A Review

This series of articles consists of an examination of the riches of salvation that become the possession of elect believers by their union with Christ. Those treasures are faith itself as union with Christ, regeneration, calling, faith, justification, sanctification, preservation, and glorification. Salvation is of the Lord, who has mercy upon whom he will have mercy and grace upon whom he will have grace. The essence of salvation is union with Jesus Christ, both in election and in the bond of faith by which the elect become one plant with Christ and one body with Christ.

The worker of salvation and the giver of all the riches of salvation that are in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit himself is the gift of salvation, so that to have the Spirit is to have salvation, life, and the promise of eternal life. And the Spirit is the giver of every perfect gift of salvation that comes to the elect from the Father of lights. The Spirit is the one who pervades the innermost recesses of the heart, implants the seed of regeneration, makes all things in the heart new, and raises those who were dead in trespasses and sins to everlasting life in Christ. The Spirit makes effectual the calling of the triune God in Christ, irresistibly drawing sinners to the Father, causing the light of the glorious gospel of Christ to shine in their hearts, and summoning them from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son and from darkness into God’s marvelous light. The Spirit causes the bond of faith to spring up as a living plant in the hearts of believers, filling them with the knowledge that all that God has revealed in his word is true and with the assurance that the promise of God is true for them and that everlasting righteousness and eternal life are theirs merely of grace for the sake of Christ’s death and obedience for them and in their place. The Spirit seals in the hearts of believers that their faith is counted for righteousness, so that they are righteous in Christ before God and have peace with the living God. And the Spirit causes hope to arise in the hearts of believers, like the sun rises in the morning, to fill them with expectation and longing for their heavenly and eternal home and floods their hearts with the outpouring of the love of God for them in Jesus Christ.

The last article was a beginning explanation regarding the truth of gracious justification in Christ by faith alone. Justification is that gracious act of God in the hearts of elect sinners to forgive their sins and to impute to them the righteousness of Christ, declaring them righteous before God and heirs of eternal life. This gracious act of God is that in which their salvation consists. This does not mean that there are no other benefits of salvation that can be distinguished among the riches of Christ that become theirs in him. From the viewpoint of salvation’s riches, salvation is like a brilliant diamond of many facets. Rather, that salvation consists in the justification of ungodly, elect sinners means that the benefit of justification is the explanation of all the other benefits that come to those sinners. Justification is the explanation of their righteousness before God. It is only the righteous who live; it is only the righteous whom God loves; and it is only the righteous whom God blesses with his favor and wonderful grace. Sinners must be righteous before God.

Yet how can sinners be righteous before God? In themselves by nature they are sinners. Whether they are Jews or Gentiles, the sentence of the law over them is that they are guilty before God and that they have no right to eternal life. They are conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins, so that their very natures are polluted and defiled. There is in their flesh no good thing, and they break all God’s commandments.

God must justify sinners freely by his grace for the sake of the righteousness of Christ, who is the head, representative, and substitute of elect sinners. God made Christ responsible for the sins of his people. God poured out on Christ, who stood in the place of his people, their punishment. Christ obeyed the law of God for them, and God imputed all Christ’s righteousness, atonement, and all his holy works to his people, forgiving their sins and declaring them righteous. For the sake of the righteousness of their head, they are declared righteous. His righteousness is so much theirs in Christ that it is as if they themselves had suffered and obeyed.

This righteousness and forgiveness belong to the elect by faith alone and not at all by their works. By faith only means that by faith God’s people are included in the righteous corporation of Christ, are under the umbrella of the righteousness of that corporation, and are declared righteous. The knowledge and assurance of this fact consciously come to them by faith. By faith they know this is true, and by faith they have the confidence and conviction that this is true for themselves. They have this by faith over against every testimony of their consciences, of the devil, and of the whole world that they are not righteous but sinners. The verdict of the cross of Christ sounds in their consciences and overcomes all other testimonies.

This confidence and conviction of God’s people cannot come by their works. The consideration of their works leads only to fear and trembling before God; and in that consideration there is no joy, hope, peace, or comfort. There is no confidence in the fact of repentance. There is no assurance in good works. This is true because the righteousness that God approves must be in all respects perfect, and whatever comes out of God’s people is polluted and defiled by sin. God does not dishonor Christ and all his suffering and death by speaking righteousness and peace to the hearts of his people by their works. God approves of and speaks righteousness and peace into their hearts only through the righteousness that he himself worked out in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

Justification at the Cross

So far I have explained the truth that believers are justified in their consciences. The conscience is God’s courtroom in which the testimony of the law that condemns sinners is overcome by the testimony of the cross of Christ that justifies sinners and causes them to stand in the grace of peace with God.

Yet that is not the full explanation of the justification of elect children of God. The justification of the elect in their consciences is the knowledge that comes to them of a justification that they had before they were born. In the case of saints in the old dispensation, it was knowledge of a justification that was sure in the counsel of God and that God would in due time make manifest in the world, revealing a righteousness that was the possession of the elect from all eternity. And so also for saints in the new dispensation. The righteousness that they possessed from eternity has been made manifest in the cross of Jesus Christ. So the apostle Paul says in Romans 3:21–26:

21. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

By the manifestation of “the righteousness of God,” the apostle means the righteousness that God decreed in Christ and gave to his people in eternity and that God revealed at the cross of Christ. God’s revelation is no mere disclosure but is God’s act in the world. When God acts in the world, revealing the righteousness of God, then that is his act to make his people partakers of that saving act that he accomplished in Christ.

That the righteousness of God is manifested or revealed means, first, that the righteousness of God always was. God’s people, who were always in God’s mind and heart, are righteous from eternity to eternity. At the heart of God’s saving act stands the cross of Jesus Christ. This is why the apostle John says in Revelation 13:8 that Christ is “the Lamb slain from [before] the foundation of the world.” That saving act of God in Christ was already in the counsel of God. It was already whole and complete in the counsel of God. And God disclosed that act, or revealed it, at the cross. In every event, every word, and every action at the cross, we see what God had decreed. There was a disclosure of what God had decreed, and yet it was such a disclosure that God was working and operating in that disclosure to save his people.

Second, that the righteousness of God is revealed means that though it was testified and witnessed to, it had not yet come into the world. There was a testimony to this righteousness that had been given in the law and the prophets, but this righteousness had not yet been revealed. On the basis of that testimony, the people of God in the old dispensation were also justified. Yet the righteousness had not yet appeared. That righteousness was promised, but it had not yet been revealed. Understand that the entire Old Testament cannot be understood apart from understanding the righteousness of God. The purpose of the Old Testament is to reveal what man is and in that revelation to reveal the wrath of God against the sin of man. Over against that, the purpose of the Old Testament also is to reveal Christ as the righteousness of God, which was manifested when Christ came. The gospel is the event that took place between the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that was the revelation of God’s righteousness. Then we see and behold what God had planned from all eternity. Then that righteousness came into the world, and it also transformed the world. It brought about a new age.

The righteousness of God still is manifested or revealed. The words “but now” in Romans 3:21 mean that over against the revelation of the wrath of God from heaven, there is always the revelation of the righteousness of God too. The righteousness of God is revealed to us. It is revealed in the gospel. And that gospel is God’s power to salvation. In the gospel God himself actively and purposefully lays hold on his people, and he saves them by the righteousness of God. The gospel works faith. And the gospel reveals the righteousness that is out of faith and not out of human exertion, efforts, or will. And so those who are righteous by faith shall live. God frees them in their own minds from guilt, and he assures them that they are at peace with God, and he blesses them with eternal life. Such is the conception in the context of Romans 3. And that saving act of God accomplished in Jesus Christ at his cross comes to us and lays hold on us and justifies us. It is not at all inaccurate to describe the justification of believers in their consciences as the coming to know, being confirmed in, and being assured of a righteousness that they had at the cross and from eternity.

Then we must first speak of a justification of the whole elect church and every elect child of God at the cross. That this is the case is the teaching of the apostle in Romans 4:24–25:

24. But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;

25. Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

When the apostle says “but for us also,” he refers to the testimony of the Old Testament scripture in Genesis 15:6 that Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. Abraham’s faith was counted for righteousness. His faith, not his works or circumcision or the law, set Abraham apart as the father of all believers. That faith was counted for righteousness not because faith itself is righteousness, but because by faith Abraham was united to the righteous corporation of Jesus Christ. This was written not only for Abraham’s sake but also for our sakes if we believe in God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Our faith in God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ is counted for righteousness, just as Abraham’s faith was counted for righteousness (Rom. 4:22). The words in verse 25 translated as “for our offences” and “for our justification” are properly understood as because of our offenses and because of our justification. The verse is saying that God did something to Christ. Not men but God delivered up Christ to death because of our offenses. This means that God judged Jesus Christ guilty in the place of us and for our sins and sinfulness and delivered him over to the bitter, shameful, and accursed death of the cross. And God raised Christ from the dead. God raised Christ as a legal act, as an act of perfect and complete justice. God did not say to Christ, “You have suffered enough, and now I take pity on you,” like a parent might say when his heart breaks at the sight of his weeping child. God did not say, “Although you are still guilty and I delivered you over to death, nevertheless, now I will overlook that guilt.” God raised Christ in an act of perfect and strictest justice. On Friday morning God had found Christ guilty in the judgment. On Sunday morning God found Jesus Christ righteous in the judgment, and God raised Christ because of that righteousness. God raised Christ because of our justification.

Justification is God’s act of declaring elect sinners righteous, that their sins are forgiven, that their whole debt has been paid, that they have fulfilled all righteousness. Justification is a legal declaration of God the judge that the sinners are not guilty but righteous before him and worthy of all blessings. The ground of Christ’s release, his resurrection, is our justification. The debt for which he had been delivered over to the cross was paid, and righteousness was earned. Because we are justified at the cross, Christ was raised. Justification is therefore not only the declaration of God in the consciences of elect sinners by the preaching of the gospel but also a declaration made at the cross by the God who delivered Jesus Christ over to death. That declaration is that all those for whom Jesus Christ was judged guilty are justified.

Because of our justification, Christ was raised. If we were not justified, he could not have been raised. If the whole elect church and every member of that church, every elect individual, were not justified on Friday evening at the cross, then Jesus would have had to remain in the ground. If we were not perfectly righteous before God at the cross, then he could not have raised Jesus Christ. Justification, which is the declaration of God that forgives all our sins and imputes to us Christ’s righteousness by faith, is also a reality, an accomplished fact at the cross, before we were engrafted into Christ by true faith, before we were regenerated, before we were called, and before we were justified in our own consciences. Justification—complete, perfect justification, the forgiving of elect sinners all their sins, and imputing to them the righteousness of Jesus Christ—was a reality on Good Friday. Is that not what Jesus Christ himself said? “It is finished.” Everything pertaining to the accomplishment of salvation was finished. It was perfectly finished. All the work that the Father gave Christ to do to save his people from sin, death, and hell was finished. And at the heart of that finished work of Christ at the cross was the perfection of our justification.

 

Justification in Eternity

Romans 4:25 also implies that there was a legal connection between Jesus Christ and his people before the cross. They were legally one corporation. Jesus Christ is the head of that corporation and also its legal representative. And that legal corporation had been established before Jesus Christ was delivered over and died for our offenses, so that his being delivered over for our offenses was a legal act in itself. How is it just to impute to an innocent man the offenses of others and to deliver him over to death, unless that man is the legally appointed representative of the others? The legal union of the elect with Jesus Christ is not established when they believe; the legal union was not established at the cross, but it had been established in eternity in God’s act of election. God gave a people to Jesus Christ. God chose a people in Jesus Christ, whom Christ would represent and for whose sins he would pay; and because of that payment, Christ would be raised to eternal life and immortality. In election we were chosen in Christ. He is first, the head and representative. We are chosen as his body and members.

But scripture says more. It teaches that the cross was an eternally completed fact in the counsel of God. Scripture does not say merely that in a certain sense the cross was eternal, but Revelation 13:8 says that the cross was an eternally completed fact and reality: “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Inasmuch as at the cross there was a declaration of God that all the members of Jesus Christ’s corporation are justified, and inasmuch as that cross was eternally in the counsel of God, there is also an eternal justification.

That eternal justification must be clearly understood. Eternal justification is not simply that God decreed that he would justify his people eventually, either at the cross or in their consciences. But eternal justification is the decree of God in which he actually forgave his people all their sins, imputed to them all the righteousness of Christ, and declared that they are righteous and worthy of eternal life. In that legal act establishing this corporation, God imputed our sins to Jesus Christ as our head and representative. And Christ imputed his righteousness to us. God always beheld his people as righteous in Christ.

That eternal decree of justification was revealed in the cross, and that justification of the cross—that verdict of God at the cross—lays hold on our consciences and justifies us. If we look at ourselves, it is impossible to believe that we are righteous. If you should stand before God in the judgment by yourself, you would say as Job said, “How should I answer him one of the thousands of charges that he might justly level against me? How shall a man be righteous with God?” Romans 4:24 answers: If you believe in God who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead. By faith in the God of the resurrection, faith has the sure testimony that the judgment is past because Christ was raised for our justification. Faith is the bond that unites us to Jesus Christ and receives his imputed righteousness and therefore receives the conviction that on the ground of that work of Jesus Christ alone we are acceptable before God, that we have peace with God, that God is our God, and that Jesus Christ is our Lord. And over against all the things that by sight testify against righteousness, believers hope against hope, give glory to God, and are fully persuaded that they are righteous in Christ.

 

Justification Preached

This truth of justification must be preached in all the world. Justification by faith alone is not a dead letter in the church’s books of theology, but justification is the content of the church’s preaching. Through the preaching of justification by faith alone, faith is worked and strengthened. When scripture teaches that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, then scripture speaks of the preaching of the righteousness of God that he worked out in the cross and by which righteousness alone ungodly sinners are justified. The preaching is rightly called the power of God to salvation only when that preaching is the preaching of the gospel of God’s righteousness in Christ. The preaching of the law, the preaching of the demands of the law, or even the preaching of the calling of the gospel to repent and believe is no power of God unto salvation. The power of God unto salvation is the preaching of Christ as the righteousness of everyone who believes in God because in Christ God justified the ungodly. The power of God unto salvation is the preaching of the truth of Christ as very God and very man and the preaching that reveals the righteousness of God that he worked out for his people in the cross and resurrection of Christ. This gospel is the power of God unto salvation as that gospel is preached in all the world. Along with that preaching of the gospel comes the calling to repent and believe, not as that which man must do to be saved but as the powerful word of God with the gospel that actually works that repentance and belief in his people, so that they believe the gospel and are manifested in the world as God’s people by the mark of repentance. In that preaching of the saving act of God in Christ, God’s saving word of salvation and justification that he spoke at the cross comes to God’s elect people in the world, saves them, justifies them, and bestows every benefit and grace of God upon them. When the gospel of the righteousness of God comes to them, then they live. He who is righteous by faith shall live.

This is especially true over against the preaching of the law. There is no power in law-preaching to save anyone, to make anyone keep the law, or to make those who hear the law preached more obedient people. The office of the law is not to administer grace to the hearers. When we say that there is no power in the law to save or to make the hearers of the law better and more obedient people, then we do not mean that there is no power in the law at all. The law too is a good work of God. But the power of the law is completely the opposite of the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is to save because the gospel justifies. The power of the law is to kill and to curse because the law condemns. The power of the law is to bring the knowledge of sin, to make sin exceedingly sinful, to cause iniquity to abound, to bring condemnation, and to curse and to damn all who hear the law, in order that all who hear its proclamation become guilty before God and worthy of eternal damnation. Even when the law comes as the guide of the thankful life, the law never comes without condemnation. Believers cannot listen to the law preached without being driven by the law’s condemnation to seek all their righteousness, hope, and joy in Christ and to cast off all their works as filthy rags in the judgment of God.

Whoever preaches the law and the obedience of the Christian to the law as a means to assurance, as the way to assurance, or who points believers for the confirmation of their justification to their works is nothing but a cruel preacher and a minister of spiritual torment and death. Such a preacher puts Christ back into the grave as though he is no living Lord, as though he did not accomplish justification by his death alone, and as though he as a living Lord is unable to assure his people through his Spirit that they are justified for Christ’s sake alone. Such preaching also reveals about the preacher that he does not possess faith and the blessed assurance of justification that comes by faith and that he seeks his assurance elsewhere than in Christ, points the people in the same direction, and robs them of all joy in God, peace of conscience, and hope of eternal life.

But the one who preaches Christ crucified declares the gospel of God with Christ and his righteousness at the center of it. Such a preacher is an instrument of life, comfort, joy, peace, and hope. By that preaching, souls are delivered from death and begin to live.

 

Justification and the Christian Life

That the preaching of justification by faith alone delivers souls from death and causes them to live is true because justification by faith alone is the source of every Christian virtue and blessedness. The theme of Romans the apostle Paul took from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk: The one who is righteous by faith shall live.

I have treated the truth of justification, and now I turn to the life that justification by faith alone gives. Those who are justified by faith live. They live and shall never die. Though they must pass through death, they do so as the living. Immediately they are taken up to Christ their head. Their communion with Christ is never interrupted for a single moment. They begin to live that eternal life already on this side of the grave. That life very simply stated is freedom. They are free from wrath. They are free from the law. They are free from sin and death, and thus they are free to be servants of God and of righteousness.

Life is to live with God and to live unto God. In an opposite way this is true of death. Death is to live apart from God and to live unto oneself. This life with God and living unto God is characterized by freedom. Freedom is to be able to do what one wants to do. Another way to put that is that freedom is the ability to be who you are in your heart. Many do not like that idea of freedom and view it as dangerous, but that is freedom. And so justified believers have freedom. What does that mean for them? They are righteous. They live, and they live unto God by virtue of their justification. The love of God for them is shed abroad in their hearts. They are adopted children of God and belong to his covenant and household. And thus their freedom is to be no longer slaves to the law, slaves to sin and death, and slaves to fear and condemnation but to live with God and to live unto God. That is the deepest and inmost desire of their hearts according to the Spirit of life in Christ that they have received. They long to do the will of God, and they begin to will that will of God as their own. That is who they want to be in their hearts. They want to live with God and to live unto God and to do the will of God.

They are freed from wrath. The wrath of God is against sinners as God works the damnation of sinners for their sins in all their lives and through death brings them down into hell. If we describe the work of wrath in the minds of men, then it is the sense of impending doom because God is angry with them. Wrath came into the world in Adam. He brought an age of wrath. That came to Israel in the law. The law destroyed the Israelites because they never kept the law, and that wrath came to its ultimate expression in the carrying away of the ten tribes and finally in the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity in Babylon.

But the children of God are saved from wrath through Jesus Christ. This does not mean that God was angry with his people, and then his attitude toward them changed through the cross of Christ. God always loved his people; he always viewed them in Christ as righteous, and so his attitude toward them was always in Christ. The proof of this love of God for his people is the cross of Christ.

The meaning of the freedom of God’s people from wrath is that they have freedom from a sense of impending doom and of the anger of God that comes on those who are guilty. God’s people are freed from the condemnation that came on the whole world in Adam and that will in the end consume with fire this world and all who are a part of it. God’s people are freed from the wrath of God that is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, which wrath delivers men over to the bondage of sin, punishes sin with more sin, and brings sinners down into the eternal wasting and desolation of hell. God’s people are righteous in Christ. They are not guilty, and thus there is no wrath for them. They live in the sense of God’s favor and that he is at peace with them, and they hope in eternal life.

God’s people are freed from wrath because they are freed from the law. To be free from the law is a great good. It means that justified Christians do not need to keep the law in order to be right with God and to have God’s blessings and favor. Justified Christians do not need to keep the law to live. They live by faith. Those who are righteous by faith shall live. The law cannot say to justified Christians that they must keep the law to live, for their life comes to them not through the law but through the righteousness of Christ. They are exalted in Christ above the demands and the condemnation of the law that they must keep it in order to live. The law then also cannot curse them and demand death for their disobedience because Christ already died for them and suffered all the curses of the law. They cannot lose their life in Christ or forfeit their state of justification, for their life in Christ does not stand or fall by their obedience but is secure in Christ himself through Christ’s own righteousness. Christians can no more lose their life in Christ or threaten their salvation than Christ could be torn out of heaven and return to the grave. Believers do not live by means of the law at all. Their obedience to the law does not bring their blessedness, and their disobedience to the law cannot curse them. They are free in Christ from the law. They are not under law, but they are under grace. Life reigns in them not by their obedience but by grace through the righteousness of Christ.

And because God’s people are freed from the law, they are freed from the bondage of sin and death. The law brings all who are under it into condemnation. The law makes all who are under the law guilty. Because the law brings into condemnation and the law makes all who are under it guilty, the law sentences them to the bondage of sin and death. So little can the law make anyone good, free, and holy, for the law brings wrath, bondage, and death. But being free from the condemnation of the law, God’s people are free also from the bondage of sin and the sentence of death. They are in Christ made servants of righteousness. They are under grace, and being under grace they are free to live with God and to live unto God.

The source of all this life is the Spirit of life in Christ. The promise of God is the promise of the Spirit of Christ, who comes to us and takes his abode in us. The charge against the doctrine of justification by faith alone without works and apart from repentance is that the doctrine makes men careless in their lives and that they then will never repent. Such a thing is impossible. It is impossible that those who are engrafted into Christ and receive his righteousness freely by God’s grace and without their works should for that reason live carelessly and impenitently. It is impossible, first, because the righteousness that is imputed to God’s people is the righteousness of Christ, and that righteousness demands that those who are righteous be raised to newness of life. It is impossible, second, because the gift of righteousness causes life to reign through the Spirit of Christ, who is given to God’s people. The only ones who can live and the only ones who do live are those who are righteous in Christ by faith alone.

And the power of the Spirit in them explains their joy, comfort, peace, hope, assurance of the love of God, and their lives of obedience to God. Justified believers can no more live carelessly, and their freedom in Christ could not be more construed as licentiousness than the Spirit could be a minister of sin. The Spirit is the minister to justified believers of all the goodness that they have in Christ on account of his righteousness. By the Spirit they have peace with God. By the Spirit they joy in Christ. By the Spirit they have hope that they will inherit eternal life and share in the glory of God. By the Spirit they have the love of God spread abroad in their hearts, so that over against every other testimony and every tribulation and anguish, they have the testimony that God loves them. Such are the blessed lives of the righteous. Those who are righteous by faith shall live.