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."

The two previous Fridays we've been considering what the Apostle says about the faith of Abraham in verses 18 to 21. We've gone into it in great detail because there we have a description of the real character of faith. 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. That is something that it 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 is faith from beginning to end. Therefore, it is very important that we should be clear as to the real nature of faith. We've considered that both positively and negatively in the terms which the Apostle uses. But the Apostle was interested here in describing and defining faith not merely in and of itself. What he is particularly concerned about here is justification by faith.

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. 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.

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. That is why we are told it was imputed to him for righteousness. Abraham is the first person in whom this great doctrine of justification by faith is first declared and emphasized in an explicit manner.

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 that in them, the whole of Christianity is comprehended. He's undoubtedly right. This is one of these tremendous statements about justification. As he is 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.

How does he put it? "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." He means this: I am quoting this faith of Abraham not only to emphasize Abraham's faith, not even only to emphasize the fact that Abraham was justified by faith. My real interest is not simply to say things about Abraham. 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. The statement about Abraham 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.

This is God's only way of justifying men. This is God's way of reconciling the world unto himself. There is no other. Do not just look back at Abraham and regard this as something exceptional or strange or odd. It was not written for his sake alone, but for us also, for everybody who believes in the way that Abraham believed. 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. What then is this faith that justifies? Or if you like it in a different form, how can a man be just with God? That is 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 the crucial question. This really is the essence of Christianity. It is 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. Therefore, these verses are of supreme importance for us.

What is this faith that justifies? First, it is a faith that believes in God and glorifies God. He says it is written for us also to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. So this faith about which he is speaking is a faith in God. 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, 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.

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. 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. The devil 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 do not see the need of the Lord Jesus Christ at all. 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 we tend constantly to do violence to the great doctrine of the Trinity? The Holy Spirit is either neglected or else the whole emphasis is put upon him. Thus we go astray.

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 does not start with me, with my subjective states and feelings or anything that happens to me primarily, nor even 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.

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. He is narrowing it down now because he is 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." It is a belief in God, but not a belief in God in general. There are people who believe in God in general, but you are not a Christian merely by believing in God in general. You could be an orthodox Jew or a Mohammedan. That is not Christianity.

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. What he means is this: that God has said something special and peculiar in the resurrection. 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 is the thing 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. This justifying faith has belief in that. It is this peculiar belief in the word of God that comes to us through the resurrection. 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 do not believe in the literal, physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

According to the Apostle here, you cannot have true Christian faith unless you believe in the fact of the literal, physical resurrection. This faith is a faith in him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. It is not a faith which just believes that Jesus, who was crucified and died and buried, is still existing in the spiritual realm. He is not teaching merely the persistence of the life of our Lord beyond the veil. No, he is particular. It is this faith in him who has raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. In the great 15th chapter of First Corinthians, the Apostle argues this out at great length. 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, our preaching is all in vain and your faith is in vain, and you are yet in your sins.

The fact of the resurrection is basic and central and vital to Christianity. It is not a matter that we can even allow to be discussed. It is crucial. The Apostle puts it here at the very center. In the 10th chapter of this mighty Epistle, he says 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.

This Christian, this justified person, is a man who believes in God. He believes particularly in what God has said to him in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What then does he believe that God has said in the resurrection? Here is the crucial question. There God has made this peculiar declaration. What is it? The answer is in verse 25. Each one leads to the next. What is God saying in the resurrection? He is saying this: that Christ was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.

What does God say in raising Jesus from the dead? 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, the resurrection is a proclamation of the fact that Jesus is the Lord. When God raised him up from the dead, he was making a proclamation. And the proclamation he was making was this: "This is my only begotten Son." The Apostle has already said it. You must repeat yourself, as we are all so liable to go astray. Peter did it at Antioch, as did Barnabas. The Apostle said this in the fourth verse of the first chapter.

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 is that Jesus is the Son of God. It is the resurrection that finally establishes the fact that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. It is the final proof of the doctrine of the person of Christ, the two natures in the one person.

The man who is reconciled to God and justified by faith is a man who must believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. He believes it through the resurrection. He is clear about this. You must be. You cannot be a Christian unless you are 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.

The Apostle then brings us to these two other things. This self-same Jesus was delivered for our offenses. What a statement. We must take it bit by bit and word by word. He does not merely say that Jesus died. It is a fact that Jesus died, but that is not the thing that the Christian believes. The Christian knows that Jesus died, yes, but the whole question is your view of that death. He does not merely say then that he died. The Revised Standard Version translates it as "was put to death." Who was put to death for our offenses.

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. It is the same word exactly that you have in the eighth chapter of this Epistle in verse 32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." There, the Revised Standard Version does not say "put to death for us all." It is inconsistent with itself. But why take anything from this great word "delivered"?

He really was delivered up to that. And by whom? Well, the 32nd verse in the eighth chapter tells us: God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. It was God who delivered him up. Christ was delivered up for our offenses, and it was God the Father who delivered him up for our offenses. Let us note this. He did not merely die. He was given over to death. He was handed over to death. It was God who handed him over.

The next word is the word "for." Delivered "for" our offenses, which means on account of our offenses. "For" is a very strong word, 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. Then the word "offenses," which means transgressions, trespasses, violations of law, deliberate rebellion, and disobedience. Trespass, transgression, offense.

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. What he is doing there is saying that Jesus of Nazareth is his only begotten Son. He is 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? Could he not have avoided that? Why did he die upon the cross? The answer is 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 the great classical doctrine of the atonement once more. We have already had it in the third chapter in verses 24, 25, and so on. "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." The Apostle comes back to it again. Any Christian must always be coming back to it, for it is 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." The prophet Isaiah had already said it. It is all there in Isaiah 53. "God hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. It hath pleased the Lord to bruise him." Delivered up for our offenses. What does it mean? This: that he was delivered up to the punishment and the guilt that our offenses deserved. He has taken our offenses and put them on him, and he has punished them in him.

It was men who crucified Christ. I know they were the instruments. But as Peter demonstrates in his great sermon on the day of Pentecost, 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 and voluntarily. 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 for all. This is what the Christian believes. This is the thing that comes out of the resurrection. He is the Son of God. Why did he die? He died because this is the way, the only way, to deal with sins. God has dealt with our sins there. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.

The next step is this last one: "and was raised again for our justification." What does this mean? 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. There is no contradiction. You cannot separate the death and the resurrection.

Some people foolishly do that. Some people try to say that Paul only preached the death of Christ and did not preach the resurrection. It is just nonsense because he said, "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." They say he did not preach the resurrection there. 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 cannot separate these things. They belong together. There is an emphasis on the death; there is an emphasis on the resurrection. What is this emphasis on the resurrection? 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.

Our Lord at the end said, "It is finished." 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. They said to one another, "It is finished," by which they meant at that point that it was the end. They had thought that he was going to be the one who was going to deliver them and bring in the kingdom, but it was finished. He was dead and buried. Then he rose from the grave. In raising him from the dead, God is making this tremendous proclamation that the Son has borne the full punishment of our sins, that he is fully satisfied, and 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. In bringing him up, God is proclaiming he has done it all. It is 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. The resurrection declares that. In that sense, he is risen again for our justification. The work was done on the cross, but here is the proclamation that it is enough.

Furthermore, it declares that our Lord, having risen from the dead and appeared for forty days to chosen witnesses, ascended into heaven. As it is put in Hebrews chapter 4, he has passed through the heavens and has entered into the holiest of all. Remember that reference 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. He would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. 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?

They would wait and listen. Suddenly they would 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 had been accepted. Christ is our great high priest. He has entered into heaven offering his own blood. There he remains. The fact that he remains there is a proof that God has fully accepted him and his offering on our behalf. There he ever liveth to make intercession for us. There he stands ever proclaiming that he has borne the guilt and the punishment. Thus he makes intercession for us.

Having gone in, he has received on our behalf and as our representative all the great and the rich gifts that God has for his people. Every grace we receive is from Christ. 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 him. The resurrection proclaims all this. 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.

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 and 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 for all, and that he is fully satisfied that the work is complete.

That is this faith about which I am 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. 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 is this: the Christian believes that God has imputed his sins to Jesus Christ and that he has also reckoned the righteousness of Jesus Christ to him. Justification is the declaration of God himself upon the throne that all who believe in Christ in this way are freely forgiven and 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 is legal; it is forensic. It is the declaration of God to us as we are in our sins. 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." The Christian is a man who believes what God tells him in bringing Christ from the dead: 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. This faith of Abraham did the following things: it believed the promise of God solely and entirely on the word of God. It believed it in spite of everything else 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.

Christian faith is like that and must be like that. 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. The Christian believer is a man who rests quietly and assuredly on this word, this promise of God, as Abraham did of old. To Abraham was made the staggering promise that through his seed the nations of the world should be blessed and that from him should come the Messiah, and he believed it. You and I have got to believe something that is equally staggering.

The Christian is a man who rests upon this word of God that comes to us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection includes the death and everything else. It is all there: incarnation, life, obedience, death, burial, rising again, ascension. The believer is a man who ceases to try to justify himself by his works or by anything else. Do you want to know for certain therefore whether you have got justifying faith this evening? Are you looking in any sense to yourself? Are you 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 is because you believe that you are saved? Is that your righteousness? If it is, you are not a Christian. 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 is the first thing.

The Christian is a man who, like Abraham of old, believes this word of God in spite of everything that he knows to be true about himself. Abraham, being not weak in faith, considered his own body now dead when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. Abraham believed what God said to him about his son 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 could not possibly have a child.

In spite of all he knew about himself and Sarah, he believed the word of God. What is justifying faith? 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 have still got an evil nature within me. It is something that believes the word of God in spite of that. It believes the word of God in spite of knowing its own weakness, its own proneness to fall and fail. That is justifying faith.

We must remember this analogy of Abraham. 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. Your faith and mine must be the same. It is no use my saying, "Yes, I'd like to believe that but I've been a terrible sinner." If you say that and bring that "but" in, you're not a Christian at all. The Christian is a man who says, "Yes, it is true. I have been a vile 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 of sin still remaining.

When the devil says, "Do you think that you've a right to say you're a Christian?" he says, "Yes I can. It is in spite of this being true. I know I am righteous in Christ." He doesn't look at himself. He looks entirely out to Christ and all that he is in Christ. He believes this word about the resurrection, the proclamation of God in raising Christ from the dead. He looks out at that in spite of all this. If you can't do that, you haven't got justifying faith. Faith is this protest against every voice that assails us from 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 is no one and no thing.

It is in spite of what we know about ourselves. So my dear friends, stop talking about your past sins. Stop talking about your present sinfulness. In this matter of justification, you must not mention them. You just stand as you are in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and in him, believing the staggering word of God. Finally, 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 my life and look at the Sermon on the Mount, the lives of the saints, and the life of Jesus Christ. I am so weak and constantly falling."

Well, you just say, "I believe this word of the resurrection. I believe the old word spoken unto Abraham." The man was dead physically and so was Sarah's womb. God said you will have a child between you. He believed it, and I believe it. Though I am weak and helpless and vile and without strength, this God of the resurrection, this God who could 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 is 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, and that he which hath begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is 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, but 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. It is a declaration that is made by men of differing schools of theology. We sang 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 and 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 aught 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 whose boundless mercy hath for me a full atonement made, an everlasting ransom paid.

Toplady says exactly the same thing: "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, 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 for all 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.