Justification by Faith (III)

Galatians 2:15-16

April 5, 1998

 

I do not know if we realize the enormity of this doctrine of justification by faith alone.  It is clearly the central teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But it is a truth that was gradually watered down somewhere in the fourth and fifth centuries.  For the most part, the organized church throughout the dark ages and middle ages abandoned this truth for a false gospel.  Thankfully, there were those few who stood firm for the gospel and justification by faith alone, many at the loss of their lives.  But until the sixteenth century this great doctrine seemed to have been totally forgotten if not ignored.  Then the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther re-discovered the gospel as proclaimed by Peter, John, Paul, and even our Lord Jesus Christ.  This re-discovery shook the world!

 

Here is how Martin Luther described justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone.

But He made satisfaction. He is the Righteous One.  This is my defense.  He died for me. He made His righteousness to be mine, and made my sins to be His own. Because if He made my sin His own, then I can have it now no longer, and I am free. If, moreover, He had made His righteousness mine, I am righteous with the same righteousness as He is. But my sin cannot swallow Him up, but is swallowed up in the infinite abyss of His righteousness since He is God, blessed forever.  And so, God is greater than the accuser. God is the defender, the heart is the accuser. What, is that the proportion? So, even so it is.  Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Nobody.  Why? Because it is Jesus Christ, who also is God, who died, nay rather who is risen again. If God be for us, then who can be against us [quoted by John Armstrong, Reformation & Revival Journal, Fall 1997, 19].

We join with the Apostle Paul in the first century, Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, and countless others since that time, to stand upon this great rock of truth:  "a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus."  Here is the heart of the gospel message.  We are not dealing in theological wranglings when we address the subject of justification.  We are uncovering the heart of the gospel and the one foundation stone of our faith.

 

I.  Justification in personal terms

 

After speaking of justification in general terms, now the Apostle puts his finger on the personal life in relationship to Jesus Christ.  The gospel is never to be thought of as something vague and impersonal.  Instead, it addresses the only truth of how a sinner can have a right standing with a just God.  Here we find Paul speaking of his own faith in Jesus Christ so that he might be justified.

 

1.  A joyful confession

 

After stating the clear truth that no one is justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, Paul makes a joyful confession.  There is an emphatic "we" to express, "Even we have believed in Christ Jesus."  To translate it in  more of a literal sense, Paul is saying, 'Even we, yes, we have believed in Christ Jesus'.  He wanted the Galatians to understand that he was not hanging onto his own works as merit before God.  Nor was he telling them something that he, as a former Pharisee, did not apply to his own life.

 

This reminds us of the personal need for faith in Jesus Christ.  When we speak of the need to believe in Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we are not addressing groups for mass conversions.  We speak to the individual.  Yes, the gospel is applicable to the group, but none of us are justified by proxy through group involvement!  It is only when we individually, personally come to faith in Jesus Christ that we are justified.

 

Let me be more specific.  There are many people who grow up in church or with Christian parents or they associate with a Christian youth group and because of this association, they believe that they are in a right standing with God.  They treat salvation much the way a group would a large umbrella.  They thing that as long as they are under the Christian umbrella with a group of serious-minded Christians, they are okay with God.  It is the concept that God is obligated to bless them because of their associations.  But what Paul is pointing out is the personal exercise of faith.  "Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ Jesus."

 

It is not your associations with Christians that justifies you before God.  It is the personal exercise of faith in Jesus Christ that opens the door for you to receive the saving work of Christ.  Do you know Jesus Christ personally?  Can you make the same joyful confession as did Paul?

 

2.  A focused faith

 

Paul uses both verb and noun to express the necessity of faith in Christ.  "Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ."  Faith states the reality of trusting Christ, while believe shows faith exercised in personal fashion.  But what is this faith?

 

Obviously, Paul is not speaking of a generic, even vague, belief in a higher being.  So many fail to understand this.  They think that as long as they believe "something," then that is acceptable to God.  I have even heard some say, 'It doesn't matter what you believe, just as long as you believe something'.  Within our context we see that Paul is reproving the Galatians for a wrong kind of faith--one that believed in a man's own ability to gain merit by the works of the law.

 

So what we can conclude is that faith in general is not what the apostle is claiming to exercise.  He is speaking of a very definite, focused sort of faith.  We typically refer to it as "saving faith" to distinguish it from a false faith.

 

Timothy George explains the nature of saving faith quite clearly.  "Saving faith is a radical gift from God, never a mere human possibility (Eph 2:8-9).  Faith is not an achievement that earns salvation anymore than circumcision is.  Rather faith is the evidence of saving grace manifested in the renewal of the heart by the Holy Spirit" [NAC, Galatians, 196].

 

There is an important distinction we must make.  It is not our faith that is the instrument of our justification. No, that belongs to Jesus Christ and His perfect righteousness and substitutionary death.  You will notice that both the prepositions "through" and "by" express this.  This is more  clearly seen in the Greek construction.  I bring this out lest anyone get the idea that a certain proficiency in faith saves you.  You might struggle and struggle to achieve a level of faith that you think will gain sufficient merit before God.  But the whole point of saving faith is that it is a gift of God to us, an evidence of the grace of God granted to us by the Holy Spirit.  We believe because the Holy Spirit has given us the grace to believe!  It is not the size of your faith that is important.  It is the focus of your faith that matters.

 

Here Paul reminds us that our faith is "in Christ Jesus."  What does that mean?  To believe in Christ Jesus is to place your trust in a living Person as He is revealed in the gospel.  My friend, you are not coming to a concept or a religious idea, but to a living Person, Jesus Christ the Lord!

 

Do you believe Him?  To believe in Christ Jesus is to trust in the reality that He is God who became a man, that he might be your Mediator.  He is not half-God and half-man.  He is not some mingling of deity and humanity.  But He is at once both 'very God of very God and very man of very man'.  Do you believe this revelation of Jesus Christ?

 

Some stop at this point.  They believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, but they do not trust in His righteousness for their standing with God.  Let's consider this for a moment.

 

We have seen that the root idea in justification is righteousness.  It is a forensic or legal term which speaks of our legal standing before a just God.  The righteousness of Jesus Christ on our behalf is two-fold.  First, there is the active righteousness of Jesus Christ.  This refers to Jesus Christ's perfect obedience to the law of  God on our behalf.  God is a God of law whose very nature demands that for any to have a right standing with Him, they must conform perfectly to the law of His character.  God's holiness and righteousness demand absolute conformity to His law if a person is to be treated as righteous before Him.  David expressed it like this, "Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?  And who may stand in His holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully" (Psa. 24:3-4).  Again, in Psalm 15, David tells us the kind of righteousness which God demands according to His nature.

O Lord, who may abide in Thy tent?  Who may dwell on Thy holy hill?  He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.  He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; he swears to his own heart, and does not change; he does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.  He who does these things will never be shaken.

Do any of us qualify to stand in the presence of the Lord?  Can we honestly claim to have clean hands and a pure heart, integrity in all of our ways, proper treatment of our neighbor, truthfulness in our dealings, no swaying by evil?  To our shame we must admit that we are transgressors of the law.  Our whole nature is bent in rebellion against God and His holy character.  So how can we stand before God?  Even if our unrighteousness is removed, that still leaves us with no righteousness to our account for standing before God.  There's nothing to commend us to God as righteous.  This is where we look to Jesus Christ as our righteousness!  As Paul put it to the church in Rome, "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Rom. 10:4).  And to the Corinthians he wrote, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" (I Cor. 1:30).  His righteousness has become our very own!  It is imputed to us as if we had personally obeyed every demand of God.

 

But there is still the problem of our sin, our transgressions, and our enmity with God.  God's justice must be satisfied against us.  Remember, we have seen that God cannot not be just.  He must satisfy the demands of His own just character.  So here, in the second place, we have what is called the passive righteousness of Jesus Christ.  This refers to that point on the cross when Jesus Christ bore our sins and all of the enmity that separated us from God.  He literally became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (II Cor. 5:21).  Then, on our behalf or vicariously, Jesus Christ received all of the wrath of God which was due to us as sinners.  He satisfied all the demands of divine justice as Jesus Christ propitiated for us.  The writer of Hebrews testifies, "Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:17).  God accepted the bloody death of our Mediator, Jesus Christ, as a complete satisfaction for the demands divine justice.  Through Jesus Christ, the enmity between us and God caused by our sin has been removed.

 

Now let's come back to saving faith.  We are not trusting in an idea but a Person.  And not just any religious person!  We are trusting in the God who became a man, so that as man He might  fulfill all of the righteousness which God demanded in the law; and so that as man He might bear all of the judgment of God which we legally deserve as sinners.  This is Who Paul said he was trusting for justification!  Do you stand with him in total reliance upon Jesus Christ and His active and passive righteousness?

 

All that Jesus Christ has effected for sinners does not become operative in our lives until we individually exercise faith in Him.  "Faith, of course, is not merely an intellectual adherence to a set of propositions," writes Leon Morris, "but the response of the whole man to the divine act on Calvary, as he trustfully commits himself to his Creator, and rests in Him for time and for eternity" [The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 286-287].  Are you trusting in Jesus Christ and the divine act of satisfaction which He carried out at Calvary?

 

We are not speaking of a light matter when we ask of your faith in Christ.  For trusting Jesus Christ in order to be justified is an eternal necessity.

 

3.  An eternal necessity

 

There are no multiple choices available when it comes to eternal salvation.  We are so accustomed to multiple choices in our society that multitudes have shifted this same way of thinking into their relationship with God.  We have choices on restaurants, choices on education, choices in healthcare, even choices in churches, so we just naturally would assume that we can have various choices of how to be right with God.  As a matter of fact, many people think we can also have our choices of gods!  We can attribute to God whatever characteristics we want Him to have, whether or not He has revealed Himself in that way.

 

In light of this, when you tell a person that there is only one way to God and that way is through Jesus Christ and His bloody death on behalf of sinners, many will balk.  They do not like this kind of religion nor see the need for it.  But Paul wrote, "Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ."  I point your attention to the clause which states the reason for believing or trusting in Jesus Christ; it is "that we may be justified by faith in Christ."  Here we can see both the present effect and the eternal consequence of justification.

 

The present effect of justification is that we are affected ethically.  In our last study on this text we saw that justification is primarily a forensic term.  But it also carries with it ethical connotations.  That is, justification in Christ affects your whole life.  This is where we see the relationship of justification to sanctification.  These terms speak of two different acts in the life of the believer, but they are not divorced from each other.  If you have one you have the other.  Leon Morris again expresses this with great clarity.

It is quite true that sanctification and justification should not be sundered, but rather kept in the closest of relations to one another.  But this does not mean that we are to confuse the one with the other.  If a man is truly justified by faith, then that faith will surely lead him in the power of God to a new life, and the one experience may well be held to imply the other.  But that is not the same as saying that the two experiences are in essence the same [291].

This is a big part of Paul's argument later in this epistle, when he addresses the ethical side or the lifestyles of those who have been justified by faith.  And when we study the book of Romans we see that the Apostle's whole argument for holy living is grounded in the justifying work of Jesus Christ.  In other words, you do not wait until heaven before the work of justification shows up in the life of the believer.  There is the immediate or present effect in which you are made a new creature in Jesus Christ, with a new standing before God, a new righteousness to commend you to God, a new Life dwelling in you, a new desire for holiness and righteousness of the truth, a new hungering for righteousness.  The ethical demands made upon Christians are always based upon the fact of their justification by faith.  You never find the New Testament manipulating the believer or putting him on a guilt trip in order to produce a certain kind of lifestyle.  Instead the Scripture spells out who we are in Christ and what is ours through the work of Jesus Christ, then tells us, 'Now that you see what Christ has done for you, go on living as those who are alive from the dead'.  This truth rings loudly in Colossians 1:21-22, "And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach."  Note the reason for Christ's redemptive work: "in order to present you before God holy and blameless and beyond reproach."  There are clear ethical realities in our lives when we have been justified by faith in Christ Jesus.

 

The eternal consequence of justification is that we shall forever have a right standing with God.  Paul spoke of justification as a great finality.  For the perfection of the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf has given to us a complete justification.  It is not a conditional justification based upon our own merits.  It is a justification or righteousness based upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  And it lasts forever!  Hear the words of our Lord in describing the eternal reality of our relationship to Him:

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand (John 10:27-28).

 

Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He may give eternal life.  And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent....Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world (John 17:1-3, 24).

When you are confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ, you are dealing with forever.  With the hedonistic spirit of this age, in which man lives for the pleasure of  today, it seems that most people have lost sight of the eternity before us.  They want to avoid thinking about the fact that this life will soon be over and eternity will begin for all of us.  Our eternity will either be spent in the glorious presence of the Lord in Heaven or in the fullness of God's wrath in Hell.  It is only those who have been justified by faith in Christ Jesus who will live forever in the presence of the Lord and His eternal blessing.  Have you thought about that great day in which you will enter into eternity?  My friend, do not try to deny it, for your few years upon this earth is just a speck of dust in comparison to your existence in eternity.  Yet, it is only in this life that you can be prepared for eternity.

 

I think that as a pastor, the most difficult thing in the world for me is to conduct a funeral service of someone who gave no thought for eternity.  They lived their lives for the present and ignored the great day in which they would leave this realm and enter into the realm of the forever.  Many decide that they will take their chances before the throne of God.  They leave this world unprepared to stand before God, so that the only recourse for them is eternal banishment to the wrath of God.  You dare not presume that all will be well with you before God.  You dare not trust in your own works of righteousness, "since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."  Your only hope for eternity is found in casting all of your confidence for this life and the next in Jesus Christ and His righteousness on your behalf.

 

II.  Justification in review

 

Our text in verse sixteen is one of those verses that must be unpacked.  For in it the Apostle Paul states two basic truths three times over:  no one is justified by the works of the Law and it is only through faith in Christ Jesus that a person is justified.  He looks at it in general, then in specific, personal terms, and now in the latter part of the text, he views justification in review.  Just in case we are still confused about the matter, the Apostle tells us, "...and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."

 

Why does Paul go to such great lengths to repeat this truth over and over?  I believe it is because of our natural propensity for trusting in ourselves and our own merit for our standing with God.  There is a battle raging today throughout the world in the heads and hearts of multitudes of people, who just will not accept the fact that they can do absolutely nothing to justify themselves before God!

 

1.  Universal statement

 

It is a universal statement:  "since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."  Paul uses this term, "flesh," to describe the mass of humanity.  Timothy George points out that flesh "was the realm of human existence that was most vulnerable to the ravages of sin.  Flesh was not evil in itself since it was created by a good God, but in its fallen state it was subject to the debilitating forces of desire, decay, and death" [NAC, Galatians, 190].  Paul is saying that the flesh is not capable in any way of doing something to be justified.  After describing his pedigree in Judaism with all of his religious efforts, Paul wrote,

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith (Philippians 3:7-9).

Do you realize what Paul is stating?  He is saying that he looks at all of the great things that he did, everything that the most spiritual men of his day would have said was positive and beneficial, and Paul says it is just "rubbish."  Why is this so?  Because there is no power to justify residing within any person.  The great Reformer, Martin Luther, brought this out so clearly in his commentary on Galatians:

Flesh...according to Paul, signifieth all the righteousness, wisdom, devotion, religion, understanding and will, that is possible to be in a natural man:  so that if a man be never so righteous according to reason, and the law of God, yet with all this righteousness, works, merit, devotion, and religion, he is not justified [Commentary on Galatians, 74].

Is there anything to which you cling beside Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross?  Then you are resting in a false hope.  You are in the middle of the ocean on an air raft with a fist-sized hole in it.  You think that you are afloat because of all the things you consider merit before God.  But your raft will not carry you in the ocean of God's judgments.  It is a universal statement, "since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."

 

2.  Authoritative declaration

 

No flesh or no human being with all of his best abilities, can justify himself.  Not now and not ever!  "Since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified," Paul declares to us.  We need not limit our thinking on "works of the Law" to strictly viewing the Ten Commandments.  Here Paul uses the phrase, "works of the Law," to refer to the broad spectrum of commands upon which the Jews devoted their attention.  It includes the ceremonial expressions of the Law, the practice of circumcision, the holy days, the sacrifices.

 

Someone might argue, 'I don't even know all of those laws!  How can I possibly be trying to justify myself by things which I don't even understand?'  By way of application, let me express it like this:  anything which we do to gain approval with God which attempts to circumvent the necessity of the cross of Christ, falls within the range of the works of the Law, at least in terms of application.  Here is where people do all sorts of things in order to convince themselves that God is now obligated to them.  Some even go through great suffering or difficult ordeals in life with the view that because they have suffered so much in this life, God is now obligated to give them a right standing with Him in eternity.  Yet such a view denies the depths of one's own sinfulness and the degree of man's enmity against God.  It is a denial of the infinite righteousness and holiness of God.  It is actually a subtle form of idolatry.  For when a person sets his own wisdom above the declaration of God in the gospel, he is denying God and exalting himself as wiser than God.

 

Conclusion

 

"We may or may not like imagery with forensic associations.  But the heart of the Christian gospel is that, while no works of our hands will avail to make us acceptable before God, we are acceptable if we come in faith on the grounds of God's own action in Christ" [Leon Morris, 287].  Here is the wonder of grace; that God accepts us, not on the basis of what we have done, but on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf.  It is His righteousness, a righteousness alien to us as sinners, which God makes available to us by faith in Christ.

 

Have you been going about seeking to establish your own righteousness to give you a right standing with God?  We have seen the clear declaration of God's Word that we have nothing to offer God which can in any way justify us before Him.  But God has provided His own satisfaction for His justice and the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ for you.  By faith and faith alone you can lay hold of what God in Christ has accomplished for sinners.  Will you who still stand under the wrath of God today, will you find an eternal refuge in Jesus Christ?  Leave aside your self-trust and your own claims to righteousness.  Cast them upon the rubbish-heap, knowing that nothing you do can save you.  And cast yourself upon Jesus Christ as your only claim to righteousness before God.  He is more than ready to save all who will come to Him in faith, turning from sin, and trusting in Him alone.

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