The just shall live by his faith.
Blessed gospel.
Salvation now and in the final judgment belongs to the just. He enjoys the blessed life now and forever. This is his by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone for him and all upon whom God had mercy and whom he loved with an everlasting love. Salvation all of grace and not by works is what the text is about. Salvation all of grace and not by works at all. No mixing of grace and works; either all of grace or all of works. If salvation is of grace, then do not ever bring in works. If salvation is of works, do not ever bring in grace. Salvation is all of grace, pure grace. Such is the gospel of the text, for the just shall live by faith.

This is the gospel of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Thus the inspired writers of the New Testament quoted Habakkuk as the summary of the gospel. Paul wrote to the Romans, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (1:16–17). Over against the folly of the Galatians who had been bewitched by the deceptive doctrine of the Judaizers, Paul wrote, “That no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:11). To the Hebrews the inspired writer said, “The just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul” (10:38–39).

The just shall live by faith.
Of that gospel we are not ashamed. It is the power of God unto salvation. Therein is the righteousness—the saving righteousness—of God revealed from faith to faith.

The just shall live. Who will ascend God’s holy hill? The just. Who will stand in his holy place? The just. Who will abide the day of his coming? The just. Who will stand when he appears? The just. Shall anything separate us from his love? Can sword, nakedness, peril, persecution, famine, or the arts of Satan and the actions of wicked men separate us from his love? Can they be against us? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, and all things work together for good to the just.

The just shall live. Only the just shall live.

Always the just shall live.
By faith.
The promise of God!
The divine word of the gospel that sounds among the dead! For all men are by nature entombed in death.

It was not always so. God made Adam alive, good, and in God’s own image, capable in all things to will agreeably to the will of God, loving God, serving God, and walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. For life is not merely the beating of the heart, the breathing in and out of air, eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, the turning of the mind, and the working of the body. Life is life with God. God is life. He is life in himself as the triune God. And the life of God is covenant fellowship and friendship among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—vibrant, ceaseless, eternal, unbounded life in the being of God as the triune God. Ever begetting and being begotten, breathing and being breathed, purposing, planning, willing, and searching all things, even the deep things of God. Communing with himself in love; the ocean of his divine life not the least disturbed by a ripple of disharmony. And God gave to Adam life when he gave himself to Adam as his friend and sovereign and created Adam as God’s friend and servant. To know God, to see God in all the creation, to walk with God, and to serve God was Adam’s life. God was Adam’s life.

But being lifted up in pride and falling into the condemnation of the devil, Adam departed from God, who was Adam’s life. The command of life—“do not eat, obey me, love me, love me as your all in all, live with me”—he transgressed. Adam brought on himself the curse of God and death as the just judgment for his treachery, pride, and rebellion. By the sin of that one man, sin entered the world and death by sin, so that death passes upon all, for that all have sinned! All are guilty in their head. His guilt was imputed to them. His condemnation and judgment fell on them, even those who did not sin after the same fashion as Adam. They all fell with him into the bondage of sin and death. Generation to generation man is conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins in a world that groans and travails in bondage to corruption. Generation to generation man is given over more and more to the total bondage of sin and corruption.

And what is God’s judgment on the whole human race? Both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understand, there is none who seek after God. They are all gone out of the way and together become unprofitable. There is none who does good—no, not one. Their throats are open sepulchers. With their tongues they use deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. And their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And they do not know the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes. The whole world is guilty before God. A corrupt stock produces corrupt offspring.

The soul that sins must die. God gives the sinner over to his sin. One sin leads to another, entrapping the sinner ever tighter in the net from which there is no escape. The sinner is a slave to sin according to the righteous judgment of God. No sin has ever passed unnoticed before the all-seeing eyes of the judge of heaven and earth. Thus all men are swept along in wickedness and sin, greed and warfare, hatred and destruction, until the measure of sin upon the earth is full. And in the earth there are floods and famines, earthquakes and disasters of every sort. Unrest and confusion reign as God visits the world in anger. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

Who will ascend God’s holy hill? Who will stand in his holy place? Who will abide the day of his coming? Who will stand when he appears? If Jehovah contend with a man, who will answer him one of a thousand? If Jehovah enter into judgment with men, who can be saved?

The just shall live by faith! Like a ray of the sun that pierces the gloomy clouds, so this gospel sounds from God in the hopeless gloom and dark night of the misery of all men.

Shall live. Life is life with God, which is to enter into his holy place and stand in his temple. Life is to know the God and Father of Jesus Christ as the God of your salvation. Life is to be recreated after God’s image in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. It is to be a son or daughter of God and a sibling with Jesus Christ. Life is to have the Spirit of the risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ and to walk with God, to talk with God, and to serve God. To live in the Spirit and to walk after the Spirit of Jesus Christ is life—a life of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, against which there is no law. Life is to have peace with the living God, to love and to serve one’s cov-enant God, and to love the neighbor as oneself. Life is to know and to be assured that you are right with God, that he loves you, and that you are the eternal object of his unchanging favor. Life is to stand in the grace of God and to rejoice in the hope of glory. Life is to be a new creature born from above, to seek the things above and not things below. Life is to stand for God’s cause in the world and for his truth in every area of life. Oh yes, in this sin-cursed world, life with God is to be the enemy of the world and to suffer its reproach; life is to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.

And life, this life, is everlasting. Never can it be lost. When those who possess this life lay aside their mortal flesh, death is swallowed up of life. And after they have gone into the grave and lie in the dust, they shall be summoned to everlasting life, body and soul, in heaven in a new heaven and a new earth to the endless ages of eternity. Now we are the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when Jesus appears we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. The transforming vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: now through a glass darkly, then in perfection, body and soul.

The just shall live—only the just, always the just.

The wicked shall be condemned; and condemned, the wicked is cursed now and forever. The curse of God is in the house of the wicked, but God blesses the habitation of the just. What does Psalm 11:4–7 say? Jehovah is in his holy temple; his throne is in heaven. His eyes behold and his eyelids try the children of men. Jehovah tries the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence Jehovah’s soul hates. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous Jehovah loves righteousness; his countenance beholds the upright.

Jehovah blesses the just. Jehovah curses the wicked. The just are those about whom God declares in the judgment that he finds no fault in them and that they have kept his law perfectly. Jehovah declares that the just are perfectly righteous according to the verdict of the eternal judge. The eternal judge sits on his throne. Every man must stand in Jehovah’s judgment every day and every moment of man’s existence with regard to all that he does in the body, regarding every thought, every purpose, and every deed. Jehovah’s judgment is according to strictest justice. He does not regard persons. About all men—Jews and Gentiles, great and small, rich and poor, male and female— Jehovah expresses his verdict, and according to that verdict he judges them. He says about every man that he is just or unjust, righteous or wicked. Jehovah makes the unjust and wicked unspeakably miserable, gives them over to their sins, and punishes them. The just and righteous he blesses with his favor and wonderful grace and assures them of righteousness and eternal life.

And what is the standard of that judgment? What expresses the awesome righteousness of God? The law, not merely as an outward code of conduct but as that law exposes the natures of all men and God’s perfect requirement that man love God with his whole being out of a perfect heart and in all that he is and does, and that he love the neighbor as himself. Absolute perfection is the standard of God’s judgment. That is whom God will justify. That is whom God will bless. The man who does these things shall live in them.

Who then is the just? Who can be saved? Who will ascend into God’s holy hill? Who will stand when he appears?

In ourselves we find that by nature we are completely contrary to God’s law. Perverse! We find that God’s law says, “Love,” and we hate. We hate God by nature, and we hate our neighbors too. We still find in us after we are regenerated that we are carnal, sold under sin, that there is another law warring in us to bring us into captivity to the law of sin in our members. We find that we do nothing but what is polluted by the flesh. Wretched men! For God’s demand expressed in the law is inexorable, unchanging, and rigorous. Against the one who does not keep all its precepts perfectly out of a perfect heart, the law delivers a terrible sentence: cursed is everyone who continues not in all things written in the law to do them. Before God’s holy law no man living will be justified. Before the law all are condemned.

There is only one just one. They killed him, the holy and just one, and desired a murderer to go free in his place. This is the gospel: Jesus, the holy and just one, was condemned, and the wicked are justified and go free! Jesus, the holy and just one, God’s only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, who is God of God, light of light, true God of true God, who was of the same essence as the Father, for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made man. He came to us from God out of God’s eternal love for his elect people and his eternal will to save them from their sins and to bring them to heavenly glory. He came in fulfillment of all of God’s promises. Jesus came to take the place of his people, as their head to bear their sin and guilt upon his shoulders and to be nailed to the accursed cross. He entered our night and came under the law to suffer the infinite and eternal weight of the wrath of God for our sins and guilt, and so to make satisfaction to God for our sins. Jesus made that perfect satisfaction, for God raised him from the dead. He was delivered over because of our offenses, and he was raised for our justification. His righteousness is the righteousness of God, the righteousness worked out in Jesus’ incarnation, in his lifelong suffering, and especially in his hellish agonies and woes upon the cross when God forsook his beloved Son. Jesus Christ loved God even from the depths of hell on the cross.

To be found in Christ—not having one’s own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness that is through faith, the righteousness that is of God by faith—that man, that man alone, is just. In Christ by faith alone, the righteousness, holiness, and perfect obedience of Christ become that man’s, and all his disobedience and sin-stained works are covered and forgiven. Him alone God sees and declares just.

The just shall live by his faith!

By his faith alone! Not faith and works. Faith alone. Faith that is God’s gift to him by the operation of the Holy Spirit to engraft him into Christ his head. Faith that is the certain knowledge and the assured confidence worked in him by the Holy Ghost by the preaching of the blessed gospel that the just shall live by faith. The certain knowledge and assured confidence worked in him by the Holy Ghost that remission of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given him, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.

The just lives now. He shall live forever.

Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is he to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Being justified by faith, he has peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The just shall live by faith.

Behold, his soul that is lifted up is not upright in him! With a few words the Holy Spirit declares the utter wretchedness of the unbeliever. His soul is lifted up in him. He is proud. He is an unbeliever. Oh, do not think that only the proud Moabite, the proud Edomite, or the proud Chaldean is described here. It is the proud Israelite. It is the proud man of the church. He especially is in view. His soul is lifted up in him. What a disgusting description of a soul, the seat of the intellect and will.

The noblest part of man is the soul. There he stands related to God. There in his conscience the awesome judge delivers his verdict.

This soul is lifted up. Better, this soul is a festering abscess of abominable pride. What is his pride? He will be saved by his works. He will live with God because he keeps the law. He will be delivered now and in the final judgment by what he has done. Worse, he covers his wicked doctrine by a cloak of deceptive appeals to grace. Who will ascend God’s holy hill? Who will stand in his holy place? Who will abide the day of Christ’s coming? Who will stand when he appears? For this cancerous soul: the obedient. Being willingly and damningly ignorant of the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, this proud soul goes about to establish his own righteousness.

So wicked that now in the temple of God this man thanks God that he is not as other men are, and he boasts of his works—all performed by grace, of course. He wears out the word grace to cover his wicked corruption of the gospel and to put a cloak over the oozing pride of his cancerous soul. And in the final judgment, in that great day of days, before the awesome judge, Jesus Christ, representing the perfectly righteous triune God and revealing God’s righteous judgment, this wretched, cancerous soul, full of death, will boast to the Lord of all he has done for God.

Not upright is such a soul. He is never justified—not now and not in the final judgment. He is condemned for all his working. His working is the most abominable kind of working there is—a working to gain with God. That unjustified soul is condemned now and in the final judgment. There are those first vexing thoughts that afflict his soul that God has not received him. There is the testimony of the conscience that the Lord is angry with him. Under the preaching of the gospel, he is exposed, and the thoughts and intents of his heart are discerned: he will do to be saved! And he is shut out from the kingdom of God week after week under the preaching of the gospel. But soon—for his soul is full of pride—he silences the testimony of his nagging conscience. He becomes smug and supercilious in his self-righteousness. Assuring himself that God is pleased with his deeds, he also turns to beat his fellow-servants and to devour the weak. Confident that he is right with God and that he reclines in his wickedness in the very lap of God, he carries on in his life. Oh, indeed, the soul that is lifted up is not upright in him.

When he appears before the great judge, Jesus Christ, there will be that terrifying pause between his own boast—“Lord, Lord, did I not do many mighty works in thy name?”—and the sentence of the righteous judge, “Depart from me, you wicked evildoer. I never knew you.” And that cancerous soul, so full of death, so haughty in his works, will be cast into the lake of fire, where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die.

Because the just shall live by faith. By faith. By faith alone.

Hallelujah!