Justification is God’s act of removing the guilt and penalty of sin while at the same time making a sinner righteous through Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

The Doctrine of Justification
by
Arthur W. Pink

• Chapter 1 – Introduction
  
  
• Chapter 2 – Its Meaning
  
  
• Chapter 3 – Its Problem
  
  
• Chapter 4 – Its Basis
  
  
• Chapter 5 – Its Nature
  
• Chapter 6 – Its Source
  
• Chapter 7 – Its Objects
  
• Chapter 8 – Its Instrument
  
• Chapter 9 – Its Evidence
  
• Chapter 10 – Its Results
  

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Introduction

Our first thought was to devote an introductory chapter

unto a setting forth the principle errors which have been

entertained upon this subject by different men and parties,

but after more deliberation we decided this would be for

little or no profit to the majority of our readers. While

there are times, no doubt, when it becomes the distasteful

duty of God’s servants to expose that which is

calculated to deceive and injure His people, yet, as a

general rule, the most effective way of getting rid of

darkness is to let in the light. We desire, then, to pen

these articles in the spirit of the godly John Owen, who,

in the introduction to his ponderous treatise on this theme

said, “More weight is to be put on the steady guidance

of the mind and conscience of one believer, really

exercised about the foundation of his peace and acceptance

with God, than on the confutation of ten wrangling

disputers… To declare and vindicate the truth unto the

instruction and edification of such as love it in

sincerity, to extricate their minds from those difficulties

in this particular instance, which some endeavor to cast on

all Gospel mysteries, to direct the consciences of them

that inquire after abiding peace with God, and to establish

the minds of them that do believe, are the things I have

aimed at.”

There was a time, not so long ago, when the blessed truth

of Justification was one of the best known doctrines of the

Christian faith, when it was regularly expounded by the

preachers, and when the rank and file of church-goers were

familiar with its leading aspects. But now, alas, a

generation has arisen which is well-nigh totally ignorant

of this precious theme, for with very rare exceptions it is

no longer given a place in the pulpit, nor is scarcely

anything written thereon in the religious magazines of our

day; and, in consequence, comparatively few understand what

the term itself connotes, still less are they clear as to

the ground on which God justifies the ungodly. This places

the writer at a considerable disadvantage, for while he

wishes to avoid a superficial treatment of so vital a

subject, yet to go into it deeply, and enter into detail,

will make a heavy tax upon the mentality and patience of

the average person. Nevertheless, we respectfully urge each

Christian to make a real effort to gird up the loins of his

mind and seek to prayerfully master these chapters.

That which will make it harder to follow us through the

present series is the fact that we are here treating of the

doctrinal side of truth, rather than the practical; the

judicial, rather than the experimental. Not that doctrine

is impracticable; no indeed; far, far from it. “All

Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable

(first) for doctrine, (and then) for reproof, for

correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim.

3:16). Doctrinal instruction was ever the foundation from

which the Apostles issued precepts to regulate the walk.

Not until the 6th chapter will any exhortation be found in

the Roman Epistle: the first five are devoted entirely to

doctrinal exposition. So again in the Epistle to the

Ephesians: not until 4:1 is the first exhortation given.

First the saints are reminded of the exceeding riches of

God’s grace, that the love of Christ may constrain

them; and then they are urged to walk worthy of the

vocation wherewith they are called.

While it be true that a real mental effort (as well as a

prayerful heart) is required in order to grasp

intelligently some of the finer distinctions which are

essential to a proper apprehension of this doctrine, yet,

let it be pointed out that the truth of justification is

far from being a mere piece of abstract speculation. No, it

is a statement of Divinely revealed fact; it is a statement

of fact in which every member of our race ought to be

deeply interested in. Each one of us has forfeited the

favor of God, and each one of us needs to be restored to

His favor. If we are not restored, then the outcome must

inevitably be our utter ruin and hopeless perdition. How

fallen creatures, how guilty rebels, how lost sinners, are

restored to the favor of God, and given a standing before

Him inestimably superior to that occupied by the holy

angels, will (D. V.) engage our attention as we proceed with

our subject.

As said Abram Booth in his splendid work “The Reign

of Grace” (written in 1768), “Far from being a

merely speculative point, it spreads its influence through

the whole body of divinity (theology), runs through all

Christian experience, and operates in every part of

practical godliness. Such is its grand importance, that a

mistake about it has a malignant efficacy, and is attended

with a long train of dangerous consequences. Nor can this

appear strange, when it is considered that this doctrine of

justification is no other than the way of a sinner’s

acceptance with God. Being of such peculiar moment, it is

inseparably connected with many other evangelical truths,

the harmony and beauty of which we cannot behold, while

this is misunderstood. Till this appears in its glory, they

will be involved in darkness. It is, if anything may be so

called, a fundamental article; and certainly requires our

most serious consideration” (from his chapter on

“Justification”).

The great importance of the doctrine of justification was

sublimely expressed by the Dutch Puritan, Witsius, when he

said, “It tends much to display the glory of God,

whose most exalted perfections shine forth with an eminent

lustre in this matter. It sets forth the infinite goodness

of God, by which He was inclined to procure salvation

freely for lost and miserable man, `to the praise of the

glory of His grace’ (Eph. 1:6). It displays also the

strictest justice, by which He would not forgive even the

smallest offense, but on condition of the sufficient

engagement, or full satisfaction of the Mediator, `that He

might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in

Jesus’ (Rom 3:26). It shows further the unsearchable

wisdom of the Deity, which found out a way for the exercise

of the most gracious act of mercy, without injury to His

strictest justice and infallible truth, which threatened

death to the sinner: justice demanded that the soul that

sinned should die (Rom. 1:32). Truth had pronounced the

curses for not obeying the Lord (Deut. 28:15-68). Goodness,

in the meantime, was inclined to adjudge life to some

sinners, but by no other way than what became the majesty

of the most holy God. Here wisdom interposed, saying, `I,

even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine

own sake, and will not remember thy sins’ (Isa. 43:25).

Nor shall you, His justice and His truth have any cause of

complaint because full satisfaction shall be made to you by

a mediator. Hence the incredible philanthropy of the Lord

Jesus shineth forth, who, though Lord of all, was made

subject to the law, not to the obedience of it only, but

also to the curse: `hath made Him to be sin for us, who

knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God

in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Ought not the pious soul, who is deeply engaged in the

devout meditation of these things, to break out into the

praises of a justifying God, and sing with the church,

“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity,

and passeth by the transgression” (Micah 7:18). O the

purity of that holiness which chose rather to punish the

sins of the elect in His only begotten Son, than suffer

them to go unpunished! O the abyss of His love to the

world, for which He spared not His dearest Son, in order to

spare sinners! O the depth of the riches of unsearchable

wisdom, by which He exercises mercy towards the penitent

guilty, without any stain to the honor of the most

impartial Judge! O the treasures of love in Christ, whereby

He became a curse for us, in order to deliver us therefrom!

How becoming the justified soul, who is ready to dissolve

in the sense of this love, with full exultation to sing a

new song, a song of mutual return of love to a justifying

God.

So important did the Apostle Paul, under the guidance of

the Holy Spirit, deem this doctrine, that the very first of

his epistles in the New Testament is devoted to a full

exposition thereof. The pivot on which turns the entire

contents of the Epistle to the Romans is that notable

expression “the righteousness of God”–than which

is none of greater moment to be found in all the pages of

Holy Writ, and which it behooves every Christian to make

the utmost endeavor to clearly understand. It is an

abstract expression denoting the satisfaction of Christ in

its relation to the Divine Law. It is a descriptive name

for the material cause of the sinner’s acceptance

before God. “The righteousness of God” is a

phrase referring to the finished work of the Mediator as

approved by the Divine tribunal, being the meritorious

cause of our acceptance before the throne of the Most High.

In the succeeding chapters (D.V.) we shall examine in more

detail this vital expression “the righteousness of

God,” which connotes that perfect satisfaction which

the Redeemer offered to Divine justice on the behalf of and

in the stead of that people which had been given to Him.

Suffice it now to say that that “righteousness”

by which the believing sinner is justified is called

“the righteousness of God” (Rom 1:17; 3:21)

because He is the appointer, approver, and imputer of it.

It is called “the righteousness of God and our Saviour

Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1) because He wrought it out

and presented it unto God. It is called “the

righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13) because faith is

the apprehender and receiver of it. It is called

“man’s righteousness” (Job 33:26) because it

was paid for him and imputed to him. All these varied

expressions refer to so many aspects of that one perfect

obedience unto death which the Saviour performed for His

people.

Yes, so vital did the Apostle Paul, under the guidance of

the Holy Spirit, esteem this doctrine of Justification,

that he shows at length how the denial and perversion of it

by the Jews was the chief reason of their being rejected by

God: see the closing verses of Romans 9 and the beginning

of chapter 10. Again; throughout the whole Epistle to the

Galatians we find the Apostle engaged in most strenuously

defending and zealously disputing with those who had

assailed this basic truth. Therein he speaks of the

contrary doctrine as ruinous and fatal to the souls of men,

as subversive of the cross of Christ, and calls it another

gospel, solemnly declaring “though we, or an angel

from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you… let him be

accursed” (Gal. 1:8). Alas, that under the latitudinal

liberty and false “charity” of our day, there is

now so little holy abhorrence of that preaching which

repudiates the vicarious obedience of Christ which is

imputed to the believer.

Under God, the preaching of this grand truth brought about

the greatest revival which the Cause of Christ has enjoyed

since the days of the Apostles. “This was the great

fundamental distinguishing doctrine of the Reformation, and

was regarded by all the Reformers as of primary and

paramount importance. The leading charge which they adduced

against the Church of Rome was that she had corrupted and

perverted the doctrine of Scripture upon this subject in a

way that was dangerous to the souls of men; and it was

mainly by the exposition, enforcement, and application of

the true doctrine of God’s Word in regard to it, that

they assailed and overturned the leading doctrines and

practices of the Papal system. There is no subject which

possesses more of intrinsic importance than attaches to

this one, and there is none with respect to which the

Reformers were more thoroughly harmonious in their

sentiments” (W. Cunningham).

This blessed doctrine supplies the grand Divine cordial to

revive one whose soul is cast down and whose conscience is

distressed by a felt sense of sin and guilt, and longs to

know the way and means whereby he may obtain acceptance

with God and the title unto the Heavenly inheritance. To

one who is deeply convinced that he has been a life-long

rebel against God, a constant transgressor of His Holy Law,

and who realizes he is justly under His condemnation and

wrath, no inquiry can be of such deep interest and pressing

moment as that which relates to the means of restoring him

to the Divine favour, remitting his sins, and fitting him

to stand unabashed in the Divine presence: till this vital

point has been cleared to the satisfaction of his heart,

all other information concerning religion will be quite

unavailing.

“Demonstrations of the existence of God will only

serve to confirm and more deeply impress upon his mind the

awful truth which he already believes, that there is a

righteous Judge, before whom he must appear, and by whose

sentence his final doom will be fixed. To explain the moral

law to him, and inculcate the obligations to obey it, will

be to act the part of a public accuser, when he quotes the

statutes of the land in order to show that the charges

which he has brought against the criminal at the bar are

well founded, and, consequently, that he is worthy of

punishment. The stronger the arguments are by which you

evince the immortality of the soul, the more clearly do you

prove that his punishment will not be temporary, and that

there is another state of existence, in which he will be

fully recompensed according to his desert” (J. Dick).

When God Himself becomes a living reality unto the soul,

when His awful majesty, ineffable holiness, inflexible

justice, and sovereign authority, are really perceived,

even though most inadequately, indifference to His claims

now gives place to a serious concern. When there is a due

sense of the greatness of our apostasy from God, of the

depravity of our nature, of the power and vileness of sin,

of the spirituality and strictness of the law, and of the

everlasting burnings awaiting God’s enemies, the

awakened soul cries out, “Wherewith shall I come

before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall

I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a

year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,

or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my

firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for

the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6:6, 7). Then it is that

the poor soul cries out, “How then can man be

justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of

a woman?” (Job 25:4). And it is in the blessed

doctrine which is now to be before us that we are taught

the method whereby a sinner may obtain peace with his Maker

and rise to the possession of eternal life.

Again; this doctrine is of inestimable value unto the

conscientious Christian who daily groans under a sense of

his inward corruptions and innumerable failures to measure

up to the standard which God has set before him. The Devil,

who is “the accuser of our brethren” (Rev.

12:10), frequently charges the believer with hypocrisy

before God, disquiets his conscience, and seeks to persuade

him that his faith and piety are nought but a mask and

outward show, by which he has not only imposed upon others,

but also on himself. But, thank God, Satan may be overcome

by “the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11): by

looking away from incurably depraved self, and viewing the

Surety, who has fully answered for the Christian’s

every failure, perfectly atoned for his every sin, and

brought in an “everlasting righteousness” (Dan.

9:24), which is placed to his account in the high court of

Heaven. And thus, though groaning under his infirmities,

the believer may possess a victorious confidence which

rises above every fear.

This it was which brought peace and joy to the heart of

the Apostle Paul: for while in one breath he cried, “O

wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body

of this death?” (Rom. 7:24), in the next he declared,

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which

are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). To which he added,

“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s

elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that

condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is

risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also

maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the

love of Christ?” (vv. 33-35). May it please the God of

all grace to so direct our pen and bless what we write unto

the readers, that not a few who are now found in the gloomy

dungeons of Doubting Castle, may be brought out into the

glorious light and liberty of the full assurance of faith.

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Its Meaning

Deliverance from the condemning sentence of the Divine Law

is the fundamental blessing in Divine salvation: so long as

we continue under the curse, we can neither be holy nor

happy. But as to the precise nature of that deliverance, as

to exactly what it consists of, as to the ground on which

it is obtained, and as to the means whereby it is secured,

much confusion now obtains. Most of the errors which have

been prevalent on this subject arose from the lack of a

clear view of the thing itself, and until we really

understand what justification is, we are in no position to

either affirm or deny anything concerning it. We therefore

deem it requisite to devote a whole chapter unto a careful

defining and explaining this word

“justification,” endeavouring to show both what

it signifies, and what it does not connote.

Between Protestants and Romanists there is a wide

difference of opinion as to the meaning of the term

“justify”: they affirming that to justify is to

make inherently righteous and holy; we insisting that to

justify signifies only to formally pronounce just or

legally declare righteous. Popery includes under

justification the renovation of man’s moral nature or

deliverance from depravity, thereby confounding

justification with regeneration and sanctification. On the

other hand, all representative Protestants have shown that

justification refers not to a change of moral character,

but to a change of legal status; though allowing, yea,

insisting, that a radical change of character invariably

accompanies it. It is a legal change from a state of guilt

and condemnation to a state of forgiveness and acceptance;

and this change is owing solely to a gratuitous act of God,

founded upon the righteousness of Christ (they having none

of their own) being imputed to His people.

“We simply explain justification to be an acceptance

by which God receives us into His favour and esteems us as

righteous persons; and we say that it consists in the

remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness

of Christ. . . Justification, therefore, is no other than

an acquittal from guilt of him who was accused, as though

his innocence has been proved. Since God, therefore,

justifies us through the mediation of Christ, He acquits

us, not by an admission of our personal innocence, but by

an imputation of righteousness; so that we, who are

unrighteous in ourselves, are considered as righteous in

Christ” (John Calvin, 1559).

“What is justification? Answer: Justification is an

act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which He

pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their

persons righteous in His sight; not for any thing wrought

in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect

obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed

to them, and received by faith alone” (Westminster

Catechism, 1643).

“We thus define the Gospel justification of a sinner:

It is a judicial, but gracious act of God, whereby the

elect and believing sinner is absolved from the guilt of

his sins, and hath a right to eternal life adjudged to him,

on account of the obedience of Christ, received by

faith” (H. Witsius, 1693).

“A person is said to be justified when he is approved

of God as free from the guilt of sin and its deserved

punishment; and as having that righteousness belonging to

him that entitles to the reward of life” (Jonathan

Edwards, 1750).

Justification, then, refers not to any subjective change

wrought in a person’s disposition, but is solely an

objective change in his standing in relation to the law.

That to justify cannot possibly signify to make a person

inherently righteous or good is most clearly to be seen

from the usage of the term itself in Scripture. For

example, in Proverbs 17:15 we read, “He that

justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just,

even they both are abomination to the LORD”: now

obviously he who shall make a “wicked” person

just is far from being an “abomination to the

LORD,” but he who knowingly pronounces a wicked person

to be righteous is obnoxious to Him.

Again; in Luke 7:29 we read, “And all the people that

heard Him, and the publicans, justified God”: how

impossible it is to make the words “justified

God” signify any moral transformation in His

character; but understand those words to mean that they

declared Him to be righteous, and all ambiguity is removed.

Once more, in 1 Timothy 3:16 we are told that the incarnate

Son was “justified in (or “by”) the

Spirit”: that is to say, He was publicly vindicated at

His resurrection, exonerated from the blasphemous charges

which the Jews had laid against Him.

Justification has to do solely with the legal side of

salvation. It is a judicial term, a word of the law courts.

It is the sentence of a judge upon a person who has been

brought before him for judgment. It is that gracious act of

God as Judge, in the high court of Heaven, by which He

pronounces an elect and believing sinner to be freed from

the penalty of the law, and fully restored unto the Divine

favour. It is the declaration of God that the party

arraigned is fully conformed to the law; justice exonerates

him because justice has been satisfied. Thus, justification

is that change of status whereby one, who being guilty

before God, and therefore under the condemning sentence of

His Law, and deserving of nought but an eternal banishment

from His presence, is received into His favour and given a

right unto all the blessings which Christ has, by His

perfect satisfaction, purchased for His people.

In substantiation of the above definition, the meaning of

the term “justify” may be determined, first, by

its usage in Scripture. “And Judah said, What shall we

say unto my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we

clear (this Hebrew word “tsadag” always signifies

“justify”) ourselves?” (Gen. 44:16). Here we

have an affair which was entirely a judicial one. Judah and

his brethren were arraigned before the governor of Egypt,

and they were concerned as to how they might procure a

sentence in their favour. “If there be a controversy

between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges

may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and

condemn the wicked” (Deut. 25:1). Here again we see

plainly that the term is a forensic one, used in connection

with the proceedings of law-courts, implying a process of

investigation and judgment. God here laid down a rule to

govern the judges in Israel: they must not

“justify” or pass a sentence in favour of the

wicked: compare 1 Kings 8:31, 32.

“If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn

me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me

perverse” (Job 9:20): the first member of this

sentence is explained in the second–“justify”

there cannot signify to make holy, but to pronounce a

sentence in my own favour. “Then was kindled the wrath

of Elihu . . . against Job . . . because he justified

himself rather than God” (Job 32:2), which obviously

means, because he vindicated himself rather than God.

“That Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest,

and be clear when Thou judgest” (Psa. 51:4), which

signifies that God, acting in His judicial office, might be

pronounced righteous in passing sentence. “But wisdom

is justified of her children” (Matt. 11:19), which

means that they who are truly regenerated by God have

accounted the wisdom of God (which the scribes and

Pharisees reckoned foolishness) to be, as it really is,

consummate wisdom: they cleared it of the calumny of folly.

2. The precise force of the term “to justify”

may be ascertained by noting that it is the antithesis of

“to condemn.” Now to condemn is not a process by

which a good man is made bad, but is the sentence of a

judge upon one because he is a transgressor of the law.

“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth

the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD”

(Prov. 17:15 and cf. Deut. 25:1). “For by thy words

thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be

condemned” (Matt. 12:37). “It is God that

justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?” (Rom. 8:33,

34). Now it is undeniable that “condemnation” is

the passing of a sentence against a person by which the

punishment prescribed by the law is awarded to him and

ordered to be inflicted upon him; therefore justification

is the passing of a sentence in favour of a person, by

which the reward prescribed by the law is ordered to be

given to him.

3. That justification is not an experimental change from

sin to holiness, but a judicial change from guilt to

no-condemnation may be evidenced by the equivalent terms

used for it. For example, in Romans 4:6 we read, “Even

as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto

whom God imputeth righteousness without works”: so

that legal “righteousness” is not a habit infused

into the heart, but a gift transferred to our account. In

Romans 5:9, 10 to be “justified by Christ’s

blood” is the same as being “reconciled by His

death,” and reconciliation is not a transformation of

character, but the effecting of peace by the removal of all

that causes offense.

4. From the fact that the judicial side of our salvation

is propounded in Scripture under the figures of a forensic

trial and sentence. “(1) A judgment is supposed in it,

concerning which the Psalmist prays that it may not proceed

on the terms of the law: Psalm 143:2. (2) The Judge is God

Himself: Isaiah 50:7, 8. (3) The tribunal whereon God sits

in judgment is the Throne of Grace: Hebrews 4:16. (4) A

guilty person. This is the sinner, who is so guilty of sin

as to be obnoxious to the judgment of God: Romans 3:18. (5)

Accusers are ready to propose and promote the charge

against the guilty person; these are the law (John 5:45),

conscience (Rom. 2:15), and Satan: Zechariah 3:2,

Revelation 12:10. (6) The charge is admitted and drawn up

in a `handwriting’ in form of law, and is laid before

the tribunal of the Judge, in bar to the deliverance of the

offender: Colossians 2:14. (7) A plea is prepared in the

Gospel for the guilty person: this is grace, through the

blood of Christ, the ransom paid, the eternal righteousness

brought in by the Surety of the covenant: Romans 3:23, 25,

Daniel 9:24. (8) Hereunto alone the sinner betakes himself,

renouncing all other apologies or defensatives whatever:

Psalm 130:2, 3; Luke 18:13. (9) To make this plea effectual

we have an Advocate with the Father, and He pleads His own

propitiation for us: 1 John 2:1, 2. (10) The sentence

hereon is absolution, on account of the sacrifice and

righteousness of Christ; with acceptation into favour, as

persons approved of God: Romans 8:33, 34; 2 Corinthians

5:21” (John Owen).

From what has been before us, we may perceive what

justification is not. First, it differs from regeneration.

“Whom He called, them He also justified” (Rom.

8:30). Though inseparably connected, effectual calling or

the new birth and justification are quite distinct. The one

is never apart from the other, yet they must not be

confounded. In the order of nature regeneration precedes

justification, though it is in no sense the cause or ground

of it: none is justified till he believes, and none believe

till quickened. Regeneration is the act of the Father

(James 1:18), justification is the sentence of the Judge.

The one gives me a place in God’s family, the other

secures me a standing before His throne. The one is

internal, being the impartation of Divine life to my soul:

the other is external, being the imputation of Christ’s

obedience to my account. By the one I am drawn to return in

penitence to the Father’s house, by the other I am

given the “best robe” which fits me for His

presence.

Second, it differs from sanctification. Sanctification is

moral or experimental, justification is legal or judicial.

Sanctification results from the operation of the Spirit in

me, justification is based upon what Christ has done for

me. The one is gradual and progressive, the other is

instantaneous and immutable. The one admits of degrees, and

is never perfect in this life; the other is complete and

admits of no addition. The one concerns my state, the other

has to do with my standing before God. Sanctification

produces a moral transformation of character, justification

is a change of legal status: it is a change from guilt and

condemnation to forgiveness and acceptance, and this solely

by a gratuitous act of God, founded upon the imputation of

Christ’s righteousness, through the instrument of faith

alone. Though justification is quite separate from

sanctification, yet sanctification ever accompanies it.

Third, it differs from forgiveness. In some things they

agree. It is only God who can forgive sins (Mark 2:7) and

He alone can justify (Rom. 3:30). His free grace is the

sole moving cause in the one (Eph. 1:7) and of the other

(Rom. 3:24). The blood of Christ is the procuring cause of

each alike: Matthew 26:28, Romans 5:9. The objects are the

same: the persons that are pardoned are justified, and the

same that are justified are pardoned; to whom God imputes

the righteousness of Christ for their justification to them

He gives the remission of sins; and to whom He does not

impute sin, but forgives it, to them He imputes

righteousness without works (Romans 4:6-8). Both are

received by faith (Acts 26:18, Romans 5:1). But though they

agree in these things, in others they differ.

God is said to be “justified” (Rom. 3:4), but it

would be blasphemy to speak of Him being

“pardoned”–this at once shows the two things are

diverse. A criminal may be pardoned, but only a righteous

person can truly be justified. Forgiveness deals only with

a man’s acts, justification with the man himself.

Forgiveness respects the claims of mercy, justification

those of justice. Pardon only remits the curse due unto

sin; in addition justification confers a title to Heaven.

Justification applies to the believer with respect to the

claims of the law, pardon with respect to the Author of the

law. The law does not pardon, for it knows no relaxation;

but God pardons the transgressions of the law in His people

by providing a satisfaction to the law adequate to their

transgressions. The blood of Christ was sufficient to

procure pardon (Eph. 1:7), but His righteousness is needed

for justification (Rom. 5:19). Pardon takes away the filthy

garments, but justification provides a change of raiment

(Zech. 3:4). Pardon frees from death (2 Sam. 12:13), but

righteousness imputed is called “justification of

life” (Rom. 5:18). The one views the believer as

completely sinful, the other as completely righteous.

Pardon is the remission of punishment, justification is the

declaration that no ground for the infliction of punishment

exists. Forgiveness may be repeated unto seventy times

seven, justification is once for all.

From what has been said in the last paragraph we may see

what a serious mistake it is to limit justification to the

mere forgiveness of sins. Just as “condemnation”

is not the execution of punishment, but rather the formal

declaration that the accused is guilty and worthy of

punishment; so “justification” is not merely the

remission of punishment but the judicial announcement that

punishment cannot be justly inflicted–the accused being

fully conformed to all the positive requirements of the law

in consequence of Christ’s perfect obedience being

legally reckoned to his account. The justification of a

believer is no other than his being admitted to participate

in the reward merited by his Surety. Justification is

nothing more or less than the righteousness of Christ being

imputed to us: the negative blessing issuing therefrom is

the remission of sins; the positive, a title to the

heavenly inheritance.

Beautifully has it been pointed out that “We cannot

separate from Immanuel His own essential excellency. We may

see Him bruised and given like beaten incense to the fire,

but was incense ever burned without fragrance, and only

fragrance being the result? The name of Christ not only

cancels sin, it supplies in the place of that which it has

canceled, its own everlasting excellency. We cannot have

its nullifying power only; the other is the sure

concomitant. So was it with every typical sacrifice of the

Law. It was stricken: but as being spotless it was burned

on the altar for a sweet-smelling savor. The savor ascended

as a memorial before God: it was accepted for, and its

value was attributed or imputed to him who had brought the

vicarious victim. If therefore, we reject the imputation of

righteousness, we reject sacrifice as revealed in

Scripture; for Scripture knows of no sacrifice whose

efficacy is so exhausted in the removal of guilt as to

leave nothing to be presented in acceptableness before

God” (B.W. Newton).

“What is placing our righteousness in the obedience

of Christ, but asserting that we are accounted righteous

only because His obedience is accepted for us as if it were

our own? Wherefore Ambrose appears to me to have very

beautifully exemplified this righteousness in the

benediction of Jacob: that as he, who had on his own

account no claim to the privileges of primogeniture, being

concealed in his brother’s habit, and invested with his

garment, which diffused a most excellent odor, insinuated

himself into the favour of his father, that he might

receive the benediction to his own advantage, under the

character of another; so we shelter ourselves under the

precious purity of Christ” (John Calvin).

---

Its Problem

In this and the following chapter our aim will be

fourfold. First, to demonstrate the impossibility of any

sinner obtaining acceptance and favour with God on the

ground of his own performances. Second, to show that the

saving of a sinner presented a problem which nought but

omniscience could solve, but that the consummate wisdom of

God has devised a way whereby He can pronounce righteous a

guilty transgressor of His Law without impeaching His

veracity, sullying His holiness, or ignoring the claims of

justice; yea, in such a way that all His perfections have

been displayed and magnified, and the Son of His love

glorified. Third, point out the sole ground on which an

awakened conscience can find solid and stable peace.

Fourth, seek to give God’s children a clearer

understanding of the exceeding riches of Divine grace, that

their hearts may be drawn out in fervent praise unto the

Author of “so great salvation.”

But let it be pointed out at the onset that, any reader

who has never seen himself under the white light of

God’s holiness, and who has never felt His Word cutting

him to the very quick, will be unable to fully enter into

the force of what we are about to write. Yea, in all

probability, he who is unregenerate is likely to take

decided exception unto much of what will be said, denying

that any such difficulty exists in the matter of a merciful

God pardoning one of His offending creatures. Or, if he

does not dissent to that extent, yet he will most likely

consider that we have grossly exaggerated the various

elements in the case we are about to present, that we have

pictured the sinner’s condition in far darker hues than

was warranted. This must be so, for he has no experimental

acquaintance with God, nor is he conscious of the fearful

plague of his own heart.

The natural man cannot endure the thought of being

thoroughly searched by God. The last thing he desires is to

pass beneath the all-seeing eye of his Maker and Judge, so

that his every thought and desire, his most secret

imagination and motive, stands exposed before Him. It is

indeed a most solemn experience when we are made to feel

with the Psalmist, “O LORD, Thou hast searched me, and

known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising,

Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my

path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my

ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O

LORD, Thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind

and before, and laid Thine hand upon me” (Psa.

139:1-5).

Yes, dear reader, the very last thing which the natural

man desires is to be searched, through and through by God,

and have his real character exposed to view. But when God

undertakes to do this very thing–which He either will do

in grace in this life, or in judgment in the Day to

come–there is no escape for us. Then it is we may well

exclaim, “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or

whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into

Heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in Hell, behold,

Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and

dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall

Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I

say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night

shall be light about me” (Psa. 139:7-11). Then it is

we shall be assured, “Yea, the darkness hideth not

from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness

and the light are both alike to Thee” (v. 12).

Then it is that the soul is awakened to a realization of

Who it is with whom it has to do. Then it is that he now

perceives something of the high claims of God upon him, the

just requirements of His Law, the demands of His holiness.

Then it is that he realizes how completely he has failed to

consider those claims, how fearfully he has disregarded

that law, how miserably he falls short of meeting those

demands. Now it is that he perceives he has been “a

transgressor from the womb” (Isa. 48:8), that so far

from having lived to glorify His Maker, he has done nought

but follow the course of this world and fulfill the lust of

the flesh. Now it is he realizes that there is “no

soundness” in him but, from the sole of the foot even

unto the head, “wounds, and bruises, and putrifying

sores” (Isa. 1:6). Now it is he is made to see that

all his righteousness are as “filthy rags” (Isa.

64:6).

“It is easy for any one in the cloisters of the

schools to indulge himself in idle speculations of the

merit of works to justify men; but when he comes into the

presence of God, he must bid farewell to these amusements,

for there the business is transacted with seriousness, and

no ludicrous logomachy practiced. To this point, then, must

our attention be directed, if we wish to make any useful

inquiry concerning true righteousness; how we can answer

the celestial Judge, when He shall call us to an account.

Let us place that Judge before our eyes, not according to

the spontaneous imaginations of our minds, but according to

the descriptions given of Him in the Scripture; which

represents Him as one whose refulgence eclipses the stars,

whose power melts the mountains, whose anger shakes the

earth, whose wisdom takes the subtle in their own

craftiness, whose purity makes all things appear polluted,

whose righteousness even the angels are unable to bear, who

acquits not the guilty, whose vengeance, when it is once

kindled, penetrates even to the abyss of Hell” (John

Calvin).

Ah, my reader, tremendous indeed are the effects produced

in the soul when one is really brought into the presence of

God, and is granted a sight of His awesome majesty. While

we measure ourselves by our fellow men, it is easy to reach

the conclusion that there is not much wrong with us; but

when we approach the dread tribunal of ineffable holiness,

we form an entirely different estimate of our character and

conduct. While we are occupied with earthly objects we may

pride ourselves in the strength of our visive faculty, but

fix the gaze steadily on the midday sun and under its

dazzling brilliance the weakness of the eye will at once

become apparent. In like manner, while I compare myself

with other sinners I can but form a wrong estimate of

myself, but if I gauge my life by the plummet of God’s

Law, and do so in the light of His holiness, I must

“Abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job

42:6).

But not only has sin corrupted man’s being, it has

changed his relation to God: it has “alienated”

him (Eph. 4:18), and brought him under His righteous

condemnation. Man has broken God’s Law in thought and

word and deed, not once, but times without number. By the

Divine tribunal he is pronounced an incorrigible

transgressor, a guilty rebel. He is under the curse of his

Maker. The law demands that its punishment shall be

inflicted upon him; justice clamours for satisfaction. The

sinner’s case is deplorable, then, to the last degree.

When this is painfully felt by the convicted conscience,

its agonized possessor cries out, “How then can man be

justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of

a woman?” (Job 25:4). How indeed! Let us now consider

the various elements which enter into this problem.

1. The requirements of God’s Law. “Every question

therefore, respecting justification necessarily brings

before us the judicial courts of God. The principles of

those courts must be determined by God alone. Even to

earthly governors we concede the right of establishing

their own laws, and appointing the mode of their

enforcement. Shall we then accord this title to man, and

withhold it from the all-wise and almighty God? Surely no

presumption can be greater than for the creature to sit in

judgment on the Creator, and pretend to determine what

should, or should not be, the methods of His government. It

must be our place reverently to listen to His own

exposition of the principles of His own courts, and humbly

to thank Him for His goodness in condescending to explain

to us what those principles are. As sinners, we can have no

claim on God. We do have claim to a revelation that should

acquaint us with His ways.

“The judicial principles of the government of God,

are, as might be expected, based upon the absolute

perfectness of His own holiness. This was fully shown both

in the prohibitory and in the mandatory commandments of the

law as given at Sinai. That law prohibited not only wrong

deeds and wrong counsels of heart, but it went deeper

still. It prohibited even wrong desires and wrong

tendencies, saying, `thou shalt not be

concupiscent’–that is, thou shalt not have, even

momentarily, one desire or tendency that is contrary to the

perfectness of God. And then as to its positive

requirements, it demanded the perfect, unreserved,

perpetual surrender of soul and body, with all its powers,

to God and to His service. Not only was it required, that

love to Him–love perfect and unremitted–should dwell as a

living principle in the heart, but also that it should be

developed in action, and that unvaryingly. The mode also of

the development throughout, was required to be as perfect

as the principle from which the development sprang.

“If any among the children of men be able to

substantiate a claim to prefectness such as this, the

Courts of God are ready to recognize it. The God of Truth

will recognize a truthful claim wherever it is found. But

if we are unable to present any such claim–if corruption

be found in us and in our ways–if in any thing we have

fallen short of God’s glory, then it is obvious that

however willing the Courts of God may be to recognize

perfectness wherever it exists, such willingness can afford

no ground of hope to those, who, instead of having

perfectness, have sins and short-comings unnumbered”

(B.W. Newton).

2. The indictment preferred against us. “Hear, O

heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I

have nourished and brought up children, and they have

rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass

his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, My people

doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with

iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are

corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked

the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away

backward” (Isa. 1:2-4). The eternal God justly charges

us with having broken all His commandments–some in act,

some in word, all of them in thought and imagination.

The enormity of this charge is heightened by the fact that

against light and knowledge we chose the evil and forsook

the good: that again and again we deliberately turned aside

from God’s righteous Law, and went astray like lost

sheep, following the evil desires and devices of our own

hearts. Above, we find God complaining that inasmuch as we

are his creatures, we ought to have obeyed Him, that

inasmuch as we owe our very lives to His daily care we

ought to have rendered Him fealty instead of disobedience,

and have been His loyal subjects instead of turning

traitors to His throne. No exaggeration of sin is brought

against us, but a statement of fact is declared which it is

impossible for us to gainsay. We are ungrateful, unruly,

ungodly creatures. Who would keep a horse that refused to

work? Who would retain a dog which barked and flew at us?

Yet we have broken God’s sabbaths, despised His

reproofs, abused His mercies.

3. The sentence of the law. This is clearly announced in

the Divine oracles, “Cursed is every one that

continueth not in all things which are written in the book

of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10). Whoever violates a

single precept of the Divine Law exposes himself to the

displeasure of God, and to punishment as the expression of

that displeasure. No allowance is made for ignorance, no

distinction is made between persons, no relaxation of its

strictness is permissible: “The soul that sinneth it

shall die” is its inexorable pronouncement. No

exception is made whether the transgressor be young or old,

rich or poor, Jew or Gentile: “the wages of sin is

death”; for “the wrath of God is revealed from

heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of

men” (Rom. 1:18).

4. The Judge Himself is inflexibly just. In the high court

of Divine justice God takes the law in its strictest and

sternest aspect, and judges rigidly according to the

letter. “But we are sure that the judgment of God is

according to truth against them which commit such things…

Who will render to every man according to his deeds”

(Rom. 2:2, 6). God is inexorably righteous, and will not

show any partiality either to the law or to its

transgressor. The Most High has determined that His Holy

Law shall be faithfully upheld and its sanctions strictly

enforced.

What would this country be like if all its judges ceased

to uphold and enforce the laws of the land? What conditions

would prevail were sentimental mercy to reign at the

expense of righteousness? Now God is the Judge of all the

earth and the moral Ruler of the universe. Holy Writ

declares that “justice and judgment,” and not

pity and clemency, are the “habitation” of His

“throne” (Psa. 89:14). God’s attributes do

not conflict with each other. His mercy does not override

His justice, nor is His grace ever shown at the expense of

righteousness. Each of His perfections is given free

course. For God to give a sinner entrance into Heaven

simply because He loved him, would be like a judge

sheltering an escaped convict in his own home merely

because he pitied him. Scripture emphatically declares that

God, “will by no means clear the guilty” (Exo.

34:7).

5. The sinner is unquestionably guilty. It is not merely

that he has infirmities or that he is not as good as he

ought to be: he has set at nought God’s authority,

violated His commandments, trodden His Laws under foot. And

this is true not only of a certain class of offenders, but

“all the world” is “guilty before God”

(Rom. 3:19). “There is none righteous, no, not one:

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become

unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not

one” (Rom. 3:10, 12). It is impossible for any man to

clear himself from this fearful charge. He can neither show

that the crimes of which he is accused have not been

committed, nor that having been committed, he had a right

to do them. He can neither disprove the charges which the

law preferred against him, nor justify himself in the

perpetration of them.

Here then is how the case stands. The law demands

personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity to its

precepts, in heart and act, in motive and performance. God

charges each one of us with having failed to meet those

just demands, and declares we have violated His

commandments in thought and word and deed. The law

therefore pronounces upon us a sentence of condemnation,

curses us, and demands the infliction of its penalty, which

is death. The One before whose tribunal we stand is

omniscient, and cannot be deceived or imposed upon; He is

inflexibly just, and swayed by no sentimental

considerations. We, the accused, are guilty, unable to

refute the accusations of the law, unable to vindicate our

sinful conduct, unable to offer any satisfaction or

atonement for our crimes. Truly, our case is desperate to

the last degree.

Here, then, is the problem. How can God justify the

willful transgressor of His Law without justifying his

sins? How can God deliver him from the penalty of His

broken Law without compromising His holiness and going back

upon His word that He will “by no means clear the

guilty”? How can life be granted the guilty culprit

without repealing the sentence “the soul that sinneth

it shall die”? How can mercy be shown to the sinner

without justice being flouted? It is a problem which must

forever have baffled every finite intelligence. Yet,

blessed be His name, God has, in His consummate wisdom,

devised a way whereby the “chief of sinners” may

be dealt with by Him as though he were perfectly innocent;

nay more, He pronounces him righteous, up to the required

standard of the law, and entitled to the reward of eternal

life. How this can be will be taken up in the next chapter.

---

Its Basis

In our last chapter we contemplated the problem which is

presented in the justifying or pronouncing righteous one

who is a flagrant violater of the Law of God. Some may have

been surprised at the introduction of such a term as

“problem”: as there are many in the ranks of the

ungodly who feel that the world owes them a living, so

there are not a few Pharisees in Christendom who suppose it

is due them that at death their Creator should take them to

Heaven. But different far is it with one who has been

enlightened and convicted by the Holy Spirit, so that he

sees himself to be a filthy wretch, a vile rebel against

God. Such an one will ask, seeing that the word of God so

plainly declares “there shall in no wise enter into it

any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh

abomination” (Rev. 21:27), how is it possible that I

can ever gain admission into the heavenly Jerusalem? How

can it be that one so completely devoid of righteousness as

I am, and so filled with unrighteousness, should ever be

pronounced just by a holy God?

Various attempts have been made by unbelieving minds to

solve this problem. Some have reasoned that if they now

turn over a new leaf, thoroughly reform their lives and

henceforth walk in obedience to God’s Law, they shall

be approved before the Divine Tribunal. This scheme,

reduced to simple terms, is salvation by our own works. But

such a scheme is utterly untenable, and salvation by such

means is absolutely impossible. The works of a reformed

sinner cannot be the meritorious or efficacious cause of

his salvation, and that for the following reasons. First,

no provision is made for his previous failures. Suppose

that henceforth I never again transgress God’s Law,

what is to atone for my past sins? Second, a fallen and

sinful creature cannot produce that which is perfect, and

nothing short of perfection is acceptable to God. Third,

were it possible for us to be saved by our own works, then

the sufferings and death of Christ were needless. Fourth,

salvation by our own merits would entirely eclipse the

glory of Divine grace.

Others suppose this problem may be solved by an appeal to

the bare mercy of God. But mercy is not an attribute that

overshadows all the other Divine perfections: justice,

truth, and holiness are also operative in the salvation of

God’s elect. The law is not set aside, but honored and

magnified. The truth of God in His solemn threats is not

sullied, but faithfully carried out. The Divine

righteousness is not flouted, but vindicated. One of

God’s perfections is not exercised to the injury of any

of the others, but all of them shine forth with equal

clearness in the plan which Divine wisdom devised. Mercy at

the expense of justice over-ridden would not suit the

Divine government, and justice enforced to the exclusion of

mercy would not befit the Divine character. The problem

which no finite intelligence could solve was how both might

be exercised in the sinner’s salvation.

A striking example of mercy helpless before the claims of

the law occurs in Daniel 6. There we find that Darius, the

king of Babylon, was induced by his nobles to sign a decree

that any subject within his kingdom who should pray, or

“ask a petition of any God or man for thirty

days” save the king himself, should be cast into the

den of lions. Daniel knowing this, nevertheless, continued

to pray before God as hitherto. Whereupon the nobles

acquainted Darius with his violation of the royal edict,

which “according to the law of the Medes and Persians

altereth not,” and demanded his punishment. Now Daniel

stood high in the king’s favour, and he greatly desired

to show clemency unto him, so he “set his heart on

Daniel to deliver him, and he labored till the going down

of the sun to deliver him.” But he found no way out of

the difficulty: the law must be honored, so Daniel was cast

into the lion’s den.

An equally striking example of law helpless in the

presence of mercy is found in John 8. There we read of a

woman taken in the act of adultery. The scribes and

Pharisees apprehended her and set her before Christ,

charging her with the crime, and reminding the Saviour that

“Moses in the law commanded us that such should be

stoned.” She was unquestionably guilty, and her

accusers were determined that the penalty of the law should

be inflicted upon her. The Lord turned to them and said,

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast

a stone at her”; and they, being convicted by their

own conscience, went out one by one, leaving the adulteress

alone with Christ. Turning to her, He asked, “Woman,

where are thine accusers, hath no man condemned thee?”

She replied, “No man, Lord,” and He answered,

“Neither do I condemn thee, go, and sin no more.”

The two adverse principles are seen operating in

conjuction in Luke 15. The “Father” could not

have the (prodigal) son at His table clad in the rags of

the far country, but He could go out and meet him in those

rags: He could fall on his neck and kiss him in those

rags–it was blessedly characteristic of His grace so to

do; but to seat him at His table in garments suited to the

swine-troughs would not be fitting. But the grace which

brought the Father out to the prodigal “reigned”

through that righteousness which brought the prodigal in to

the Father’s house. It had not been “grace”

had the Father waited till the prodigal decked himself out

in suitable garments of his own providing; nor would it

have been “righteousness” to bring him to His

table in his rags. Both grace and righteousness shone forth

in their respective beauty when the Father said “bring

forth the best robe, and put it on him.”

It is through Christ and His atonement that the justice

and mercy of God, His righteousness and grace, meet in the

justifying of a believing sinner. In Christ is found the

solution to every problem which sin has raised. In the

Cross of Christ every attribute of God shines forth in its

meridian splendor. In the satisfaction which the Redeemer

offered unto God every claim of the law, whether preceptive

or penal, has been fully met. God has been infinitely more

honored by the obedience of the last Adam than He was

dishonored by the disobedience of the first Adam. The

justice of God was infinitely more magnified when its awful

sword smote the beloved Son, than had every member of the

human race burned for ever and ever in the lake of fire.

There is infinitely more efficacy in the blood of Christ to

cleanse, than there is in sin to befoul. There is

infinitely more merit in Christ’s one perfect

righteousness than there is demerit in the combined

unrighteousness of all the ungodly. Well may we exclaim,

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross

of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14).

But while many are agreed that the atoning death of Christ

is the meritorious cause of His peoples’ salvation,

there are now few indeed who can give any clear Scriptural

explanation of the way and manner by which the work of

Christ secures the justification of all who believe. Hence

the need for a clear and full statement thereon. Hazy ideas

at this point are both dishonouring to God and unsettling

to our peace. It is of first importance that the Christian

should obtain a clear understanding of the ground on which

God pardons his sins and grants him a title to the heavenly

inheritance. Perhaps this may best be set forth under three

words: substitution, identification, imputation. As their

Surety and Sponsor, Christ entered the place occupied by

His people under the law, so identifying Himself with them

as to be their Head and Representative, and as such He

assumed and discharged all their legal obligations: their

liabilities being transferred to Him, His merits being

transferred to them.

The Lord Jesus has wrought out for His people a perfect

righteousness by obeying the law in thought and word and

deed, and this righteousness is imputed to them, reckoned

to their account. The Lord Jesus has suffered the penalty

of the law in their stead, and through His atoning death

they are cleansed from all guilt. As creatures they were

under obligations to obey Gods’ Law; as criminals

(transgressors) they were under the death-sentence of the

law. Therefore, to fully meet our liabilities and discharge

our debts it was necessary that our Substitute should both

obey and die. The shedding of Christ’s blood blotted

out our sins, but it did not, of itself, provide the

“best robe” for us. To silence the accusations of

the law against us so that there is now “no

condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” is

simply a negative blessing: something more was required,

namely, a positive righteousness, the keeping of the law,

so that we might be entitled to its blessing and reward.

In Old Testament times the name under which the Messiah

and Mediator was foretold is, “THE LORD OUR

RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Jer. 23:6). It was plainly predicted

by Daniel that He should come here to “finish the

transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make

reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting

righteousness” (9:24). Isaiah announced “Surely,

shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and

strength: even to Him shall men come; and all that are

incensed against Him shall be ashamed. In the LORD shall

all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory”

(45:24, 25). And again, he represents each of the redeemed

exclaiming, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my

soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with

the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe

of righteousness” (61:10).

In Romans 4:6-8 we read, “David also describeth the

blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth

righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose

iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute

sin.” Here we are shown the inseparability of the two

things: God imputing “righteousness” and God not

imputing “sins.” The two are never divided: unto

whom God imputes not sin He imputes righteousness; and unto

whom He imputes righteousness, He imputes not sin. But the

particular point which we are most anxious for the reader

to grasp is, Whose “righteousness” is it that God

imputes or reckons to the account of the one who believes?

The answer is, that righteousness which was wrought out by

our Surety, that obedience to the law which was vicariously

rendered by our Sponsor, even “the righteousness of

God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1). This

righteousness is not only “unto all” but also

“upon all them that believe” (Rom. 3:22). It is

called “the righteousness of God” because it was

the righteousness of the God-man Mediator, just as in Acts

20:28 His blood is call the blood of God.

The “righteousness of God” which is mentioned so

frequently in the Roman epistle refers not to the essential

righteousness of the Divine character, for that cannot

possibly be imputed or legally transferred to any creature.

When we are told in 10:3 that the Jews were “ignorant

of God’s righteousness” it most certainly does not

mean they were in the dark concerning the Divine rectitude

or that they knew nothing about God’s justice; but it

signifies that they were unenlightened as to the

righteousness which the God-man Mediator had vicariously

wrought out for His people. This is abundantly clear from

the remainder of that verse: “and going about to

establish their own righteousness”–not their own

rectitude or justice, but performing works by which they

hoped to merit acceptance with God. So tightly did they

cling to this delusion, they, “submitted not

themselves unto the righteousness of God”: that is,

they refused to turn from their self-righteousness and put

their trust in the obedience and sufferings of the

incarnate Son of God.

“I would explain what we mean by the imputation of

Christ’s righteousness. Sometimes the expression is

taken by our divines in a larger sense, for the imputation

of all that Christ did and suffered for our redemption

whereby we are free from guilt, and stand righteous in the

sight of God; and so implies the imputation both of

Christ’s satisfaction and obedience. But here I intend

it in a stricter sense, for the imputation of that

righteousness or moral goodness that consists in the

obedience of Christ. And by that obedience being imputed to

us, is meant no other than this, that that righteousness of

Christ is accepted for us, and admitted instead of that

perfect inherent righteousness that ought to be in

ourselves: Christ’s perfect obedience shall be reckoned

to our account, so that we shall have the benefit of it, as

though we had performed it ourselves: and so we suppose,

that a title to eternal life is given us as the reward of

this righteousness” (Jonathan Edwards).

The one passage which casts the clearest light upon that

aspect of justification which we are now considering is 2

Corinthians 5:21, “For He hath made Him to be sin for

us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the

righteousness of God in Him.” Here we have the counter

imputations: of our sins to Christ, of His righteousness to

us. As the teaching of this verse is of such vital moment

let us endeavor to consider its terms the more closely. How

was Christ “made sin for us”? By God imputing to

Him our disobedience, or our transgressions of the law; in

like manner, we are made “the righteousness of God in

Him” (in Christ, not in ourselves) by God imputing to

us Christ’s obedience, His fulfilling the precepts of

the law for us.

As Christ “knew no sin” by inward defilement or

personal commission, so we “knew” or had no

righteousness of our own by inward conformity to the law,

or by personal obedience to it. As Christ was “made

sin” by having our sins placed to His account or

charged upon Him in a judicial way, and as it was not by

any criminal conduct of His own that He was “made

sin,” so it is not by any pious activities of our own

that we become “righteous”: Christ was not

“made sin” by the infusion of depravity, nor are

we “made righteous” by the infusion of holiness.

Though personally holy, our Sponsor did, by entering our

law-place, render Himself officially liable to the wrath of

God; and so though personally unholy, we are, by virtue of

our legal identification with Christ, entitled to the favor

of God. As the consequence of Christ’s being “made

sin for us” was, that “the LORD laid on Him the

iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6), so the consequence of

Christ’s obedience being reckoned to our account is

that God lays righteousness “upon all them that

believe” (Rom. 3:22). As our sins were the judicial

ground of the sufferings of Christ, by which sufferings He

satisfied Justice; so Christ’s righteousness is the

judicial ground of our acceptance with God, by which our

pardon is an act of Justice.

Notice carefully that in 2 Corinthians 5:21 it is God who

“made” or legally constituted Christ to be

“sin for us,” though as Hebrews 10:7 shows, the

Son gladly acquiesced therein. “He was made sin by

imputation: the sins of all His people were transferred

unto Him, laid upon Him, and placed to His account and

having them upon Him He was treated by the justice of God

as if He had been not only a sinner, but a mass of sin: for

to be made sin is a stronger expression than to be made a

sinner” (John Gill). “That we might be made the

righteousness of God in Him” signifies to be legally

constituted righteous before God–justified. “It is a

righteousness `in Him,’ in Christ, and not in

ourselves, and therefore must mean the righteousness of

Christ: so called, because it is wrought by Christ, who is

God over all, the true God, and eternal life” (Ibid.).

The same counter-exchange which has been before us in 2

Corinthians 5:21 is found again in Galatians 3:13, 14,

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,

being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is

every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of

Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus

Christ.” As the Surety of His people, Christ was

“made under the law” (Gal. 4:4), stood in their

law-place and stead, and having all their sins imputed to

Him, and the law finding them all upon Him, condemned Him

for them; and so the justice of God delivered Him up to the

accursed death of the cross. The purpose, as well as the

consequence, of this was “That the blessing of Abraham

might come on the Gentiles”: the “blessing of

Abraham” (as Rom. 4 shows) was justification by faith

through the righteousness of Christ.

“Upon a Life I did not live,
Upon a Death I did not die;
Another’s death, Another’s life
I’d rest my soul eternally.”

---

Its Nature

Justification, strictly speaking, consists in God’s

imputing to His elect the righteousness of Christ, that

alone being the meritorious cause or formal ground on which

He pronounces them righteous: the righteousness of Christ

is that to which God has respect when He pardons and

accepts the sinner. By the nature of justification we have

reference to the constituent elements of the same, which

are enjoyed by the believer. These are, the non-imputation

of guilt or the remission of sins, and second, of the

investing of the believer with a legal title to Heaven. The

alone ground on which God forgives any man’s sins, and

admits him into His judicial favour, is the vicarious work

of his Surety–that perfect satisfaction which Christ

offered to the law on his behalf. It is of great importance

to be clear on the fact that Christ was “made under

the law” not only that He might redeem His people

“from the curse of the law” (Gal. 3:13), but also

that they might “receive the adoption of sons”

(Gal. 4:4, 5), that is, be invested with the privileges of

sons.

This grand doctrine of Justification was proclaimed in its

purity and clarity by the Reformers–Luther, Calvin,

Zanchius, Peter Martyr, etc.; but it began to be corrupted

in the seventeenth century by men who had only a very

superficial knowledge of it, who taught that justification

consisted merely in the removal of guilt or forgiveness of

sins, excluding the positive admittance of man into

God’s judicial favour: in other words, they restricted

justification unto deliverance from Hell, failing to

declare that it also conveys a title unto Heaven. This

error was perpetuated by John Wesley, and then by the

Plymouth Brethren, who, denying that the righteousness of

Christ is imputed to the believer, seek to find their title

to eternal life in a union with Christ in His resurrection.

Few today are clear upon the twofold content of

Justification, because few today understand the nature of

that righteousness which is imputed to all who believe.

To show that we have not misrepresented the standard

teachings of the Plymouth Brethren on this subject, we

quote from Mr. W. Kelly’s “Notes on Romans.”

In his “Introduction” he states, “There is

nothing to hinder our understanding `the righteousness of

God’ in its usual sense of an attribute or quality of

God” (p. 35). But how could an “attribute”

or “quality” of God be “upon all them that

believe” (Rom. 3:22)? Mr. Kelly will not at all allow

that the “righteousness of God” and “the

righteousness of Christ” are one and the same, and

hence, when he comes to Romans 4 (where so much is said

about “righteousness” being imputed to the

believer) he evacuates the whole of its blessed teaching by

trying to make out that this is nothing more than our own

faith, saying of Abraham, “his faith in God’s word

as that which he exercised, and which was accounted as

righteousness” (p. 47).

The “righteousness of Christ” which is imputed

to the believer consists of that perfect obedience which He

rendered unto the precepts of God’s Law and that death

which He died under the penalty of the law. It has been

rightly said that, “There is the very same need of

Christ’s obeying the law in our stead, in order to the

reward, as of His suffering the penalty of the law in our

stead in order to our escaping the penalty; and the same

reason why one should be accepted on our account as the

other… To suppose that all Christ does in order to make

atonement for us by suffering is to make Him our Saviour

but in part. It is to rob Him of half His glory as a

Saviour. For if so, all that He does is to deliver us from

Hell; He does not purchase Heaven for us” (Jonathan

Edwards). Should any one object to the idea of Christ

“purchasing” Heaven for His people, he may at

once be referred to Ephesians 1:14, where Heaven is

expressly designated “the purchased possession.”

The imputation to the believer’s account of that

perfect obedience which his Surety rendered unto the law

for him is plainly taught in Romans 5:18, 19,

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon

all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of

one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of

life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made

sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made

righteous.” Here the “offence” or

“disobedience” of the first Adam is set over

against the “righteousness” or

“obedience” of the last Adam, and inasmuch as the

disobedience of the former was an actual transgression of

the law, therefore the obedience of the latter must be His

active obedience unto the law; otherwise the force of the

Apostle’s antithesis would fail entirely. As this vital

point (the chief glory of the Gospel) is now so little

understood, and in some quarters disputed, we must enter

into some detail.

The one who was justified upon his believing sustained a

twofold relation unto God: first, he was a responsible

creature, born under the law; second, he was a criminal,

having transgressed that law–though his criminality has

not canceled his obligation to obey the law any more than a

man who recklessly squanders his money is no longer due to

pay his debts. Consequently, justification consists of two

parts, namely, an acquittal from guilt, or the condemnation

of the law (deliverance from Hell), and the receiving him

into God’s favour, on the sentence of the law’s

approval (a legal title to Heaven). And therefore, the

ground upon which God pronounces him just is also a double

one, as the one complete satisfaction of Christ is viewed

in its two distinct parts: namely, His vicarious obedience

unto the precepts of the law, and His substitutionary death

under the penalty of the law, the merits of both being

equally imputed or reckoned to the account of him who

believes.

Against this it has been objected, “The law requires

no man to obey and die too.” To which we reply in the

language of J. Hervey (1750), “But did it not require

a transgressor to obey and die? If not, then transgression

robs the law of its right, and vacates all obligation to

obedience. Did it not require the Surety for sinful men to

obey and die? If the Surety dies only, He only delivers

from penalty. But this affords no claim to life, no title

to a reward–unless you can produce some such edict from

the Court of Heaven– `Suffer this, and thou shalt

live.’ I find it written `In keeping Thy commandments

there is great reward’ (Psa. 19:11), but nowhere do I

read, `In undergoing Thy curse, there is the same

reward.’ Whereas, when we join the active and passive

obedience of our Lord–the peace-speaking Blood with the

Life-giving righteousness–both made infinitely meritorious

and infinitely efficacious by the Divine glory of His

person, how full does our justification appear! How firm

does it stand!”

It is not sufficient that the believer stand before God

with no sins upon him–that is merely negative. The

holiness of God requires a positive righteousness to our

account–that His Law be perfectly kept. But we are unable

to keep it, therefore our Sponsor fulfilled it for us. By

the blood-shedding of our blessed Substitute the gates of

Hell have been forever shut against all those for whom He

died. By the perfect obedience of our blessed Surety the

gates of Heaven are opened wide unto all who believe. My

title for standing before God, not only without fear, but

in the conscious sunshine of His full favour, is because

Christ has been made “righteousness” unto me (1

Cor. 1:30). Christ not only paid all my debts, but fully

discharged all my responsibilities. The law-Giver is my

law-Fulfiller. Every holy aspiration of Christ, every godly

thought, every gracious word, every righteous act of the

Lord Jesus, from Bethlehem to Calvary, unite in forming

that “best robe” in which the seed royal stand

arrayed before God.

Yet sad to say, even so widely-read and

generally-respected a writer as the late Sir Rob. Anderson,

said in his book, “The Gospel and Its Ministry”

(Chapter on Justification by Blood), “Vicarious

obedience is an idea wholly beyond reason; how could a God

of righteousness and truth reckon a man who has broken law

to have kept law, because some one else has kept it? The

thief is not declared to be honest because his neighbour or

his kinsman is a good citizen.” What a pitiable

dragging down to the bar of sin-polluted human reason, and

a measuring by worldly relations, of that Divine

transaction wherein the “manifold wisdom of God”

was exercised! What is impossible with men is possible with

God. Did Sir Robert never read that Old Testament

prediction wherein the Most High God declared,

“Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous

work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder:

for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the

understanding of their prudent men shall be hid” (Isa.

29:14)?

It is pointed out that, “In the human realm, both

innocence and righteousness are transferable in their

effects, but that in themselves they are

untransferable.” From this it is argued that neither

sin nor righteousness are in themselves capable of being

transferred, and that though God treated Christ as if He

were the sinner, and deals with the believer as though he

were righteous, nevertheless, we must not suppose that

either is actually the case; still less ought we to affirm

that Christ deserved to suffer the curse, or that His

people are entitled to be taken to Heaven. Such is a fair

sample of the theological ignorance of these degenerate

times, such is a representative example of how Divine

things are being measured by human standards; by such

sophistries is the fundamental truth of imputation now

being repudiated.

Rightly did W. Rushton, in his “Particular

Redemption,” affirm, “In the great affair of our

salvation, our God stands single and alone. In this most

glorious work, there is such a display of justice, mercy,

wisdom and power, as never entered into the heart of man to

conceive, and consequently, can have no parallel in the

actions of mortals. `Who hath declared this from ancient

time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD?

and there is no God else beside Me; a just God and a

Saviour; there is none beside Me’: Isaiah 45:21.”

No, in the very nature of the case no analogy whatever is

to be found in any human transactions with God’s

transferring our sins to Christ or Christ’s obedience

to us, for the simple but sufficient reason that no such

union exists between worldlings as obtains between Christ

and His people. But let us further amplify this

counter-imputation.

The afflictions which the Lord Jesus experienced were not

only sufferings at the hands of men, but also enduring

punishment at the hand of God: “it pleased the LORD to

bruise Him” (Isa. 53:10); “Awake, O sword,

against My Shepherd, and against the man that is My Fellow,

saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd” (Zech.

13:7) was His edict. But lawful “punishment”

presupposes criminality; a righteous God had never

inflicted the curse of the law upon Christ unless He had

deserved it. That is strong language we are well aware, yet

not stronger than what Holy Writ fully warrants, and things

need to be stated forcibly and plainly today if an

apathetic people is to be aroused. It was because God had

transferred to their Substitute all the sins of His people

that, officially, Christ deserved to be paid sin’s

wages.

The translation of our sins to Christ was clearly typed

out under the Law: “And Aaron shall lay both his hands

upon the head of the live goat, (expressing identification

with the substitute), and confess over him all the

iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their

transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the

head of the goat (denoting transference), and shall send

him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And

the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a

land not inhabited” (Lev. 16:21, 22). So too it was

expressly announced by the Prophets: “The LORD hath

laid on Him the iniquity of us all… He shall bear their

iniquities” (Isa. 53:6, 11). In that great Messianic

Psalm, the 69th, we hear the Surety saying, “O God,

Thou knowest My foolishness; and My sins are not hid from

Thee” (v. 5)–how could the spotless Redeemer speak

thus, unless the sins of His people had been laid upon Him?

When God imputed sin to Christ as the sinner’s Surety,

He charged Him with the same, and dealt with Him

accordingly. Christ could not have suffered in the stead of

the guilty unless their guilt had been first transferred to

Him. The sufferings of Christ were penal. God by act of

transcendent grace (to us) laid the iniquities of all that

are saved upon Christ, and in consequence, Divine justice

finding sin upon Him, punished Him. He who will by no means

clear the guilty must strike through sin and smite its

bearer, no matter whether it be the sinner himself or One

who vicariously takes his place. But as G.S. Bishop well

said, “When justice once strikes the Son of God,

justice exhausts itself. Sin is amerced in an Infinite

Object.” The atonement of Christ was contrary to our

processes of law because it rose above their finite

limitations!

Now as the sins of him who believes were, by God,

transferred and imputed to Christ so that God regarded and

treated Him accordingly–visiting upon Him the curse of the

law, which is death; even so the obedience or righteousness

of Christ is, by God, transferred and imputed to the

believer so that God now regards and deals with him

accordingly–bestowing upon him the blessing of the law,

which is life. And any denial of that fact, no matter by

whomsoever made, is a repudiation of the cardinal principle

of the Gospel. “The moment the believing sinner

accepts Christ as his Substitute, he finds himself not only

freed from his sins, but rewarded: he gets all Heaven

because of the glory and merits of Christ (Rom. 5:17). The

atonement, then, which we preach is one of absolute

exchange (1 Peter 3:18). It is that Christ took our place

literally, in order that we might take His place

literally–that God regarded and treated Christ as the

Sinner, and that He regards and treats the believing sinner

as Christ.

“It is not enough for a man to be pardoned. He, of

course, is then innocent–washed from his sin–put back

again, like Adam in Eden, just where he was. But that is

not enough. It was required of Adam in Eden that he should

actually keep the command. It was not enough that he did

not break it, or that he is regarded, through the Blood, as

though he did not break it. He must keep it: he must

continue in all things that are written in the book of the

law to do them. How is this necessity supplied? Man must

have a righteousness, or God cannot accept him. Man must

have a perfect obedience, or else God cannot reward

him” (G.S. Bishop). That necessary and perfect

obedience is to be found alone in that perfect life, lived

by Christ in obedience to the law, before He went to the

cross, which is reckoned to the believer’s account.

It is not that God treats as righteous one who is not

actually so (that would be a fiction), but that He actually

constitutes the believer so, not by infusing a holy nature

in his heart, but by reckoning the obedience of Christ to

his account. Christ’s obedience is legally transferred

to him so that he is now rightly and justly regarded as

righteous by the Divine Law. It is very far more than a

naked pronouncement of righteousness upon one who is

without any sufficient foundation for the judgment of God

to declare him righteous. No, it is a positive and judicial

act of God “whereby, on the consideration of the

mediation of Christ, He makes an effectual grant and

donation of a true, real, perfect righteousness, even that

of Christ Himself unto all that do believe, and accounting

it as theirs, on His own gracious act, both absolves them

from sin, and granteth them right and title unto eternal

life” (John Owen).

It now remains for us to point out the ground on which God

acts in this counter-imputation of sin to Christ and

righteousness to His people. That ground was the

Everlasting Covenant. The objection that it is unjust the

innocent should suffer in order that the guilty may escape

loses all its force once the Covenant-Headship and

responsibility of Christ is seen, and the covenant-oneness

with Him of those whose sins He bore. There could have been

no such thing as a vicarious sacrifice unless there had

been some union between Christ and those for whom He died,

and that relation of union must have subsisted before He

died, yea, before our sins were imputed to Him. Christ

undertook to make full satisfaction to the law for His

people because He sustained to them the relation of a

Surety. But what justified His acting as their Surety? He

stood as their Surety because He was their Substitute: He

acted on their behalf, because He stood in their room. But

what justified the substitution?

No satisfactory answer can be given to the last question

until the grand doctrine of everlasting covenant-oneness

comes into view: that is the great underlying relation. The

federal oneness between the Redeemer and the redeemed, the

choosing of them in Christ before the foundation of the

world (Eph. 1:4), by which a legal union was established

between Him and them, is that which alone accounts for and

justifies all else. “For both He that sanctifieth and

they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He

is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. 2:11). As

the Covenant-Head of His people, Christ was so related to

them that their responsibilities necessarily became His,

and we are so related to Him that His merits necessarily

become ours. Thus, as we said in an earlier chapter, three

words give us the key to and sum up the whole transaction:

substitution, identification, imputation–all of which rest

upon covenant-oneness. Christ was substituted for us,

because He is one with us–identified with us, and we with

Him. Thus God dealt with us as occupying Christ’s place

of worthiness and acceptance. May the Holy Spirit grant

both writer and reader such an heart-apprehension of this

wondrous and blessed truth, that overflowing gratitude may

move us unto fuller devotedness unto Him who loved us and

gave Himself for us.

---

Its Source

Let us here review, briefly, the ground which we have

already covered. We have seen, first, that “to

justify” means to pronounce righteous. It is not a

Divine work, but a Divine verdict, the sentence of the

Supreme Court, declaring that the one justified stands

perfectly conformed to all the requirements of the law.

Justification assures the believer that the Judge of all

the earth is for him, and not against him: that justice

itself is on his side. Second, we dwelt upon the great and

seemingly insoluable problem which is thereby involved: how

a God of truth can pronounce righteous one who is

completely devoid of righteousness, how He can receive into

His judicial favour one who is a guilty criminal, how He

can exercise mercy without insulting justice, how He can be

gracious and yet enforce the high demands of His Law.

Third, we have shown that the solution to this problem is

found in the perfect satisfaction which the incarnate Son

rendered unto Divine Law, and that on the basis of that

satisfaction God can truthfully and righteously pronounce

just all who truly believe the Gospel.

In our last article we pointed out that the satisfaction

which Christ made to the Divine Law consists of two

distinct parts, answering to the twofold need of him who is

to be justified. First, as a responsible creature I am

under binding obligations to keep the law–to love God with

all my heart and my neighbor as myself. Second, as a

criminal I am under the condemnation and curse of that law

which I have constantly transgressed in thought and word

and deed. Therefore, if another was to act as my surety and

make reparation for me, he must perfectly obey all the

precepts of the law, and then endure the awful penalty of

the law. That is exactly what was undertaken and

accomplished by the Lord Jesus in His virtuous life and

vicarious death. By Him every demand of the law was

fulfilled; by Him every obligation of the believer was

fully met.

It has been objected by some that the obedience of Christ

could not be imputed to the account of others, for being

“made under the law” (Gal. 4:4) as man, He owed

submission to the law on His own account. This is a serious

mistake, arising out of a failure to recognize the absolute

uniqueness of the Man Christ Jesus. Unlike us, He was never

placed under the Adamic Covenant, and therefore He owed

nothing to the law. Moreover, the manhood of Christ never

had a separate existence: in the virgin’s womb the

eternal Son took the seed of Mary into union with His

Deity, so that whereas the first man was of the earth,

earthy, “the second Man is the Lord from Heaven”

(1 Cor. 15:47), and as such He was infinitely superior to

the law, owing nothing to it, being personally possessed of

all the excellencies of Deity. Even while He walked this

earth “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead

bodily.”

It was entirely for His peoples’ sake that the God-man

Mediator was “made under the law.” It was in

order to work out for them a perfect righteousness, which

should be placed to their account, that He took upon

Himself the form of a servant and became “obedient

unto death.” What has been said above supplies the

answer to another foolish objection which has been made

against this blessed truth, namely, that if the obedience

of the Man Christ Jesus were transferable it would be

available only for one other man, seeing that every human

being is required to obey the law, and that if vicarious

obedience be acceptable to God then there would have to be

as many separate sureties as there are believers who are

saved. That would be true if the “surety” were

merely human, but inasmuch as the Surety provided by God is

the God-man Mediator, His righteousness is of infinite

value, for the law was more “honoured and

magnified” by the obedience of “the Lord from

Heaven” than had every member of the human race

perfectly kept it. The righteousness of the God-man

Mediator is of infinite value, and therefore available for

as many as God is pleased to impute it unto.

The value or merit of an action increases in proportion to

the dignity of the person who performs it, and He who

obeyed in the room and stead of the believer was not only a

holy man, but the Son of the living God. Moreover, let it

be steadily borne in mind that the obedience which Christ

rendered to the law was entirely voluntary. Prior to His

incarnation, He was under no obligation to the law, for He

had Himself (being God) formulated that law. His being made

of a woman and made under the law was entirely a free act

on His own part. We come into being and are placed under

the law without our consent; but the Lord from Heaven

existed before His incarnation, and assumed our nature by

His spontaneous act: “Lo, I come… I delight to do

Thy will” (Psa. 40:7, 8). No other person could use

such language, for it clearly denotes a liberty to act or

not to act, which no mere creature possesses. Placing

Himself under the law and rendering obedience to it was

founded solely on His own voluntary deed. His obedience was

therefore a “free will offering,” and therefore

as He did not owe obedience to the law by any prior

obligation, not being at all necessary for Himself, it is

available for imputation to others, that they should be

rewarded for it.

If, then, the reader has been able to follow us closely in

the above observations, it should be clear to him that when

Scripture speaks of God “justifying the ungodly”

the meaning is that the believing sinner is brought into an

entirely new relation to the law; that in consequence of

Christ’s righteousness being made over to him, he is

now absolved from all liability to punishment, and is given

a title to all the reward merited by Christ’s

obedience. Blessed, blessed truth for comforting the

conscientious Christian who daily groans under a sense of

his sad failures and who mourns because of his lack of

practical conformity to the image of Christ. Satan is ever

ready to harass such an one and tell him his profession is

vain. But it is the believer’s privilege to overcome

him by “the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11)–to

remind himself anew that Another has atoned for all his

sins, and that despite his innumerable shortcomings he

still stands “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph.

1:6). If I am truly resting on the finished work of Christ

for me, the Devil cannot successfully lay anything to my

charge before God, though if I am walking carelessly He

will suffer him to charge my conscience with unrepented and

unconfessed sins.

In our last chapter, under the nature of justification, we

saw that the constituent elements of this Divine blessing

are two in number, the one being negative in its character,

the other positive. The negative blessing is the

cancellation of guilt, or the remission of sins–the entire

record of the believer’s transgressions of the law,

filed upon the Divine docket, having been blotted out by

the precious blood of Christ. The positive blessing is the

bestowal upon the believer of an inalienable title to the

reward which the obedience of Christ merited for him–that

reward is life, the judicial favour of God, Heaven itself.

The unchanging sentence of the law is “the man which

doeth those things shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5). As

we read in Romans 7:10, “the commandment, which was

ordained to life.” It is just as true that obedience

to the law secured life, as disobedience insured death.

When the young ruler asked Christ “what good thing

shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” He

answered, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the

commandments” (Matt. 19:16, 17).

It was because His people had failed to “keep the

commandments” that the God-man Mediator was “made

under the law,” and obeyed it for them. And therefore

its reward of “life” is due unto those whose

Surety He was; yea, due unto Christ Himself to bestow upon

them. Therefore did the Surety, when declaring “I have

glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which

Thou gavest Me to do” (John 17:4), remind the Father,

“that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou

hast given Him” (v. 2). But more, on the footing of

justice, Christ demands that His people be taken to Heaven,

saying, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast

given Me, be with Me where I am” (John 17:24)–He

claims eternal life for His people on the ground of His

finished work, as the reward of His obedience.

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came

upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness

of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification

of life” (Rom. 5:18). The offence of the first Adam

brought down the curse of the broken law upon the whole

human race; but the satisfaction of the last Adam secured

the blessing of the fulfilled law upon all those whom He

represented. Judgment unto condemnation is a law term

intending eternal death, the wages of sin; the “free

gift” affirms that a gratuitous justification is

bestowed upon all its recipients–“justification of

life” being the issue of the gift, parallel with

“shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ” (v.

17). The sentence of justification adjudges and entitles

its object unto eternal life.

Having now considered the two great blessings which come

to the believer at his justification–deliverance from the

curse of the law (death) and a title to the blessing of the

law (life)–let us now seek to take a view of the

originating source from which they proceed. This is the

free, pure sovereign grace of God: as it is written

“Being justified freely by His grace” (Rom.

3:24). What is grace? It is God’s unmerited and

uninfluenced favour, shown unto the undeserving and

hell-deserving: neither human worthiness, works or

willingness, attracting it, nor the lack of them repelling

or obstructing it. What could there be in me to win the

favourable regard of Him who is of too pure eyes to behold

evil, and move Him to justify me? Nothing whatever; nay,

there was everything in me calculated to make Him abhor and

destroy me–my very self-righteous efforts to earn a place

in Heaven deserving only a lower place in Hell. If, then, I

am ever to be “justified” by God it must be by

pure grace, and that alone.

Grace is the very essence of the Gospel–the only hope for

fallen men, the sole comfort of saints passing through much

tribulation on their way to the kingdom of God. The Gospel

is the announcement that God is prepared to deal with

guilty rebels on the ground of free favour, of pure

benignity; that God will blot out sin, cover the believing

sinner with a robe of spotless righteousness, and receive

him as an accepted son: not on account of anything he has

done or ever will do, but of sovereign mercy, acting

independently of the sinner’s own character and

deservings of eternal punishment. Justification is

perfectly gratuitous so far as we are concerned, nothing

being required of us in order to it, either in the way of

price and satisfaction or preparation and meetness. We have

not the slightest degree of merit to offer as the ground of

our acceptance, and therefore if God ever does accept us it

must be out of unmingled grace.

It is as “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10)

that Jehovah justifies the ungodly. It is as “the God

of all grace” He seeks, finds, and saves His people:

asking them for nothing, giving them everything. Strikingly

is this brought out in that word “being justified

freely by His grace” (Rom. 3:24), the design of that

adverb being to exclude all consideration of anything in us

or from us which should be the cause or condition of our

justification. That same Greek adverb is translated

“without a cause” in John 15:25–“they hated

Me without a cause.” The world’s hatred of Christ

was “without a cause” so far as He was concerned:

there was nothing whatever in Him which, to the slightest

degree, deserved their enmity against Him: there was

nothing in Him unjust, perverse, or evil; instead, there

was everything in Him which was pure, holy, lovely. In like

manner, there is nothing whatever in us to call forth the

approbation of God: by nature there is “no good

thing” in us; but instead, everything that is evil,

vile, loathsome.

“Being justified without a cause by His GRACE.”

How this tells out the very heart of God! While there was

no motive to move Him, outside of Himself, there was one

inside Himself; while there was nothing in us to impel God

to justify us, His own grace moved Him, so that He devised

a way whereby His wondrous love could have vent and flow

forth to the chief of sinners, the vilest of rebels. As it

is written, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy

transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy

sins” (Isa. 43:25). Wondrous, matchless grace! We

cannot for a moment look outside the grace of God for any

motive or reason why He should ever have noticed us, still

less had respect unto such ungodly wretches.

The first moving cause, then, that inclined God to show

mercy to His people in their undone and lost condition, was

His own wondrous grace–unsought, uninfluenced, unmerited

by us. He might justly have left us all obnoxious to the

curse of His Law, without providing any Surety for us, as

He did the fallen angels; but such was His grace toward us

that “He spared not His own Son.” “Not by

works of righteousness which we have done, but according to

His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and

renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which He shed on us abundantly

through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by

His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of

eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7). It was His own sovereign

favour and good will which actuated God to form this

wondrous scheme and method of justification.

Against what has been said above, it has been objected by

Socinians and their echoists that this cannot be: if the

believing sinner is justified upon the grounds of a full

satisfaction having been made to God for him by a surety,

then his discharge from condemnation and his reception into

God’s judicial favour must be an act of pure justice,

and therefore could not be by grace. Or, if it be purely an

act of Divine grace, then no surety can have obeyed the law

in the believer’s stead. But this is to confound two

distinct things: the relation of God to Christ the Surety,

and the relation of God to me the sinner. It was grace

which transferred my sins to Christ; it was justice which

smote Christ on account of those sins. It was grace which

appointed me unto everlasting bliss; it is justice to

Christ which requires I shall enjoy that which He purchased

for me.

Toward the sinner justification is an act of free

unmerited favour; but toward Christ, as a sinner’s

Surety, it is an act of justice that eternal life should be

bestowed upon those for whom His meritorious satisfaction

was made. First, it was pure grace that God was willing to

accept satisfaction from the hands of a surety. He might

have exacted the debt from us in our own persons, and then

our condition had been equally miserable as that of the

fallen angels, for whom no mediator was provided. Second,

it was wondrous grace that God Himself provided a Surety

for us, which we could not have done. The only creatures

who are capable of performing perfect obedience are the

holy angels, yet none of them could have assumed and met

our obligations, for they are not akin to us, possessing

not human nature, and therefore incapable of dying. Even

had an angel became incarnate, his obedience to the law

could not have availed for the whole of God’s elect,

for it would not have possessed infinite value.

None but a Divine person taking human nature into union

with Himself could present unto God a satisfaction adequate

for the redemption of His people. And it was impossible for

men to have found out that Mediator and Surety: it must

have its first rise in God, and not from us: it was He that

“found” a ransom (Job 33:24) and laid help upon

One that is “mighty” (Psa. 89:19). In the last

place, it was amazing grace that the Son was willing to

perform such a work for us, without whose consent the

justice of God could not have exacted the debt from Him.

And His grace is the most eminent in that He knew

beforehand all the unspeakable humiliation and unparalleled

suffering which He would encounter in the discharge of this

work, yet that did not deter Him; nor was He unapprized of

the character of those for whom He did it–the guilty, the

ungodly, the hell-deserving; yet He shrank not back.

“O to grace how great a debtor,
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.”

---

Its Objects

We have now reached a point in our discussion of this

mighty theme where it is timely for us to ask the question,

Who are the ones that God justifies? The answer to that

question will necessarily vary according to the mental

position we occupy. From the standpoint of God’s

eternal decrees the reply must be, God’s elect: Romans

8:33. From the standpoint of the effects produced by

quickening operations of the Holy Spirit the reply must be,

those who believe: Acts 13:39. But from the standpoint of

what they are, considered in themselves, the reply must be,

the ungodly: Romans 4:5. The persons are the same, yet

contemplated in three different relations. But here a

difficulty presents itself: If faith be essential in order

to justification, and if a fallen sinner must be quickened

by the Holy Spirit before he can believe, then with what

propriety can a regenerated person, with the spiritual

grace of faith already in his heart, be described as

“ungodly”?

The difficulty pointed out above is self-created. It

issues from confounding things which differ radically. It

is the result of bringing in the experimental state of the

person justified, when justification has to do only with

his judicial status. We would emphasize once more the vital

importance of keeping quite distinct in our minds the

objective and subjective aspects of truth, the legal and

the experimental: unless this be steadily done, nought but

confusion and mistakes can mark our thinking. When

contemplating what he is in himself, considered alone, even

the Christian mournfully cries “O wretched man that I

am”; but when he views himself in Christ, as justified

from all things, he triumphantly exclaims, “who shall

lay anything to my charge!”

Above, we have pointed out that from the viewpoint of

God’s eternal decrees the question “Who are the

ones whom God justifies?” must be “the

elect.” And this brings us to a point on which some

eminent Calvinists have erred, or at least, have expressed

themselves faultily. Some of the older theologians, when

expounding this doctrine, contended for the eternal

justification of the elect, affirming that God pronounced

them righteous before the foundation of the world, and that

their justification was then actual and complete, remaining

so throughout their history in time, even during the days

of their unregeneracy and unbelief; and that the only

difference their faith made was in making manifest

God’s eternal justification in their consciences. This

is a serious mistake, resulting (again) from failure to

distinguish between things which differ.

As an immanent act of God’s mind, in which all things

(which are to us past, present, and future) were cognized

by Him, the elect might be said to be justified from all

eternity. And, as an immutable act of God’s will, which

cannot be frustrated, the same may be predicated again. But

as an actual, formal, historical sentence, pronounced by

God upon us, not so. We must distinguish between God’s

looking upon the elect in the purpose of his grace, and the

objects of justification lying under the sentence of the

law: in the former, He loved His people with an everlasting

love (Jer. 31:3); in the latter, we were “by nature

the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:3).

Until they believe, every descendant of Adam is

“condemned already” (John 3:18), and to be under

God’ condemnation is the very opposite of being

justified.

In his ponderous treatise on justification, the Puritan

Thomas Goodwin made clear some vital distinctions, which if

carefully observed will preserve us from error on this

point. “1. In the everlasting covenant. We may say of

all spiritual blessings in Christ, what is said of Christ

Himself, that their `goings forth are from

everlasting.’ Justified then we were when first

elected, though not in our own persons, yet in our Head

(Eph. 1:3). 2. There is a farther act of justifying us,

which passed from God towards us in Christ, upon His

payment and performance at His resurrection (Rom. 4:25, 1

Tim. 3:16). 3. But these two acts of justification are

wholly out of us, immanent acts in God, and though they

concern us and are towards us, yet not acts of God upon us,

they being performed towards us not as actually existing in

ourselves, but only as existing in our Head, who covenanted

for us and represented us: so as though by those acts we

are estated into a right and title to justification, yet

the benefit and possession of that estate we have not

without a farther act being passed upon us.”

Before regeneration we are justified by existing in our

Head only, as a feoffee, held in trust for us, as children

under age. In addition to which, we “are to be in our

own persons, though still through Christ, possessed of it,

and to have all the deeds and evidences of it committed to

the custody and apprehension of our faith. We are in our

own persons made true owners and enjoyers of it, which is

immediately done at that instant when we first believe;

which act (of God) is the completion and accomplishment of

the former two, and is that grand and famous justification

by faith which the Scripture so much inculcates–note the

`now’ in Romans 5:9, 11; 8:1!… God doth judge and

pronounce His elect ungodly and unjustified till they

believe” (Ibid.)

God’s elect enter this world in precisely the same

condition and circumstances as do the non-elect. They are

“by nature the children of wrath, even as others”

(Eph. 2:3), that is, they are under the condemnation of

their original sin in Adam (Rom. 5:12, 18, 19) and they are

under the curse of God’s Law because of their own

constant transgressions of it (Gal. 3:10). The sword of

Divine justice is suspended over their heads, and the

Scriptures denounce them as rebels against the Most High.

As yet, there is nothing whatever to distinguish them from

those who are “fitted to destruction.” Their

state is woeful to the last degree, their situation

perilous beyond words; and when the Holy Spirit awakens

them from the sleep of death, the first message which falls

upon their ears is, “Flee from the wrath to

come.” But how and whither, they, as yet, know not.

Then it is they are ready for the message of the Gospel.

Let us turn now to the more immediate answer to our

opening inquiry, Who are the ones that God justifies? A

definite reply is given in Romans 4:5: “Him that

justifieth the”–whom? the holy, the faithful, the

fruitful? no, the very reverse: “Him that justifieth

the ungodly.” What a strong, bold, and startling word

is this! It becomes yet more emphatic when we observe what

precedes: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth

on Him that justifieth the ungodly.” The subjects of

justification, then, are viewed in themselves, apart from

Christ, as not only destitute of a perfect righteousness,

but as having no acceptable works to their account. They

are denominated, and considered as ungodly when the

sentence of justification is pronounced upon them. The mere

sinner is the subject on which grace is magnified, toward

which grace reigns in justification!

“To say, he who worketh not is justified through

believing, is to say that his works, whatever they be, have

no influence in his justification, nor hath God, in

justifying him, any respect unto them. Wherefore he alone

who worketh not, is the subject of justification, the

person to be justified. That is, God considereth no

man’s works, no man’s duties of obedience, in his

justification; seeing we are justified freely by His

grace” (John Owen). Those whom God, in His

transcendent mercy, justifies, are not the obedient, but

the disobedient; not those who have been loyal and loving

subjects of His righteous government, but they who have

stoutly defied Him and trampled His laws beneath their

feet. Those whom God justifies are lost sinners, lying in a

state of defection from Him, under a loss of original

righteousness (in Adam) and by their own transgressions

brought in guilty before His tribunal (Rom. 3:19). They are

those who by character and conduct have no claim upon

Divine blessing, and deserve nought but unsparing judgment

at God’s hand.

“Him that justifieth the ungodly.” It is

deplorable to see how many able commentators have weakened

the force of this by affirming that, while the subject of

justification is “ungodly” up to the time of his

justification, he is not so at the moment of justification

itself. They argue that, inasmuch as the subject of

justification is a believer at the moment of his

justification and that believing presupposes

regeneration–a work of Divine grace wrought in the

heart–he could not be designated “ungodly.” This

seeming difficulty is at once removed by calling to mind

that justification is entirely a law matter and not an

experimental thing at all. In the sight of God’s Law

every one whom God justifies is “ungodly” until

Christ’s righteousness is made over to him. The awful

sentence “ungodly” rests as truly upon the purest

virgin as much as it does upon the foulest prostitute until

God imputes Christ’s obedience to her.

“Him that justifieth the ungodly.” These words

cannot mean less than that God, in the act of

justification, has no regard whatever to any thing good

resting to the credit of the person He justifies. They

declare, emphatically, that immediately prior to that

Divine act, God beholds the subject only as unrighteous,

ungodly, wicked, so that no good, either in or by the

person justified, can possibly be the ground on which or

the reason for which He justifies him. This is further

evident from the words “to him that worketh not”:

that this includes not only works which the ceremonial law

required, but all works of morality and godliness, appear

from the fact that the same person who is said to

“work not” is designated “ungodly.”

Finally, seeing that the faith which belongs to

justification is here said to be “counted for (or

“unto”) righteousness,” it is clear that the

person to whom “righteousness” is imputed, is

destitute of righteousness in himself.

A parallel passage to the one which has just been before

us is found in Isaiah 43. There we hear God saying,

“I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions

for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (v.

25). And to whom does God say this? To those who had

sincerely endeavoured to please Him? To those who, though

they had occasionally been overtaken in a fault, had, in

the main, served Him faithfully? No, indeed; very far from

it. Instead, in the immediate context we find Him saying to

them, “But thou hast not called upon Me, O Jacob; but

thou hast been weary of Me, O Israel. Thou hast bought Me

no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled Me with

the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made Me to serve

with thy sins, thou hast wearied Me with thine

iniquities” (vv. 22, 24). They were, then, thoroughly

“ungodly”; yet to them the Lord declared,

“I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy

transgressions”–why? Because of something good in

them or from them? No, “for Mine own sake”!

Further confirmation of what has been before us in Romans

4:5 is found in both what immediately precedes and what

follows. In verses 1-3 the case of Abraham is considered,

and the proof given that he was not “justified by

works,” but on the ground of righteousness being

imputed to him on his believing. “Now if a person of

such victorious faith, exalted piety, and amazing obedience

as his was, did not obtain acceptance with God on account

of his own duties, but by an imputed righteousness; who

shall pretend to an interest in the heavenly blessing, in

virtue of his own sincere endeavors, or pious

performances?–performances not fit to be named, in

comparison with those that adorned the conduct and

character of Jehovah’s friend” (A. Booth).

Having shown that the father of all believers was regarded

by the Lord as an “ungodly” person, having no

good works to his credit at the moment of his

justification, the Apostle next cited David’s

description of the truly blessed man. “And how does

the royal Psalmist describe him? To what does he attribute

his acceptance with God? To an inherent, or to an imputed

righteousness? Does he represent him as attaining the happy

state, and as enjoying the precious privilege, in

consequence of performing sincere obedience, and of keeping

the law to the best of his power? No such thing. His words

are, `Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and

whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord

will not impute sin’ (vv. 7-9). The blessed man is here

described as one who is, in himself, a polluted creature,

and a guilty criminal. As one who, before grace made the

difference, was on a level with the rest of mankind;

equally unworthy, and equally wretched: and the sacred

penman informs us that all his blessedness arises from an

imputed righteousness” (A. Booth).

“Him that justifieth the ungodly.” Here is the

very heart of the Gospel. Many have argued that God can

only pronounce just, and treat as such, those who are

inherently righteous; but if this was so, what good news

would there be for sinful men? Enemies of the Truth insist

that for God to pronounce just those whom His law condemns

would be a judicial fiction. But Romans 4:5 makes known a

Divine miracle: something only God could have achieved. The

miracle announced by the Gospel is that God comes to the

ungodly with a mercy that is righteous, and in spite of all

their depravity and rebellion, enables them through faith

(on the ground of Christ’s righteousness) to enter into

a new and blessed relation with Himself.

The Scriptures speak of mercy, but it is not mercy coming

in to make up the deficiencies and forgive the slips of the

virtuous, but mercy extended through Christ to the chief of

sinners. The Gospel which proclaims mercy through the

atonement of the Lord Jesus is distinguished from every

religious system of man, by holding out salvation to the

guiltiest of the human race, through faith in the blood of

the Redeemer. God’s Son came into this world not only

to save sinners, but even the chief of sinners, the worst

of His enemies. Mercy is extended freely to the most

violent and determined rebel. Here, and here only, is a

refuge for the guilty. Is the trembling reader conscious

that he is a great sinner, then that is the very reason why

you should come to Christ: the greater your sins, the

greater your need of the Saviour.

There are some who appear to think that Christ is a

Physician who can cure only such patients as are not

dangerously ill, that there are some cases so desperate as

to be incurable, beyond His skill. What an affront to His

power, what a denial of His sufficiency! Where can a more

extreme case be found than that of the thief on the cross?

He was at the very point of death, on the very brink of

Hell! A guilty criminal, an incorrigible outlaw, justly

condemned even by men. He had reviled the Saviour suffering

by his side. Yet, at the end, he turned to Him and said,

“Lord remember me.” Was his plea refused? Did the

Physician of souls regard his as a hopeless case? No,

blessed be His name, He at once responded “Today shalt

thou be with Me in Paradise.” Only unbelief shuts the

vilest out of Heaven.

“Him that justifieth the ungodly.” And how can

the thrice holy God righteously do such a thing? Because

“Christ died for the UNGODLY” (Rom. 5:6).

God’s righteous grace comes to us through the

law-honouring, justice-satisfying, sin-atoning Work of the

Lord Jesus! Here, then, is the very essence of the Gospel:

the proclamation of God’s amazing grace, the

declaration of Divine bounty, altogether irrespective of

human worth or merit. In the great Satisfaction of His Son,

God has “brought near HIS righteousness” (Isa.

46:13). “We do not need to go up to Heaven for it;

that would imply Christ had never come down. Nor do we need

to go down to the depths of the earth for it; that would

say Christ had never been buried and had never risen. It is

near. We do not need to exert ourselves to bring it near,

nor do anything to attract it towards us. It is near… The

office of faith is not to work, but to cease working; not

to do anything, but to own that all is done” (A.

Bonar).

Faith is the one link between the sinner and the Saviour.

Not faith as a work, which must be properly performed to

qualify us for pardon. Not faith as a religious duty, which

must be gone through according to certain rules in order to

induce Christ to give us the benefits of His finished work.

No, but faith simply extended as an empty hand, to receive

everything from Christ for nothing. Reader, you may be the

very “chief of sinners,” yet is your case not

hopeless. You may have sinned against much light, great

privileges, exceptional opportunities; you may have broken

every one of the Ten Commandments in thought, word and

deed; your body may be filled with disease from wickedness,

your head white with the winter of old age; you may already

have one foot in Hell; and yet even now, if you but take

your place alongside of the dying thief, and trust in the

Divine efficacy of the precious blood of the Lamb, you

shall be plucked as a brand from the burning. God

“justifieth the ungodly.” Hallelujah! If He did

not, the writer had been in Hell long ago.

---

Its Instrument

“Being justified freely by His grace” (Rom.

3:24); “being now justified by His blood” (Rom.

5:9); “being now justified by faith” (Rom. 5:1).

A full exposition of the doctrine of justification requires

that each of these propositions should be interpreted in

their Scriptural sense, and that they be combined together

in their true relations as to form one harmonious whole.

Unless these three propositions be carefully distinguished

there is sure to be confusion; unless all the three are

steadily borne in mind we are sure to land in error. Each

must be given its due weight, yet none must be understood

in such a way as to make its force annul that of the

others. Nor is this by any means a simple task, in fact

none but a real teacher (that is, a spiritual theologian)

who has devoted a lifetime to the undivided study of

Scriptures is qualified for it.

“The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus

Christ” (Rom. 3:22); “A man is justified by faith

without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28); “even

we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be

justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of

the law” (Gal. 2:16). What is the precise place and

influence which faith has in the important affairs of

justification? What is the exact nature or character of

justifying faith? In what particular sense are we to

understand this proposition that we are “justified by

faith”? and what is the connection between that

proposition and the postulates that we are “justified

by grace” and “justified by Christ’s

blood”? These are matters which call for the utmost

care. The nature of justifying faith requires to be closely

defined so that its particular agency is correctly viewed,

for it is easy to make a mistake here to the prejudice of

Christ’s honour and glory, which must not be given to

another–no, not to faith itself.

Many would-be teachers have erred at this point, for the

common tendency of human nature is to arrogate to itself

the glory which belongs alone to God. While there have been

those who rejected the unscriptural notion that we can be

justified before God by our own works, yet not a few of

these very men virtually make a saviour of their own faith.

Not only have some spoken of faith as though it were a

contribution which God requires the sinner to make toward

his own salvation–the last mite which was necessary to

make up the price of his redemption; but others (who

sneered at theologians and boasted of their superior

understanding of the things of God) have insisted that

faith itself is what constitutes us righteous before God,

He regarding faith as righteousness.

A deplorable example of what we have just mentioned is to

be found in the comments made upon Romans 4 by Mr. J.N.

Darby, the father of the Plymouth Brethren: “This was

Abraham’s faith. He believed the promise that he should

be the father of many nations, because God had spoken,

counting on the power of God, thus glorifying Him, without

calling in question anything that He had said by looking at

circumstances; therefore this also was counted to him for

righteousness. He glorified God according to what God was.

Now this was not written for his sake alone: the same faith

shall be imputed to us also for righteousness”

(“Synopsis” vol. 4, p. 133–italics ours). The

Christ-dishonouring error contained in those statements

will be exposed later on in this chapter.

“How doth faith justify a sinner in the sight of God?

Answer: Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not

because of those other graces which do always accompany it,

nor of good works that are the fruits of it, nor as if the

grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him for

justification; but only as it is an instrument by which he

receiveth and applieth Christ and His righteousness”

(Westminster Confession of Faith). Though this definition

was framed upwards of two hundred and fifty years ago, it

is far superior to almost anything found in current

literature on the subject. It is more accurate to speak of

faith as the “instrument” rather than as the

condition, for a “condition” is generally used to

signify that for the sake whereof a benefit is conferred.

Faith is neither the ground nor the substance of our

justification, but simply the hand which receives the

Divine gift proffered to us in the Gospel.

What is the precise place and influence which faith has in

the important affair of justification? Romanist answer, It

justifies us formally, not relatively: that is, upon the

account of its own intrinsic value. They point out that

faith is never alone, but “worketh by love” (Gal

5:6), and therefore its own excellency merits acceptance at

God’s hand. But the faith of the best is weak and

deficient (Luke 17:5), and so could never satisfy the law,

which requires a flawless perfection. If righteousness was

given as a reward for faith, its possessor would have cause

for boasting, expressly contrary to the Apostle in Romans

3:26, 27. Moreover, such a method of justification would

entirely frustrate the life and death of Christ, making His

great sacrifice unnecessary. It is not faith as a spiritual

grace which justifies us, but as an instrument–the hand

which lays hold of Christ.

In connection with justification, faith is not to be

considered as a virtuous exercise of the heart, nor as a

principle of holy obedience: “Because faith, as

concerned in our justification, does not regard Christ as

King, enacting laws, requiring obedience, and subduing

depravity; but as a Substitute, answering the requirements

of the Divine Law, and as a Priest expiating sin by His own

death on the cross. Hence, in justification we read of

`precious faith… through the righteousness of God and our

Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 1:1) and of `faith in

His blood’ (Rom. 3:25), and believers are described as

`receiving the atonement’ and `receiving the gift of

righteousness’ (Rom. 5:11, 17). Therefore it is evident

that faith is represented as having an immediate regard to

the vicarious work of Christ, and that it is considered not

under the notion of exercising virtue or of performing a

duty, but of receiving a free gift” (A. Booth).

What is the relation of faith to justification? The

Arminian answer to the question, refined somewhat by the

Plymouth Brethren, is, that the act of believing is imputed

to us for righteousness. One error leads to another. Mr.

Darby denied that Gentiles were ever under the law, hence

he denied also that Christ obeyed the law in His

people’s stead, and therefore as Christ’s vicarious

obedience is not reckoned to their account, he had to seek

elsewhere for their righteousness. This he claimed to find

in the Christian’s own faith, insisting that their act

of believing is imputed to them “for

righteousness.” To give his theory respectability, he

clothed it in the language of several expressions found in

Romans 4, though he knew quite well that the Greek afforded

no foundation whatever for that which he built upon it.

In Romans 4 we read “his faith is counted for

righteousness” (v. 5), “faith was reckoned to

Abraham for righteousness” (v. 9), “it was

imputed to him for righteousness” (v. 22). Now in each

of these verses the Greek preposition is “eis”

which never means “in the stead of,” but always

signifies “towards, in order to, with a view to”:

it has the uniform force of “unto.” Its exact

meaning and force is unequivocally plain in Romans 10:10,

“with the heart man believeth unto (“eis”)

righteousness”: that is, the believing heart reaches

out toward and lays hold of Christ Himself. “This

passage (Rom. 10:10) may help us to understand what

justification by faith is, for it shows that righteousness

there comes to us when we embrace God’s goodness

offered to us in the Gospel. We are then, for this reason,

made just: because we believe that God is propitious to us

through Christ” (J. Calvin).

The Holy Spirit has used the Greek prepositions with

unerring precision. Never do we find Him employing

“eis” in connection with Christ’s

satisfaction and sacrifice in our room and stead, but only

“anti” or “huper,” which means in lieu

of. On the other hand, “anti” and

“huper” are never used in connection with our

believing, for faith is not accepted by God in lieu of

perfect obedience. Faith must either be the ground of our

acceptance with God, or the means or instrument of our

becoming interested in the true meritorious ground, namely,

the righteousness of Christ; it cannot stand in both

relations to our justification. “God justifieth, not

by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, but by

imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ”

(Westminster Catechism).

That faith itself cannot be the substance or ground of our

justification is clear from many considerations. The

“righteousness of God (i.e., the satisfaction which

Christ rendered to the law) is revealed to faith”

(Rom. 1:17) and so cannot be faith itself. Romans 10:10

declares “with the heart man believeth unto

righteousness” so that righteousness must be a

distinct thing from believing. In Jeremiah 23:6 we read

“The LORD our righteousness,” so faith cannot be

our righteousness. Let not Christ be dethroned in order to

exalt faith: set not the servant above the master. “We

acknowledge no righteousness but what the obedience and

satisfaction of Christ yields us: His blood, not our faith;

His satisfaction, not our believing it, is the matter of

justification before God” (J. Flavel). What

alterations are there in our faith! what minglings of

unbelief at all times! Is this a foundation to build our

justification and hope upon?

Perhaps some will say, Are not the words of Scripture

expressly on Mr. Darby’s side? Does not Romans 4:5

affirm “faith is counted for righteousness”? We

answer, Is the sense of Scripture on his side? Suppose I

should undertake to prove that David was cleansed from

guilt by the “hyssop” which grows on the wall:

that would sound ridiculous. Yes; nevertheless, I should

have the express words of Scripture to support me:

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean”

(Psa. 51:7). Yet clear as those words read, they would not

afford me the least countenance imaginable from the sense

and spirit of God’s Word. Has the hyssop–a worthless

shrub–any kind of fitness to stand in the stead of the

sacrificial blood, and make an atonement for sin? No more

fitness has faith to stand in the stead of Christ’s

perfect obedience, to act as our justifying righteousness,

or procure our acceptance with God!

An apology is really due many of our readers, for wasting

their time with such puerilities, but we ask them to kindly

bear with us. We hope it may please God to use this article

to expose one of Darby’s many grievous errors. For

“grievous” this error most certainly is. His

teaching that the Christian’s faith, instead of the

vicarious obedience of Christ, is reckoned for

righteousness (Mr. W. Kelly, his chief lieutenant, wrote

“his [Abraham’s] faith in God’s word as that

which he exercised and which was accounted as

righteousness”–see article 5) makes God guilty of a

downright lie, for it represents Him as giving to faith a

fictitious value–the believer has no righteousness, so God

regards his poor faith as “righteousness.”

“And he believed in the LORD; and He counted it to

him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). The one point to

be decided here is: was it Abraham’s faith itself which

was in God’s account taken for righteousness (horrible

idea!), or, was it the righteousness of God in Christ which

Abraham’s faith prospectively laid hold of? The

comments of the Apostle in Romans 4:18-22 settle the point

decisively. In these verses Paul emphasizes the natural

impossibilities which stood in the way of God’s promise

of a numerous offspring to Abraham being fulfilled (the

genital deadness both of his own body and Sarah’s), and

on the implicit confidence he had (notwithstanding the

difficulties) in the power and faithfulness of God that He

would perform what He promised. Hence, when the Apostle

adds, “Therefore it was imputed to him for

righteousness” (v. 22), that “therefore” can

only mean: Because through faith he completely lost sight

of nature and self, and realized with undoubting assurance

the sufficiency of the Divine arm, and the certainty of its

working.

Abraham’s faith, dear reader, was nothing more and

nothing else than the renunciation of all virtue and

strength in himself, and a hanging in childlike trust upon

God for what He was able and willing to do. Far, very far,

indeed, was his faith from being a mere substitute for a

“righteousness” which he lacked. Far, very far

was God from accepting his faith in lieu of a perfect

obedience to His Law. Rather was Abraham’s faith the

acting of a soul which found its life, its hope, its all in

the Lord Himself. And that is what justifying faith is: it

is “simply the instrument by which Christ and His

righteousness are received in order to justification. It is

emptiness filled with Christ’s fulness; impotency lying

down upon Christ’s strength” (J.L. Girardeau).

“The best obedience of my hands
Dares not appear before Thy throne;
But faith can answer Thy demands,
By pleading what my Lord has done.”

What is the relation of faith to justification?

Antinomians and hyper-Calvinists answer, Merely that of

comfort or assurance. Their theory is that the elect were

actually justified by God before the foundation of the

world, and all that faith does now is to make this manifest

in their conscience. This error was advocated by such men

as W. Gadsby, J. Irons, James Wells, J.C. Philpot. That it

originated not with these men is clear from the fact that

the Puritans refuted it in their day. “By faith alone

we obtain and receive the forgiveness of sins; for

notwithstanding any antecedent act of God concerning us in

and for Christ, we do not actually receive a complete

soul-freeing discharge until we believe” (J. Owen).

“It is vain to say I am justified only in respect to

the court of mine own conscience. The faith that Paul and

the other Apostles were justified by, was their believing

on Christ that they might be justified (Gal. 2:15, 16), and

not a believing they were justified already; and therefore

it was not an act of assurance” (T. Goodwin, vol. 8).

How are we justified by faith? Having given a threefold

negative answer: not by faith as a joint cause with works

(Romanists), not by faith as an act of grace in us

(Arminians), not by faith as it receives the Spirit’s

witness (Antinomians); we now turn to the positive answer.

Faith justifies only as an instrument which God has

appointed to the apprehension and application of

Christ’s righteousness. When we say that faith is the

“instrument” of our justification, let it be

clearly understood that we do not mean faith is the

instrument wherewith God justifies, but the instrument

whereby we receive Christ. Christ has merited righteousness

for us, and faith in Christ is that which renders it meet

in God’s sight the purchased blessing be assigned.

Faith unites to Christ, and being united to Him we are

possessed of all that is in Christ, so far as is consistent

with our capacity of receiving and God’s appointment in

giving. Having been made one with Christ in spirit, God now

considers us as one with Him in law.

We are justified by faith, and not for faith; not because

of what faith is, but because of what it receives. “It

hath no efficacy of itself, but as it is the band of our

union with Christ. The whole virtue of cleansing proceeds

from Christ the object. We receive the water with our

hands, but the cleansing virtue is not in our hands, but in

the water, yet the water cannot cleanse us without our

receiving it; our receiving it unites the water to us, and

is a means whereby we are cleansed. And therefore is it

observed that our justification by faith is always

expressed in the passive, not in the active: we are

justified by faith, not that faith justifies us. The

efficacy is in Christ’s blood; the reception of it is

in our faith” (S. Charnock).

Scripture knows no such thing as a justified unbeliever.

There is nothing meritorious about believing, yet it is

necessary in order to justification. It is not only the

righteousness of Christ as imputed which justifies, but

also as received (Rom. 5:11, 17). The righteousness of

Christ is not mine until I accept it as the Father’s

gift. “The believing sinner is `justified by

faith’ only instrumentally, as he `lives by eating’

only instrumentally. Eating is the particular act by which

he receives and appropriates food. Strictly speaking, he

lives by bread alone, not by eating, or the act of

masticating. And, strictly speaking, the sinner is

justified by Christ’s sacrifice alone, not by his act

of believing in it” (W. Shedd). In the application of

justification faith is not a builder, but a beholder; not

an agent, but an instrument; it has nothing to do, but all

to believe; nothing to give, but all to receive.

God has not selected faith to be the instrument of

justification because there is some peculiar virtue in

faith, but rather because there is no merit in it: faith is

self-emptying–“Therefore it is of faith that it might

be by grace” (Rom. 4:16). A gift is seen to be a gift

when nothing is required or accepted of the recipient, but

simply that he receive it. Whatever other properties faith

may possess, it is simply as receiving Christ that it

justifies. Were we said to be justified by repentance, by

love, or by any other spiritual grace, it would convey the

idea of something good in us being the consideration on

which the blessing was bestowed; but justification by faith

(correctly understood) conveys no such idea.

“Faith justifies in no other way than as it

introduces us into a participation of the righteousness of

Christ” (J. Calvin). Justifying faith is a looking

away from self, a renouncing of my own righteousness, a

laying hold of Christ. Justifying faith consists, first, of

a knowledge and belief of the truth revealed in Scripture

thereon; second, in an abandonment of all pretense, claim

or confidence in our own righteousness; third, in a trust

in and reliance upon the righteousness of Christ, laying

hold of the blessing which He purchased for us. It is the

heart’s approval and approbation of the method of

justification proposed in the Gospel: by Christ alone,

proceeding from the pure grace of God, and excluding all

human merits. “In the LORD have I righteousness and

strength” (Isa. 45:24).

None will experimentally appreciate the righteousness of

Christ until they have been experimentally stripped by the

Spirit. Not until the Lord puts us in the fire and burns

off our filthy rags, and makes us stand naked before Him,

trembling from head to foot as we view the sword of His

justice suspended over our heads, will any truly value

“the best robe.” Not until the condemning

sentence of the law has been applied by the Spirit to the

conscience does the guilty soul cry, “Lost,

lost!” (Rom. 7:9, 10). Not until there is a personal

apprehension of the requirements of God’s Law, a

feeling sense of our total inability to perform its

righteous demands, and an honest realization that God would

be just in banishing us from His presence forever, is the

necessity for a precious Christ perceived by the soul.

---

Its Evidence

In Romans 3:28 the Apostle Paul declared “that a man

is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,”

and then produces the case of Abraham to prove his

assertion. But the Apostle James, from the case of the same

Abraham, draws quite another conclusion, saying, “Ye

see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by

faith only” (James 2:24). This is one of the

“contradictions in the Bible” to which infidels

appeal in support of their unbelief. But the Christian,

however difficult he finds it to harmonize passages

apparently opposite, knows there cannot be any

contradiction in the Word of God. Faith has unshaken

confidence in the inerrancy of Holy Writ. Faith is humble

too and prays, “That which I see not teach Thou

me” (Job. 34:32). Nor is faith lazy; it prompts its

possessor unto a reverent examination and diligent

investigation of that which puzzles and perplexes, seeking

to discover the subject of each separate book, the scope of

each writer, the connections of each passage.

Now the design of the Apostle Paul in Romans 3:28 may be

clearly perceived from its context. He is treating of the

great matter of a sinner’s justification before God: he

shows that it cannot be by works of the law, because by the

law all men are condemned, and also because if men were

justified on the ground of their own doings, then boasting

could not be excluded. Positively he affirms that

justification is by grace, through the redemption that is

in Christ Jesus. His reasoning will appear the more

conclusive if the whole passage (Rom. 3:19-28) be read

attentively. Because the Jews had a high regard of Abraham,

the Apostle proceeded to show in the 4th chapter of Romans

that Abraham was justified in that very way–apart from any

works of his own, by faith alone. By such a method of

justification the pride of the creature is strained, and

the grace of God is magnified.

Now the scope of the Apostle James is very different: his

Epistle was written to counteract quite another error.

Fallen men are creatures of extremes: no sooner are they

driven out of the false refuge of trusting to their own

righteousness, than they fly to the opposite and no less

dangerous error of supposing that, since they cannot be

justified by their own works, that there is no necessity

whatever for good works, and no danger from ungodly living

and unholy practice. It is very clear from the New

Testament itself that very soon after the Gospel was freely

proclaimed, there arose many who turned the grace of God

into “lasciviousness”: that this was not only

quickly espoused in theory, but soon had free course in

practice. It was therefore the chief design of the Apostle

James to show the great wickedness and awful danger of

unholy practice and to assert the imperative necessity of

good works.

The Apostle James devoted much of his Epistle to the

exposing of any empty profession. In his second chapter,

particularly, he addresses himself unto those who rested in

a notion which they called “faith,” accounting an

intellectual assent to the truth of the Gospel sufficient

for their salvation, though it had no spiritual influence

upon their hearts, tempers, or conduct. The Apostle shows

their hope was a vain one, and that their “faith”

was not a whit superior to that possessed by the demons.

From the example of Abraham he proves that justifying faith

is a very different thing from the “faith” of

empty professors, because it enabled him to perform the

hardest and most painful act of obedience, even the

offering up of his only son upon the altar; which act took

place many years after he had been justified by God, and

which act manifested the reality and nature of his faith.

From what has been said above, it should be very evident

that the “justification” of which Paul treats is

entirely different from the “justification” with

which James deals. The doctrine of the former is that

nothing renders any sinner acceptable to God but faith in

the Lord Jesus Christ; the doctrine of the latter is that

such a faith is not solitary, but accompanied with every

good work, and that where good works are absent, justifying

faith cannot exist. James is insistent that it is not

enough to say I have justifying faith, I must give proof of

the same by exhibiting those fruits which love toward God

and love toward men necessarily produce. Paul writes of our

justification before God, James of our justification before

men. Paul treats of the justification of persons; James, of

the justification of our profession. The one is by faith

alone; the other is by a faith which worketh by love and

produces obedience.

Now it is of first importance that the above-mentioned

distinctions should be clearly grasped. When Christian

theologians affirm that the sinner is justified by faith

alone, they do not mean that faith exists alone in the

person justified, for justifying faith is always

accompanied by all the other graces which the Spirit

imparts at our regeneration; nor do they mean that nothing

else is required in order to our receiving forgiveness from

God, for He requires repentance and conversion as well as

faith (Acts 3:19). No, rather do they mean that there is

nothing else in sinners themselves to which their

justification is in Scripture ascribed: nothing else is

required of them or exists in them which stands in the same

relation to justification as their faith does, or which

exerts any casual influence or any efficacy of

instrumentality in producing the result of their being

justified (Condensed from Cunningham).

On the other hand, that faith which justifies is not an

idle and inoperative principle, but one that purifies the

heart (Acts 15:9) and works by love (Gal. 5:6). It is faith

which can easily be distinguished from that mental faith of

the empty professor. It is this which the Apostle James

insists so emphatically upon. The subject of this Epistle

is not salvation by grace and justification by faith, but

the testing of those who claim to have faith. His design is

not to show the ground on which sinners are accepted before

God, but to make known that which evidences a sinner’s

having been justified. He insists that the tree is known by

its fruits, that a righteous person is one who walks in the

paths of righteousness. He declares that the man who is not

a doer of the Word, but a “hearer only,” is

self-deceived, deluded. When God justifies a man, He

sanctifies him too: the two blessings are inseparable,

never found apart.

Unless the subject and scope of James’ Epistle be

clearly seen, the apprehension of many of its statements

can only issue in God-dishonouring, grace-repudiating,

soul-destroying error. To this portion of the Word of God,

more than any other, have legalists appealed in their

opposition to the grand truth of justification by grace,

through faith, without works. To the declarations of this

Epistle have they turned to find support for their

Christ-insulting, man-exalting, Gospel-repudiating error of

justification by human works. Merit-mongers of all

descriptions cite James 2 for the purpose of setting aside

all that is taught elsewhere in Scripture on the subject of

justification. Romanists, and their half-brothers the

Arminians, quote “Ye see then how that by works a man

is justified, and not by faith only” (v. 24), and

suppose that ends all argument.

We propose now to take up James 2:14-26 and offer a few

comments thereon. “What doth it profit, my brethren,

though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can

faith save him?” (v. 14). Observe carefully that the

Apostle does not here ask, “What doth it profit a man

though he hath faith and have not works?”–such a

supposition is nowhere countenanced by the Word of God: it

were to suppose the impossibility for wherever real faith

exists, good works necessarily follow. No, instead he asks,

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man (not

“one of you”!) say he hath faith”?

Professing to be a Christian when a man is not one, may

secure a standing among men, improve his moral and social

prestige, obtain membership in a “church,” and

promote his commercial interests; but can it save his soul?

It is not that those empty professors who call themselves

Christians are all (though many probably are) conscious

hypocrites, rather are they deceived souls, and the tragic

thing is that in most places there is nothing in the

preaching which is at all calculated to un-deceive them;

instead, there is only that which bolsters them up in their

delusion. There is a large class in Christendom today who

are satisfied with a bare profession. They have heard

expounded some of the fundamentals of the Christian faith,

and have given an intellectual assent thereto, and they

mistake that for a saving knowledge of the Truth. Their

minds are instructed, but their hearts are not reached, nor

their lives transformed. They are still worldly in their

affections and ways. There is no real subjection to God, no

holiness of walk, no fruit to Christ’s glory. Their

“faith” is of no value at all; their profession

is vain.

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say

he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save

him?” By noting the emphasis upon the word

“say,” we perceive at once that James is arguing

against those who substituted a theoretical belief of the

Gospel for the whole of evangelical religion, and who

replied to all exhortations and reproofs by saying,

“We are not justified by our works, but by faith

alone.” He therefore begins by asking what profit is

there in professing to be a believer, when a man is devoid

of true piety? The answer is, none whatever. To merely say

I have faith when I am unable to appeal to any good works

and spiritual fruits as the evidence of it, profits neither

the speaker nor those who listen to his empty talk. Ability

to prate in an orthodox manner about the doctrines of

Christianity is a vastly different thing from justifying

faith.

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of

daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace,

be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not

those things which are needful to the body; what doth it

profit?” (vv. 15, 16). Here the Apostle shows by an

opposite illustration the utter worthlessness of fair

talking which is unaccompanied by practical deeds: notice

the “say unto them, depart in peace” etc. What is

the use and value of feigning to be charitable when the

works of charity are withheld? None whatever: empty bellies

are not filled by benevolent words, nor are naked backs

clothed by good wishes. Nor is the soul saved by a bare

profession of the Gospel.

“Faith worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6). The first

“fruit of the spirit,” that is of the new nature

in the regenerated soul, is “love” (Gal. 5:22).

When faith has truly been wrought in the heart by the Holy

Spirit, that faith is manifested in love–love toward God,

love toward His commandments (John 14:23), love toward the

brethren, love toward our fellow-creatures. Therefore in

testing the “faith” of the empty professor, the

Apostle at once puts to the proof his love. In showing the

pretense of his love, he proves the worthlessness of his

“faith.” “But whoso hath this world’s

good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his

bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God

in him?” (1 John 3:17)! Genuine love is operative; so

is genuine faith.

“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being

alone” (James 2:17). Here the Apostle applies the

illustration he has employed to the case before him,

proving the worthlessness of a lifeless and inoperative

“faith.” Even our fellow-men would promptly

denounce as valueless a “love” which was gushing

in words but lacking in works. Unregenerate people are not

deceived by those who talk benignly to the indigent, but

who refuse to minister unto their needs. And think you, my

reader, that the omniscient God is to be imposed upon by an

empty profession? Has He not said, “Why call ye Me,

Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke

6:46).

That “faith” which is only of the lips and is

not confirmed by evidence in the life, is useless. No

matter how clear and sound may be my head-knowledge of the

Truth, no matter how good a talker upon Divine things I am,

if my walk is not controlled by the precepts of God, then I

am but “sounding brass and a tinkling symbol.”

“Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being

alone.” It is not a living and fruitful faith, like

the faith of God’s elect, but a thing which is utterly

worthless– “dead.” It is “alone,” that

is, divorced from love to God and men and every holy

affection. How could our holy Lord approve of such a

“faith”! As works without faith are

“dead” (Heb. 9:14), so a “faith” which

is without “works” is a dead one.

“Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have

works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show

thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18). Here the true

Christian challenges the empty professor: You claim to be a

believer, but disgrace the name of Christ by your worldly

walk, so do not expect the real saints to regard you as a

brother till you display your faith in the good works of a

holy life. The emphatic word in this verse is

“show”–proof is demanded: demonstrate your faith

to be genuine. Actions speak louder than words: unless our

profession can endure that test it is worthless. Only true

holiness of heart and life vindicates a profession of being

justified by faith.

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest

well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (v. 19).

Here the Apostle anticipates an objection: I do actually

believe in the Lord! Very well, so also do the demons, but

what is the fruit of their “believing”? Does it

influence their hearts and lives, does it transform their

conduct Godward and manward? It does not. Then what is

their “believing” worth! “But wilt thou

know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?”

(v. 20): “vain” signifies “empty,”

exposing the hollowness of one who claims to be justified

by faith yet lacks the evidence of an obedient walk.

“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when

he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how

faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made

perfect?” (vv. 21, 22). The faith which reposes on

Christ is not an idle, but an active and fruitful

principle. Abraham had been justified many years before

(Gen. 15:6); the offering up of Isaac (Gen. 22) was the

open attestation of his faith and the manifestation of the

sincerity of his profession. “By works was faith made

perfect” means, in actual obedience it reaches its

designed end, the purpose for which it was given is

realized. “Made perfect” also signifies revealed

or made known (see 2 Cor. 10:9).

“And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham

believed God, and it was imputed unto him for

righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God”

(James 2:23). The “Scripture” here is God’s

testimony to Abraham in Genesis 15:6: that testimony was

“fulfilled” or verified when Abraham gave the

supreme demonstration of his obedience to God. Our being

informed here that Abraham was “called the Friend of

God” is in beautiful accord with the tenor of the

whole of this passage, as is clear from a comparison with

John 15:14: “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I

command you.”

“Ye see then how that by works a man is justified,

and not by faith only” (James 2:24). In the “ye

see then” the Apostle draws his “conclusion”

from the foregoing. It is by “works,” by acts of

implicit obedience to the Divine command, such as Abraham

exercised–and not by a mere “faith” of the brain

and the lips–that we justify our profession of being

believers, that we prove our right to be regarded as

Christians.

“Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by

works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent

them out another way?” (v. 25). Why bring in the case

of Rahab? Was not the example of Abraham conclusive and

sufficient? First, because “two witnesses” are

required for the truth to be “established”–cf.

Romans 4:3, 6. Second, because, it might be objected

Abraham’s case was so exceptional that it could be no

criterion to measure others by. Very well: Rahab was a poor

Gentile, a heathen, a harlot; yet she too was justified by

faith (Heb. 11:31), and later demonstrated her faith by

“works”–receiving the spies at the imminent risk

of her own life.

“For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith

without works is dead also” (James 2:26). Here is the

summing up: a breathless carcass and a worthless faith are

alike useless as unto all the ends of natural and spiritual

life. Thus the Apostle has conclusively shown the

worthlessness of the garb of orthodoxy when worn by

lifeless professors. He has fully exposed the error of

those who rest in a bare profession of the Gospel–as if

that could save them, when the temper of their minds and

the tenor of their lives was diametrically opposed to the

holy religion they professed. A holy heart and an obedient

walk are the scriptural evidence of our having been

justified by God.

---

Its Results

The justification of the believer is absolute, complete,

final. “It is God that justifieth” (Rom. 8:33),

and “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be

for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken

from it” (Eccl. 3:14). So absolute and inexorable is

this blessed fact that, in Romans 8:30 we are told,

“Whom He justified, them He also glorified”:

notice it is not simply a promise that God “will

glorify,” but so sure and certain is that blissful

event, the past tense is used. “Them He also

glorified” is speaking from the standpoint of the

eternal and unalterable purpose of God, concerning which

there is no conditionality or contingency whatsoever. To be

“glorified” is to be perfectly conformed to the

lovely image of Christ, when we shall see Him as He is and

be made like Him (1 John 3:2). Because God has determined

this, He speaks of it as already accomplished, for He

“calleth those things which be not as though they

were” (Rom. 4:17).

So far as the believer is concerned, the penal side of the

sin question has been settled once and for all. His case

has been tried in the supreme court, and God has justified

him: in consequence thereof the Divine decision is

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which

are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Once those very

persons were under condemnation–“condemned

already” (John 3:18); but now that their faith has

united them to Christ there is no condemnation. The debt of

their sin has been paid by their great Surety; the record

thereof has been “blotted out” by His cleansing

blood. “It is God that justifieth. Who is he that

condemneth” (Rom. 8:33, 34). Who will reverse His

decision! Where is that superior tribunal to which this

cause can be carried? Eternal justice has pronounced her

fiat; immutable judgment has recorded her sentence.

It is utterly and absolutely impossible that the sentence

of the Divine Judge should ever be revoked or reversed. His

sentence of justification results from and rests upon a

complete satisfaction having been offered to His Law, and

that in the fulfillment of a covenant engagement. Thus is

effectually precluded the recall of the verdict. The Father

stipulated to release His elect from the curse of the law

provided the Son would meet the claims of justice against

them. The Son freely complied with His Father’s will:

“Lo, I come.” He was now made under the law,

fulfilled the law, and suffered the full penalty of the

law; therefore shall He see of the travail of His soul and

be satisfied. Sooner shall the lightenings of omnipotence

shiver the Rock of Ages than those sheltering in Him again

be brought under condemnation.

How very, very far from the glorious truth of the Gospel

is the mere conditional pardon which Arminians represent

God as bestowing upon those who come to Christ–a pardon

which may be rescinded, yea, which will be canceled, unless

they “do their part” and perform certain

stipulations! What a horrible and blasphemous travesty of

the Truth is that!–an error which must be steadfastly

resisted no matter who holds it: better far to hurt the

feelings of a million of our fellow-creatures than to

displease their august Creator. On no such precarious basis

as our fulfilling certain conditions has God suspended the

justification of His people. Not only is there “now no

condemnation” resting upon the believer, but there

never again shall me, for “Blessed is the man to whom

the Lord will not impute sin” (Rom. 4:8).

The dread sentence of the law, “Thou shalt surely

die,” cannot in justice be executed upon the

sinner’s Surety and also upon himself. Hence by a

necessity existing in the very nature of moral government,

it must follow that the believing sinner be freed from all

condemnation, that is, so cleared of the same that he is

raised above all liability to punishment. So declared our

blessed Saviour Himself, in words too plain and emphatic to

admit of any misunderstanding: “Verily, verily, I say

unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him

that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come

into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life”

(John 5:24). He, the habitation of whose throne is

“justice and judgment,” has sealed up this

declaration forever, by affirming “I will never leave

thee nor forsake thee.” Sooner shall the sword of

justice cleave the helmet of the Almighty than any Divinely

pardoned soul perish.

But not only are the sins of all who truly come to Christ

eternally remitted, but the very righteousness of the

Redeemer passes over to them, is placed upon them, so that

a perfect obedience to the law is imputed to their account.

It is theirs, not by promise, but by gift (Rom. 5:17), by

actual bestowment. It is not simply that God treats them as

if they were righteous, they are righteous and so

pronounced by Him. And therefore may each believing soul

exclaim, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul

shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the

garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of

righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with

ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her

jewels” (Isa. 61:10). O that each Christian reader may

be enabled to clearly and strongly grasp hold of this

glorious fact: that he is now truly righteous in the sight

of God, is in actual possession of an obedience which

answers every demand of the law.

This unspeakable blessing is bestowed not only by the

amazing grace of God, but it is actually required by His

inexorable justice. This too was stipulated and agreed upon

in the covenant into which the Father entered with the Son.

That is why the Redeemer lived here on earth for upwards of

thirty years before He went to the cross to suffer the

penalty of our sins: He assumed and discharged our

responsibilities; as a child, as a youth, as a man, He

rendered unto God that perfect obedience which we owed Him.

He “fulfilled all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15) for

His people, and just as He who knew no sin was made sin for

them, so they are now made “the righteousness of God

in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). And therefore does Jehovah

declare, “For the mountains shall depart, and the

hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from

thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed,

saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee” (Isa. 54:10).

By actually believing with a justifying faith the sinner

doth receive Christ Himself, is joined to Him, and becomes

immediately an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ. This

gives him a right unto and an interest in the benefits of

His mediation. By faith in Christ he received not only the

forgiveness of sins, but an inheritance among all them that

are sanctified (Acts 26:18), the Holy Spirit (given to him)

being “the earnest of our inheritance” (Eph.

1:13, 14). The believing sinner may now say “in the

LORD have I righteousness” (Isa. 45:24). He is

“complete in Him” (Col. 2:10), for by “one

offering” the Saviour hath “perfected for ever

them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). The believer

has been “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6),

and stands before the throne of God arrayed in a garment

more excellent than that which is worn by the holy angels.

How infinitely does the glorious Gospel of God transcend

the impoverished thoughts and schemes of men! How

immeasurably superior is that “everlasting

righteousness” which Christ has brought in (Dan. 9:24)

from that miserable thing which multitudes are seeking to

produce by their own efforts. Greater far is the difference

between the shining light of the midday sun and the

blackness of the darkest night, than between that

“best robe” (Luke 15:22) which Christ has wrought

out for each of His people and that wretched covering which

zealous religionists are attempting to weave out of the

filthy rags of their own righteousness. Equally great is

the difference between the truth of God concerning the

present and immutable standing of His saints in all the

acceptability of Christ, and the horrible perversion of

Arminians who make acceptance with God contingent upon the

believer’s faithfulness and perseverance, who suppose

that Heaven can be purchased by the creature’s deeds

and doings.

It is not that the justified soul is now left to himself,

so that he is certain of getting to Heaven no matter how he

conducts himself–the fatal error of Antinomians. No

Indeed. God also imparts to him the blessed Holy Spirit,

who works within him the desire to serve, please, and

glorify the One who has been so gracious to Him. “The

love of Christ constraineth us… that they which live

should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him

which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14,

15). They now “delight in the law of God after the

inward man” (Rom. 7:22), and though the flesh, the

world, and the Devil oppose every step of the way,

occasioning many a sad fall–which is repented of,

confessed, and forsaken–nevertheless the Spirit renews

them day by day (2 Cor. 4:16) and leads them in the paths

of righteousness for Christ’s name’s sake.

In the last paragraph will be found the answer to those

who object that the preaching of justification by the

imputed righteousness of Christ, apprehended by faith

alone, will encourage carelessness and foster

licentiousness. Those whom God justifies are not left in

their natural condition, under the dominion of sin, but are

quickened, indwelt, and guided by the Holy Spirit. As

Christ cannot be divided, and so is received as Lord to

rule us as well as Saviour to redeem us, so those whom God

justifies He also sanctifies. We do not affirm that all who

receive this blessed truth into their heads have their

lives transformed thereby–no indeed; but we do insist that

where it is applied in power to the heart there always

follows a walk to the glory of God, the fruits of

righteousness being brought forth to the praise of His

name. Each truly justified soul will say:

“Let worldly minds the world pursue,
It has no charms for me;
I once admired its trifles too,
But grace has set me free.”

It is therefore the bounden duty of those who profess to

have been justified by God to diligently and impartially

examine themselves, to ascertain whether or not they have

in them those spiritual graces which always accompany

justification. It is by our sanctification, and that alone,

that we may discover our justification. Would you know

whether Christ fulfilled the law for you, that His

obedience has been imputed to your account? Then search

your heart and life and see whether a spirit of obedience

to Him is daily working in you. The righteousness of the

law is fulfilled only in those who “walk not after the

flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4). God never

designed that the obedience of His Son should be imputed to

those who live a life of worldliness, self-pleasing, and

gratifying the lusts of the flesh. Far from it: “If

any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are

passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2

Cor. 5:17).

Summarizing now the blessed results of justification.

1. The sins of the believer are forgiven. “Through

this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And

by Him all that believe are justified from all things”

(Acts 13:38, 39). All the sins of the believer, past,

present, and to come, were laid upon Christ and atoned for

by Him. Although sins cannot be actually pardoned before

they are actually committed yet their obligation unto the

curse of the law were virtually remitted at the Cross,

antecedently to their actual commission. The sins of

Christians involve only the governmental dealings of God in

this life, and these are remitted upon a sincere repentance

and confession.

2. An inalienable title unto everlasting glory is

bestowed. Christ purchased for His people the reward of

blessing of the law, which is eternal life. Therefore does

the Holy Spirit assure the Christian that he has been

begotten “to an inheritance incorruptible, and

undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for

you” (1 Peter 1:4). Not only is that inheritance

reserved for all the justified, but they are all preserved

unto it, as the very next verse declares, “who are

kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready

to be revealed in the last time” (v.

5)–“kept” from committing the unpardonable sin,

from apostatising from the truth, from being fatally

deceived by the Devil; so “kept” that the power

of God prevents anything separating them from His love in

Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:35-38).

3. Reconciliation unto God Himself. “Therefore being

justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord

Jesus Christ… we were reconciled to God by the death of

His Son” (Rom. 5:1, 10). Until men are justified they

are at war with God, and He is against them, being

“angry with the wicked every day” (Psa. 7:11).

Dreadful beyond words is the condition of those who are

under condemnation: their minds are enmity against God

(Rom. 8:7), all their ways are opposed to Him (Col. 1:21).

But at conversion the sinner throws down the weapons of his

rebellion and surrenders to the righteous claims of Christ,

and by Him he is reconciled to God. Reconciliation is to

make an end of strife, to bring together those at variance,

to change enemies into friends. Between God and the

justified there is peace–effected by the blood of Christ.

4. An unalterable standing in the favour of God.

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace

with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we

have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand”

(Rom. 5:1, 2). Mark the word “also”: not only has

Christ turned away the wrath of God from us, but in

addition He has secured the benevolence of God toward us.

Previous to justification our standing was one of

unutterable disgrace, but now, through Christ, it is in one

of unclouded grace. God now has naught but good-will toward

us. God has not only ceased to be offended at us, but is

well-pleased with us; not only will He never afflict

punishment upon us, but He will never cease to shower His

blessings upon us. The throne to which we have free access

is not one of judgment, but of pure and unchanging grace.

5. Owned by God Himself before an assembled universe.

“But I say unto you, That every idle word that men

shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of

judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified”

(Matt. 12:36, 37): yes, justified publicly by the Judge

Himself! “These shall go away into everlasting

punishment: but the righteous into life eternal”

(Matt. 25:46). Here will be the final justification of the

Christian, this sentence being declaratory unto the glory

of God and the everlasting blessedness of those who have

believed.

Let it be said in conclusion that the justification of the

Christian is complete the moment he truly believes in

Christ, and hence there are no degrees in justification.

The Apostle Paul was as truly a justified man at the hour

of his conversion as he was at the close of his life. The

feeblest babe in Christ is just as completely justified as

is the most mature saint. Let theologians note the

following distinctions. Christians were decretively

justified from all eternity: efficaciously so when Christ

rose again from the dead; actually so when they believed;

sensibly so when the Spirit bestows joyous assurance;

manifestly so when they tread the path of obedience;

finally so at the Day of Judgment, when God shall

sententiously, and in the presence of all created things,

pronounce them so.

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