Justification is defined not as God making a person as if they had never sinned, but as a judicial act where a believing sinner is declared righteous by God. This doctrine is essential because all humans are inherently unrighteous, and self-righteousness, whether through the law or good works, is insufficient and useless in God's sight due to His perfect holiness. Justification is a gift of God's grace, received by faith in Christ's atoning blood, and it results in peace with God, a righteous standing, and ultimate glorification, with good works serving as evidence of this transformation to others. The sermon emphasizes that justification is not earned but freely given, providing a secure and unassailable standing before God, free from condemnation.
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Our study is on justification. And as is the case with almost any Bible study, you need a definition of terms. First of all, justification does not mean just as if I have never seen. I want that point number one. It does not mean just as if I have never seen. Now, people sometimes say this because of the word justification. They say, you can remember that easily because it means just as if I've never seen.
Now, if that were true, you and I would be in the same position that Adam was in, and therefore we would be susceptible to fall, and we'd be right back where we started, probably quicker than needed. The word has nothing to do with giving us an original position. Now second, let me say that there are some related words which you need to know about. The word in the Greek language is daikyasumi, and related words are righteous, righteousness, just, judge, and judgment.
These are all related words. If you keep these in mind, if you think in terms of righteousness, righteous or righteousness, and the sense of justice, judge, judgment, then you'll know that we're talking about a person who is right, And of course we are not right, that's why we need justification. That is, we are not right by nature. I have typed in in your outlines what I believe is one of the best definitions for justification that I have ever come across.
It is the judicial act of God. It doesn't do something to you. It just doesn't change your attitudes. It's strictly a judicial act between God as a holy judge and man as a sinner. It's a judicial act of God whereby the believing sinner, having become righteous in God's sight through faith in Christ, is justly and freely declared righteous. Now this is a marvelous thing when you think about it. It's a lot more than just being forgiven. If all that happened to you when you accepted Christ as your Savior is that God forgave all your sins up to that point, you're really no better off than you were when you started out sinning.
Because the minute you do something wrong, you're right back where you were. And people who understand only forgiveness usually believe in the falling away doctrine. I never waste my time trying to convince people of eternal security. I teach them justifications. Once they see justification, they know that there could never be any return to the original position. Our second section, it is needed by all. One, it is recognized in the earliest writings, not only of the Scripture, but the book of Job is the earliest piece of literature extant.
We don't know of any literature older than the book of Job in the Bible. And I've given you two quotations from it. In Job nine, verses one to three, and again in the thirtieth verse, he asks the question, first of all, how can a man be just with God? And since no revelation had been given at that time, he had reason to wonder, how can a man be just who is a natural sinner. And in the twenty-fifth chapter of Job in verse four, he said, if I justify myself, my own mouth will condemn me. And this is exactly what happened.
When I operated the children's home, I never wasted any time accusing boys of anything, if they had done wrong, or girls either. I just got started talking. That's all I have to do. And as grandpa used to say, you give a calf a nerve rope and he'll hang himself. And you just let a fellow talk and he'll tangle himself all up. If I justify myself, my own mouth will condemn me. So it was recognized in the earliest writings. And then second, self-righteousness is useless. Isaiah sixty-four-six is a good proof of this, where he says, all our righteousness is or is filthy rags and again in the book of Job nine thirty to thirty three he says if I wash myself with snow water and make me never so clean yet thou will abhor me and plunge me into the ditch so all human efforts to make ourselves right in God's presence are useless this is what is what is asked of most church members
They tell you to do good and be good and feel good and hope that when you die, something might turn out all right. Now the reason why self-righteousness is useless, our third point is that God is perfectly holy. His perfect holiness is expressed in Exodus fifteen and eleven, where we read, Who is like the glorious? in holiness. And again in the twenty-second Psalm, the first three verses which were quoted, part of which is quoted by the Lord Jesus on the cross, when he said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Then he goes on to say, But thou art righteous, and I am a worm, and no man. So the reason why the Lord Jesus must be forsaken at Calvary, And it was not imaginary. It happened. The reason why he must be forsaken, not by his father. Never say that. But by God. Of course, God was his father. But as God, as a holy God, he must forsake the one who is taking our place and taking our sins. See, this is because God is holy. This is the reason for the awful darkness at Calvary's Cross for three hours.
If a holy God is to settle sin, then it must be settled justly so that he can then give us a perfect righteousness. Now there are a couple of points here I'd like to add under this third section. The first one is that God abhors sin in Habakkuk I and verse thirteen. He plainly tells us that he is of pure eyes than to behold iniquity.
God can't look upon sin. Sin can never enter into God's heaven. Sin has to be put out of God's presence. And unless we can be separated justly from our sins, then we too must be shut out of God's heaven. In Exodus thirty four and verse seven, the Lord said very plainly that he would by no means clear the guilty. In fact, he said that it was wrong to justify a guilty person. That means without something being done about that guilt. And then in Ecclesiastes chapter three and verse fifteen, We read this statement, God requireeth that which is past.
So you ought to put down there in your notes that God requires the past. Now many people seem to think that if they can forget their sins, probably God will. But the trouble is that God keeps books and that the judgment of the great white throne, those books are all going to be open, including the book of record of our lives unless those sins have been put away. Now our fourth point under this second section has to do with Old Testament saints. Old Testament saints were counted righteous.
And oftentimes the question is asked, how could a person be counted righteous before God, before Christ had died on the cross? And the answer, of course, is that we are saved on credit. They were, they looked ahead to the cross, just as you and I look back to it. Now there are four persons whom you ought to study in this connection, and I'll give you the names and passages. The first one is Abel, and in Hebrews eleven and four we're told that Abel was counted righteous because of his sacrifice. Abel was not a better boy than King.
He wasn't smarter. He didn't do more, but he brought the right kind of a sacrifice, and God accepted him. And then there was Noah. In the same eleventh chapter of Hebrews in verse seven, he tells us that Noah was counted a righteous man because he accepted God's provision for the salvation of himself and his household. And then in Romans four, verses three to five, he takes up the matter of Abraham. Now he said, what about Abraham? Did he do anything to earn righteousness? No, he said, he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
That is, God put to his credit a righteousness which he never produced himself. Strangely enough, the same thing was true of his nephew, Lot. You'd never know this from reading his history in the Old Testament. But Second Peter, too, in verse eight, calls him a just man and a righteous man. Now in the Old Testament, all people who were counted righteous were people who brought sacrifices. and they were counted righteous because of their sacrifice and because of their confidence in God now one more point it was prophesied that it would come through Christ justification was promised through Christ Isaiah forty five and verse twenty five says in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified in the Lord not by their words.
And in that wonderful fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which I hope you're all familiar with, you should learn it by heart, the eleventh verse says that my righteous servant, the Lord Jesus of course, shall justify many. Now let's go into the third section of our study and that is the process of justification. And we take the negative ones first. One, it is not by the law. Romans three-twenty says, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. And people who try to keep the law only find themselves condemned.
Now in Galatians two, verses fifteen and sixteen, we read, knowing that a man is not justified by the law. Then he goes on to make the other statements. So the underlying principle on which he acts is that it is impossible for a man to be right with God through the law. Now second, it is not by good works. There are good works, you know, apart from the law. Someone may say, well, I've never really kept the law, but I've always tried to do what was right. Well, in Romans four in verse two, I referred to this a little bit ago.
It says of Abraham, what did Abraham our father find? If he were justified by works, it certainly would not be before God. God would never justify a person by his works. And in Romans ten in verse three, and this is a very wonderful verse, it says that the Jewish nation, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. Now a good picture of this is in the Garden of Eden. When man sinned, he knew that he needed something.
But he didn't know that God was going to provide him with a covering for his nakedness. And so he tried to make some himself from fig leaves. And he was dissatisfied with it after he got it done because then he went and hid behind the trees. But God gave him suitable covering in the skins of the animals. And this illustrates this verse very nicely. Being ignorant of God's righteousness, they go about to establish their own righteousness. If people understood that God could make them righteous in his sight and give them a righteous standing, they would never try to make themselves acceptable with God.
In the eleventh chapter of Romans, and it's all part of the same section, in verse six, there was a verse which is very difficult to to learn because it seems to be a kind of a tongue twister. It says that if it be by grace, then it is no more works. Otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace. Otherwise work is no more work, which simply means you can't mix works and grace. You're either saved totally by grace or you're saved by works. And since none of us can be saved by works, how foolish it is for us to try to do so. Now, the process, number three in our section, the source is grace.
In Romans three, verse twenty-four, we read being justified freely by his grace. And that word freely, by the way, is the same word translated without a cause. the Lord Jesus said, they hated me without a cause. And that's the word that's used here, being justified freely or without a cause by His grace. We never earned it. We never could. In Titus three, in verse seven, we're told that we are justified by grace, that we might be made heirs. So the grace of God makes us right.
and then makes us heirs. Now fourth, the means is the blood of Christ. It was God's grace that was the source of it. The means of justification is the blood of Christ. Romans five and nine says much more, being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. And in the eighth chapter of that same book of Romans, verses thirty-three and thirty-four, he says now, it's Christ who died. Who's going to lay anything to our charge? It's God who justified us.
So you see, by means of the blood, by means of the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus, we can be counted right in the sight of God. Now, the fifth point is that we receive it by faith. Romans three twenty-eight tells us a little about this. It's not a matter of our doing something. It's not a matter of our earning something, but it's a matter of our believing God. And in the fifth chapter of Romans in the first verse, you may recall, he says, Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God.
You'd never have peace if you look back over your own works, because you'd never feel that you had done quite enough. But looking at the work of the Lord Jesus, we have peace with God. I'm not sure whether you're familiar with Acts thirteen, thirty-eight and thirty-nine, but I recommend this as one of the verses on your list to be memorized. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified, from all things from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.
There were at least Fifteen sins in the Old Testament mentioned under the law of Moses, for which there was no forgiveness, because they were considered to be outright rebellion against God, a refusal. And they were, under the law, they were not offered any justification, any opportunity for setting that right. wonderful that God has given us by faith the opportunity of being made right. Now, the sixth thing is we prove it to men by our works.
You may have been bothered by that passage in James II, fourteen and twenty, where he says that faith without works is dead. You say you believe, show me your faith without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works. That's no contradiction of the teaching in Romans at all. For instance, in James II, he tells us that Abraham was justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar. But Romans IV tells us that he was justified by faith when he believed that the son was going to be born. Now, the son was at least seventeen years old when he offered him as a sacrifice, and he may have been older.
So he was justified by faith, eighteen to twenty years before he was justified by works. You see what the point? He was justified by faith in God's sight. God put this down, that he is just. Now he had a chance to prove it to others by what he did. And that's why I've given you this little illustration. An irrigation system illustrates justification. God's grace, is the lake or the reservoir, the source. Christ's blood is the canal that brings it down to us. Faith is the head gate that we open to let the water onto the field.
No matter how much God has done for me, it won't do me any good unless I'm willing to receive from Him. And then works is the growing crop that proves that we let in the supply. I can drive by your field and tell whether you've been taking water out of the irrigation ditch or not by the state of the growing crop. And this is the way in which we are justified by works. In the sight of God, then, we're justified by grace, by the blood, and by faith. And in the sight of men, we're justified by our work. Now let's move on to the fourth section, and that is our responsibility in this.
The first thing to do is to acknowledge our unrighteousness. We call this repentance. Acts seventeen thirty says, God commands all men everywhere to repent. And second, we must believe on or rely upon the Savior. This section in Romans three, verses nineteen to thirty-one, read the whole section. You'll notice that he makes it very plain that there is nothing for us through the law, but it's a matter of our putting of confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, as a result of believing, we saw a little bit ago in Acts thirteen, thirty-eight and thirty-nine, that all believers are justified from all things.
That's a subheading under the second point in this section. Now the third point is that God expects us to rest on God's word. Romans eight, twenty-eight to thirty-nine begins, you know, by saying all things work together for good. and then he goes on to say what can separate us from the love of God and he finally finishes the chapter by saying that he's persuaded that nothing whatever can separate us from the love of God through the Lord Jesus Christ so you will your responsibility then is not only to accept the Lord Jesus but to rest on his word and a good illustration of this is the children of Israel at the Passover.
You can read that story in Exodus twelve. And remember this, the blood made them safe, regardless of how they felt, regardless of their confidence or lack of it. If they put the blood on the outside, God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. The blood made them safe. But the word made them sure. And if you want to be a happy Christian, then you must rely on what God has said. Now, the fourth thing, our responsibility, is to show by a godly life that we have been justified.
And James II, he says, you say that you're going to show me your faith without works? Well, he said, I'll show you my faith by my works. Now the faith has to be there first, so there won't be any works. But this is how we prove that we are justified. And then, last of all, we have the responsibility to share the good news with others. Romans one, fourteen to seventeen tells us three things that Paul said about his sharing the gospel.
First of all, he said he was a debtor to everybody. And then he said he was ready to pay that debt. He was ready to preach the gospel wherever God wanted him to. And then he said in verse seventeen, verse sixteen, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and salvation to everyone that believe it. So this is our responsibility. Having accepted righteous standing from the Lord, It's our responsibility to prove that we are right with God and to share this good news with others. Now the fifth division of our study, the results of justification.
Now this is a very important thing. Number one, God is still perfectly just. Romans three, verse twenty six, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeeth in Jesus. There is no other way that God could keep his word and still take sinners to heaven, except by the process of justification. By allowing the Lord Jesus to take our place, he righteously takes away what was in the road and righteously gives us a righteous standing.
In Deuteronomy twenty-five and one, he tells us very plainly that thou shalt justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. This is what the law demanded. He said, he was saying this specially to judges. He said, now if you're a judge in your district and it was divided up, nation of israel is divided up into districts and there were judges and each of these judges had a responsibility to justify the righteous and condemn the wicked and god can justify the wicked but he has to do it on a righteous basis so this is one of the wonderful results of justification now the second one is that we have peace through a risen substitute Romans four twenty three through the first verse of the fifth chapter says now I've told you these things about Abraham but it wasn't written for Abraham's sake it's for you too if you believe and then he goes on to tell us that the Lord Jesus was delivered for our offenses raised again for our justification therefore
being justified by faith we have peace with God So the risen substitute, and I emphasize this word risen. We have peace through a risen substitute. You have not told the gospel if you tell people simply that Jesus died or that he died for sins or that he died for sinners or even that he died for that particular sinner. You haven't told him the gospel unless you tell him that he is raised again from the dead because the gospel includes the resurrection. Otherwise, we would never be sure that we had a righteous standing. This is often neglected in preaching.
Now, the third thing is that God has given to us a righteous standing. First Corinthians six, nine to eleven, he names a number of awful things, very wicked things that these Corinthians were guilty of. And then after he enumerates them, he says, Now such were some of you, but you're washed, you're sanctified, you're justified. By the means of washing away sins, God can give them a righteous standing. And we cannot boast of ourselves. Romans three, verse twenty seven.
He says, Where is boasting then? It is excluded. And excluded means shut out. You just put it out the door and shut the door after it. Boasting is out. You and I have nothing to brag about. My grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of worse, lest any man should boast. Now the fourth thing is no one can condemn the believer. Romans eight and thirty-four, we referred to a little while ago. If God justifies us, who has a right to condemn us?
Well, certainly not Moses, because John five, forty-three to forty-seven, tells us Moses in whom you trust will condemn you if you're trying to keep the law. that we have been delivered from the law so even Moses can't condemn us and then Satan can't condemn us because in Revelation twelve and ten we are told the accuser of the brethren is cast out one of the names for Satan is the accuser of the brethren see that you don't do his job for him he has had his mouth shut because of the cross.
And the last point is, Romans eight and thirty, that we are, that all of us who are justified shall be glorified. That section says, whom he predestinated, he also called, whom he called, he also justified, and whom he justified, he also glorified. So justification ultimately will result in the glorification of every believer.