A SERMON BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS.
“Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins.”—ROMANS iii. 24, 25.
IF I were asked to say where, in all the Scriptures, one could find the doctrine of gratuitous justification most amply declared within the smallest compass, I should certainly point to the words of my text. In order to think our thoughts concerning this fundamental doctrine with the inspired Apostle, it will be necessary for us, in our endeavour to unfold the meaning of our text, to consider:—
I.—The need that men have of being justified.
II.—What is the nature of that justification which the Apostle Paul held to be so essential a part of his Gospel?
III.—What, according to our text, may be said to be the causes of justification?
I.—The need that every sinner of mankind has of being interested in justification, in the Gospel sense, is inexpressibly great, and, indeed, until one is brought to regard it thus there is little probability of one’s doing justice to God’s mind, revealed in the Word of Truth, in connection with it. The need we speak of is evident, from two considerations. (a) On the one hand, we are all sinners—guilty sinners. And this guilt is, for one most important consideration, in proportion to our privileges and opportunities. The heathen—to whom the Word of God came not—are guilty, because they have not acted in accordance with the light wherewith, notwithstanding how comparatively forsaken they have been, they have been privileged. The material universe utters a speech—in the sense that itself is not eternal—that it owes its being to One to whom infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness belong. That revelation of God in the work of creation ought to have prevented rational beings from falling down to worship stocks and stones, or images of corruptible man or of birds, or of four-footed beasts and of creeping things. It ought to, but it did not; and the heathen, in thus refusing to yield to walk in the light of nature, have brought guilt upon themselves. Nor is the glory of God, as revealed in the work of creation, in the sense now referred to, the only revelation that has been made to those heathen, nor the only light they have traversed. They have had, besides, the work of the law written in their hearts, or in other words, the apprehensions and judgments concerning conduct which the natural conscience—even in the case of a heathen—does not fail to give forth. But this light also has been traversed; these judgments have been practically despised by them; and
because of all this the heathen have brought upon themselves aggravated guilt. Certain it is that the heathen stand in need of deliverance from great guilt, and that is as much as to say that they stand in need of gratuitous justification.
But if the heathen thus stand in need of the Gospel, in a certain regard sinners of the Jews—I refer just now to the Jews simply as that nation stood before Christ came—stand still more greatly in need of it. For as men’s opportunities are increased so also are their responsibilities. Therefore is it that if the heathen who sinned without the law, that is, without their having the Old Testament, were liable to perish without their being judged by that written law, the Jews to whom the Word of God came must be judged by that Word. The Jews were themselves conscious of their superior privileges, and in virtue of these privileges were ready to reckon themselves as fit to give counsel to the benighted heathen, and to condemn them in the light of the standard which God had placed as a privilege in the hands of the Jews. But if in the secrecy of their heart, at the centre of their being, they did not themselves yield implicit obedience to the law by which they condemned others, it is self-evident that the judges in this case could not escape being judged, and if they but listened to what the oracles of God uttered as a true judgment, they should hear it say to the very Jews:
“There is none of you righteous, no not one.
There is none of you that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Your throat is an open sepulchre.
With your tongue you have used deceit.
The poison of asps is under your lips.
Your mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Your feet are swift to shed blood.”
Thus does the Apostle Paul bring in the Jews as guilty before God with an aggravated guilt even above the heathen, inasmuch as their life of godlessness was spent in contempt of a light greater than the heathen were privileged with.
But as for us, we should remember that one and all of us have been privileged, in common with the heathen, with the revelation which God gives of Himself in the works of nature, and with them also we have been privileged with the light of a natural conscience. Further, we have, with the Jews that were of old, been privileged with the light of the Old Testament Scriptures. But over and above those privileges we have been visited with favours such as neither the heathen nor the Jews of the Old Testament period ever had. God spake to the Jews of the Old Testament period in the prophets. But He hath spoken unto us under the Gospel in a Son. And such a Son! The brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person. We are obliged therefore to ask ourselves—With what esteem have we esteemed the Son of God? For the New Testament does not
allow us to think that it is a matter of indifference what we think or do not think of Jesus Christ. “If any man,” says the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xvi. 22), “love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.” Have we, as gospel hearers, lived up to our privileges? Have we ceased from imagining that we can be our own saviours from sin, in order that we should yield up the work of our salvation into the hands of Him who is called Jesus, because He saves His people from their sins? Have we by faith entered into this rest? Think not that in this respect the gospel does not lay upon each of us a fresh responsibility. Was the unbelief of the children of Israel, when at God’s command they refused on their arrival at Kadeshbarnea to go up straight to take possession of the land of Canaan, so great that they must wander in the wilderness for forty weary years until the carcasses of that generation fell in the same wilderness, and shall not the guilt of gospel-hearers, who are invited to come to Him whom none knew thoroughly but the Father, and to whom alone the Father was thoroughly known, but who is pleased to make the Father known in a saving measure to such as come to Him, and who invites all the weary and heavy-laden to come to him that He may give them rest—shall not the unbelief, I say, of such rejectors of Jesus Christ, be reckoned as ever so much more culpable than was that of the Israelites of old at Kadesh? What fruit of the Spirit have we brought forth—in love, in joy, in peace, in long-suffering, in temperance, in meekness, in faith, in crucifying of the flesh? Is it not to be feared, with regard to many gospel-hearers among us, that they stand in danger of being, in the sight of God, comparable to the ground upon which much pains have been spent, and upon which the showers from heaven have been falling, and yet that has brought forth only briers and thorns? Surely they are near to cursing, and if they repent not, their end must be to be burned (see Hebrews vi. 8). Which of us, when we remember how God privileged us from our infancy with His gospel, His Sabbaths, His means of grace, and His people’s fellowship, but must take guilt to ourselves for not having brought forth fruit comparably to the pains that have been taken with us?
I have dwelt long on what I conceive to be the need which sinners under the Gospel dispensation have of the great benefit of gratuitous justification. The need is realised as we realise our guiltiness. But that is only the first of the two considerations of which the Apostle Paul makes use, when he would bring home to all and sundry their need of the Gospel which he was commissioned to preach. For (b) the implicate of guilt is wrath, the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Now as long as we are guilty, we are in danger of having that wrath inflicted upon us. Indeed, it may be in process of infliction without our realising it. For, according to the teaching of Paul, God’s wrath shews itself mainly
in two ways. In time, He may shew His wrath by withdrawing His common grace from us, so that we fall into deeper sin, and sin becomes the punishment of sin. Thus it was with the heathen. Because they trampled upon the light of nature to the extent of imagining the Creator to be like corruptible man, or even creeping things, therefore God withdrew His restraining grace from them so that both men and women were guilty of unnatural sins of uncleanness. And from this there flowed sins of covetousness, of maliciousness, of envy, and even of murder. Now, all this was an expression of the divine displeasure. It was wrath; and so it will be reckoned by every soul whose conscience has been so washed as to be able to understand that sin itself is the greatest of all evils.
But that is not the only form that wrath assumes. For there is ahead of us a day of wrath that is peculiarly deserving of that epithet. It will be a revelation of the righteous judgment of God, and in that day it will be very evident that the punishment of no one will for intensity be comparable to that of those who under the Gospel trampled upon the Son of God, counted the blood of the new covenant a common thing, and did despite to the Spirit of grace. For, for them is reserved the knowledge in full measure of what that means: “Vengeance is mine, I will recompense, saith Jehovah.”
II.—Yet for such guilty sinners, who are by nature wedded to the law as to a covenant, is there, whilst we are yet upon praying ground, hope in virtue of the Gospel. Sinners may incur a responsibility under the Gospel greater than they could incur under the law of nature, or even under the law in the sense of the Mosaic economy. But there is a great difference between being under the law as a covenant of works and being under the Gospel or the covenant of grace. The law as a covenant knows no mercy, even after one has acknowledged one’s fault. Not so the Gospel. With Christ there is forgiveness. Even some of those whose hands were literally red in His blood, found forgiveness on the Day of Pentecost. It is the language of the forgiving Christ and of the covenant of grace one hears addressed to sinners whose guilt was truly aggravated, in Isaiah i. 18: “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” And therefore is it that the Apostle Paul in this great Epistle—I mean that to the Romans—after having at the outset shown the need which every creature of the human race (whether Gentile or Jew or, we may add, Christian) has of the benefit of a gratuitous justification, proceeds to explain the nature of this benefit. (See especially the beginning of the fourth chapter of this Epistle.)
Briefly, justification, in the Gospel sense, means two things, to wit, pardon and acceptance. It is explained in the place just now referred to, as meaning on the one hand the benefit of not
having one’s sins put to one’s account, which is only another way of saying, pardon of sins. On the other hand it implies, according to the teaching of the same passage, the imputation of righteousness. One thing worthy of note, as it is a matter much emphasised in the Apostolic writings, is that pardon in the Gospel sense does not mean merely partial forgiveness. It does not mean that one should be forgiven in ninety-nine out of every one hundred transgressions, but it is a case of what we call “cent. per cent.” “Forgiving you,” says the Apostle Paul (Colossians ii. 13), “all trespasses.” “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son,” says the Apostle John (1 John i. 7), “cleanseth us from all sin.” “I will be merciful to your unrighteousness, and your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more,” says God in the New Covenant (Hebrews viii. 12). This is a truth which the Biblical writers insist upon very largely as being a matter that not only touches upon the comfort of believers, but also upon the glory of Christ and of the work which was perfected upon Calvary. Therefore does the Holy Ghost speak of casting our iniquities into, the depth of the sea. Therefore also does He use the expression that He will blot out our sins. It is as if something were written contrary to us on, say, a slate, with a slate pencil, and a wet cloth were taken and the thing written removed as perfectly as though it had never been there. Such is the way God proposes to deal with the most aggravated sins of such as now flee to Him for refuge. But He proposes for our security to do still more. He imputes righteousness apart from works. In other words, He puts to our account the obedience of the Son of God in our nature. I know that it has been maintained that the obedience of one could not be put to another’s account. But it is impossible, if we take words in their plain meaning, to understand in any other sense than in that of imputed righteousness, what the Apostle Paul, in the fifth chapter of this Epistle, and at the nineteenth verse, says: “Through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.”
To justify does not mean to make just, no more than to condemn means to make wicked. Both these terms are judicial terms. When an evil-doer is arraigned before a judge and convicted for evil-doing, the judge, in pronouncing sentence, does not make the culprit an evil-doer—that was the culprit’s own work. What the judge does, is to set up the law of the land as a standard of measurement, and, on comparing the culprit’s life with the law of the land, to point out the discrepancy, and because of this discrepancy he pronounces the evil-doer guilty and sentences him to condign punishment. Similarly, when a judge justifies, what he does is virtually to declare that there is no reason in law or in justice why the person arraigned should be condemned to punishment, that, on the contrary, he is entitled to honour and freedom and life. In no other sense can we, if we accept Biblical terms in their plain meaning, regard the
expression “to justify” here. In a word, the meaning or result of gratuitous justification is deliverance from hell and the granting of a title to heaven.
III.—We proceed, therefore, to consider the ground of this procedure, for it is a matter of astonishment that the Righteous Judge should “justify the ungodly,” yea, every ungodly person that “believes upon Jesus.”
(1) If, then, the reason or cause of this procedure be asked for, the first answer which our text gives us is, that it is done freely—that is, as much as to say, without any reason at all on the part of the sinner justified. It is the same word which is rendered “without a cause,” in John xv. 25, that is rendered “freely” in Romans iii. 24. And a comparison of the two places now named leads us to say that just as those who hated Christ could have found no reason—that is, substantial reason—in Christ for their hatred, so God, the Judge of all, finds no reason in the sinner justified why He should justify him. And if one should argue that, although no reason for a sinner’s justification could be found in his life previous to union with Christ, yet, that we should not exclude as a partial ground of justification that sinner’s life of godliness subsequent to his believing upon Jesus Christ; the answer must be, that fruit borne after conversion enters not at all into the ground of our justification. The Psalmist, who composed the one hundred and forty-third psalm, was, we may well suppose, long ere he composed that psalm, a God-fearing person, and yet he pleads with God that He would not enter into judgment with him, because in God’s sight no living man, whether in the state of nature or in the state of grace, could, on the ground of personal merit, be justified. Yea, and one may go on to say that, although the redeemed of the Lord shall through endless ages serve Him even as angels now do in heaven, yet that service enters not at all into the ground of their justification, and to imagine that it does or that it could so enter, would be comparable to the madness of a gardener who should proceed to pluck up a tree, which was bearing much precious fruit, by the roots, with a view to making the fruit itself take the place which, in all sane gardening, is occupied by the roots.
(2) As the cause of a sinner’s justification, in the Gospel sense, is not in the least degree found with the sinner, we are compelled to go on still in search of its cause. And in answer to our question—What is the cause of a sinner’s gratuitous justification?—the Scriptures give several answers.
(a) To begin with, our justification is said to be by the grace of God. The grace of God is, in some sense, the cause of our justification. In what sense are we to understand the expression, the grace of God? It does not mean grace, in the sense in which a believer, whose nature has been changed, may be said to have been made a partaker of grace, and so to have become a gracious person. The grace of God means the infinite compassionate love
of God. It is grace, not in the stream, but in the fountain. This grace or compassionate love towards the guilty is ever set before us in the Word of Truth as the very fountain of our salvation, and may therefore, in the language of the schools, be well called the moving cause of our salvation in general, and of our justification in particular. Thus the matter is constantly pressed upon our notice in the Word of God. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John iii. 16). “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John iv. 10).
(b) But again: we are said to be justified “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” or as it is put in Romans v. 9, we are justified by or in Christ’s blood. This really is the one proper ground, in law, of our justification, the meritorious cause of our justification. Christ’s life, which He laid down upon the Cross, was a true ransom. It was received by God in lieu of the lost, whom Christ came to save—the lost who had forfeited their own life and all title to it. And this ground of a sinner’s justification, that is, of complete pardon and acceptance before God, is so perfect for its own ends in its very nature that it does not bear to be added to. This is the meaning of the Apostle’s contention in a large part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and especially in the tenth chapter, where the perfection of that sacrifice whereby those who are “sanctified” were “perfected for ever,” is most insistently and emphatically asserted.
(c) But still another answer which the Scriptures give to our question, and an answer that is in thorough consistency with the foregoing and succeeding answers, is that the cause of our justification is faith. We are said to be justified by faith, and unbelievers can in no case be justified by God. Faith is the instrumental cause of our justification. Faith is an empty hand, and that is the reason why, in a sense in which that cannot be said of repentance, or of hope, or of love, faith is said to be the cause of our justification. In the nature of things, we cannot be believers without our self-confidence having been spoiled. Believers are on this account compared to little children, that is to babes, who can do nothing for themselves, but must be altogether dependent upon their mother, or nurse, for their wellbeing.
(d) The result of this dependence upon Christ is union with Christ, yea, in a sense with God in Christ. What, then, takes place in this mysterious transaction of justification? God, as the Judge of all, imputes, that is, puts to the account of the believing sinner, all the merit of the life and death of the Redeemer. And so is it that, in the language of the schools, we say that the formal cause of our justification is imputation. And upon this proceeds the real sentence of the Judge in the great matter of our justification. For the Judge now regards us as invested with this imputed righteousness, and on this account His sentence is that
there is no reason in law or in justice why we sinners, to whom Christ’s obedience unto death is imputed, should be adjudicated unto death, but that, in virtue of Christ’s obedience, thus imputed and received by faith, there is brought forth, for our benefit, a sure title to eternal life.
(e) Our text gives yet a sixth answer to the question, “What is the cause of our justification?” in the sense, that it is for the glory of God, and especially for the glory of His righteousness. This is what we call the final cause of our justification. When God justifies the ungodly that believes upon Jesus, He does this, we are told, in order that His righteousness might be declared for the remission of sins. For inasmuch as the sentence of pardon and acceptance manifestly proceeds on the basis of an adequate ransom, therefore is it brought to light that if God’s righteousness as a Judge is seen in the destruction of impenitent, unbelieving sinners, it still more brilliantly shines forth in the pardon and acceptance of the penitent believer in Jesus. It would not seem so strange or wonderful, if it had been said that God’s purpose in gratuitous justification is the manifestation or declaration of His mercy; but it does seem wonderful that it should be said to be the manifestation of His righteousness, even of His righteousness as a Judge. How sweet a thought it is to a tender conscience that pardon and title to life are founded upon justice!
Conclusion.—We have thus endeavoured to bring before you—(1) the need sinners have of justification; (2) the nature of this blessing; and (3) the causes of justification. May we not say that the Biblical representation of this great theme is, under every aspect by which we have sought in this connection to set God’s truth before you, fitted in its own nature to allure sinners to Jesus Christ? If, then, it is in its nature fitted to draw sinners to God in Christ, and if, notwithstanding, sinners are not drawn, is not the fault the sinner’s own? If this Gospel is “hid,” must it not be to “the lost” that it is hid, and must we not conclude that this unwillingness to be drawn is not to be fully accounted for apart from a recognition of Satanic agency, that “the god of this world” successfully blinds the minds of impenitent unbelievers? On the other hand, are there not among us some who say of God’s way of saving sinners by gratuitous purification that it is all their salvation and all their desire? In this attitude of soul, of which we have just spoken, we have the clearest indication of an effectual calling, and God, who promises to remember His covenant, assures those who thus fall in with His way of peace that He will never leave them, nor forsake them.
“THE learned Salmatius said, when on his deathbed, ‘Oh, I have lost a world of time! If one year more was to be added to my life, it should be spent in reading David’s Psalms and Paul’s Epistles.'”