A Sermon by the Rev. John R. Mackay, M.A., Inverness: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”—ROM. iv. 5

I N drawing attention to this portion of God’s Word, we shall, as the Holy Spirit may enable us,

I.—Consider what is here revealed to us concerning the mental activities of those who are saved;

The Lord does not deal with those whom He saves as if they were but blocks of wood or stone. He deals with them as with rational, accountable creatures. And it is as rational, accountable creatures that those who are saved are represented to us in the words of our text; yea, and as making the best use possible of their rational faculties. We do not mean that the exercising of the understanding or intellect of a natural man upon the way of salvation, however powerful that intellect in a natural sense may be, will of itself bring the soul from death to life. Our contention simply is, that where the understanding is renewed, that understanding will be exercised in matters of law and of Gospel; and that there is no exercise of the human intellect so truly deserving of the epithet “rational” as is that of the soul, when it is thus exercised in matters of law and of Gospel. Angus of the Hills, as he was called, was mentally such an imbecile that he could scarcely count up the fingers of one hand, and yet, according to his own account of his conversion, the Lord in saving him dealt with him as with a rational, responsible being. He had heard the late Rev. Alexander MacLeod, then minister of Uig, Lewis, several times without any apparent benefit. But one day, when Mr. MacLeod preached from the words, “If ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword” (Isaiah i. 20), it came home to Angus as something new, and fearful, that he himself should have been a rebel against God from his youth. It was the beginning of a good work in the imbecile’s soul; and we will add that there are very many Gospel hearers, who are naturally gifted with much better talents than was Angus, who yet never put their understanding to the good use to which Angus, through grace, put his that day. We are, indeed, disposed to agree with those who interpret the stony-ground hearers of the parable of the sower, as meaning a people whose feelings have been touched, but whose understanding was never much exercised in law and Gospel. In any case, our text brings before us one whom we must regard as making good use of his mental faculties, in regard to both law and Gospel. This person’s soul exercise is seen first in the judgment passed upon himself. From his heart he regards himself as “one that does not work,” as “ungodly,” and it is with that conviction that he looks to God, the Saviour. What is meant by one that worketh not? It is one who is convinced that he has not merited salvation, or rather that he is incapable of meriting salvation. One may have been very diligent in the exercise of brain and of limb for worldly ends, but a natural man is unprofitable to God; he has not God in all his aims; and the person taught savingly will reckon that he has been unprofitable to God, that the glory of God had not been his aim at all. Nay more. When he comes into Christ’s school, he learns that the law of God demands, in order to life, a clean heart and clean hands; that his heart is full of uncleanness; and that his hands, so far as restraining common grace permitted, were unclean as his heart; and that on all this account he is guilty. What is meant by one that is ungodly? It is one who, so far from meriting life from God, has merited indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish at the hands of the Righteous Judge. Now, it is a painful thing to pass a judgment like that upon one’s own heart, and conduct, and condition. Yet it is very salutary, and indeed very necessary that one should do this. We do not mean that all the Lord’s people have consciously had an equally deep and protracted law work before coming to Christ. We are inclined to say with the late Dr. Ronald Bayne of Kiltarlity, that if you had of law work but what might be compared to a pin-prick in your heart, if that experience turned you away from looking to the Covenant of works for salvation it was enough; you will know more of the law in your spiritual upbringing. At the same time, we have no doubt that all those who have been well taught in the law have received as true, touching themselves, what the Spirit of God in His word says about man by nature. They were brought to make a self-application of such passages as Romans iii. 10-18, Ephesians ii. 1-3. Now, that one should from the heart pass so severe a judgment upon oneself, surely involves soul activities which are not too common. But, secondly, the exercise of the soul that is saved is revealed in its apprehension of God as Saviour. He is the God “that justifieth the ungodly.” The fact is that if He had not revealed Himself thus, a sinner convinced of his ill deserts could not, as a rational being, put his trust in God. Let us then turn aside, and reverently seek to gaze upon this astonishing revelation which God gives of Himself, as One that justifieth the ungodly. For although the revelation be so astonishing as to appear a paradox, it is so true that through it, heaven itself will have for sinners all its light and life and happiness. According to the terms of the Covenant of works, God appeared as ready to justify the godly, to justify those who should continue to walk in the image in which mankind had been created. But in the Gospel, He appears as One who justifies the ungodly. Nor is it right to regard that revelation of Him as only partial, or as only one of many aspects. For this is His whole aspect and appearance as revealed upon the throne of Grace, as revealed in the Gospel. A paradox is something which upon being first heard strikes one as an absurdity, but which, the more it is looked into, appears most truthful. In this sense, we say that the revelation which God gives of Himself in the Gospel is, in its surprisingness, paradoxical. For is it not a dictate even of natural conscience that certain deeds of which men have been guilty, were deserving only of death? Is it not the teaching of His word, that Jehovah is a God that hath not pleasure in wickedness? Evil shall not dwell with Him. The foolish shall not stand in His sight. He hates all workers of iniquity. He shall destroy them that speak leasing. He abhors the bloody and deceitful man (Psalms v.). Has He not demanded of earthly judges that they should justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked? (Deut. xxv. i.) Do not both the word of God and the conscience of man teach us that if an earthly judge justifies the wicked and condemns the righteous, it is an outrage upon the law of righteousness? How, then, can we think of the Judge of all the earth as glorifying Himself when He justifieth the ungodly? And yet we say that to assert that He does justify the ungodly is, in principle, the whole Gospel. It is only through Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, that God pardons sin or justifies the ungodly. If any have forgiveness of sins, it is a redemption to be had only through the blood of Him who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, by whom all things were created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, who is before all things, and by whom all things consist, who is the Head of the body, the Church (Col. i. 15, 16). And God appears as righteous in every step of the process by which this revelation of Himself as a just God and a Saviour has been realised. It was in righteousness that He entered into covenant with His own eternal Son—the fore-ordained Saviour of that which was lost—before the foundations of the world were laid. It was in righteousness, when the fulness of the time was come, that He sent this eternal Son—the same in His essential nature with Himself—into the world, made of a woman, made under the law. It was in righteousness that He laid the sins of the unjust upon the Just One. It was in righteousness that He visited this great Sin-bearer—this Jesus, who came only to seek and to save that which was lost—with the stroke of the sword of avenging justice. All Christ’s sufferings were inflicted in righteousness; and because God’s purpose was to reveal Himself as the Justifier of the ungodly, His servant, Jesus Christ, came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Yet how few receive Christ, a whole Christ, with their whole heart, in this sense! It was in righteousness that God raised Christ from the dead and gave Him glory. Christ was as one arrested and made a prisoner until the debt which had been put to His account had been paid. But now that the debt was paid in His precious blood, it was an act of justice to take Him out of His prison-house. And every step of the exaltation of Him who was exalted far above all heavens, that He might fill all things, was a revelation of the righteousness of God. And when God pardons sins, for Christ’s sake, He, in an infinitely merciful act or deed, gives an infinitely glorious revelation of Himself as a righteous Judge. Christ’s exaltation is so great as that He is said to fill all things; but His exaltation is not greater than His merits, and His merits are co-extensive with the mercy of God, which is infinite. It is in Christ, the living One who was dead and is alive for evermore, that God addresses sinners, saying, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else. There is no Saviour besides Me. I know not any.” Here mercy and truth meet; righteousness and peace kiss mutually. In Christ justice and judgment are the foundations of God’s throne of grace, while mercy and faithfulness to His promise go before His face. But who among us have been brought to apprehend and to regard God in this way? Certain it is, however, that the soul that is saved so apprehends and so regards God. For how otherwise could one put one’s trust in Him that justifieth the ungodly. We have indicated that the person who is savingly taught will pass judgment upon himself as one that worketh not—as one that is ungodly. We have also briefly referred to the soul exercise which is implied in apprehending and regarding God as glorifying every attribute of His nature when He reveals Himself as One who justifieth the ungodly. But this twofold judgment must be a practical one. We mean that the view that this person takes of himself as a sinner, and of God in Christ reconciling a world to Himself, results in his going out from himself, and of his going out to God thus revealed. That is implied in its being said that he “believes” on Him that justifieth the ungodly. For to believe is to trust, faith being, as one has put it, conviction passing over into trust. So much, for the present, touching the mental activities of the soul that is saved.

II.—Point out the profitability of these exercises;

We proceed to speak briefly concerning the profitability of this exercise. For to such a believer his faith is counted for righteousness. That, as we shall see, spells true riches. There are few passages of the New Testament that have been more the subject of debate among interpreters of the Scriptures than has been this last clause of our text. Arminians have understood the clause as asserting that the act of trust was itself the ground of pardon. But that is an interpretation which excludes Christ from His own place in the scheme of redemption, and of itself is the sufficient condemnation of the Arminian interpretation. When the Apostle (Romans v. 9) says that we are justified by the blood of Christ, that is as much as to say that Christ crucified is the ground or meritorious cause of our justification, and other foundation can no man lay than that which is thus already laid. Others have taken the word “faith” in this clause to mean not the grace of faith, or the exercise of trust, but the object of faith, which is, in a word, Christ Himself. That interpretation is more in keeping with the analogy of the faith than is the Arminian view, but, for our own part, we reckon that faith means here that “trust,” the nature and manner of which we have sought to set forth in the first part of this discourse, and we understand our text to teach that where God sees this going out from confidence in one’s self, and this going towards God in Christ in an act of confidence, God will assuredly put to that soul’s account Christ’s obedience. This person’s faith will be unto righteousness, because, according to the promises and terms of the New Covenant, every such believer will have the satisfaction, which Christ rendered to the justice of God, put to his account as surely and as amply, as though that person had been able of himself to give the said satisfaction to the justice of God; and God’s righteousness, as a judge, giving each his own, will be not less illustriously exhibited than His mercy, in pardoning that believing sinner. When we take the passage in this sense the word “faith” is taken in its most natural sense. And at the same time, faith is seen to be but the receiving instrument, the eye to see, or the ear to hear, or the heart to receive, while Christ is held forth as being the meritorious cause, even as the grace of God is the moving cause of our justification. This exercise, then, of trust in God is surely most profitable, for what could be more profitable than that which results in the forgiveness, not of some, but of all our innumerable trespasses; which results in the acceptance of our person as righteous, having thus a title to eternal life, a title from which flows a certainty of the mortification of sin in all its members, and of a final complete redemption? And it enhances the value of this personal favour that it becomes one’s own in perfect consistency with, and to the glory of, all the claims of law and of justice.

III.—Make some use of the doctrine involved.

We would make two uses of the doctrine involved:

(a) One pertaining to the publicly maintaining of a pure testimony for God’s truth

The Protestant faith, at the Reformation, may be said to have turned upon two principles, as upon pivots. The first of these principles was the sufficiency, and divine authorship of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It is not necessary, at this time of day, to tell among us, how men professing to be Protestants have sought to undermine this first and formal principle of the Reformation, and have by their work of destruction been playing into the hands of the Church of Rome. For it is natural to men to seek some authority upon which to lean. Now as long as Protestants had implicit faith in the sufficiency and divine authorship of Holy Scripture, there was no temptation to ask for another prop. But when men have had their confidence in the finality of the Bible, as an authority, undermined, men are much more likely to fall a prey to the allurements of the Church of Rome, urging the Church’s, or, in practice, the Pope’s infallibility, in matters of faith. All that is very sad, but not more sad that what one witnesses nowadays in the case of men, calling themselves Protestants, who, nevertheless, try to undermine the material principle of the Reformation, as it used to be called, to wit, justification by faith, apart from works. How can we otherwise describe those who hold that “one is justified according as one is sanctified”? Yet that view is countenanced in the new edition of the Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopædia. Now what is this, but to shear the Gospel of its marvellous light? And besides, it is a view fitted to weaken one’s confidence in the Reformation as a work of God. Against this new-fangled notion we enter an emphatic protest for the following among other reasons:—

1. To say that the meritorious ground of a sinner’s justification is some good disposition found in the person justified is clean contrary to the judgment which, as we have seen, those who are taught of God pass upon themselves. How should it be possible that the person capable of justification, in a Gospel sense, is one who regards himself as ungodly, if some good disposition were the meritorious ground of his pardon and acceptance?

2. The view contested is not in keeping with the revelation of God as one that justifieth the ungodly. If one is justified as one is sanctified, then God justifies the godly, not the ungodly. That were to make the Covenant of Grace one with the Covenant of Works. This contested view may delude one who has not been deeply taught that he is a corrupt and guilty creature, but it will be no Gospel for the lost. But the serious part of the matter is that the view contested, although apparently so pious, in reality leaves the Gospel shorn of its most marvellous light, tends, in a word, effectively to obscure the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. If we lose that, we lose everything. Nor does the Reformation of the sixteenth century in anything manifest itself as a work of God more plainly than in the way in which its leaders asserted the contrary of the view here contested.

3. The view contested is not only contradicted by the single verse which forms our text, but is contradicted by the structure of the Epistle to the Romans, regarded as a whole. We have sometimes wondered that there is so little specific reference in the first seven chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to the work of the Holy Spirit in the application of redemption. There is a reference to the Holy Spirit, and to His agency in redemption, in Romans v. 5, and possibly in Romans ii. 29, and vii. 6. But it is not until one comes to the eighth chapter that one finds the subject of the agency of the Spirit in the application of redemption discussed after a detailed, adequate and consecutive method. Why is this? Doubtless the presence of the Holy Spirit is felt in this epistle in the whole course of its argument, and that in a twofold sense. His presence and activity are felt in His being the true and primary Author of the epistle. His presence is also felt in every step of that process of salvation which the Apostle describes in the first seven chapters of this epistle—a process which would have been an impossibility apart from the Spirit’s presence and activity. The fruit of His agency is seen in a sinner being brought, from the heart, to judge himself to be one that does not work—an ungodly person; it is seen in a sinner being able to apprehend the glory of God as, in Christ, a sin-forgiving God; it is seen in a sinner ceasing to seek shelter in himself and going forth to find shelter in God in Christ. Yet that there should be so little specific reference to the Spirit’s agency until we come to the eighth chapter in an epistle which is really a treatise in systematic theology, is a circumstance fitted to raise the question—Why is this? We believe the true answer to be that what the Apostle has in view is to set forth the great doctrine of justification by faith. Now, although the work of the Spirit in the application of redemption is as indispensable as the work of Christ in procuring redemption, it is at the same time quite necessary that these two agencies should be clearly distinguished, for the work of the Holy Spirit in us is not the ground of forgiveness and acceptance. The Spirit, by His work, does not add anything to the work which Christ undertook and perfected. To suppose that He does would imply that, instead of glorifying Christ by revealing Him as a perfect Saviour, He should detract from His glory by adding something to Christ’s work, in order to make Christ’s specific work perfect or complete—the very suggestion of which is to be spurned as blasphemous. For the work of Christ is in itself complete, and incapable of being added to, and is the alone ground of a sinner’s justification. Abraham has been, as to his soul, for thousands of years with the spirits of just men made perfect, and in all that time has not, in spirit, done anything to grieve God, being perfect in holiness. But that perfection of holiness enters not into and adds nothing to the ground of his justification. For that ground is Christ crucified, a ground which is of its own peculiar kind, and is incapable of receiving any addition in time or in eternity from any agency whatsoever. Yet there is nothing to which one is more prone than to imagine that, if the Spirit’s work in a sinner may not be substituted for Christ’s work for the sinner, at the least the Spirit’s work in us may be added to Christ’s work for us, so as to make the ground of our justification more stable. Against that suggestion the Apostle urges the whole force of his argument. And we are convinced that the reason why in the Epistle to the Romans there is so little specific mention of the work of the Spirit, as long as the Apostle is directly dealing with the question of justification, is just in order to deliver his readers from the snare of imagining anything else whatsoever, than Christ crucified, to be the ground of a sinner’s justification before God. Not even the work of the Holy Spirit may in this matter take the place of Christ crucified. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

4. In the last place, we protest against the view that one is justified according as one is sanctified, or, in other words, that the Spirit’s work in one must be added to Christ’s work for one as the ground of one’s justification, because the Spirit does His necessary work in us in order to our coming to Christ in perfect keeping, according to the laws of our rational nature, with its being taught us that the alone ground of our justification is the blood of Christ. For when the Spirit is given in order to our union with Jesus Christ, He comes as the Spirit of truth. And what are the primary truths that He brings to us? They are these: (1) That we, in and of ourselves, are children of wrath; (2) That Christ is the perfect and only Saviour of those who are lost as we are.

(b) One pertaining to individual responsibility and duty

1. Christ’s complaint against His rejecters under the Gospel is: “Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.” God does indeed find fault with you who are rejecters because of your having violated His law. It is because you violated His law that there was need of a Mediator between God and creatures who had become sinful. But He finds not so much fault with you for breach of the Covenant of works, as for your spurning the New Covenant which He offers to make with you. He finds not so much fault with you for sinning against His law as for sinning against His Gospel. This is the crowning condemnation of sinners under the Gospel, that light hath come into the world, and men choose darkness rather than light. Oh, then, come as you are; being assured that although your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; that though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool ; yea, assured that when God accepts you, for Christ’s sake, His own glory, and the glory of His Son Jesus Christ shines forth more illustriously than in any other of His works at all.

2. The Lord’s people who have for some time been followers of Christ know how little confidence they have reason to put in themselves, and the accuser of the brethren would have them fix their gaze constantly on their short-comings, on their unnatural conduct towards God, because the accuser is not so much opposed to anything as to the glory of Christ crucified, nor does anything please him so much as the thing that keeps the poor soul from believably looking towards Christ crucified. But our doctrine instructs the children of God to remind themselves of what they once thought of the glory of God as it was revealed in their forgiveness, that it was a grace so ample as to give them a permanent place among the children of God, and that therefore it is still their duty to maintain the permanency of the filial relation, For rest assured that if you are still satisfied that the ground of your justification should be Christ, and Christ alone, neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, can ever separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.