Introduction to the Doctrine of Salvation
Romans chapter 3. We are continuing our series on the doctrine of salvation. We have seen salvation planned. We saw the work of God in eternity past, determining a plan of salvation, determining whom he would save, how he would save them. We’ve seen something now of the next broad section, redemption accomplished. God sent his Son, and the Son willingly came to secure the redemption of his people. And what we’ve been doing in recent weeks is to explore the nature of that work that he did. We looked at the doctrine of sacrifice. We looked at the doctrine of substitution. We looked at the doctrine of propitiation. And we’ve looked at others, and now we come today to look at this doctrine of justification by the blood of Christ, or as I’ve titled it this morning, “Justification: The Great Exchange.”
In a lot of this, we have been focusing on Romans chapter three. We’ll do that again today and we’ll move on to Romans chapter four. Romans chapter three, I’ll begin reading with verse 19:
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there’s no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It’s excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by a law of faith. We hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. The one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count sin.”
Let’s bow together in prayer. Our Father, how grateful we are for your Word. As we saw in the Sunday school hour, to see this revelation of your greatness, not only in the created order, but in the record of how that all came about in the beginning. We marvel at what a great God you are. And now in this hour, we marvel again at this revelation of your grace and your kindness to us in Jesus Christ. What a marvelous thing it is that our God has sent his own Son to be for us everything that you require of us. What a wonderful grace, what a wonderful gospel. We pray again this morning that you will deepen our understanding of that gospel, reach our hearts with it, give us a greater appreciation for Christ that we may love him more fully, trust him more fully, and serve him more faithfully. We pray in his name, amen.
Justification As A Legal Term
Romans is recognized, of course, as Paul’s great exposition of the doctrine of justification. When you look at that doctrine today, as you know—in case you have forgotten, I’ll remind you—justification is a legal term, a forensic term. It’s the language of the courtroom. It means to declare righteous. It does not mean to make righteous, to make you holy or something like that. It’s a judicial term. It pictures us standing before God the judge. God the judge hears the case against us, and having weighed the evidence, pronounces us just or righteous. It’s the declaration of the judge that we are righteous.
Now that’s an astonishing thing. It is an astonishing gospel that God the righteous, the righteous God, would pronounce sinners to be righteous. It almost sounds like a blasphemous thing. And yet it’s the astonishing announcement of the gospel, as we have in chapter 4 and verse 5, telling us God justifies the ungodly. God justifies the ungodly.
And in fact, Paul spends the first three chapters of this letter to the Romans, Romans 1 to 3, expounding the nature of our guilt before God. He’s not trying to say we weren’t that bad and so God could justify us. He goes to great lengths to show us just how bad we are, just how deep is our rebellion. And systematically in Romans 1 to 3, Paul takes the two main categories of humanity. First, those who have never heard any special revelation from God. They’ve not had Moses bringing the revelation from God. They’ve not had the prophets. It’s what we call the pagan world out there. And the pagan world itself has a basic understanding of the just demands of God, and the pagan world has not done as well as it knows. The problem with the pagans around the world is not their ignorance. The basic problem is rebellion. What they know about God, they’ve rejected and suppressed it and rebelled against him.
And it doesn’t get any better with those who have received the revelation from God in a special way through Moses, through the prophets, and so on. Again, those of—in particular, he mentions the Jews who have received the revelation from God. They haven’t done as well as they know to do either. Their problem is not that they’ve not received revelation; they’ve received it. And yet the revelation that they have received, even though it is fuller and more specific, they have rebelled against it.
And Paul comes to that great conclusion in Romans 3, verses 9 and following: “What then, are we Jews any better off? Not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they’ve become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
So here’s Paul’s case. He has heard the evidence against all of humanity and the verdict is guilty. Every last person is guilty before God. Now we get to this point in Romans chapter three and see Paul’s argument. You might think, well, what we need to do then is we need to tighten up and do better at obeying God’s law. Well, that sounds reasonable, but Paul takes that up in chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. “Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that,” get that, “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may become accountable to God. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” All that the law has done with the great revelation of God’s will for his creatures, all it has done in the end is pointed out our guilt. It hasn’t pointed out how well we’ve done. It’s pointed out our rebellion and our guilt.
This is the problem, of course, with all of the personal merit type of approaches before God. It lowers the bar. It says that God will let bygones be bygones and he won’t demand in the end actually what his law says he demands, but he’ll let it. How is it that God can justify us? If we are all guilty, how is it that God, the righteous judge, can look at us in the day of judgment and say, “Not guilty”?
Well, you’ve got a couple of options. In face of all that, I can say, well, all I have to do is conform my life to God’s law and do all that he requires. It’s too late for that. My other option is, well, God will lower the bar, and he’ll say, “Well, you didn’t do all I said, and you didn’t live up to my law’s demands, really. But we’ll consider it well enough.” Now that’s exactly what we would all want God to do. And that in fact is what every other religion in the world in one way or another attempts to tell us God will do. The problem is God is a righteous judge. He can’t pretend there’s no sin when there is sin. The sin must be judged. It must be punished. And in fact, God himself affirmed several times in the Old Testament, “I will not acquit the guilty.”
So we’ve got quite a problem here. This is the twin problem of our sin and God’s righteousness. I’ve sinned. God is righteous. I’ve sinned. I deserve condemnation. God is righteous. He demands condemnation. What in the world am I going to do? How can that dilemma be solved? And of course, the answer is, well, that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Heart Of The Gospel Explained
Verses 21 to 26 we’ve been looking at over the last several weeks many times, and I want to see it again today and then we’ll move into chapter 4. But look at chapter 3 verse 21 again. We have this compressed statement—I’ve been saying that over and again—complex but compressed statement of how the gospel works. Perhaps more than any other place in the New Testament you have here a compressed statement of how the gospel works. Notice it carefully:
Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there’s no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Now, this is the heart of the gospel explained. And let’s take these phrases one more time, phrase by phrase, and make sure we get them. Verse 24: “justified by his grace.” That is, you’re justified freely, without any demands on your side, justified by His grace as a gift. That is, in case you don’t understand what grace means, it means as a gift. It’s not something you’ve earned, it’s something God gives. Now, righteousness—what you owe to God, the obedience, the righteousness that you owe to God as His creature under His law—that righteousness that He demands of you, He gives as a gift.
All right, let’s move on. Justified by grace as a gift. It’s free without anything on our side. How? “Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” That is, Christ liberated us from the demands of the law. He has liberated us from the penalty of the law. So we’re justified freely as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now the next phrase. How is it that Christ constitutes the redemption, the purchasing out of our freedom? “Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood.” By his blood, that’s shorthand for substitution, dying in our place. Propitiation: he died to appease the wrath of God due us because of our sin. And then he says, “to be received by faith,” just trusting in Christ to be for us what God requires of us.
So see the reasoning of it again. God justifies as a gift freely. You don’t have to do anything. How is that? Because we’ve been redeemed through Jesus Christ. How is the work of Christ a redeeming work? Because he stood in our place, propitiated God, appeased his wrath, and now we receive him through faith and not works, justified freely by grace as a gift through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation in his blood. There’s a shorthand expression of this over in chapter 5 and verse 9, if you’ll see it. Chapter 5, verse 9: “since therefore we have now been justified by His blood.” There’s another shorthand expression. Because Christ has stood in our place, because He has borne the penalty that we deserved, we then are justified freely, because He paid the redeeming price.
Faith As The Means And Righteousness As The Ground
All right, now we need to push that a little bit further today. It’s one thing to say that we’ll not be punished because we had a substitute who took the punishment for us. We’ve seen all of that in this series. It’s one thing to say that we won’t be punished because we have a substitute who took the punishment in our place. But it’s still more to say that God will actually declare us to be righteous in judgment. How in the world can he do that?
In fact, the Roman Catholic Church, for centuries since the Reformation, has said that this Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is just legal fiction. Today, in a “new perspective,” interpreters will tell us the same. It’s just legal fiction. God’s saying something that isn’t true, pronouncing us righteous when we’re not righteous. Is God just pretending then in judgment when he declares us to be righteous, when in fact we weren’t righteous? How do we explain all of that?
In Romans chapter 4, Paul develops the argument further. And here he deals with the nature of justification. I’m only going to deal with this today. We’re not going to spend weeks on this passage, so please watch the text carefully and see what’s going on. And just as a heads up up front, Paul’s focus in Romans 4 here is twofold. One, faith as the instrumental means of justification. Not works, but faith. Faith is the means of justification. I’ll develop that later in this series on redemption applied. But that’s part of Paul’s perspective here that we’ll have to see. And the other part of his focus here is righteousness as the ground of justification. Paul labors that in chapters 3 and 4, and he wants us to see that God declares us righteous not as legal fiction. He declares us righteous on the ground of a satisfaction of his righteous demands in Jesus. And we’ll see that primarily here through two Old Testament illustrations: Abraham, and here he deals with Genesis 15 and verse 6, and David, and here he deals with Psalm 32.
Look at verses 1 to 5 of chapter 4. Abraham—if he’s not justified by works, then no one is, right? It’s great Abraham, but notice how it says Abraham was justified. “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” That’s Genesis 15 and verse 6. “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Now let’s follow his reasoning here in verses 1 to 4. Verses 1 and 2: if Abraham was justified by works, then he could boast before God. That’s easy enough, isn’t it? If Abraham had done well enough, he could stand before God and say, “I’ve done it. Justify me.” And when Paul says, “but not before God” in verse two, he’s simply saying that is never going to happen. No one ever will stand before God and find God in his debt. God is the God of grace. He always gives freely. He gives without constraint. He’s never obliged. He’s God. And in fact, we’re sinners. And no one will ever stand before God and hold him in debt as though he was obliged to justify.
And he gives the illustration in verse four about working and the wages we receive when we work. When you work, your employer pays you. And when your employer gives you that paycheck, you don’t say, “Wow, what a wonderful guy he is. I didn’t deserve this. He gave me my paycheck.” No, I worked all week long for it. He owed that to you, right? You worked for it. You earned it. And Paul says here, that will never happen before God. No one will ever go before God and say, “I’ve worked, you owe me.” He gives; he gives freely. Not even with Abraham can anyone stand before God and expect his due when it comes to justification.
And he gives a proof text, verse three, Genesis 15, verse six. What does the scripture say? Abraham worked hard and earned God’s favor, and so God justified him? That’s not what it says. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” So God appears to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, Genesis chapter 12. “I’m going to give you a family, I’m going to give you a nation, and I’m going to make you a blessing, and the whole world’s going to be blessed in your seed, and I’m going to give you this land.” Years later, hasn’t happened. Abraham and Sarah don’t have a son yet. God appears to Abraham again, Genesis 15. “Yep, I said I would do it. You see all the stars out there? You’re gonna have a seed, that many.” And Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him as righteousness.
This really isn’t relevant, but I always like it that in Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God—the Hebrew word for trust or to believe, amen. Amen. Abraham, God said, “I’m going to give you all of this.” And Abraham said, “Amen.” He trusted God. He believed God. And God counted it as righteousness. It was by faith that Abraham was justified before God. And so Paul gives us his proof text for it.
Now we come to verse five, and here he takes the whole matter a step further. He makes three very important assertions here. Follow them. Number one, first of all, verse five: “to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Number one, justification is never the result of our works, but it is always by faith. And again, as I said, we’ll deal with this later in the series, but we have to see it here briefly now. He says it here in verse five: the one who does not work but believes, that’s the one who’s justified. Faith is the whole of God’s requirement for justification, as per Abraham. Faith is the instrumental means as to how we receive justification. We’ll deal with that more when we get to redemption applied.
The second important assertion here, as I’ve already mentioned, verse 5: “God justifies the ungodly.” Now you need to see how startling, astonishing that is. The righteous God declaring ungodly people to be righteous. How in the world can you do that? That just seems blasphemous. That’s just what we want God to do for us. But God won’t bend the rules. In fact, as I say, he’s announced it several times in the Old Testament, “I will not acquit the guilty.” That’s a startling thing. God justifies the ungodly. We’ll get to the how-to in a second.
There’s another thing startling here when he says God justifies the ungodly, and that is he’s talking about Abraham. You see that? How many of you refer to Abraham as ungodly? Now, to be sure here, his perspective is broader here, but Abraham is his proof text to demonstrate that God justifies the ungodly. So after all of this, Abraham believed God, but he in himself is still ungodly. And God justifies him by faith. Now that’s essential to Paul’s point here. Justification does not stem from so much of my obedience. It does not stem from obedience or law-keeping on our part, our good works of any kind. It is based on faith.
Now it flies in the face of the rabbinic interpretations in Paul’s day. We have some of the rabbinic writings from the day, and they will deal with this justification of Abraham, but the approach is entirely different. “Abraham obeyed God. Of course he was justified. Look at Mount Moriah, Genesis 22. He obeyed God. He was justified.” Paul says no. He was justified by faith, proving that God justifies the ungodly.
This became important, of course, at the time of the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church, in its theology still today, confuses justification with sanctification. Righteousness or justification—righteousness is something that is infused, infused at baptism. So you become righteous. You’re not declared righteous, you become righteous through the grace that is ministered through the waters of baptism. And then you improve that righteousness that has been given to you until finally you’re accepted before God. And so in the Roman Catholic view, my righteousness forms the ground of my justification before God. Reformers came along and said, “No, no, no, look at verse five. God justifies the ungodly.” And the rabbis of Paul’s day, and the Roman Catholic Church of the Reformers’ day, thought that’s just scandalous. God justifies ungodly people? How does that reflect on God? It can’t be right.
Well then, Paul, how is it that God will justify righteously? How will God righteously declare ungodly people to be righteous? How do you do that? It seems double talk; it’s an impossibility; it’s self-contradictory. How in the world can the righteous God righteously declare unrighteous people to be righteous? And that brings us to the third assertion of verse five. God justifies the ungodly by imputing righteousness to them.
This word “imputing,” it’s a record-keeping term, a commercial term. You make a payment; it’s counted against your account. Or you purchase something; it’s counted against your account. You make a deposit; that’s credited to your account. Imputed—that’s the word, to count or to credit. And I want you to see how important that is throughout this passage. This word “impute,” or as it’s in my version, “counted,” appears throughout the passage.
Look at verse three: “For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Verse four: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.” Verse five: “To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted [or imputed] as righteousness.” Verse 6: “David also speaks of the one to whom God counts [or imputes] righteousness apart from works.” Verse 8: “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count [or impute] his sin.” Verse 9, the last part of the verse: “We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.” Verse 10: “How then was it counted [or imputed] to him?” Verse 11: “The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.” Righteousness imputed to them as well.
Again, it’s a bookkeeping term. Righteousness, the righteousness that we don’t have, is credited to us freely as a gift. So now suddenly this righteousness that we owe to God by our obedience, being under his law, is not something in the end we give to him. He doesn’t say, “Okay, you’ve done well, I’ll pronounce you righteous.” What he does is he gives us the righteousness he requires of us. And on that ground, he pronounces us righteous. Now, that’s tough. Verse six, God imputes righteousness. Verse 11, the righteousness he had by faith. Verse 11 again, the righteousness would be counted to them. In God’s grace, he provides for us the righteousness that he requires of us. This is stated in brief shorthand in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30, where Paul says, “Christ is made unto us righteousness.” I’ll expound on that more in a minute, but let’s go on to the next illustration.
The Non-Imputing Of Sin
Verses 6 to 8, Paul talks about David and here we have his quoting of Psalm 32, the opening verses of the psalm. Notice the first words here in verse 6: “just as.” That is, David now is an exact parallel to what we find with Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now we’ve got the same thing with David, “just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.” So we have the same thing with David. Righteousness is counted to him, credited to him apart from works. And then the first proof text, Psalm 32 verses 1 and 2: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Now the setting here, of course, is David’s sin with Bathsheba, 2 Samuel chapter 11 and 12. You remember the awful episode in David’s life. We have his great confession of that sin in Psalm 51. And in Psalm 32, we have David exalting the greatness of God’s forgiveness in light of that sin that he had committed. And Paul quotes it here to show that this is an exact parallel to what we have with Abraham.
Now what’s interesting is that in Genesis 15:6, with regard to Abraham, what’s emphasized is the positive reckoning of righteousness. God credits righteousness. God imputes righteousness to Abraham. In Psalm 32, which Paul quotes here in verses 7 and 8, it’s more negative. Justification is the non-reckoning, the non-imputing of sin. Notice that again. Verse seven, here he quotes David: “Blessed are those,” well, let’s back up to verse six. “Just as David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness,” there’s the positive imputation of righteousness, “apart from works, blessed are those,” he says, “whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not count sin.” So here the emphasis is on the non-reckoning of sin.
And yet Paul characterizes them both—the reckoning of righteousness and the non-reckoning of sin—he says they’re both virtually the same thing. In verse 6, righteousness is imputed. Verses 7 and 8, sin is not imputed. So for both Abraham and David, their standing before God rested entirely on grace and what was credited to them. In the case of Abraham, what’s emphasized is the crediting to him apart from works of a righteousness that he did not have. God gave it to him. He wasn’t good enough. He was ungodly. He wasn’t good enough. And so the righteousness required of him was imputed to him through faith.
Now in the case of David, sins are not counted against him. His sins are not counted against him. And his concern was not whether or not, as in the case of Abraham, was Abraham good enough. In David’s case, the question is not whether or not he’s been good enough. The question is whether he’s been too bad. And here the emphasis is his sins just were not counted against him.
So in justification—notice that in justification God both removes our sin (forgiveness, non-imputing of sin). In justification God both removes our sin and counts righteousness to us. It’s often been referred to as the double grace of justification: both forgiveness and righteousness imputed. Now the big question is, how in the world can a righteous God do that? Are we still pretending? God gives me a righteousness I don’t have and then says, “Okay, you’re righteous.” How does a righteous God do that? Well, the answer of course is Jesus. And that’s what Paul expounds through this passage.
Romans 3, verses 24 and 25 again: “They are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” God justifies us freely as a gift by grace entirely. We don’t do anything. No strings attached. Not our performance. He justifies us freely. How? Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. How is Jesus the redemption? How is it that in Jesus we have a liberation from sin and the penalty and all of that? Because God put him forward as a propitiation through faith in his blood. We have here what Paul says in briefer terms in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21: “He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
Justification, The Great Exchange
The great exchange: my sin made his, his righteousness made mine. So you see then, imputation is just absolutely essential to the very idea of justification. In fact, the terminology of justification and imputation throughout this passage is virtually interchangeable. For example, chapter 3, verse 28: “one is justified by faith apart from the law.” Chapter 4, verse 6: “God credits righteousness apart from work,” same thing. Paul’s thinking of justification in terms of imputed righteousness. To justify us, God imputes righteousness to us. Chapter 4, verses 2 and 3. Verse 2, he speaks of justification. Verse 3, it’s imputed. Same thing. Abraham was justified by works [hypothetically] because it was imputed to him as righteousness. Verse 5 and verse 6. Verse 5, we have justification. Verse 6, it’s spoken of as the crediting of righteousness. Same thing.
All of that to say my acquittal before God does not stem from anything about me. It’s important to see that. In any other setting, to justify would mean that my righteousness has been demonstrated. If I’m called up on charges and go to court, the case is heard against me. The only way I’m going to be acquitted is to produce the proof that I have in fact not broken the law and in fact I have done what the law requires. That will never happen before God. It’s impossible. And so in order to justify us, God gave us his Son; he stood in our place; he made our sin his, and he made his righteousness ours. And because we have no less than the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to our account, on the ground of the unassailable righteousness of Jesus, God declares us to be righteous. And he does so righteously.
A great exchange. Brothers and sisters, when we think of the cross, we need to think in exactly these kinds of terms. My sin made his. His righteousness made mine. That was the exchange at the cross. This is the answer. This is the only answer to the problem of human guilt. And this is the whole ground of every Christian’s hope. My sin made his. His righteousness made mine.
Paul speaks of this again in Philippians chapter 3. You remember he sort of gives his testimony, talks about his background. “If anybody had ground to boast before God, I had it. I had the heritage. I had religious blue blood in my veins.” And in fact, in terms of performance, he had that too. He had a great record, had a great reputation. Everyone knew he had zeal for God. And Paul says, you know, I came to the realization that all of that is just filth. I had rejected all, and now he says my only hope is that I’ll be found before God not having my own righteousness. I’ll be found in him having the righteousness of God which is by faith.
Pronounced righteous before the righteous judge now because Jesus has done for us everything that God has required of us. And so in place of my unrighteousness, I have his righteousness. In place of my sin, I have his sinlessness. In place of my—name it—my lawlessness, I have his obedience. In place of my unworthiness, I have his worthiness. In place of my uncleanness, I have his purity. In place of my rebellion, I have his faithfulness. In place of my shame, I have his glory made mine.
That is the value of Jesus Christ. I’ve been emphasizing that through this series. This is the value of Jesus. If you don’t have Jesus Christ, you are on your own, and that is where you do not want to be before God. Justification and imputation—these are two big words that you want to know. Don’t shy away from this at all. Let’s learn the vocabulary. Let’s just exult in it. Justification and imputation. When conscience accuses us, I want to be able to say, “God justifies the ungodly.” I want to be able to say quickly, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for me, that I might be made the righteousness of God in him.” God put forward his own Son to be in our place. My sin made his. His righteousness made mine. It’s the whole ground of my hope.
At last, in the final judgment, God opens the books. That’s the imagery used in the Scriptures, isn’t it? God keeps the books. My whole hope in judgment, when God opens the books, is not that he’ll find listed under there that my good works outweigh my bad. I don’t want that. I don’t want him to see in there, “Well, he didn’t have quite enough good works, but he was sincere.” I don’t want that. My only hope is that when God opens the books and he turns and under my name he sees another name: Jesus Christ the Righteous. My sin made his, his righteousness made mine.
I hear the accuser roar of ills that I have done. I know them well, thousands more. Jehovah findeth none. Though the restless foe accuses, sins recounting like a flood, every charge our God refuses, Christ has answered with his blood. This is the whole ground of every Christian’s hope. We sing it, don’t we? “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame”—not the best thing about me—”I lean wholly on Jesus’ name.” Amen. Let’s pray.