02.08. Chapter 4B
CHAPTER 4B
Let us hold fast in our hearts the great revelation about God which closes Romans 4:17 : "God, who makes alive the dead, and calls the things not existing as existing." The translation in both the King James and the Revision Version surely comes short of the meaning here. The Greek literally is, God making alive dead ones, and calling things not being, being! It is as when God spoke to the darkness, back in Genesis One (Hebrew), the creative word, "Let light be!--and light was." It shone, too, "out of darkness"--not a ray that was projected from already existing light! His word was a creative fiat; and, answering it, "out of darkness" sprang the heretofore nonexistent, now created, light!
Note that it is the God who makes alive [93] dead ones;--not those with some faint and feeble existence, but actually dead ones, those utterly gone! It is the God who calls non-existent things existent,--not, "as though" they existed, a translation which, not reaching the Divine view, really involves doubt. "Not being, being," is what the text reads. It is as when God says of His words, "I make all things new,"--"they are come to pass!" (Revelation 21:5; Revelation 21:6). This is the God whose word Abraham trusted. It was in this character, that of Life-Giver to the dead, and the Caller of not-things existent, that he trusted Him. Thus Abraham was nothing (but dead), and the seed, non-existent! Yet Abraham believed God’s word that he should be "Father of a multitude"; and obediently changed his own name from Abram to Abraham!
[93] This remarkable compound word (zoe, life, plus poieO, make) is translated in the King James Version by the poor word "quicken." The Revised Version is right. The King James Version uses the same feeble word, "quicken" to translate the mighty word of Ephesians 2:5, a marvelous word of three components: a preposition, ("together with,"--sun)--plus our compound word, "make-alive," of Romans 4:17, above,--the whole really meaning, "made-alive-together-along-with"--Christ’ God enlifes us in Him,--us who once were in the other Adam, dead in sins! "Quicken" is not only pitiful, but lamentable in such a verse, as it hides the fundamental truth of a believer’s union with Christ in life and position.
Therefore the actual process and progress of Abraham’s life of faith in such a God, is vividly set before us as our pattern. We should study it over and over. The character of faith will be the same, with this consideration: Abraham believed on God in view of what He said He would do; we believe on Him who has raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.
So, in His counsels and reckoning the believer, in Chapter Eight, is seen already glorified! Of course, in counting things not being as being, God is committed to bring into outward actuality all that He reckons; thus the believing ungodly not only is accounted righteous, but will one day be publicly manifested as the very "righteousness of God"! Indeed, justification involves God’s giving him life, as see Romans 5:18. But that is not the ground of his being reckoned righteous--that some day he will be in experience as righteous as he is now reckoned--any more than that he is accounted righteous on the ground of his own good works. For justification is a sovereign, judicial--not creative-act of God, based wholly upon the death and resurrection of Christ. When a sinner is to be justified, then, righteous is that which he is not! But, he believing, God counts him, holds him as righteous. He has no more righteousness (as a quality) than when he a moment ago, believed. But he stands in all Christ’s acceptance by the act of God, the Judge! Though we have said, God will make this standing good in glorious manifestation, yet no degree of sanctification or glorification is the basis of his being declared righteous, but the blood of Christ only, and His resurrection,--the sacrifice of Christ and God’s sovereign act in view of it. For God to call the things not being as being; to extend to a man the complete value of Christ’s atoning work and "reckon" him justified and glorified in His sight, although not yet so in manifestation, is God’s own business. Let us praise Him for His grace!
Here, then, in Romans 4:18-25 we have the difficult, though blessed and glorious, yea, and God-glorifying path of faith, exemplified in Abraham. He kept on in hope, believing contrary to all human hopes! There were many trials to his faith, the essence of the difficulty, however, always being to "look unto the promise of God" alone, and not to circumstances, or to the impossibility, according to the flesh, of the promise’s being fulfilled.
We inherit what Abraham believed for and received. Mark down two points, naming the first "A" for Abraham; and the second, "C" for Christ. Now draw a line from "A" to "C" and then onward, and let that line represent the line of God’s blessing. The promises of blessing were lodged in Abraham, and all conditions of blessing were fulfilled by Christ; and you and I merely step into the line of blessing from Abraham through Christ. It is good to be born into a good family on earth; how blessed to be in the great family of faith, the family of God, along with Abraham!
Satan hates active faith in a believer’s heart, and opposes it with all his power. The world, of course, is unbelieving, and despises those who claim only "the righteousness of faith." The example of professing Christians generally is also against the path of simple faith. Among the "seven abominations" that Bunyan said he still found in his heart, was "a secret inclining to unbelief." "Against hope," against reason, against "feeling," against opinions of others, against all human possibilities whatever, we are to keep believing. This is the very article and essence of faith, [94] that it reckons as God does,--that is, upon God as described here, giving life not to the feeble, but to the dead, to those who cannot be "recovered" or "helped" or so wrought upon or patched up as to become something that they were not before; but who are absolutely hopeless, dead!
[94] 1. I cannot refrain from quoting John Bunyan’s Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, in his contrasts of faith and unbelief: "Let me here give the Christian reader a more particular description of the Qualities of unbelief, by opposing faith unto it, in these particulars: 1. Faith believeth the Word of God, but unbelief questioneth the certainty of the same. 2. Faith believeth the word, because it is true, but unbelief doubteth thereof, because it is true. 3. Faith sees more in a promise of God to help than in all other things to hinder; but unbelief, notwithstanding God’s promise, saith. How can these things be? 4. Faith will make thee see love in the heart of Christ when with His mouth He giveth reproofs, but unbelief will imagine wrath in His heart when with His mouth and word He saith He loves us. 5. Faith will help the soul to wait, though God defers to give, but unbelief will snuff and throw up all, if God makes any tarrying. 6. Faith will give comfort in the midst of fears, but unbelief causeth fears in the midst of comforts. 7. Faith will suck sweetness out of God’s rod, but unbelief can find no comfort in the greatest mercies. 8. Faith maketh great burdens light, but unbelief maketh light ones intolerably heavy. 9. Faith helpeth us when we are down, but unbelief throws us down when we are up, 10. Faith bringeth us near to God when we are far from Him, but unbelief puts us far from God when we are near to Him. 11. Faith putteth a man under grace, but unbelief holdeth him under wrath. 12. Faith purifieth the heart, but unbelief keepeth it polluted and impure. 13. Faith maketh our work acceptable to God through Christ, but whatsoever is of unbelief is sin, for without faith it is impossible to please Him, 14. Faith giveth us peace and comfort in our souls, but unbelief worketh trouble and tossings like the restless waves of the sea. 15. Faith maketh us see preciousness in Christ, but unbelief sees no form, beauty, or comeliness in Him. 16. By faith we have our life in Christ’s fulness, but by unbelief we starve and pine away. 17. Faith gives us the victory over the law, sin, death, the devil, and all evils; but unbelief layeth us obnoxious to them all. 18. Faith will show us more excellency in things not seen than in them that are, but unbelief sees more of things that are than in things that will be hereafter. 19. Faith makes the ways of God pleasant and admirable, but unbelief makes them heavy and hard. 20. By faith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob possessed the land of promise; but because of unbelief neither Aaron, nor Moses, nor Miriam could get thither. 21. By faith the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, but by unbelief the generality of them perished in the wilderness. 22. By faith Gideon did more with three hundred men and a few empty pitchers than all the twelve tribes could do, because they believed not God. 23. By faith Peter walked on the water, but by unbelief he began to sink. thus might many more be added, which, for brevity’s sake, I omit, beseeching every one that thinketh he hath a soul to save or be damned to take heed of unbelief lest, seeing there is a promise left us of entering into His rest, any of us by unbelief should indeed come short of it." That God should call the things that are not as being, is what faith rejoices in! Only God could call things thus. Abraham becomes before our eyes the particular shining example of this.
Romans 4:19 : His own body as in a dead condition--"he considered" [95] it, and knew it to be thus, and was therefore wholly hopeless in himself. Moreover, Abraham knew Sarah was "past age," unable to bear a child. He had before him, then, himself as dead, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. But he also had before him the promise of God: "Thou shalt become a father of many nations"; "So shall thy seed be."
[95] The King James Version along with certain commentators reads "considered not." William Kelly says: "There is excellent and perhaps adequate authority of every kind (mss., versions and ancient citations) for dropping the negative particle." It is remarkable in this nineteenth verse that whichever reading we adopt, the resultant statement is not inconsistent with the context, though the two readings are opposite as can be.
Romans 4:20 : It was plainly and only a question of the veracity of God, and of His ability to carry out what He had promised. Abraham, therefore, believed [96] in Jehovah (Genesis 15:5; Genesis 15:6); and he wavered not through unbelief, but became inwardly strengthened through faith, giving glory to God; and also even Sarah herself "counted Him faithful who had promised; and received power to conceive seed."
[96] 1.The moral grandeur, yea, sublimity, of Abraham’s position cannot be put into human description. Alone (except for Melchizedek) in a world that had left God, Abraham became by his faith, the silver thread that bound his seed to the God the world had deserted! Out from Eden man had gone, and then away from God’s presence, to found, in Cain’s city, a state of human affairs with God left out. Condemned and judged by the Deluge, they had built their proud Babel-tower. Scattered, again by Divine judgment, over the earth, they set up wood and stone "gods," and sacrificed to demons, glorifying the very lusts of their degradation: such was man’s state, without God and without hope, in the world. And then--Abraham! Walking by a principle the world could not know, direct faith in God as He is,--as He reveals Himself step by step to this friend of His, Abraham comes quietly, but how wondrously, upon the scene. Even the Hittites, though they said of him, "Thou art a prince of God among us," yet knew him not,--neither Abraham, nor his blessed God. Faith in God cannot be understood, nor those who have it known, except by the men of faith. And because real faith in God enters into all the walk and ways of a trusting soul, such a one becomes, like Abraham, a "stranger and pilgrim on earth." The Lots, the Ishmaels, one by one, withdraw from Abraham. He dwelt at "Hebron," which word means "communion." Lot, though saved at last, walked as a worldling,--"by sight." Ishmael, as after him Esau, knew nothing of God. But Abraham knew, and progressed steadily in knowledge of his God, even to the ready offering of Isaac upon the altar. There was a seven-fold revelation of God to Abraham: First, it was as "the God of glory" that He appeared first in Ur of the Chaldees (Acts 7:2). Second, He revealed Himself to him as Jehovah (Genesis 12:8; Genesis 14:22; Genesis 15:2; Genesis 15:8),--although not opening to him, as afterwards to Moses in Israel the meaning of that Name (Exodus 3:15); third, as El Elyon, God Most High, "Possessor of heaven and earth": and the Disposer of lands, and kings: (Genesis 14:19-22; Daniel 3:26; Daniel 4:2; Daniel 5:18; Daniel 5:21); fourth, as Lord (Adonai, Jehovah-- Genesis 15:2, Genesis 15:8); fifth, as El Shaddai, the Almighty God (Genesis 17:1); sixth, as "the Everlasting God" (Genesis 21:33); and seventh, as Jehova-Jireh" (Genesis 22:14): The God who will Provide,--Especially, a Lamb for sacrifice (Genesis 22:8). Christ, in His ministry on earth, said "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad!" And, finally, Paul tells us in Hebrews 11:1-40 that this great man of faith "looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Architect and Maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10),--that is, the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21:1-27, Revelation 22:1-21. Thus Abraham was taken into God’s complete confidence--as he himself had had complete confidence in God! "The Friend of God"--what a title! No angel or seraph had that name!
We find in Genesis 17:17 that Abraham not only considered the natural deadness of his body, but also brought up the question before the Lord: "Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?" But, Jehovah having answered his objection with a definite promise, Abraham thereafter refused to have his faith weakened by any natural thought of himself and Sarah, but set God’s promise only before his mind, without wavering, [97] as "double-minded" people, in their doubting, do (James 1:6-8, R.V.). Indeed, his constancy was such that it evidently wrought upon the doubting Sarah, who learned that He was "faithful who had promised." [98] Sarah’s incredulous but eager laugh (Genesis 18:12; Genesis 18:13; Genesis 18:15) Jehovah charged her sternly with; for He had before when Abraham laughed (Genesis 17:16-19), named the son whom she was to bear "Isaac"--which means laughter! Thus both Abraham and Sarah thought this thing "too good to be true"; but God in faithfulness brought it to pass. And we remember the happy laughter into which Sarah finally entered: "Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh; every one that heareth will laugh with me" (Genesis 21:5-7). Every time she spoke the name "Isaac" she could remember her doubt, and how gracious Jehovah had been to her.
[97] The word translated "wavered" (Romans 4:20), originally means to discriminate; then to learn or decide by discrimination; then to dispute or contend inwardly; then to be at variance with oneself, to hesitate, doubt. See Thayer’s Lexicon, where he finally translates: "Abraham did not hesitate through want of faith." Uncertainty, inward balancings and strugglings of faith with unbelief (as the father of the demoniac cried, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief") such was not the state of Abraham’s soul. Having committed himself to God’s promise, which was wholly beyond human possibility, he went steadily forward. This had the double result of giving glory to the God whom he believed, and of making Abraham himself stronger and stronger in faith. Two travelers on their way home came to a river frozen over, but evidently not as yet with thick ice. One said, "I am afraid that ice will not bear my weight," and he sat down in the cold. The other said, "I am going home," and strode forward over the ice with steady step. He had committed himself! He refused to look at circumstances; and every step strengthened his resolve to go ahead. He reached the other bank, and eventually his home. The other man stayed back in the cold. Mr. Moody used to say, "Unbelief sees something in God’s hand, and says, I wish I had that. Faith sees it, and says, I will have it!--and gets it." As one has said:
"The steps of faith fall upon the seeming void, And find the rock beneath!"
[98] God let Abraham wait many years, over thirteen at least (compare Genesis 16:16 with Genesis 17:1) before He began to let him realize the promises in the birth of Isaac.
Romans 4:21 : Being full of assurance that what He had promised. He was able to perform. What a blessed assurance of faith, resting wholly upon God’s performance of what He had promised,--how that puts us to shame! Since Abraham’s day we have the written Word; and Christ has come Yet how often we doubt! [99]
[99] "We have also a precious suggestion of some reasons (if we may say so) why God prescribes Faith as the condition of the justification of a sinner. Faith, we see, is an act of the soul which looks wholly away from self (as regards both merit and demerit), and honours the Almighty and All-graciousin a way not indeed in the least meritorious (because merely reasonable, after all), but yet such as to touch the hem of His garment.’ It brings His creatures to Him in the one right attitude--complete submission and confidence. We thus see, in part, why faith, and only faith, is the way to reach and touch the Merit (value and power) of the Propitiation"--Moule.
Romans 4:22 : Now God tells us that His word concerning Abraham, that "his faith was reckoned as righteousness," was written not for him only, but for us, also,--for all Abraham’s children. There is no more striking description of the principle and process of faith than in this passage. Look at the "also" of Romans 4:22 : Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him as righteousness. That evidently looks toward Genesis 22:1-24; at the end of Abraham’s testing time, when he offered up Isaac. Let us see what is here:
(1) We are not told that Abraham was reckoned righteous because of the vision of the God of glory that was vouchsafed to him in Ur of the Chaldees (Acts 7:2). Nor do we read that he was reckoned righteous because he forsook his own land and was brought to the land of Canaan, nor because he built altars to Jehovah and worshipped him; nor because he had such high courage as to slaughter the kings and deliver Lot. All these things occurred before the amazing scene of Genesis 15:1-21 : where God proposed to him something absolutely impossible of accomplishment, except in God Himself.
(2) Abraham was reckoned righteous when he "believed in Jehovah," in His word, to bring about concerning Abraham something that could not humanly be--that he should be a "father of nations." God came to him years after this (Genesis 17:1-27), commanding him to change his name from Abram, "high father" (but desolate, like a lonely peak), to Abraham, "father of a multitude." And Abraham obeyed, and changed his name thus; although God had just rejected Ishmael, the only offspring he had in sight, from being the seed of promise and covenant!
(3) Abraham "gave glory to God," because he counted on God’s bringing to pass His word, about that which only His glorious power could effect; a thing completely outside human possibility, but which all God’s faithfulness and truth were pledged to accomplish. Thus Abraham let God in upon the scene, to act according to His own truth and power. Probably at that time he was the only man on earth who was giving God His due praise as the God of truth, who has "magnified His Word above all His Name" (Psalms 138:2). Our reason, yea, and our conscience also, keep telling us that right living is essentially better than right believing; but both conscience and reason are wrong! [100]
[100] Ernest Gordon in the Sunday School Times says, "A French Unitarian preacher, M. Lauriol, in speaking at the recent synod of Agen, said, Purity of heart and life is more important than correctness of opinion,’ to which Dean Doumergue answers shrewdly, Healing is more important than the remedy, but without the remedy, there would be no healing.’" Faith is the only faculty by which we can lay hold of God. "Let him take hold of My strength," is God’s command (Isaiah 27:5). But we cannot reach His greatness--we are dust. We cannot look upon His face, for He dwelleth in light unapproachable. We cannot apprehend His wisdom, for it is infinite, incomprehensible ,--"reasonings of the wise, (regarding God) are vain," Then how shall we lay hold of God at all? By believing Him! The weakest of men can believe what God tells him! Praise be to His Name! Faith, simple faith, connects us with the Mighty One! Paul says, "The faith of God’s elect" involves "the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness" (Titus 1:1). "Purity of heart and life" without the correct, accurate, constant teaching of doctrine,--"the doctrine which is according to godliness" (1 Timothy 6:3)--is simply a philosopher’s speculation or a Romanist’s lie, or a "Modernist’s" imagination.
(4) Jehovah reckoned Abraham righteous not because he was either righteous or holy, but acting absolutely, and entirely according to Himself--who "giveth life to the dead" (Abraham was dead: he could beget no seed); and "calleth the things that are not" (Abraham was a sinner, not righteous in himself) "as though they were."
(5) The purpose, then, of God concerning Abraham, Abraham thus allowed God to fulfil. Some day you will see Abraham just as righteous and holy in character and in evident fact, as His God, in that far day, reckoned him. It was not however, on the ground of what God would make him in the future that He reckoned Abraham righteous when he believed Him. The ground, as we see plainly in Romans 3:25, was Christ set forth as a propitiation,--through faith in Christ’s blood. For "God set Him forth as a propitiation . . . because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime" (that is, by Abraham and by all who lived before Christ’s death).
God had His own foreknown ground, Christ, as the Lamb "without blemish and without spot," foreknown "before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:19; 1 Peter 1:20). We keep repeating these things because of the continual tendency of our wretched hearts to find some cause in ourselves, or in our own faithfulness, for God’s reckoning us righteous.
(6) Romans 4:23-24 : Now it was not written for his sake only, that it was reckoned unto him, but for our sakes likewise, for it [our faith] will be reckoned [as righteousness] to us also who are believing on Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. This is a blessed and sweet revelation for believers, that we, like Abraham, have righteousness reckoned to us; and that the story in Genesis was "written for our sake." The Old Testament is a living book for God’s real saints! But we must remember that God’s methods with faith are always the same. Abraham’s faith was tried: are not we also told to expect the trial of our faith? [101]
[101] Satan, our deadly foe, has one target at which he constantly aims,--the faith of a believer. We believe that Satan’s whole effort is engaged directly against faith in Christ. Millions of demons--unclean spirits, dumb spirits, lying spirits--swarm the air of this earth to carry on, together with those angelic principalities and powers who fell with Satan, the terrible program, with its "lusts of the flesh" and "of the eyes," and "the vainglory of life," called in Ephesians 2:2 "the course of this world" (literally,--the aion of this cosmos, that is, the present stage of this world-order). But Satan himself, filled with hellish jealousy against the Son of Man who came and spoiled the strong man’s house (in the wilderness temptation); and triumphed over all Satan’s baits at Calvary, when He put away the sin of the world from God’s sight (a fact which is true already, as Satan, and instructed saints, well know, and which will be made good openly soon, in the new heavens and new earth),--Satan himself, we say, is at present chiefly occupied blinding men to the redemption and glory that are in Christ, and in preventing and hindering the progress of every believer. Every one who confesses the Lord Jesus is openly challenged by the prince of this world. It is well that "the God of peace shall bruise Satan under our feet shortly!" But God meanwhile says, "Whom resist, steadfast in your faith!"
There is also a beautiful message in the literal rendering of verse 24(Romans 4:24), that can scarcely be supplied in English: It was on account of us also, unto whom it [righteousness] is about to be reckoned, to those who believe--as if God were eager (as indeed He is) to write down righteous those who believe His testimony concerning His Son!
Note two things here: First, it is upon God we believe. The very God who was, in the opening chapters of the Epistle, bringing all of us under His judgment, without righteousness and helpless to attain it, is here believed on; as our Lord Jesus indeed said in John 12:44 : "He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me."
But, second, it is upon Him as having raised Jesus our Lord from the dead that we believe on God in Romans 4:24. It is not merely on the God who set forth Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, but it is on the God who has set a public seal to the truth of our Lord’s last words, "It is finished," by raising Him from the dead. "He is not here, but is risen," was the angel’s word that thrilled those saints early at His tomb. And since then He has been received up in glory, and the Holy Spirit has come, witnessing to the amazing fact that the One who hung on a Roman cross, numbered with transgressors by men, and forsaken of God in the just judgment of our sins, was raised and glorified by the same God who forsook Him on Calvary. This glorious fact should be held fast by our hearts. For not only does God’s raising up Christ prove our sins to have been put away; but a Risen Christ becomes a new place for us! We were justified from all things by His blood; we are now set by God in Christ Risen! And thus we are prepared for the last great verse in this blessed chapter.
Romans 4:25 : Who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justifying. Here we have Jesus our Lord delivered up for our offences. Now the Greek word for "delivered up" occurs again in Chapter 8:32(Romans 8:32): "God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." The meaning is evident: on account of our trespasses, of what you and I have done, our Lord was delivered up by a holy God to bear our sin, with its guilt and penalty, even to God’s forsaking His Son: for He must otherwise have forsaken us forever!--yea, to His smiting our Substitute instead of smiting us: "He was bruised for our iniquities." And was raised for our justifying--This must be the sense here: for we are not justified till we believe. Furthermore, if Christ’s resurrection was merely to prove that we had been justified (as some teach), a verb-construction would have been used, which would signify, on account of our having been justified. But God uses the noun-construction (dikai sis) meaning, "the act of justifying"; showing that Christ’s resurrection was for the purpose of justifying us, positively, in a Risen Christ, (Compare Romans 5:10)
Matthew Henry says: "In Christ’s death He paid our debt; in His resurrection, He took out our acquittance." But Scripture goes much further in this matter of justification than the satisfaction of all claims of God’s justice against us. We are set in a new place of acceptance, the Risen Christ, that has nothing to do with our old place. God will now go on to "create us in Christ Jesus." It will be "justification of life," as we shall see in Chapter Five.
Only, we repeat, let us always remember that we are justified as ungodly, and now we are "new creatures in Christ Jesus.’ Here, indeed, is a great mystery. God does not declare us righteous as connected with the old Adam--old creatures, we might say. Nor does He declare us righteous because we are new creatures. But God that calleth the things not existing as existing, acts in justification, declaring the ungodly who believe on Him, righteous: not because of any process of His operation upon the creature, but by His own fiat, reckoning to the beliving one the whole work of Christ on his behalf. This involves God’s giving this ungodly believing one a standing in Christ Risen; and God will go on by an act of creation, to cause him to share Christ’s risen life, which is justification of life. But it is as ungodly that he is declared righteous. We must hold fast to this, the first point of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3).
We are indeed said to be justified by or in His blood (Romans 5:9), but if there had been no resurrection, His death would have availed us nothing. So Paul says that both Peter and he were "justified in Christ" (Galatians 2:17): that is, in the Risen Christ, in view, of course, of His finished work on the cross. When our Lord said, "It is finished," He announced the penalty paid for every believer that shall be. But He lay under the power of death for three days and nights, His body in Joseph’s tomb and His spirit in Paradise.
Now justification involves not only, negatively, the putting away of our guilt; but, positively, a new place and standing. For the old Adam was utterly condemned, as his history, and the law, and finally the cross, fully showed. If I am a sinner, and my sins are transferred to the head of Christ my Substitute, and He bears the penalty of them in death, then where am I, if Christ be not raised? His death and resurrection are one and inseparable as regards justification. Christ being raised up, God announces to me, "Not only were your sins put away by Christ’s blood, so that you are justified from all things; but I have also raised up Christ; and you shall have your standing in Him. I have given you this faith in a Risen Christ, and announce to you that in Him alone now is your place and standing. Judgment is forever past for you, both as concerns your sin, and as concerns My demand that you have a standing of holiness and righteousness of your own before Me. All this is past. Christ is now your standing! He is your life and your righteousness; and you need nothing of your own forever. I made Christ to become sin on your behalf, identified Him with all that you were, in order that you might become the righteousness of God in Him."
I must here quote the vigorous, triumphant words of Martin Luther, from his commentary on Galatians, touching these words, "delivered up for OUR trespasses": "Christ verily is the innocent, as concerning His own person, and the unspotted and undefiled Lamb of God, and therefore He ought not to have been hanged upon a tree: but because, according to the law of Moses, every thief and malefactor ought to be hanged, therefore Christ also, according to the law, ought to be hanged. For He sustained the person of a sinner and of a thief: not of one, but of all sinners and thieves. For He being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person, but a sinner which hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blasphemer, an oppressor, a persecutor; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer; and, briefly, Christ, who hath and beareth the sin of all men in His own body, not that He Himself committed them, but for that He received them, being committed or done of us, and laid upon His own body, that He might make satisfaction for them with His own blood. Therefore whatsoever sins I, thou, and we all have done and shall do, hereafter, they are Christ’s own sins, as verily as if He Himself had done them. To be brief, our sin must needs become Christ’s own sin, or else we shall perish forever.
"Also learn this definition diligently (Who was delivered for OUR trespasses’), that this one syllable being believed, may swallow up all thy sins: that thou mayest know assuredly, that Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee. Then let thy sins be not sins only, but even thy own sins indeed.
"Thus may we be able to answer the devil accusing us, saying, Thou art a sinner, thou shalt be damned. No, say I, for I flee unto Christ who hath given Himself for my sins. Therefore, Satan, thou shalt not prevail against me in that thou goest about to terrify me, in setting forth the greatness of my sins, and so to bring me into heaviness, distrust, despair, hatred, contempt, and blaspheming of God. Yea, rather, in that thou sayest, I am a sinner, thou givest me armour and weapons against thyself, that with thine own sword I may cut thy throat, and tread thee under my feet; for Christ died for sinners! Moreover, Satan, thou thyself preachest unto me the glory of God; for thou puttest me in mind of God’s fatherly love toward me, wretched and damned sinner: Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16). And as often as thou objectest that I am a sinner, so often thou callest me to remembrance of the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lay all my sins; for the Lord hath laid all our iniquity upon Him’ (Isaiah 53:6). Again, For the transgressions of His people was He smitten’ (Isaiah 53:8). Wherefore, when thou sayest I am a sinner, thou dost not terrify me, but comfortest me above measure." So Paul closes his setting forth of this great resurrection side of our salvation, saying, He was raised for our justifying. Doubtless other and eternal ends were in view in God’s raising up Christ; but lay fast hold of this, that in your case it was for the purpose of declaring you who believe righteous, that God raised Christ. And further, of giving you a hitherto unheard of place, to be in Christ, one with Him before God forever, loved as Christ is loved, seen in all the perfectness and beauty of Christ Himself, glorified with Him, associated with Him as companions, that He might be the First-born among many brethren!
There is no limit to God’s favor toward those in Christ!
JUSTIFICATION--A REVIEW I. What It Is Not
1. It is not regeneration, the impartation of life in Christ; for although it is "justification of life"--meaning God will give life to the justified, he is justified as ungodly.
2. It is not "a new heart," or "change of heart,"--indefinite expressions at best, but having in them no proper definition of justification.
3. It is not "making an unjust man just," in his life and behavior. The English word justified, as we all know, comes from the Latin word meaning to make just or righteous; but this is exactly what justification is not, in Scripture.
4. It is not to be confused with sanctification; which is the state of those placed in Christ,--"sanctified in Christ Jesus"; and consequently the manner of their walk in the Spirit.
II What It Is.
1. It is a declaration by God in heaven concerning a man, that he stands righteous in God’s sight.
2. God justifies a man, on the basis or ground of the "redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). See Romans 5:6 : We are "justified by [or in] His blood";--the blood the procuring ground, or means; God the acting Person.
3. God who has already acted judicially, in pronouncing the whole world guilty (Romans 3:19), now again acts judicially concerning that sinner who becomes convinced of his guilt and helplessness, and believes that God’s Word concerning Christ’s expiatory sacrifice applies to himself; and thus becomes "of faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26,RSV, margin): God’s judicial [102] pronouncement now is, that such a believing one stands righteous in His sight.
[102] "Wherefore as condemnation is not the infusing of a habit of wickedness into him that is condemned, nor the making of him to be inherently wicked who was before righteous, but the passing of a sentence upon a man with respect to his wickedness; no more is justification the change of a person from inherent unrighteousness by the infusion of a principle of grace, but a sentential declaration of him to be righteous" (i.e., in his standing before God)--John Owen.
4. Justification, or declaring-righteous, therefore, is the reckoning by God to a believing sinner of the whole value of the infiinte work of Christ on the cross; and, further, His connecting this believing sinner with the Risen Christ in glory, giving him the same acceptance before Himself as has Christ: so that the believer is now "the righteousness of God in Him" (Christ).
Negatively, then, God in justifying a sinner reckons to him the putting away of sin by Christ’s blood. Positively, He places him in Christ: he is one with Christ forever before God!
Wondrous prize of our high calling!
Speed we on to this, Past the cities of the angels,-- Farther into bliss; On into the depths eternal Of the love and song, Where in God the Father’s glory Christ has waited long;
There to find that none beside Him God’s delight can be: Not BESIDE HIM, NAY, BUT IN HIM, O BELOVED ARE WE!
--C. P. C., in Hymns of Ter Steegen.