It is God Who Justifies

There was once a man who considered it his vocation in life to stand up on top of a hill dressed in a clean white suit and with a shiny stainless steel shovel to keep tossing muddy slime in the people who walked on below. One day an old lady cried out, why are you doing this? As he wiped the mud out of her eyes and shook it off her tattered dress. And the man above said, it's my duty to show you hypocrites how filthy you are.

One day when our hero came home from an especially strenuous day dressed in his white suit of shoveling mud on people down below, he had a strange surprise. Barely had he turned the key in the lock of his door when it burst open and out rushed a veritable mountain of muddy slime which quickly engulfed him up to the neck. Through the open door he could see into his house and discovered that every stick of furniture was covered with slime.

Slime was running down the stairs and oozing underneath the windows. And just then he spotted a man who was dressed not in a clean white garment but in burning light whose face shone like the sun. And he demanded, where did this slime come from? And the answer was, from you.

Every drop of slime in this house came from your shovel. It took a while but it found its way home. Especially over the last few years in this fellowship we've all had quite a bit to say about the danger of cheap grace.

The danger of giving people the idea that if they come to church, sing a few hymns, sit through a sermon once a week, they're okay with God. The danger of giving the impression that as long as you believe it doesn't matter how you live. Baptism without repentance.

Communion without commitment, as Bonhoeffer said. We've emphasized that while the door of the kingdom of God is open, it is also narrow. And that in order to pass through the door you have to leave your own life behind.

We've stressed that God does not play games and that whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. But now we have creeping up on us another danger. The danger that while we emphasize how narrow the door is and how God refuses to play games with people, we begin to make ourselves the judges of our and other people's commitment.

We draw our own line down to the church to decide who are the true disciples. Who are the sheep and who are the goats? Who are the weak and who are the pared? And before we know it, our minds have been engulfed in a huge spiritual mountain better known as condemnation. The minute I take the step of measuring other people's lives, judging them, condemning them in my heart, things which my Lord expressly told me not to do, that minute I lose all sense of what God has done for me.

I can no longer see the meaning of the blood of Jesus for me and how desperately I need it for my cleansing. I am no longer standing on the ground that I am justified before God by his sheer mercy. By making myself just over other men, I immediately forfeit my standing of justification before God.

I lose God's peace and I can no longer include myself in the scriptural promise. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because I have moved out of Jesus, out of his mercy, out of his love, and I have myself now chained right down to the treadmill where I am trying to justify myself on the basis of those standards with which I've been measuring everyone else's life. Of course I feel uneasy and so now I try to make myself feel better by telling myself that I at least am sincere.

I'm not like those slobs over there. I'm committed. I'm not undisciplined like those chain smokers.

I'm disciplined. I'm not like those spiritual morons over there. I know my scripture.

I sacrifice. I'm a true disciple. But even that doesn't quite do it for me.

So now I go looking for friends, men and women, brothers and sisters, who will make me think that these things I'm thinking about myself are indeed true. They'll assure me and of course in exchange I assure them that they also are true disciples. And yet in my heart for all the wonderful things I tell myself about myself and all the wonderful assurances and smiles that come from these select brothers and sisters who make me feel better, in my heart I am condemned.

All the condemnation that I have been shoveling so freely on these hypocrites, these publicans and sinners and all these other stupid people around me, all that mud has just slid right down and collected in my heart. And aged there. And now it begins to develop an odor that announces my coming of far off.

If you like scriptural principles, try this one. When you justify yourself, you immediately become an instrument of condemnation for others. And you are yourself condemned in your heart and from every direction outside of you.

On the other hand, when you are justified by God alone, you condemn no one. Nor can anyone condemn you. What then shall we say to death? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.

Will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What a relief to come back to that mercy without which not one of us can possibly stand before God.

If thou, Lord, shouldest mark an equinix, O Lord, who should stand? But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest keep thee. What claim do you have on God right now? Can you stand before God and expect him to answer your prayers because you've been disciplined, you've been getting into the word, and you've been loving, and you've been diligent, and you've been faithful? The only claim you have on God right now is his mercy, nothing else. The shed blood of his son, who went up on that cross and died as if he were dying only for your sins, and rose for your justification as if you were the only one who needed to be justified, and who now intercedes for you by name, prays to you by name before the Father's throne.

And he loves everyone else who's ever been born just like that. Now I don't care if you've been following the Lord for 50 years, and I don't care if you know your New Testament by heart in the Greek. You need God's mercy today, and without that mercy you are lost.

You can't justify yourself. It is God who justifies, and how does he do it? He does it by faith giving. He sends his son to you with the scars of the nail still in his hand, and then Jesus says to you, take heart my child, your sins are forgiven.

Now you don't have to just need to hear that on the day you'll be born, you need to hear that now. Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. T'was grace that brought me safe thus far, not anything in me, and grace will bring me home.

Now sure I have to be obedient, and I have to be disciplined, and I have to love my neighbor, and I have to get into the Word, and I have to go out there and follow in the footsteps of my Lord, but I will never do any of those things from my heart apart from the working of God's grace within me. And as by the power of his grace I walk in the footsteps of my Lord day by day, what can I say but God be merciful to me a sinner. We're unprofitable servants and we've only done our duty.

God help us. Then God pours out his Spirit afresh, and lifts us up, and strengthens our wobbling legs, and says come on my child, a fresh start. I'll take care of it, let's go.

And as long as we are walking in God's mercy with all our hearts, who can condemn us? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If God didn't even spare his own Son, but offered him up for us all, will he not give us all things within? Moreover, when I walk in God's mercy, I begin to view the people around me with eyes of mercy. Knowing what the Lord has done for me, I know that he can do it for them.

I don't judge them. When I see these brothers and sisters floundering and in confusion, I don't judge them. And before I go rushing in there with my heavy advice, I be sure that I have God's permission to do that.

Because it is before their own master that they stand or fall, and they will be upheld for he is able to make them stand. So I'm not forever putting these people, these floundering, struggling souls, on the defensive with my superior spiritual knowledge, or confusing them with my condescending, self-righteous advice. Rather, I get down where I belong and join them in crying out for God's mercy and hanging on to God's promises.

For I know, looking at my Lord, that he is able to correct the errands, lift up the fallen, strengthen the weak, and save the lost. He's able. God helps us to admit that all too much of the time, we have not been living in that mercy.

That all too much of the time, we have not been pouring out our lives in joy and praise and thanksgiving to the Lord who justified us. God help us to admit that much of the time, our eyes are off the Lamb who justified us and saved us with his blood. And all those struggling sinners all around us who aren't making the grade, and what have we been doing? We've been shoveling mud.

God help us to admit that in our own hearts, we have been all too much of the time justifying ourselves and not letting God justify us. God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are. And this is why we have so little peace.

And this is why people run away as we approach. Because instead of the sweet aroma of the Christ, they can smell a flower. The scent of that mountain of condemnation that we've been throwing up or down or any way you like on these other people has been slipping right back down into our own hearts.

And this is why we haven't been able to come down from the temple justified. We've made it impossible for God to justify us because we've been too busy trusting in ourselves that we are righteous and despising others. But with a simple turning of the heart, this can all change today.

All we have to do is stop measuring how short our brothers and sisters have been falling and confess before God the sin which is in our own heart. Lord, I don't come here to justify myself in your sight today. I come for help.

I come to be forgiven. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Lord, save me from my sin.

God, help me. If in your heart you can say amen to that, join me now in prayer. And Lord God, should there be any among us that are standing at the door of the kingdom that that the invitation of the Lord himself will be heard by that heart and they'll find their way through, out of darkness into light.

And for those of us, Heavenly Father, who've been tasting the good things of your kingdom, know so much, have experienced such wonderful evidences of your forgiveness and grace, we just ask that you'd help us now to go through the kind of housecleaning our hearts need. And that this hardness and this metallic spirituality and this righteousness which is not from the blood, and all these credits and merits that we've been trying to pile up for ourselves, secretly in our hearts perhaps, may be just dumped out, the wretched that they are, to make way once more for the blood of the land and the living water, Heavenly Father, of your spirit. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.