From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: We come in a study of the Epistle to the Romans this evening to the statement in the fourth chapter, which is found at the end in verses 22 to 25. Verses 22 to 25, in the fourth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

And therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now, it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.

Now, the two previous Fridays we've been considering what the apostle says about the faith of Abraham in verses 18 to 21. And we've gone into it in detail because there we have a description of the real character of faith. And as we considered it in the statements that the apostle makes concerning it, we did realize that we were facing one of the great classical descriptions and accounts of faith, faith in and of itself.

And that is something that is very important for us to realize. The whole of this Christian life is a life of faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. It's faith from beginning to end, and therefore it is very important that we should be clear as to the real nature of faith. And we've considered that both positively and negatively in the terms which the apostle uses.

But the apostle, of course, was interested here in describing, defining faith. Not merely in and of itself. What he is particularly concerned about here is justification by faith. So he has taken up this illustration of Abraham not only to illustrate Abraham's faith in and of itself, but particularly to show us how Abraham was justified before God by faith.

And that his faith was accounted or reckoned unto him for righteousness. And so he puts it like that in the 22nd verse. He says, "And therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness." He's described exactly what it was, how Abraham was confronted by this amazing promise of God about the seed that he should bear. How Abraham saw the day of Christ, and how salvation was to come in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, who would be a descendant of his according to the flesh.

Abraham saw it all. He wasn't weak in faith through looking at his own body or that of Sarah. He didn't stagger in unbelief as he looked at the greatness and immensity of the promise. He just believed it. He gave God the glory and he went on. Now then, that is why we are told it was imputed to him for righteousness. So that this is the statement that Abraham is the first person in whom this great doctrine of justification by faith is first declared and emphasized in an explicit manner.

And we've seen already in the earlier parts of the chapter, the significance of realizing that. Now then, having dealt with that, the apostle goes on in verses 23 to 25 to say one of the most important things that any human being can ever consider and ever face. Martin Luther says of these verses something like this, he says, "In these verses the whole of Christianity is comprehended."

And he is undoubtedly right. This is one of these tremendous statements about justification. Of course, it isn't the only one. We've already found others in earlier parts of the epistle. But as he is, as it were, winding up his mighty argument about justification by faith, he does put it here in this remarkable, glowing and wonderful climax. "In these verses the whole of Christianity is comprehended."

Now then, how does he put it? Well, he puts it like this. I like his method. Now he says, "It was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead." He means this, I am quoting this faith of Abraham, he says, not only to emphasize Abraham's faith, not only even to emphasize the fact that Abraham was justified by faith.

I am doing that, but he says my real interest is not simply to say anything about Abraham. And when the scripture says that Abraham was thus justified by faith and that his faith was imputed to him for righteousness, it is not concerned only with the case of Abraham. The case of Abraham is the case of everybody who is in Christ. The case of Abraham is just this first outstanding example and illustration of God's method of righteousness, of God's way of salvation, of God's whole process of justification by faith.

So that the statement about Abraham, he says, must not be confined to Abraham. We are not only interested in the thing historically. What was true of Abraham is true of every man who has ever or who ever will be reconciled to God. Because this is God's only way of justifying men. This is God's way of reconciling the world unto Himself. There is no other.

So he says, "Don't just look back at Abraham and regard this as something exceptional or strange or odd. It wasn't written for his sake alone, but for us also, for everybody who believes in the way that Abraham believed." And if we do believe as Abraham believed, we shall be justified as Abraham was justified himself. In other words, he comes back and makes one of these great statements with regard to the whole method of justification by faith only.

Very well, let me put it to you like this. What then is this faith that justifies? That's the question, or if you like it in a different form, how can a man be just with God? That's Job's old question. And it is the greatest question a man can ever face. How can a man be right with God? How can a man know that his sins are forgiven? How can one approach God in prayer with confidence? How can one face death without a fear? How can one think of the judgment without terror and alarm?

Those are the questions that are comprehended by this one great question, "How can a man be just with God?" This is, as I say, and as Luther underlines and emphasizes, this is the crucial question. This really is the essence of Christianity. It's not surprising that Luther speaks as he does. It was his rediscovery of this that led to the Protestant Reformation. This is Protestantism. This is evangelical Christianity in its very essence.

And therefore, I say these verses are of supreme importance for us. Very well, let's take it in this form. What is this faith that justifies? And here are the apostle's answers. First, it is a faith that believes in God and glorifies God. You notice how he puts it. He says, "It is written for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised our Lord, that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."

So that this faith about which he's speaking is a faith in God. And as he has indicated in the case of Abraham, it is always a faith that glorifies God. It is a faith that believes His word. That is how we glorify God, we saw, by believing His word, taking it absolutely because it is God's word, in spite of everything else and apart from everything else, and submitting ourselves utterly and entirely to it and to Him.

It is a faith which is concerned above all else to please God and to glorify His great and holy name. Now, I don't want to stop with this, but I have often hinted in passing and I must do so again this evening, that I have sometimes had a fear that there is much that passes as faith which never mentions the name of God at all. It only speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ.

It always prays to the Lord Jesus Christ and always speaks about Him and never speaks about God the Father. And yet you notice that in the apostle's great and essential definition of this faith that justifies, he puts it in terms of believing on God. These things are subtle. And the devil, of course, is not troubled at all as to what we believe as long as he can get us confused.

And so it comes to pass that some people put the whole of their emphasis on God and don't see the need of the Lord Jesus Christ at all. So others are led to put the whole of their emphasis upon the Lord Jesus Christ to the exclusion of God the Father. Isn't it tragic how thus we tend constantly to do violence to the great doctrine of the Trinity? Again, the Holy Spirit is either neglected or else the whole emphasis is put upon Him.

And thus we go astray. We must therefore keep these things in the order in which we find them in the scriptures, and we must remember that everything starts with God, and everything must end with God. All the work of the Lord Jesus Christ is to bring us to God, to reconcile us to God. It is God who sent Him to do that. Therefore, it all must center ultimately upon God Himself.

This is the starting point of this faith. This is the starting point of all Christianity. It doesn't start with me, with my subjective states and feelings or anything that happens to me primarily. Not even, I say, with the Son of God Himself, nor the Holy Spirit, but with God the Father. Believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Very well, there is the starting point. But you notice at once that the apostle goes on in the second place to define that yet more closely.

This faith believes in God particularly in terms of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, he's narrowing it down now because he's really concerned here about the way a man is reconciled to God. So he at once comes to this. "It shall be reckoned to us also, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." Yes, it's a belief in God, but not a belief in God in general.

There are, as I say, people who believe in God in general. But you're not a Christian merely by believing in God in general. You can be an orthodox Jew, you can be a Mohammedan. You can be one of a number of other things. So that isn't Christianity. Christianity, this justifying faith, is a faith that believes in God in particular in terms of the fact that He raised up the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

Now then, this is a particular faith. What he means is this, that God has said something special and peculiar in the resurrection. Now we remember that Abraham was justified in this way, God made a statement to Abraham. Abraham had already believed in general in God, but there came a day when God said something special and peculiar to Abraham. And Abraham believed that. That's the thing, I say, that justified him. It was that that was reckoned to him for righteousness.

In exactly the same way, argues the apostle, God has said something peculiar in raising His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. And this justifying faith is that that has belief in that. So it's not a mere general belief in God. It is this peculiar belief in the word of God that comes to us through the resurrection. Now, you see the implication of this.

You see the all-importance of believing in the fact of the resurrection. Isn't it extraordinary how people can ever wander away from that? There are those today who teach and claim to be teachers of Christian doctrine. But they don't believe in the literal, physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, according to the apostle here, and not only here, you cannot have true Christian faith unless you believe in the fact of the literal, physical resurrection.

He says, "This faith is a faith in Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." It isn't, he says, a faith which just believes that Jesus, who was crucified and died and buried, is still existing in the spiritual realm. That isn't what he's saying. He isn't teaching merely the persistence of the life of our Lord beyond the veil. No, no, he's particular. It is this faith in Him who has raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.

Now, you know, you remember, that in the great 15th chapter of First Corinthians, the apostle argues this out at great length. He says, "If this is not a fact, if it is not a fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was raised in the body from the grave on the morning of the third day," he says, "our preaching is all in vain and your faith is in vain, you are yet in your sins."

Well, now he's saying that here. The fact of the resurrection is basic and central and vital to Christianity. It's not a matter that we can even allow to be discussed. It is crucial. The apostle puts it here at the very center. You remember how in the 10th chapter of this mighty epistle, he really says the same thing again. He says here that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

There it is again, in the 10th chapter and in the ninth verse. Well, now then, let's go on. This man, this Christian, this justified person, this man to whom righteousness is imputed, is a man who believes in God. He believes particularly in what God has said to him in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That brings me to my third point. What then does he believe that God has said in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Here's the crucial question.

There God has made this peculiar declaration. What is it? The answer is in verse 25. You notice how each one leads to the next. What is God saying in the resurrection? He's saying this, that Christ was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. Now then, let me analyze this. What does God say in raising Jesus from the dead? Well, the first thing he says is that Jesus is the Lord.

You notice the terms, "If we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord." Not our savior here, but our Lord, Jesus our Lord. In other words, he's saying, "The resurrection is a proclamation of the fact that Jesus is the Lord." In other words, when God raised Him up from the dead, He was making a proclamation. And the proclamation He was making was, "This is My only begotten Son." Now, of course, the apostle's already said it. You notice how he goes on repeating himself.

You must repeat yourself. We are all so liable to go astray. We think we know a thing, the next moment we deny it, as Peter did. You see there at Antioch and as Barnabas tended to do this dissimulation. The apostle has said all this in the fourth chapter of the in the fourth verse of the first chapter. He says, "His gospel is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead."

The great proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God. Well, now he's just saying it all over again. And surely we must be clear about this. It is the resurrection that finally establishes the fact that Jesus is God. That Jesus is the Son of God, the eternal Son of God. It's the final proof of the doctrine of the person of Christ, the two natures in the one person. Here it is. So that's the first great thing it says.

So, who is the Christian? Who is the man who is reconciled to God and justified by faith? He is a man who innately must believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. He believes it through the resurrection. He's clear about this. And you must be. You can't be a Christian unless you're clear about the person of our Lord, that He is the Lord of glory, the eternal Son of God, one in substance with the Father, the whole marvel and mystery of the incarnation again.

But wait a minute, the apostle then brings us to these two other things. The next is that this selfsame Jesus was delivered for our offenses. What a statement. We must take it bit by bit and word by word. You notice that he doesn't merely say that Jesus died. It is a fact that Jesus died, but that isn't the thing that the Christian believes. The Christian knows that Jesus died, yes, but the whole question is, what is your view of that death?

He doesn't merely say then that He died. And here I regret once more, I must say it, the Revised Standard Version translates it like this, he says, "Was put to death." "Who was put to death for our offenses." But you know, Paul did not write that He was put to death for our offenses. He was put to death for our offenses, but the apostle says more than that here. This word "delivered" is right. He was delivered up for our offenses.

And you see, it's the same word exactly that you've got in the eighth chapter of this epistle in verse 32. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." Now, there Revised Standard Version does not say "put to death for us all." It's inconsistent with itself. But why, why, why take anything from this great word "delivered"? Well, I'm afraid I've already indicated to you the answer to that question.

Because what it means is this, he really was delivered up to death. And by whom? Well, the 32nd verse in the eighth chapter tells us, "He, God, that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." It was God who delivered Him up. And that is what the apostle is saying here, "Christ was delivered up for our offenses." And it was God the Father who delivered them up delivered Him up for our offenses. So, let's note this.

He didn't merely die. He was given over to death. He was handed over to death. That's what it means. And it was God who handed Him over. The next word, of course, is the word "for." "Delivered for our offenses," which means "on account of our offenses." "For," it's a very strong word and most important in the whole matter of the atonement. It was on account of our offenses that God delivered up His only begotten Son to death.

And then the word "offenses," which means "transgression," which means "trespasses," "violations of law," "deliberate rebellion and disobedience," "trespass," "transgression," "offense." So that you see, the apostle is narrowing down his definition. We believe in God. Yes, but we believe in particular in what God is declaring and doing in the resurrection. And what He's doing there is to say that Jesus of Nazareth is His only begotten Son.

He's raising Him from the dead and proclaiming Him to be His Son. That immediately raises this question, "If Jesus is the Son of God, why did He ever die?" Why does the Son of God die on a cross? Couldn't He have avoided that? Why did He die upon the cross? The answer is, says the apostle, that God sent Him to the cross on account of your offenses. You who believe in Him, He has died for your sins. He has been delivered up for our transgressions, for our trespasses.

Now, this is, of course, the great classical doctrine of the atonement once more. We've already had it in the third chapter in verses 24, 25, etc. "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 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," etc. The apostle comes back to it again, and any Christian must always be coming back to it, for it's here.

He sees the way in which God has forgiven him and saved him and reconciled him unto Himself. "God has delivered up His own Son for our sins." Listen to him saying it in Second Corinthians 5:21. "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." But the prophet Isaiah had already said it. It's all there in Isaiah 53. "God hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." "It has pleased the Lord to bruise Him."

Delivered up for our offenses, what does it mean? Well, this, that He was delivered up to the punishment and the guilt that our offenses deserve. He has taken our offenses and put them on Him, and He has punished them in Him. Ah, but you say it was men who crucified Christ. I know, they were the instruments. But as Peter proves and demonstrates in his great sermon on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2, though it was done by the cruel hands of men and the rulers of the Jews, it was according to the predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

It was God who sent Christ to the cross. That is why Christ said Himself that He must go there. He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, and nobody and nothing could dissuade Him. It was the only way. It was God who delivered Him up, laid on Him our sins, made Him to be sin for us. All those terms mean exactly the same thing. Our Lord was agreeable. He submitted Himself willingly, voluntarily.

And there in a sense, therefore, you can say that He took them all upon Himself. But the apostle is here putting it the other way round and emphasizing it. God laid them upon Him. As the Judge eternal, and dealt with them there once and forever. Now then, this is what the Christian believes. This is the thing, you see, that comes out of the resurrection. He's Son of God. Why did He die? Well, He died because this is the way, the only way to deal with sins.

And God has dealt with our sins there. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Very well, but let's go on. The next step is, of course, this last one, "And was raised again for our justification." What does this mean? Well, you will notice that in the next chapter, in the ninth verse, the apostle says much more then, "Being now justified by His blood."

Is he contradicting himself? Elsewhere we are told that we are justified by the death of Christ. Here we are told that we are justified by the resurrection. Is there a contradiction? Well, patently there isn't. You cannot separate the death and the resurrection. Some people foolishly do that. Some people try to say that in Corinth our Lord the Paul only preached the death of Christ and didn't preach the resurrection. It's just nonsense.

Because he said, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." They say he didn't preach the resurrection there. And yet that whole epistle is full of the resurrection. And he reminds them in the 15th chapter that he preached the death and the resurrection. Of course, you can't separate these things. They they belong together. There is an emphasis on the death. There is an emphasis on the resurrection. What is this emphasis on the resurrection?

Well, it is this, the resurrection is the proclamation of the fact that God is fully and completely satisfied with the work that His Son did upon the cross. You remember how our Lord at the end said, "It is finished." And He knew that it was finished. And the people heard Him saying, "It is finished." Yes, but He died and His body was put in a grave. So they said to one another, "It is finished."

By which they meant at that point, oh, it was the end. We had thought that He was going to be the One who was going to deliver us and bring in the kingdom, but it's finished. He's dead, He's buried. And then He rose from the grave. And in the rising from the grave, God, in raising Him from the dead, is making this tremendous proclamation, that the Son has borne the full punishment of our sins, that He is fully satisfied.

That His law is fully and completely satisfied. If He had not raised Him from the grave, we could draw no other conclusion than this, that He was not able to bear the punishment of the guilt of our sins, that it was too much even for Him, and that He had been killed, and that that was the end. But He rises from the dead, and in bringing Him up, God is proclaiming, "He's done it all."

It's full expiation. "I am completely satisfied. I have poured out My wrath upon Him, and therefore I and the law which I have promulgated are completely satisfied." So the resurrection declares that, and it is in that sense that He has risen again for our justification. It's there we see it so clearly, the work was done on the cross, but here is the proclamation that it's enough.

Furthermore, it declares this, that our Lord, having risen from the dead, and having appeared for 40 days to chosen witnesses, ascended into heaven, or as it's put in Hebrews chapter 4, in verses 14, 15 and 16, "He has passed through the heavens and has entered into the holiest of all." You remember that's referenced back to the Old Testament ceremonial. The High Priest, once a year, used to go in with the blood of the sacrificed animals to represent the people and to make atonement for their sins, and he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat.

And the people were all waiting outside. The question was, "Is God going to accept this offering, this sacrifice? Will He accept this blood of atonement?" And they'd wait and listen, suddenly they'd hear the jingling of the bells at the bottom of the robe of the High Priest, and they knew he was coming out, and they knew that all was well, that he'd been accepted. Well, Christ is our great High Priest. He's entered into heaven, offering His own blood. And there He remains, and the fact that He remains there is a proof that God has fully accepted Him and His offering on our behalf.

And there He ever liveth to make intercession for us. There He stands ever, proclaiming that He's borne the guilt and the punishment, and thus He makes intercession for us. But more than that, having gone in, He has received on our behalf, and as our representative, all the great and the gift, and the rich gifts that God has for His people. So that every grace we receive is from Christ.

You remember how John puts it in the prologue of his gospel, "Of His fullness have we received, and grace for grace." All the gifts of God for His people are put into Christ. He has gone in and has received them all for us, and we receive them from the resurrection proclaims all this. Very well then, this is the statement that the resurrection makes. It proclaims He is the Son of God, that He died, and had to die to make atonement for our sins, and that furthermore, He has risen, and God in raising Him up is making this grand proclamation.

It is this, if you like, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. This is God's way of salvation. This is God's way of saving us. This is what a Christian therefore believes. He believes that the only way of salvation is the way that God has provided. That He has sent His only begotten Son from heaven to earth as Jesus of Nazareth. That He has put Him under the law, that He kept the law perfectly, that He has then laid our sins and their guilt upon Him, and has punished it and dealt with it there once and forever.

And that He is fully satisfied that the work is complete. That is this faith, says the apostle, about which I'm speaking. As Abraham of old believed what God said to him, you and I must believe this, for this is what God is saying in the resurrection. This is peculiar Christian faith. This is the thing that makes a man a Christian. Not only belief in God, not just living a good life, no, no. It is to see that your entire salvation is in Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and risen again from the dead.

This proclamation of God about salvation, we believe that. That is the thing that is accounted to us for righteousness. Or if I may borrow language that the apostle uses elsewhere, it's this. The Christian believes that God has imputed, reckoned, His sins to Jesus Christ, and that He has also reckoned the righteousness of Jesus Christ to him. So that justification is this. It is the declaration of God Himself upon the throne that all who believe in Christ in this way are freely forgiven.

That all their sins are blotted out. More, that they are clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God is declaring here in this resurrection that any man who believes in that way in the Lord Jesus Christ is just and righteous in His sight. As if he had never sinned at all. God declares this. That is justification by faith. It's legal, it's forensic. It is the declaration of God to us as we are in our sins, because let me remind you that the fifth verse of this chapter has already told us, "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness."

So the Christian is a man who believes what God tells him there in bringing Christ from the dead, that as he believes in and looks to and trusts in Christ only for his salvation, he stands before God, fully and freely forgiven, in Christ righteous, a child of God, in Christ. That is it, says the apostle. Now, let me, as I close, just put it in a little more practical way for you, because I must do this because the apostle has brought in this case of Abraham.

And I must bring in the case of Abraham at this point in order to show it in detail and in practice. This faith of Abraham, we saw, did the following things. It believed the promise of God. It believed the promise of God solely and entirely on the word of God. It believed it in spite of everything to the contrary. It was confident and assured of it, being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was able also to perform, and it therefore acted on it.

And you know, my friends, Christian faith is like that and must be like that. Now, I reminded you last Friday night that there is such a thing as a weak faith and a strong faith, but these elements must be there, otherwise it isn't Christian faith. So it comes to this. The Christian believer, the Christian man, is a man obviously who ceases to justify, or to try to justify himself by his works, or by anything else.

Do you want to know for certain therefore whether you've got justifying faith this evening? Here is the way to answer it. Are you looking in any sense to yourself? Are you in any sense relying even to the slightest extent upon any good you've ever done or anything that you've ever been? Are you even relying upon your own faith? Do you think it's because you believe that you are saved? Is it that? Is that your righteousness? If it is, you're not saved, you're not a Christian, because the Christian is a man who looks only and entirely to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

His whole righteousness is in Christ. Christian faith is a faith that looks only to the Lord Jesus Christ and to nothing and to nobody else. That's the first thing. But let me emphasize it by putting it like this. The Christian is a man, like Abraham of old, who believes this word of God in spite of everything that he knows to be true about himself. Now, remember how we were told there about Abraham, "Being not weak in faith, he considered his own body now dead when he was about an hundred years old, neither neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb."

And you remember how we worked it out. Abraham believed what God said to him about his son, his seed, his progeny, in spite of the fact that he knew he was 99 years old, and in spite of the fact that he knew that Sarah's womb was dead, and that in a natural sense she couldn't possibly have a child, in spite of all he knew about himself and Sarah, he believed the word of God. What's justifying faith? It's this. It is the faith that believes what God says in Christ in spite of all I know about my past sins.

In spite of all I know about my present sinfulness. In spite of the fact that I know that I've still got an evil nature within me, that I can say with Paul, "In me, that is to say, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." It is something that believes the word of God in spite of it. It believes the word of God in spite of knowing its own weakness, its own proneness to fall, and its own proneness to fail. That is justifying faith.

Now, we must remember this analogy of Abraham. How helpful it is. Abraham's faith was a faith that held onto the word of God and gave glory to God in spite of all he knew to be true about himself. And your faith and mine must be the same. It's no use my saying, "Ah, yes, I'd like to believe that, but I've been a terrible sinner." If you say that, and if you bring that "but" in, you're not a Christian at all. The Christian is a man who says, "Yes. Alas, it's true."

"I have been a vile and a horrible and a desperate sinner. Yet I believe that I stand righteous in the presence of God in Christ." He can face his past. He can look into himself and see the vileness, the pollution of sin still remaining. And when the devil says, "Do you think that you have a right to say you're a Christian?" he says, "Yes, I can. It's in spite of this being true. I know I am righteous in Christ." He doesn't look at himself, you see. He looks entirely out to Christ and all that He is in Christ.

He believes this word about the resurrection, the proclamation of Christ of God in raising Christ from the dead. He looks out at that in spite of all this. And if you can't do that, you haven't got justifying faith. Faith is this protest against every voice that assails us within and from hell. It stands with Paul in chapter 8 and says, "Who shall bring anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?" In the light of that, there's no one, there's nothing.

That is it. It is in spite, I say, of what we know about ourselves. So, my dear friend, stop talking about your past sins. Stop talking about your present sinfulness. In this matter of justification, you mustn't mention them. You just stand as you are in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and in Him, believing the staggering word of God. And this final thing, that he does not stagger at the greatness of the promise.

The devil will come to you, and voices within you will say, "How can I possibly say a thing like that? Look at this life I'm coming into the Sermon on the Mount, the lives of the saints, and the life of Jesus Christ, and I'm so weak and I'm so constantly falling. How can I?" Well, you just say, "I believe this word of the resurrection. I believe the old word spoken unto Abraham." The man was dead as it were physically and so was Sarah's womb. God said, "You'll have a child between you." He believed it. And I believe it, that though I'm weak and helpless and hopeless and vile and without strength, this God of the resurrection, this God who could bring to naught the things bring to bring to life the things that are not, who quickeneth the dead and calleth those things which be not as though they were, can call into life this new man in me, and give me strength and power.

That's the Christian's faith. This is justifying faith. It is a faith that dares to believe on the bare word of God that one day I shall be faultless and blameless, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that He which hath begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, I say, a faith that can stand confidently and defy everybody and everything. It is a faith that no longer fears death and the grave.

Indeed, it is a faith that no longer fears the judgment, because it knows that it has passed from judgment unto life in Christ Jesus. It sounds as if it were boasting. It is extreme humility, because it looks out of itself altogether and entirely unto the Lord Jesus Christ. It is that which rests upon the word, the proclamation, the declaration of God, when He raised Jesus our Lord again from the dead. And so, you see, it is a declaration that is made by men of differing schools of theology.

Are we saying at the beginning John Wesley's translation of Zinzendorf's hymn, "Jesus, Thy robe of righteousness, my beauty is, my glorious dress. Midst flaming worlds in this arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head." "In the flaming worlds that are coming, the end of time, the last judgment, in the midst of the flaming worlds, in this arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head." Bold shall I stand in thy great day, the day of judgment. "For who ought to my charge shall lay? Fully through Thee absolved I am from sin and fear, from guilt and shame. Jesus be endless praise to Thee. Who has boundless mercy hath for me for me a full atonement made and everlasting ransom paid." Toplady, as I'm never tired of quoting, says exactly the same thing in his words.

"The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do. My Savior's obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view." Like Abraham, my beloved friend, never look at yourself again and all that is so true of you. It is in spite of that. It is what God has done in Christ. Look to that. Rest on that. Be confident in that. Hold up your head with boldness. Yea, I say it with reverence. Go even into the presence of God with a holy boldness and in the full assurance of faith, not in yourself, but in your mediator, in your great High Priest, in the One whom God raised from the dead in order to let you know that your sins were dealt with there once and forever, and that He looks upon you as His dear child. Oh, may God give us all this full assurance, this boldness of justifying faith. Amen.