GRACE FOR TODAY Radio Message #465

 

          Justified By Grace Through Blood

         

          Pastor Don Fortner

          Grace Baptist Church of Danville

          2734 Old Stanford Road

          Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

 

          According to Romans 3:24-26 God’s elect are a people who stand before him as completely justified from all sin and perfectly righteous in Christ. The righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us and we are made to be the righteousness of God in him. This justification of our souls before God is a work of his free grace toward us through the sin-atoning blood of his darling Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

          C. H. Spurgeon wrote, “I must hold that, in the moment when Jesus Christ paid my debts, my debts were canceled; in the hour when he worked out for me a perfect righteousness it was imputed to me; and therefore, I may, as a believer, say I was complete in Christ before I was born, accepted in Jesus, even as Levi was blessed in the loins of Abraham.” That is exactly the doctrine of Holy Scripture. When the Word of God declares that we are justified by the faith of Christ or by faith in Christ, the meaning is not that our faith justifies us, but rather that Christ the Object of our faith justifies us. We are not justified by our act of faith in him, but by his faithful obedience to God for us, as our Representative.

 

In his life of obedience to the law and will of God, the Lord Jesus Christ worked out a perfect righteousness for us. In him all God’s elect have obeyed God’s holy law perfectly (Dan. 9:24; Jer. 23:6; 1 Cor. 1:30). His name is “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”; and that is our name as well (Jer. 33:16), because he is made of God unto us righteousness. All who trust the Son of God have been made the righteousness of God in him by Divine imputation (2 Cor. 5:21). We are not made righteous by our works, or even by our faith, but by grace, by the free imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. His righteousness is imputed to us in exactly the same way and to the same degree that our sins were imputed to him.

 

The life of Christ was as necessary for our salvation as his death. The holy Lord God demands obedience as well as satisfaction. By his death, our great Substitute paid our debts, satisfying the justice of God for our sins. But by his life of obedience to God for us, as our Federal Head and Representative, the Son of God brought in an everlasting righteousness of infinite value for his people. It is this righteousness (the righteousness of his obedience) which is imputed to us in justification, just as our unrighteousness (the unrighteousness of our disobedience) was imputed to him in condemnation.

 

When the Lord Jesus Christ died under the wrath of God at Calvary, all God’s elect died in him, fully satisfying the demands of God’s law and justice against them for sin (Gal.3:13; 2:20; Rom. 6:6-7; 8:1). In Christ I died. Thus, by his death, I am freed from sin’s penalty, the law’s curse and condemnation, and shall forever be freed from all the consequences of sin in eternal life.

 

Since our Redeemer is both God and man in one Glorious Person, all that he has done is of infinite value for all who trust him. He has effectually accomplished the eternal justification of his people. He has obtained eternal redemption for us (Heb. 9:12). He has put away the sins of his people (Col. 2:13-15; Heb. 9:26). He has perfected for ever those who were set apart as the objects of his grace (Heb. 10:14). This is complete, perfect justification. The law can require no more of us than perfect righteousness and infinite satisfaction (Eph. 2:4-6). All who believe are justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

 

AMEN.