A Sermon by J W Alexander
Romans 3:28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
- Having learned what this righteousness is, the remaining question is, How does it become ours? It does not avail for all, for some are never justified. The explanation is that this righteousness is made over to those who believe, and as soon as they believe. Hence it is called “the righteousness of faith”, the “righteousness which is of faith”, the “righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ”; and we are repeatedly said to be “justified by faith”. These declarations are too numerous and too explicit to leave room for doubt, except as to the place which faith occupies in justification.
Here arises a class of theologians who teach that the very act of faith is reckoned to our account, instead of the righteousness of our works. They conceive that they find some basis for this statement in such texts as these: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness”; “Faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness”. But if we carefully examine Paul’s reasoning in these places, we shall find he means that justification is a matter not of working but of believing; in other words, that it is not earned. In his argument, to say that justification is “by faith” is the same as to say that it is a matter of grace; and as his object is to prove that Abraham was justified without works, he cites the declaration that he was justified by faith.
Nothing short of perfection can justify anyone. To suppose a reduction in the demands of the law so that God could receive the act of believing, in place of other acts of obedience, is to annul Paul’s argument. The whole method of grace is then simply the substitution of one work in place of all the rest. And, strange to say, it is assumed that it gets rid of the substitution of Christ for His people. The act of believing is of course a work, and as such it is demanded by the law; but as a work it is excluded by the gospel. The very freeness of the salvation is lost by considering faith as the ground of acceptance. Faith has indeed a value, which shall be pointed out, but it renders unnecessary the supposition that the act of faith is reckoned to us.
All Paul’s convincing reasoning against justification by works bears in full force against justification by faith considered as a work. He most carefully
1The remainder of the sermon, continued from last month. The preacher emphasised in the first section that to justify does not mean to make holy but to declare a sinner righteous. This section follows on from one which explained what the righteousness is which is the basis of a sinner’s justification – Christ’s righteousness.
distinguishes faith from the righteousness which is received by it. That which justifies must be a perfect satisfaction to the law, which faith is not. If faith is the ground of our acceptance, we are justified without the law being satisfied – unless we say that it is satisfied by the obedience of Christ. This is indeed most true; but then the imputation of the act of faith is more than needless. It is highly absurd to suppose that Paul, in the very discourses in which he is reasoning against all righteousness of our own, represents the act of faith as set to the sinner’s account instead of obedience.
These reasons go far to set aside the related error – that we are justified by faith because it is considered as the root and principle of all obedience. Faith is here regarded as incomplete obedience. This is justification by works under the name of faith. The idea destroys at once the freeness of salvation. It is only a refined righteousness of works. It is as much our own righteousness as works are our own righteousness. It is a payment of the debt by a different kind of works. Every declaration that we are justified by faith involves denying that we are justified by anything that comes from ourselves; nothing can be plainer. Does Paul say that “boasting is excluded”? “By what law?” “By the law of faith.” Does he say that Abraham was justified by faith? He adds: “Now to him that worketh not . . . but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned”. Such is the irreconcilable opposition between faith and works, as justifying, that Paul assumes it as a maxim: “The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them”.
It is undoubtedly true that faith works by love and that love is the fulfilling of the law, and consequently that faith is the principle of all obedience. It is also true that only justifying faith produces works, but it does not derive its power to justify from its fruitfulness. Indeed the assumption is a covert method of bringing in a holy nature as the basis for justification.
When the Scripture speaks of justification, it passes very lightly over the act of believing, as if not to ascribe to it a substantive part in the work. Scripture always introduces it as a sign and proof of the freeness of the benefit, and always as the channel for communicating something higher. We should accustom ourselves to take this view. Faith is simply an instrument that receives. It is the hand stretched forth to receive an infinite bounty – the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its whole activity is to bring the sinner into connection with that righteousness – to which he would otherwise have no claim. Faith is a persuasion of God’s mercy, acquiescing in God’s plan; it involves despairing of our own strength and acknowledging free grace; it is above all other exercises fitted to exclude the pretence of merit and to exalt the riches of Christ.
The moment a sinner believes, he is justified. It is of all things the furthest from any thought that this act constitutes any claim; he scarcely makes it an object of attention; his soul is absorbed in the infinite object which it grasps. Yet at this point of time the righteousness of Christ becomes his, and it becomes so because faith unites him to the Surety. This is the secret of its power. It establishes communication with the source of merit. He is thenceforth in Christ, and the righteousness of God is in him. Being one with Christ, he possesses the acts and merits of his Head, in the eye of the law. These are no longer the righteousness of another infinitely removed from him, but are the righteousness of one with whom he has become indissolubly connected. The oneness is so complete that it is likened to the unity of the Father and the Son.
In God’s solemn account are written all the enormous debts of His people; but God’s own hand has written opposite them, in letters of blood, the payment of His Son. God is pleased to regard the righteousness of the Head as the righteousness of the members. Nor is there error or deception in such a reckoning. This righteousness, though not rendered by believers, is rendered for us by one who is their Surety; and they “are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” Turretine, the Genevan theologian, states, “We are not declared righteous in ourselves, which would be false, but in Christ, which is most true”. And Witsius, a Dutch writer, says, “God does not judge that we in our own persons have rendered this righteousness, which is false; but that Christ has so fulfilled it for us that we may justly be invested with His merit, which is so true that it is the sum of the whole gospel”.
Christ’s righteousness was rendered for no other purpose. The law did not demand it, except for this purpose. The Son of God became incarnate to render it. He was under no obligation, except the obligation of His people. When He bowed under the law, it was the world of elect sinners which bowed. “If one died for all, then were all dead” (or, all died). The infinite Judge does not merely accept it; He devised it. It was the very thing which He contemplated from all eternity as the most glorious satisfaction to the law; it would be the height of presumptuous scruple for us to find fault with it. And all heaven rejoices in beholding a glorious body of saints, so united to the Messiah that every act of His redounds to their salvation.
It is a view of the subject which avoids many difficulties and anticipates many objections. The union of believers with Christ is the ground on which they receive His righteousness. It is set to their account; it has become theirs by this gracious connection. This, and no more, is what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Instead of arbitrarily ascribing to believers something contrary to fact, as our adversaries allege, God beholds them as
intimately connected with the great Surety. The obedience which He rendered He rendered in their nature, in their name, and as their covenant head. It was His very intention that it should be regarded as theirs. It had no other intention. Faith completes the union long contemplated in the covenant and, from then on, God regards the believer no longer in himself, but in Christ, and the Church of elect saints as the body of Christ invested with His righteousness.
From what has been said, it is apparent that justification is instantaneous. The notion of progressive justification is inseparable from the teaching of righteousness on the basis of a holy nature. At every moment the soul is either condemned or absolved, either unrighteous or righteous. It is equally apparent that the notion of eternal justification is unscriptural. The covenant counsels of the Godhead, and the purpose to justify, were indeed from eternity, but the act of justification takes place in time.
Neither can we say that actual justification ensued immediately when the Lord Jesus satisfied divine justice. Although the righteousness was complete at that instant, it was not yet applied to those for whom it was intended because, as we have seen, this application is founded on the union of believers to Christ, which had not yet taken place in regard to all. The moment of justification is the moment of believing; in the order of time, it is therefore identical with the moment of effectual calling. This appears from all those expressions which speak of believers as having been under condemnation and wrath, as passing from darkness to light, from enmity to friendship, from death to life. But holy men who lived under the Old Testament were united by faith to a Redeemer not yet incarnate and were justified by a righteousness yet to come.
At this blessed moment of justification, the sinner is at once admitted to the favour of God. He is accepted as righteous. The law is as fully satisfied with regard to him as if he had never sinned. The righteousness of Christ is now his righteousness. He can no more come into condemnation than Christ can come into condemnation. He is delivered from the guilt and penalty of all his sins. As to sins which he may hereafter commit, he is indeed not pardoned, because it would be incongruous to say that sins are pardoned before they are committed; but God has graciously accepted the righteousness of Christ, even in respect to these sins, and in process of time pardon is dispensed. The effect of this grace is to remove all condemnation and all punishment.
That sin which has been visited on the Surety, will not be visited on believers. The afflictions of this life are not legal pains, but fatherly trials and corrections. And death itself, being deprived of sin, which is its sting, and the law, which is its strength, is despoiled of all its punitive force. Here is a
change of state so great that it is amazing even to him who experiences it. The absolving act is not in every case pronounced to the soul of the believer; it is, however, sooner or later, sealed to every one of them by the Holy Spirit. But the vastness of its meaning will not be appreciated by anyone until the time of the general judgment, when the Judge shall acquit His people, as a body, before the assembled universe, and welcome them to the joy of their Lord.
Such is the doctrine of the Bible on this important subject; and if my endeavour has been successful, I have shown these points: justification is a legal term, expressing an act of God by which He accepts a sinner as righteous in the sight of the law; the best obedience of the sinner, even in his renewed state, is insufficient for this end; we are justified without works, and the works thus excluded are not merely ceremonial works, nor works wrought in unbelief, but all works whatever; the righteousness which justifies us is that of the Divine Mediator, consisting in what He did and what He suffered; this righteousness becomes ours when we believe; the efficacy of faith does not arise from the act of believing being imputed instead of obedience, nor from faith viewed as the source of all obedience, but from its uniting us with the Lord Jesus Christ; in consequence of this union, the acts of the Redeemer are considered as the acts of His people, which is otherwise called the imputation of His righteousness; and hence the believing sinner receives the absolute remission of all his sins and has a right to eternal salvation.
Two reflections will sum up our discussion of the subject and will at the same time be a reply to objections which some think formidable.
- Justification by faith is free justification. From beginning to end, the work of salvation is of grace. And it is futile to object that this grace is impaired by the satisfaction rendered to the law. The debt which we owed is indeed paid, but not paid by us. The means of paying it is freely given us by God. He who places in the hands of an insolvent debtor the amount which shall discharge all his liabilities, does not thereby lessen the obligation of the person relieved. Our own part in justification is merely to receive. It is not our own works or even our own faith that is the ground of our acceptance. And though the law is fully satisfied and the debt cancelled, it is a gracious gift to us; a gift from the hand of Almighty God.
The offended Judge is He by whom the propitiation is devised, applied, accepted and perfected. This is deeply impressed on the heart of the rejoicing believer. The more clearly he views the righteousness of the Surety as the basis of all his hope, the more humbly does he acknowledge that his salvation is all of grace. The doctrine abases human pride and exalts the riches of Divine favour. And we may confidently appeal to experience to show that
none have been more constant in praising free grace than those who behold it manifested in the imputation of perfect righteousness.
- The belief of justification by faith tends to personal holiness. In answer to the objection of adversaries, we maintain that the obligations to obedience are not weakened but confirmed. He who expects justification to be, not by works, but by faith, expects it in this way because his conviction of the eternal obligation of the law is so strong; the law could not relax one jot or tittle of its claim, without satisfaction. He connects with this such a sense of the evil of sin as can be produced only by seeing it visited on the holy Son of God. He sees, as no others see, the dreadful nature of its punishment. He sees, as no others can see, the infinite purity of God’s character. But he especially feels the obligation of gratitude, for the free compassion and infinite love of God; so he has the strongest possible motive to obedience. Every view which he takes of Christ’s mediatorial work and suffering is a fresh inducement for him to live no longer unto himself but unto Him who loved him and gave Himself for him.
Consequently the history of the Church shows that gospel morality has flourished best where this doctrine has been preached. To which side shall we look for strictness in observing the law of God – to the Romish body, where human merit was triumphant, or to the churches of the Reformation? Where shall we go to find strong convictions of sin – to the assemblies where human merit is exalted, or to those where free salvation is proclaimed? What charge was ever brought more violently against our forefathers than the charge of being unduly scrupulous and pharisaical? To what class of preachers do worldly people attach themselves – to those who make everything of morals, or to those who preach the righteousness of Christ? By whose labours are great re formations wrought and extensive awakenings produced, if not the defenders of a gracious justification?
Are any disposed to say that a doctrine cannot be true which is open to the objection that it encourages sin? We answer, This misrepresentation is as old as Paul’s time; the truth was understood wrongly even in the age of the apostles. “What shall we say, then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” We may reply, as Paul replied, “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
We may go further and say that of all the means for promoting personal holiness, none is more effective than to contemplate, steadily and affectionately, the very truth which has now been presented. It is when believers behold the blessed Saviour suffering for them, and obeying for them, that their self-devotion rises to its height. Draw your motives, beloved brethren, from the cross of Christ. Your obedience will then have a continual spring.
Instead of being a cold observance, it will be the outgoing of a melted, broken heart. The more free you feel yourself from the law as a covenant of works, the more will you feel it to be a delightful yoke as a rule of life. The more you feel freed from the bondage of sin, the hardest of all masters, the more you will exult in the service of a gracious Lord.
And if the insidious adversary should ever abuse your minds by Antinomian suggestions, you will answer his seductive argument, as Paul answered it: “What then; shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants . . . his servants ye are? . . . But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but . . . being made free from sin, and became servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”