to get a bone for her dog. When she got there, the cupboard was bare. I went to the cupboard of justification. I discovered that Fred Malone had raided it first. Then Keith Underhood took what was left. and then Baruch finished the job. So by the time I got to the cupboard it was quite bare. There'll be nothing I will say this morning that is profound or novel, I hope, but I do trust that there'll be some help for us as we understand and appreciate where we are in the whole question of justification with Roman Catholicism. But it's not just the Catholic situation. It is Anglicanism, Lutheranism, it goes across the spectrum. So this discussion and all the previous four are immensely relevant for the Church for the longer term. By way of introduction, there are five observations I want to make on the question of the doctrine of justification. The first is this, it takes effort to understand the doctrine. It is a theological term and for many people it's an immediate turn-off. As the gospel is presently presented, it has been boiled down, diluted, stripped bare to the point that all one has to do is make an emotional decision about Jesus that may have little impact on their lives or their futures. The second observation is justification is a pride-crushing, self-humbling truth. It speaks of our dreadful state and danger, and our inability to change ourselves without the dependence entirely of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because sin in us is such a shocking truth, and the need for sinners to know just what they are, preachers shy away from preaching on sin, with the result that justification is downgraded in importance and need. In Redemption Accomplished by John Murray, he makes this observation. He says, We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Far too frequently we fail to entertain the gravity of this fact. Hence, the reality of our sin and the reality of the wrath of God upon us for our sin do not come with the reckoning. This is the reason why the grand article of justification does not ring the bell in the innermost depths of the spirit. This is the reason why the Gospel of Justification is to such an extent a meaningless sound in the world and in the Church of the twentieth century. We are not imbued with a profound sense of the reality of God, of his majesty and holiness, and sin, if reckoned with at all, is little more than misfortune and maladjustment. Why the doctrine is difficult is because it's not loved and appreciated by many in the church. It speaks of God, not as a father, but as a judge. It speaks of the law in the charge sheet. It speaks of us in the dock. It speaks of the hammer coming down and the declaration being proclaimed condemned. And this dimension of God is highly offensive in a secret sensitive age. Fourthly, we are living at a time wherein church history is so little appreciated. The great rediscovery of the doctrine at the time of the Reformation is not appreciated by many today. The darkness that covered the earth and the misery of untold millions of people is little appreciated now. I am justified, so what, ho hum. But do you ponder what your life would have been without this doctrine? Just as a human being. What would you be doing? The whole bent and basis and bias of your life would not be as it is this day in this room. And there are millions who are still in that condition. People think that a shared experience is a litmus test of truth. It isn't. It's the truth as revealed in scripture. I'll come back to that later on. R.C. Sproul makes the observation, at a time when many people think that Martin Luther was a civil rights leader from the recent past, and that John Calvin is the designer brand of a particular kind of jeans. That's how much they know about church history. There is an added problem, fifthly, in trying to grasp Roman Catholicism. Because Roman Catholicism is a very broad church. How it's represented here is entirely different to what is represented in Britain, and it's entirely different again to how it's represented in Ireland. Note the distinction. And then it's different again in South America. It is a broad, broad church, and to get your hands on a definitive understanding of the Catholic doctrine is quite complex. There's folk Catholicism. where you have the pilgrimage to Lourdes and Medjugorje and Knock and on all these places where superstition and imagery and novenas and penance are part of the Catholic faith. There's the ethnic Catholicism, which I think is the Irish situation. To be Irish is to be Catholic. 99% of our people presently are Roman Catholic. When you become a Christian, they're causing to question your Irish identity. And of course, if you're a Scottish football fan, Celtic and Rangers again determine for you the ethnic dimension of the Catholic faith. So it is a very difficult thing to be able to find home. There's also the blurring of the edges among Catholics at a local level and evangelicals. Catholics at a local level now are using the Alpha course. in North America, in Australia, across the European continent. The Alpha Course started off in a London Anglican church with a view to evangelism. And now you can go to Catholic churches all over Ireland and they're advertising the Alpha Course. That I find a little bit blurring and a little bit confusing. Added to that you have the signatories of the ECT document who claim it is sheep stealing to evangelize Catholics. So there's a further blurring of the edges of where people are at in what the Catholic Church believes. The other thing we have to say, and it's an important clarification, for a long time the Catholic Church has said there is no salvation outside the church. Protestants are tempted to reply there's no salvation inside the church. Of the two, I think we are in danger of saying that there is no salvation inside the church. My doctrine of election allows me to believe that God has his people where they are. And I do not believe that there are no Christians in the Catholic system. I do not believe it. They're there despite the system, not because of the system. And on an individual basis, you may meet people, and as you're talking with them, you have a sense, an appreciation that these people have a similar experience that you have, but they're still within this institution. The institution itself is defective, not the individual. And in our dealing with the Catholic controversy, we have to make the distinction between the institution and the individual. Mind you, our dealing with the individual must not allow us to be not clear on what the institution believes. You've got to make that distinction. So where are we to get a clear definition of what the Catholic Church teaches on the question of justification? Mark Knoll in a recent book called Is the Reformation Over? It's a very disturbing book. I'm not citing it to endorse it. I'm citing it because it is part of the morass where we presently are at. He says the place to go to understand the Catholic religion is the Catechism, is the Vatican II documents, and the Confession. So that's where we go to understand the Catholic faith, for us to understand what they understand by justification. We have to say that there are things about the Catholic Church that are commendable. Their orthodoxy on the Trinity, their orthodox on the Incarnation, their orthodox on sin, and indeed their understanding of the Church as much teach us as evangelicals. Evangelicals have downgraded the church. Individualism is rampant. If you don't like what I'm preaching then you can go to the church on the corner. And the church as an entity is not held in high regard by evangelical Christians. And we can be challenged by the importance of the church within the Catholic system. All of those things are commendable. But we have major, major difficulties and differences with the Catholic Church and the institution and its teaching. The first major difficulty is with authority. Where do you derive your authority for what you proclaim as your truth? The Catholic Church in the Vatican documents, Vatican II, in the document Dei Verbum in 1965, declared that the Church does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone, but Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence." With equal sentiments of devotion and reverence. There's a dual authority. There's the Scriptures, there's the tradition. And in a crisis, I'm inclined to think that tradition supersedes the authority of the scriptures. In a debate in a secondary school on one occasion, that question was asked of me by the students. And there was a priest in the room. And the students asked me, how come your views are different to the priest? And I gathered the students around and I said to the priest, I said, now I want you to clarify this if I'm in the wrong. Here's the scriptures. Here's tradition. In a crisis, we as Christians say that the scriptures are the final authority. The Catholic Church says, in a crisis, the tradition of the church can supersede that authority. And I said, is that a fair assessment? to which the priest said yes. So the tradition for the church is very, very important, and even as you appreciate the tradition, they appear to conflict and contradict what the scriptures teach, and yet they're able to keep the schizophrenic idea that both are contained in the scriptures. For example, in 1854 they declared the Immaculate Conception, pages 109 to 110 of the Catechism. In 1870, they proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope. In 1950, they proclaimed the assumption of Mary into heaven. These things are in conflict with the Scriptures, and yet they cannot see a conflict between the authority of the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church. We who have a confession, we can call it a tradition, but our traditions derive entirely and only from the Scriptures. We do not go outside of the scriptures to bring our confessions together. Our tradition is regulated only by the Word of God. So we can say in 2 Peter 1, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him. We can say in Ephesians 2, in verse 2, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being himself the chief cornerstone. We can say 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, we can be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Why? Because we have the sufficiency of the scriptures and are wanting nothing. That isn't the case with the Catholic Church. coming more to the issue of justification. What is justification and what are the issues that are at stake? Is justification a word for those who study big words and like to use them to impress? Would it not be better reading a book on the end times or how to have a better family or something else? Why belabor the question of justification? The question of justification is, if you look at it from the point of view of the scriptures, how much do the scriptures give to the doctrine? And then you can get the measure of its importance. The whole letter of Romans. What is it but a statement of the doctrine of justification? Ephesians 1 and 2, Galatians chapter 2 through 4, Philippians chapter 1. As a reminder, last night, Psalm 32, Isaiah 53. It is not just a small issue. The scriptures give it a large corpus within the Word of God. So it is a very important book for you and I as God's people. Dr. Malone, I should have rang him a few weeks ago and asked him what passage he intended speaking on. Because when he got up to speak on Tuesday evening on Luke 18, my wife turned to me, isn't that your passage? It wasn't after he was finished. I do want, however, to return to that passage. A preacher's function, in some respects, is twofold when he preaches. His function as a preacher is to comfort the distressed and to distress the comforted. We have those dual functions as part of our preaching ministry. We must comfort the distressed, but we must also distress the comforted. And it's the man in that that I want us to look at to give some comfort. The tax collector. Let me just give you the verse. We're down at verse 13. But the tax collector, standing afar off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Part of our job, as I said, is to comfort those who are in distress and to challenge those who are comforted. This passage in Luke 18 is significant for a number of reasons. There's a book written by an evangelical man in the States called Robert A. Sanjas. I may not be pronouncing his name, S-U-N-G-E-N-I-S. I heard a voice. It's a 774 page and he's supposed to be an evangelical. He's got a master's degree from Westminster Theological Seminary. He has great difficulty with locating. Robert Raymond, in his response to the book, said his exegesis of the parable is shocking. He says that Sundus, in his defense of a Catholic understanding of justification, says in verses 9-14 of that section, he says that the tax collector was going up to pray on a regular basis. It was his daily activity, even though the verb going up is in the aorist. That is, an action viewed as a single whole or part occurring at a time. Sundus then goes on to say that what the tax collector did was to bring his work before God with sincere faith and love, and under grace his works are accepted. But if he sins again he will have to return to the temple and confess his sin lest his justification be nullified. Nothing in the passage proves a once for all imputed justification by faith alone. That's why Luke 18 is a significant passage. The other thing we can say about Luke 18 in that context is, it's not just Paul who's got a preoccupation with justification. It is Jesus who proclaims it. He was the one who declared to the man, this man went down home justified. So it's not just Paul, for those who have embraced a view that Paul is preoccupied with overzealous conscience. The prayer of the Pharisee in that parable is exquisitely brief and very often when we are in a difficult situation our prayers are usually brief. Help Lord, Lord forgive me, O God. Our prayers can be quite brief when James Montgomery Boyce says the words, God, me, a sinner, are profound because they express the essential genuine religious insight gained when a person becomes aware of God's presence. Is not this the experience of the people of God in the scriptures? What does Isaiah see in chapter 6, the pre-incarnate glory of the Lord Jesus as John tells us? What was his response after that sight? Woe is me, for I am undone. What was Peter's experience after being in the boat fishing? This rugged man, flighty of tongue, quick of temper. He is confronted by Jesus and he says, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. What was John's response in Revelation? I fell at his feet as though dead. Shakespeare is incorrect. We should not just know ourselves. We need to know God. And in order for us to fully appreciate who we are, unless we know God, we cannot define ourselves in relation to him. Calvin and the Institute says our knowledge must be derived both from God and from man. It is not just a one-way street. When we know ourselves in the way that God shows us in the scriptures, it makes us aware that we are unworthy. It makes us aware that we're sinners. It makes us aware that we ourselves cannot do anything to help ourselves. That tax collector is not just a tax collector in the parable. She's an old-age pensioner that I knock on the doors and try to speak to about the Lord. And I just speak with these women in the 70s who've given their best years to the Catholic Church. They may have given their funds when they had little for themselves. They followed the ritual. They went through the hour before communion, good for no fish on Friday, all the ritual of the religion. And when you speak with them and you see that vacant look in their eyes, the hopelessness of their future, you cannot but be grieved that these people are burdened but can find no comfort. And there are millions like it. I'm thinking of other people. I'm thinking particularly of Luther. This is what he says of himself after being in the monastery. He said, I myself was a monk for 20 years. I tortured myself with praying, fasting, keeping vigils and freezing. The cold enough The cold alone was enough to kill me, and I inflicted upon myself such pains as I would never inflict again, even if I could. In fact, Luther carried out his duties with such rigor that they exclaimed, If any monk ever got to heaven by monkery, then I should have made it. All my monastery companions who knew me can testify to that. He concludes his reminiscence by noting that, if it had lasted much longer, I would have killed myself with vigils, prayings, readings, and such labours. There's an organisation presently called Opus Dei. It has got significant and influential people who are involved in it. And in Opus Dei, wearing a hair shirt, chains around your ankles, self-mortification are part of that And there are many people in our own country, that's the Roman Catholic country, who don't have the comfort of the Scriptures. Can you imagine the priest saying to this man in temple, after he had made this prayer, try harder next time? And that's what they say. Try harder next time. This poor man, who needed comfort, could get none in Rome. I like the Shorter Catechism's definition of justification. Question 33. Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. Good statement of what justification is. The Reformers held to a seven-point understanding of justification. Firstly, they said, we all stand before the judgment seat of God and must answer to him for ourselves. No church, no hierarchy, no priest, we stand naked before a holy God. All of us. No backup. Secondly, every man and woman is a sinner by nature and practice and as such they can only expect God's wrath and judgment. Thirdly, justification is God's judicial act of pardoning the guilty sinner, accepting him as righteous, and being received as a child of God. Fourthly, the source of justification is grace, not human effort or initiative. It's outside of us. Fifthly, the grounds of our justification is Christ's vicarious righteousness and bloodshedding, not our merit. Sixthly, the means of justification here and now is faith in Christ Jesus, here and now. Seventhly, the fruit of faith, the evidence of its reality, is a manifested repentance and a life of good works. There's nothing there that you haven't known before. Justification is a declaration of status. It does not change the person. It is not internal. It is a legal declaration. It is a declaration on the part of the judge. It is judicial and forensic. And it's proclaimed about the person in relationship to the law of God. Justification is a once-for-all action on the part of God and cannot be undone. I'll come back to that shortly. So, when you think of poor Martin Luther in monkery, When you think of old-age pensioners, when you think of the poor of South America, when you think of the Catholics in my own country. I used to take a Bible study in a village about 15 miles from where I lived and I had to go over the mountains to get there on a winter's night and coming home after doing the Bible study there was a shrine. The dead of winter, a ghastly place, but I would pull up out of curiosity and I would go in and there would be old men and women praying to a statue in the hope she'd move. I was frozen and if I was her I'd have moved too. But these old people were there at this shrine day and night praying in the hope that this thing was going to move. They have no comfort, nothing from the scriptures. Mark Knoll in his book, I'm not citing him because he was brilliant, but because he puts the Catholic perspective succinctly. He says this, It is confusing, however, that Catholics seem to blend what evangelicals regard as two steps in the way of salvation, namely justification and sanctification. In defence of how they use the terminology, Catholics appeal to Augustine. Augustine was wrong on his definition of justification. Augustine saw justification as God making us, not declaring us righteous. He did not appreciate the biblical understanding of justification by faith. And in Hans Kung's book on justification, he comes down on the same position that we would hear in the Declaration. That was Hans Kung's position. So the Catholic Church go back to Augustine as an authority for their practice and interpretation of justification, when in fact Augustine's understanding was seriously defective. But anyway, I must go on. For Catholics, justification is conferred at baptism, continues with faith personally proclaimed at Confirmation, develops as the Christian grows in knowledge and faithfulness in the context of the Church and through being nourished by the Sacraments, and continues even after death when God cleans away remaining sin during Purgatory. Since Catholics view salvation as a process, not a single event, There is a possibility of interpretation, though a choice of mortal sin anywhere along the continuum, that interruption can lead to a departure from God's kingdom, even to eternity in hell. Catholics therefore find it presumptuous to announce assurance that salvation is complete and heaven is certain. They take seriously the biblical admonition, he who stands firm to the end will be saved. It's not just that admonition that they take seriously, it's the way of the religion. Can you imagine it? That no Catholic has the assurance of heaven. No Catholic has the assurance of sins forgiven. When I go on the doors talking to people, I love going to the end of John chapter 3. And I love putting my hand with the Bible and having the person read it. Because in that verse it says, he who believes in the Son has, not might or could or will, but has everlasting life. The Catholic has no comfort from the scriptures for themselves. Rome says that the Lord Jesus in Mark 8, Luke 18 was wrong. He couldn't have made that declaration. The Council of Trent met in 1545 to 1563 and they opposed the Reformation. It was called the Counter-Reformation. In the sixth session of the Council in 1547, they deal with the question of justification. It's made up of 16 chapters and 32 canons of anathema. Justification, they say, is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. Paragraph 1989. Justification is conferred in baptism, and by it God makes us inwardly just. Paragraph 1992. The Council of Trent complained, and I'm quoting here, not without the shipwreck of many souls and grievous detriment to the unity of the Church a certain erroneous doctrine has been disseminated touching justification. They conclude, if anyone says that by faith alone the impious is justified in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining of the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema." They conclude further, if anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sin for Christ's sake, or that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified, let him be anathema. There's a lot of anathemas. Canon 9 states, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by action of his own will, let him be anathema. In the Catechism of 1994 of the Catholic Church, Trent says that justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. that it is not enough that Christ died, you must live a life of holiness if you are to be justified. That's the reality of what is happening. It's all very well for the academics and the theologians to be sitting in their ivy towers and getting a PhD for a strange idea, new and novel to us all, and then propagate it upon the church, but the reality is when you look into the faces of men and women and boys and girls, you give them a religion of despair. It is not a religion of hope, it is a religion of despair. Trent's view of justification is the dominant one and the one being advanced by a large number of people even to the present day. For Trent to declare that the patristic fathers and the medieval Latin scholars endorsed their understanding is wrong. Dr. Roger Beckwith, a one-time warden of Latimer House in Oxford, says that this non-biblical use of the term was by no means universal among the medieval Latin writers of the Middle Ages. He also states that Trent understood the word justifying in a non-biblical sense even when it is quoting the Latin Bible itself, as in chapter 8 of his decrees where they quote the fundamental teaching of Romans chapter 3. What is at stake in the doctrine of justification? You know how it is when you have a jumper and there's a thread and you begin to pull it and before you know it the whole thing begins to unravel. Let's see if we can pull justification out and see what comes with it. Justification. Robert Traill makes the observation, all the great fundamentals of Christian truth centre in this justification. The trinity of persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the only begotten Son of the Father, the satisfaction paid to the law and justice of God for all the sins of the world by his obedience and sacrifice The divine authority of the scriptures, which reveal all this, are all straight lines of truth that centre in this doctrine the justification of a sinner by the imputation and application of that satisfaction. So much unravels when the doctrine of justification is picked the way it's been picked in the contemporary evangelical world. The doctrine of justification has been attacked by academic apostates. by satanic subtlety, by religious relativism, by those who have shared experience rather than scriptural exegesis. This is not an armchair debate. It's not even a debate. It's a war of real and lasting importance that must be fought on all fronts. For if it continues to gain respectability, the Church will be brought back to the dark ages from whence this great doctrine liberated us all those years ago. Dr. Harry U Pritchard, a well-known Ulster Presbyterian, and I were in conversation about a little over a week ago, and we were discussing this issue. And I was surprised at Dr. U Pritchard's remarks because he's a very measured man. And he said the doctrine of justification is under greater threat than it's ever been in its history. Under greater threat. The reason why that is the case is because when Luther and the reformers opposed Rome, they knew the enemy. They knew the issues. They were united. They were advancing a common cause for the declaration of the Sola Scriptura, justification by faith. Today, all fronts of the church are not covered. We have within the church those who would say the justification is not the forensic declaration of the scriptures, but more a Catholic position, BDCT. It's in the press, it's in the publishing houses, it's in the seminaries. It's only a matter of time if this is not stopped by God's grace, that in the next 20 years a lot of folk will have no idea what justification by faith means. They really won't. And you and I as soldiers, whose job it is to protect and declare that truth, don't footsie with Rome. I don't mean that in an anti-Catholic way, I don't. But the issues are far, far too grave. They are far, far too grave. There is that man in the temple who cries out, God be merciful to me, the sinner. What will Rome give him? Penance, effort, hopelessness. This is not an academic debate. This is a question of the life of the church in the longer term. I love the last sermon of Let me give you his name. Forgotten his name already. Joseph Smith. He was one of the early students from Princeton. He was 47. He was in Washington County. April 72. It says he was 50. He was 56 years of age when he ascended the pulpit at Cross Creek on the first morning of April 1792. Although his health was never strong. It seems for others at that day to be much as usual. Yet Smith preached as though he knew it was to be his last sermon. What would be your text for your last sermon? Let's hear what he says. His text was Galatians 1 and verse 8. He says, Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, other than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. The Catholic Church says, if we preach any other gospel other than the gospel they proclaim, let us be accursed. Who's got the final authority? The Word of God. He continued, as he drew to a conclusion, he gave such a summary view of his 12 years preaching that his people sensed it was the winding up of his ministry. The whole congregation wept, the more so when they saw that the preacher they had heard for the last time could not move from the pulpit to his horse without help. Brethren, that's a good model for us. We are to declare in all the riches, in all the wonder, in all the beauty, in all the kindness of God, this astonishing truth. that there is mercy for sinners, and it's found only in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The academics may continue to debate. Our job is to look into the face of people who are guilty sinners and give them the good news of the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing else will do. You must continue to declare that truth unashamedly, without hesitation, to all you come in contact with. May God enable us to remain faithful even as Joseph Smith was to the very end. Even if you stand alone. Even if you've got no friends beside you, declare this truth to one and all. Let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, We see you assess the Pharisee and the tax collector and we see the Pharisee self-righteous and comforted and we see the tax collector in distress who is declared justified. Grant that we might see people as you do and long to be able to tell them that they can be justified through faith in Jesus Christ alone and know for certain that they have eternal life. Enable us as men in our ministries not to become weary in well-doing. Enable us not to be sidetracked by academic discussion. But may we adhere strictly to the scriptures and may we continue to proclaim that Jesus Christ saves sinners. Apply your word to our hearts and bless us and give us journeying mercies as we ask these our prayers in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.