Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Romans 3 | Date: May 8, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Christianity Is a Redemptive Religion

Christianity is at its heart a redemptive religion. If you were to ask why is Christianity in the world, that’s it. Now we could speak more broadly; we can say, of course, as Craig mentioned last Sunday evening, that all that God does, he does to glorify himself. Our question here is: how has God set out to glorify himself? And Christianity is in the world to tell us that God has set out to glorify himself through the redemption of sinners. The very reason for being for Christianity is to bring sinners back to God. Its message, the message of the Christian faith, is a message of God’s saving action to accomplish redemption for sinners and to bring them into fellowship with him.

The whole Bible story is a story of how God has established redemption and he is accomplishing it through his son, the Lord Jesus. That’s the Bible story, that’s the reason for Christianity itself, and we find that all through the Bible, but it fell to the Apostle Paul himself to explain for us just how it is that God can do all of that. And when we ask this question—just how is it that God can bring us back into a right relationship with himself?—it brings us to the study of the doctrine of justification.

Here we come to the fundamental significance of the death of Christ, and we learn how God in grace and in justice accepts sinful people into his fellowship. There are many biblical passages that deal with that, but Romans chapters 3 and following have been recognized as the ones that deal with it most pointedly, and we have looked at these passages in earlier sessions in this series of studies under Redemption Accomplished. But these passages—these chapters here, Romans 3 and 4 and 5 in particular—deal with this heart of the matter of what justification is and how it is accomplished.

There’s actually some discussion about whether the doctrine of justification is the center, if we can rightly say that the doctrine of justification is the center of Paul’s theology. I’m not sure if we can say that or not. That’s always a slippery question. It’s a difficult thing to answer precisely. But at least we can say this: a few things.

Number one, and that is the idea of justification is tied more tightly to the cross in the New Testament than any other doctrine. It’s more tied to the cross more explicitly and more repeatedly than any other doctrine. And we can also say that justification in the New Testament marks the entry point of salvation. There are many other attending blessings of salvation. We’ve already seen some; we will see more. But this marks the entry point. When God justifies us, declares us righteous, this is the entry point, the event in which rebels are accepted into fellowship with God.

And then we can also say that when the Apostle Paul himself—J. I. Packer makes this observation, I think it’s really helpful—when the Apostle Paul gives his own testimony about his own salvation and how he came to believe in Christ, he couches that more often in terms of justification than any other thing. So this in some sense is central to Paul’s theology. Whether we can say it’s the center or not, it is massively important. And as I say, it does mark the entry point of salvation. And this is how Paul deals with it repeatedly throughout his letters.

In this discussion, then, of justification, we find we come to the heart of the gospel. And it’s no surprise, then, that this doctrine of justification has been a central theme in the preaching of preachers throughout history. In movements of revival, movements of great advance of the Christian faith, at the heart of it has been very often this message of justification by faith. If we think in terms particularly of the Protestant Reformation, which was a recovery of the gospel, there were men and women in droves coming to faith in Christ. At the heart of that whole movement was a recovery of this doctrine of justification by faith. Speak in terms of the Great Awakening, and Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield—this preaching of this doctrine of justification by faith was prominent. In the New Testament, it’s prominent. In the Reformed tradition, it is prominent. It has central importance in the message of Christianity.

Martin Luther—and you’ve probably heard this before—Martin Luther, the Reformer, referred to the doctrine of justification as the article of a standing or falling church. A church that stands is a church that’s clear on this doctrine of justification by faith. If they are not clear on it, that church is falling. John Calvin referred to the doctrine of justification as the hinge on which all true religion turns. John Owen, the dean of the Puritans, said, “I shall take the boldness therefore to say, whoever be offended at it, that if we lose the ancient doctrine of justification through faith in the blood of Christ and the imputation of his righteousness unto us, public profession of religion will quickly issue in popery or atheism.”

Well, there are a few doctrines—if these men are anywhere near right, there are a few doctrines with which every Christian ought to be very well acquainted. This ought to be the staple in preaching and in church life. It’s a doctrine that we, as pastors, ought to highlight frequently. We will take time this month to explore more facets of this doctrine of justification. It ought to be a doctrine with which every Christian is very familiar. As I’ll try to explain later, your joy in Christ and your assurance and your confidence before God depends on it.

Now earlier in the series, we talked about this doctrine in terms of the great exchange. And at the cross, our sin is given to Jesus, and in exchange, his righteousness becomes ours. That’s the heart and the center of this doctrine of justification. And Paul deals with that in Romans 3 and 4 in a very pointed way. You’ll remember in chapters 1 to 3 of Romans, Paul establishes the universal guilt of mankind. Jews who have received the law of God, have seen it objectively given to them, “thou shalt,” “thou shalt not.” They’ve seen it, they’ve rebelled against it, they are guilty. Gentiles who did not receive the law of God in that objective way have nonetheless received a revelation from God in their hearts—an instinctive, intuitive knowledge of right and wrong—and they have rebelled against that. And universally, this is Paul’s argument in Romans 1 to 3, universally we all know better than we have done. We have all rebelled against the law of God as we understand it.

And Paul concludes in the middle of Romans chapter 3 with this message of universal guilt. Every one of us stands before God guilty because of the sins we have committed against him. And then we come to chapter 3, verses 21 and following, where he starts to expound the gospel. Notice verse 23: “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 of his divine forbearance. 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.”

So here we have this compressed statement. Remember, we’ve studied it before. In this compressed statement, Paul tells us how God can justify a sinner. We’re all guilty. But in the face of that guilt, God put forth his son as a propitiation for our sins. And in his death, he took the wrath of God due us, so that that wrath is turned away from us, and he has satisfied the demands of justice in our place. And he says, thereby he’s effected a redemption. We’ve been set free by the payment of a ransom. He’s paid the ransom price that releases us and frees us from the curse and the judgment of the law. And having been freed from the curse of the law and its condemning power, we are—he says, there’s the third step in it—justified.

God can do it this way because in this way it is done justly. And he tells us that in verses 25–26. This was to show his righteousness. That’s the point. The first obstacle that is presented in our salvation is not an obstacle that faces you; it’s an obstacle that God faces. How can he receive, as a righteous judge, sinners into fellowship? How can he declare them to be righteous? And he does it in this way, by putting forth his son as a propitiation for the sins, thereby redeeming them from the curse of the law and from their sin, and thereby he is free justly to justify them in Jesus Christ.

And then we get to chapter 4, and Paul expounds for us, as we’ve seen, the method of justification: that our sins are imputed to him, his righteousness is imputed to us, and we have that great exchange that we’ve talked about. Now you’ve seen all of that earlier in the series, and we’ll see more of it as we go along. Today what I want to do is go back and highlight the elements of all of that that I’ve just mentioned. Next time we’ll talk about justification by faith—what faith is and why that is essential to justification, how that fits into Paul’s gospel here. But today I want to highlight the other major features of justification, and that with Romans 3 and 4 in view. And I’ll give them to you quickly here if you’d like to write them down to chart out where we’re going in the message.

Number One: Justification Is God’s Judicial Declaration Of Righteousness

I put it that way, it sounds very academic, but it’s important to recognize what justification is. Justification is not God looking at us and saying, “Well, he’s good enough. He has behaved well enough. He hasn’t sinned badly enough.” Justification envisions God as the judge, and we as the accused, and somehow God making the official pronouncement as judge that we’re righteous.

Now this was important in the Reformation in a very particular sense because in the medieval Roman Catholic Church all of this had been confused. We have in Roman Catholic theology justification confused and conflated with sanctification and regeneration. God infuses grace in baptism, in the waters of baptism, according to Roman Catholic theology. In the waters of baptism, righteousness is infused and now it is ours to develop that righteousness until finally we are righteous, and in the end God is able to declare us righteous because we in fact are righteous. We have done well enough and God makes that determination finally in the end. For the Roman Catholics, justification—righteousness—this was a state, a condition of the person himself, not a status before God. For the Roman Catholic theology, justification was God making us righteous, not declaring us righteous.

Now the reformers then came along and they’re wrestling with the biblical text and they’re finding out both in the Hebrew and the Greek how this word justification is used. And it’s used in a judicial sense. It doesn’t mean making people righteous. It’s used in a judicial sense, a forensic sense. It declares them to be righteous. This is all-important in the doctrine of justification. It is God the judge looking at the sinner and declaring him to be righteous. In other words, I think this is a helpful illustration: in justification, God is not acting as a physician, declaring us to be well, that we’ve recovered. In justification, God is acting as a judge, declaring us to be righteous with regard to the law. In justification, God looks at us and says, “The law has been kept, the law has been upheld, he is righteous.” He doesn’t make us righteous. He declares us to be righteous.

And the clearest example of that is in the stunning words of Romans chapter 4 and verse 5: “To the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly.” Justifies the ungodly. That is the scandal of the gospel: that God, the righteous judge, declares unrighteous people to be righteous—declared to be right before God, the judge.

Number Two: Justification Is Never Grounded In Our Merit

Now we see plenty of statements of this in this passage. Romans 3, verses 19 and following: “We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, the whole world may be held accountable to God.” That is to say, the purpose of the law was to demonstrate your guilt. You ever witness to a friend and say, “Well, I think if you keep the Ten Commandments that you’ll do well and God will accept you”? And the thing to do at that point is turn to the Ten Commandments and say, “How are you doing?” And you go, “One, two, three…” You work through it, and pretty soon it’s, “Oh, oh, oh, I guess I haven’t.” That’s what Paul says here in verses 19 and 20. The law speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world become guilty before God. And then he explains further, verse 20, “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 the law has done is shown you how guilty you are. The law certainly can’t justify you because you haven’t kept it. All the law can do is show you that you need justification because you violated it. Chapter 3, verse 28: “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” And so it’s often been translated this way ever since Martin Luther. It’s been translated here with a little word, “alone,” inserted: “For we hold that one is justified by faith alone, apart from the works of the law,” to draw the sense of what Paul is saying here. Not by works of any kind.

We get to chapter 4, verses 1 and following, and we have this illustration of Abraham and how some people work and they receive a wage, and they’re due that wage, and the employer is obligated to pay that wage, and that doesn’t happen with God. No one has ever—Paul says in Romans 4 verses 1 and following—not even Abraham, no one has ever gone before God and said, “You owe me.” God is not indebted to anyone. If anyone is justified, it is always by grace, it is never by works. And chapter 4 here in the opening verses—not even Abraham could do that.

A famous passage in Romans chapter 10, Paul has dealt with the falling away of the nation of Israel and they have rejected the Messiah and the gospel has gone out to the Gentiles. What then of all the promises? Paul is dealing with that problem in Romans 9 to 11. He deals with God’s sovereignty and salvation and all of that. He gets to the end of chapter 10—chapter 9 gets into chapter 10—he raises the question: “Well, why haven’t the Jews received it?”

You remember how he answers? He doesn’t say, “Well, they haven’t received it because it was God’s predestinarian plan.” He says they haven’t received justification because they’ve gone about trying to establish their own righteousness as though they could do it. And justification is never by the law. All the law can do is tell you that you’re a sinner. This is everywhere in Paul. Justification is never grounded in our own merit.

Galatians chapter 2 verse 16: “We know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” One of my favorites for years, one of my favorite expressions of this, is in Galatians 2:21: “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no reason.” You see his logic there? If justification came through your works, then why in the world did Jesus die? He says the whole reason he died is to pay a debt that you could not pay.

We have this affirmed in Paul everywhere: not by works of righteousness that we have done. And in fact, it is so severe that for Paul, those of you who try to be saved by the law, those of you who attempt to be justified before God by your works, you’ve been severed from Christ, cut off altogether. And anyone who preaches it, he says, “Let him be accursed.” This is a repeated emphasis with insistence throughout Paul. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. It’s not by works. It’s not by developed character. It’s not by church membership. It’s not by ceremonial works, religious works, or moral works. You can’t. And the reason is twofold. One, it’s too late. You’re already guilty. You violated the law and you stand condemned before God. And two, God makes no exceptions. He cannot bend the rules for you. He is a righteous God. And if you are guilty, you are guilty. So justification is never grounded in our own merit.

Number Three: Justification Is Always And Only By Grace

This is just the flip side of that. Justification is always and only by grace. It’s precisely what Paul says here. You’ll notice it in chapter 3 verse 24. I love the expression of it here: “We are justified by his grace as a gift.” Now that is just redundant. “Justified by grace as a gift.” You see what Paul—he’s pushing it. He wants you to understand that we make no contribution to this at all. It is by grace as a gift. Paul makes a similar expression in Titus chapter 3 verse 7: “Justified by grace.”

Justified by grace. That is divine favor given to the ill-deserving—not just the undeserving, but the ill-deserving. It is pure benevolence. And in fact, it’s pure benevolence to those who in fact deserve God’s wrath. It is grace in its highest sense. And so what Paul emphasizes throughout here is that justification finds its source not in anything about us. Justification finds its source and originating cause only and always in himself. He’s not obliged. He’s not obligated to anyone at any time. It’s not elicited by anything in us. It’s not because of something infused into us that we have developed and perfected. It’s a donation, it’s a gift. Everything from his side.

And this is why we find in the New Testament righteousness described as a gift, which is really an interesting thing when you think about it. Righteousness on one level is something we ought to give to God. We owe it to him. He’s a righteous judge, he demands righteousness of us, and we owe it to give it to him. And in the end, the gospel tells us righteousness is not something we have given God; it is in fact something he has given us in grace. Romans 3:24: “Justified by his grace as a gift.” Romans 5 verse 17: “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness,” there it is, “the free gift of righteousness, reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

So justification, then, is God’s judicial declaration of righteousness. It is not grounded in our own merit. It is always and only by grace.

Number Four: Justification Is In Keeping With Divine Justice

And yet, and here’s the catch, and here we get to the heart of it: number four, justification is in keeping with divine justice. Justification is in keeping with divine justice. This is the problem, if we can speak of it that way, the problem of justification. God is the judge. He’s a righteous judge. We have statements about that throughout the scriptures. God is righteous in all his ways. We find it in the Torah and the Old Testament. We find it in the book of Proverbs: that he that justifies the wicked and he that condemns the innocent are an abomination to God. He’s a just God. He hates a false balance. He hates a false decision in the court. He’s a just God. He’s a righteous God and he will always, always, always and only judge righteously.

And then the catch: how then can a righteous God declare sinners to be righteous? There’s this tension then. If we are unrighteous, and God is a God who always and only judges righteously, then if he justifies the ungodly, as we see in Romans 4:5, if he justifies the ungodly, he has found a righteous way to do it. And that’s what brings us then to the heart of the Gospel, Romans 3 and 4, that Paul expounds at so much length. “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.”

So here’s the logic that he works out. This is the logic of the gospel. God demands righteousness. We are condemned. We are guilty. We must be condemned. But to interrupt in all of that, God put forth his son to satisfy the demands of justice in our place. He put him forth as the propitiation for our sins, and in him he has made satisfaction for our sins. And we in turn are freed from the law by the payment of that ransom price. And being freed from the law and freed from sin and freed from condemnation, God then is free justly to justify us in Jesus Christ because in our substitute his just demands have been met.

And so we have then this great exchange. His righteousness made ours, chapter 4. God imputes, counts, counts Christ’s righteousness to us and counts our sin to him. And so our sin is judged in the person of our substitute. We have these two imputations: our sin, imputed to Christ, counted his; and his righteousness, counted ours. We find this everywhere in the New Testament. Paul loves to glory in this: “He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Philippians chapter 3, Paul speaks of standing before God in this: “His whole hope is that he will be found not having my own righteousness, but the righteousness of God which is by faith in Christ.” Or that wonderful statement in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30: “Christ is made unto us righteousness.” The righteousness we have, we have in Jesus Christ.

And so there is Paul’s argument, I think, in summary. Justification is God’s judicial declaration of righteousness. It is never grounded in our merit. It is always by grace. And it is in keeping with his demands of justice. His just demands are met in the substitute, his Son, who is given to us to take our sin and to give us his righteousness.

The Stunning Glory Of The Gospel

Now let’s try to unpack that a little bit more. Over the centuries, theologians have attempted to capture all of that in various ways. One is what we’ve seen before many times: the great exchange. That expression goes back centuries in Christian theology. The great exchange—it captures it well. We give Christ our sin, and on the cross he takes our sin; in exchange we have his righteousness. The great exchange.

We have other expressions. One is—the language is a little bit dated, but it’s a wonderful expression—the “alien righteousness.” That’s a little dated in an era of Star Wars and aliens of all kinds. Alien righteousness can mean a lot of different things. But the idea is that this righteousness that I have is alien to me. It’s mine now that I have it, but it doesn’t originate here. It comes to me from the outside. That was Martin Luther’s expression. Your salvation is outside of you. It’s an alien righteousness. It’s not yours. It’s Christ’s, and it’s given to you freely by grace. It’s an alien righteousness. It’s a helpful expression.

Martin Luther, in his arguing this doctrine during the Reformation, used a Latin phrase that has become standard in Christian theology. If you haven’t studied Latin, it’s okay, but: simul justus et peccator. Simul—that’s where we get our word simultaneous—”at once,” “at the same time.” Justus—”just” or “righteous.” Et peccator—”and a transgressor,” “a sinner.” At the same time, righteous and a transgressor. That was very important for Luther, and it’s very important for us to recognize both of those. At the same time, I’m righteous before God because of what I have in Christ, but at the same time, I’m a sinner. I have transgressed the law, and all I have in myself is that to offer: sin. But because of Christ, at the same time, I’m just and righteous. Just and a sinner.

In fact, I’ll never be anything else. There’s a tradition in Christian theology, Christian hymnody, of referring to ourselves as “miserable sinners.” It’s in confessions of all branches of the Christian church other than Roman Catholic; all the Protestant denominations use this language. Miserable sinners. Miserable sinners. It’s in our hymns. It crops up. It crops up with other related language like “worm” and “wretch” and things like that. Miserable sinners. Miserable sinner Christians.

Now in our day, that has fallen on hard times. We like to think better of ourselves. We like to think of our worth, our value. I remember sitting in a home Bible study one time some years ago. One of the ladies challenged me on this: “What are we?” And I thought immediately in terms of “we’re both righteous and sinful.” No, I don’t like that. And it’s extremely important to hold on to both. And if you don’t hold on to both, you don’t understand the gospel. That we in ourselves are miserable sinners. We are the transgressors and that’s all we have to offer. But at the same time, we’re righteous because we have in Christ all the righteousness that God requires.

In fact, Luther had another phrase that he added to it, not just simul justus et peccator (“at the same time just and a transgressor”): semper justus et peccator. “Always, always just and a transgressor.” I’m never anything else! And it is vital to understanding the gospel that we grasp that. We don’t say merely that God has acquitted us and leave it at that. That might imply, that just could imply, that we hadn’t done anything wrong. God has examined it, found us to be good, found us to be well, and that’s that. What we say is that God has declared us righteous, though in fact we are sinners. He has declared us righteous because of our substitute.

And this is just the stunning glory of the gospel: that God declares sinners to be righteous. God justifies the ungodly. We are justified before God, we’re declared righteous before God, as we openly confess that we’re guilty. And in fact, we’re justified before God as we openly disclaim any righteousness of our own. I don’t think I can say this often enough: our justification is not grounded in anything about us. We have to come to grips with that. Our justification is not grounded in anything about us. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” I dare not trust the best thing about me; I wholly lean on Jesus’ name. That’s the reason I’m justified. Jesus. That’s it.

Stephen Westerholm is a Canadian New Testament scholar. He’s done some wonderful work in various areas. He makes a point somewhere I thought was just fascinating. He says that Paul delights in paradoxes of the gospel. I thought it was a wonderful observation. Paul delights in paradoxes of the gospel. So, by the foolishness of God, 1 Corinthians 1, the foolishness of God confounds the wise of this world. The weakness of God overthrows the mighty—paradoxes of the gospel. And here we have another: God justifies the ungodly. Sounds like a scandal. But the kicker is God justifies the ungodly and he has found a righteous way to do it. He declares unrighteous people to be righteous because their sins he has put to their righteous substitute and his righteousness has become theirs. And God justly justifies the ungodly.

In Christ, God justifies us, sinners though we are, and he does so justly. He doesn’t overlook our sins. He doesn’t pretend that we’ve done well enough. Our hope is not grounded in some pretentious plea that we’ve not sinned or we’ve not sinned badly enough. Our whole hope is that our sin is not counted against us. Our sin is counted to Christ, and his righteousness is counted to us.

Now this is just all-important that we come to grips with this and settle it in our hearts and in our conscience. Apart from this, you will never have joy, you will never have confidence before God. You’ll always struggle with assurance. I’ve told you before, kiddingly, that one of the requirements of every Christian is that you must read Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m sort of kidding on that. If you haven’t read it, please read it. Anyway, there’s one passage in it—a couple of things about Pilgrim’s Progress that have confused many people. We have Pilgrim leaving the City of Destruction, you know, and he’s fleeing from the wrath to come. You remember he comes to the Wicket Gate. He passes through there, and this of course is the point of his conversion. Christ is the gate, and going through Christ he enters into salvation. Easy enough.

But then a little later in the allegory, we find him approaching that hill with three crosses, and he looks to the center cross, and when he looks at the center cross, finally now the burden falls off his back. It seems like, “Okay, this is the conversion point.” Was he converted back at the Wicket Gate or is he converted now at the hill? Calvary—what’s up with all of this? And the explanation of it all is simply to find it in Bunyan’s own personal experience: that he came to Christ, he was converted, trusted in Christ, but for the remaining time, for much time in the ensuing days and weeks—I think even months—he struggled with this matter of assurance. He still has sin, and how can God accept him? He’s a struggling sinner, and he struggled severely. When you read his autobiography, it’s just a horrible thing how he struggled so severely with his conscience. “How could God ever accept me?” until finally this truth gripped him. I forget what passage it was he was reading in the scriptures, but it came to mind that Christ is made unto us righteousness. The phrase that he gives in Pilgrim’s Progress is: “My righteousness is in heaven.” And when he looked at the cross and recognized that’s my righteousness that God requires, the burden fell off his back.

Well, what this means then—I think Sinclair Ferguson put it this way—there are no degrees of justification. You’re not more or less justified. You’re not midway justified. You’re not partially justified. You’re either justified or you’re condemned. If you’re justified, you’re not condemned. You’re not more or less justified. You’re not more justified if you’ve been a good Christian boy or a good Christian girl this week. The struggle for practical godliness is not a struggle for justification. There are no degrees of justification.

When we sin, we have this awful temptation, even though we’re Protestants—we have this awful temptation to think that we have to put ourselves through some kind of what I call Protestant purgatory. “If I wallow in this long enough and feel badly enough for long enough, well then I’m good again.” Am I the only one that’s done that? It’s a terrible tendency that we have in all of us to think too much in terms of our work, in terms of our merit, in terms of our performance. We sing about grace, we talk about grace, we’ll explain the gospel in terms of grace, but when it comes to our own daily experience, we think too much in terms of our own performance. We allow—and this is just a horrible thing—we allow our confidence, and we allow our joy, and we even allow our emotions to be governed by what we have done and how well we have performed.

And so this week I have, well, I’ve prayed every day, and I’ve witnessed to people, and I haven’t yelled at my wife, or yelled at the kids, or yelled at your husband or your kids. You’ve been a good little Christian boy or girl this week, and you’re good, and your confidence is grounded in your performance. Then you stumble somewhere and you go to pray: “I’m not worthy to be here.” Of course you’re not. It’s no surprise, is it? Remember semper justus et peccator? We ground our confidence in ourselves and we too soon forget that the whole ground, the whole ground of our confidence before God has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with Jesus.

Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf—that’s a big name to remember—German leader of the 18th century, leader of the Moravian Church, very aggressive in Christian missions. He wrote a hymn that captures all of this so well. It’s not a hymn that’s sung very often anymore. It’s in every hymnal, I think, but it’s sung, I think, only in Reformed churches, oddly enough. Written in German, John Wesley translated into English, captures all of this very well:

“Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress; amidst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head. When from the dust of death I rise to seize my mansion in the skies, even then, even then, this shall be all my plea: Jesus has lived, has died for me.”

That’s the whole point. God justly justifies by grace through Jesus Christ. Amen. Our Father,