About this sermon
How can a sinner be accepted by a holy God? Sin has corrupted every part of us, and God does not grade on a curve. Justification is God’s free gift by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. Christ bore the Father’s wrath against sin in our place, and faith rests in him, receiving his righteousness as a gift.
Sermon transcript
This evening I’ll be preaching a second sermon on the doctrine of justification. This is the second in a three-part mini-series called The Wonder of Justification, and our text for this evening, again as it was last week, is Romans 3, verses 19-21. Romans 3, verses 19-31. Let us hear God’s holy word. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God because by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.
This was to demonstrate His righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith, is one. Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be. On the contrary, we establish the law.
Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. O Lord and Father in heaven, you are a God of infinite holiness who engages in holy war against your enemies and you who deserve your wrath. And yet, Lord, you are a merciful God who has poured out upon Christ, your son, sevenfold vengeance, O Lord, for the sins that we have committed. We thank you that for those who are covered by the blood of Christ, there is full and free redemption. We thank you, Lord God, for this precious doctrine of justification by faith alone. We ask, Lord and Father in heaven, that you would grant that we would gain a deeper appreciation for, love for, and understanding of this wonderful gospel doctrine. And we pray, Heavenly Father, that as we gain further understanding of this doctrine, that it would impact our lives in a practical and powerful way, that we might indeed live out the truth of this doctrine with joy and in the fullness of your spirit, for it is in Jesus’ name that we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.
Congregation, you may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is The Wonder of Justification, Part Two, God’s Provision of Justification. And there’s four key words to be listening for tonight. Those words, very important words, are the words grace, redemption, justification, and faith. Well, my dear listeners, how can a sinner be accepted before a holy God? That is the question that is at the heart of this doctrine of justification. The God revealed in the Bible is a God of infinite white-hot holiness. He is a God of infinite perfect righteousness and justice. And so the question is, how can an unjust man be justified, that is to say, be declared righteous and just in the sight of a perfectly just and righteous Creator? These are questions which are very significant for each of us to ask ourselves because the answer that we give to these kinds of questions can reveal the state of our souls before Almighty God.
When we’re dealing with the doctrine of justification, we are dealing with issues of eternal life or everlasting punishment. These are eternal issues that are at stake when we are dealing with this precious doctrine. If you’re resting on a false method of justification before God, then according to God’s word, it will most certainly result in your everlasting misery. Unless, of course, God in sovereign grace is pleased to graciously open your eyes before you die to the true pathway. of justification, namely Christ and Christ alone. On the other hand, if God has graciously taken the scales off of your eyes and has shown you the true method of justification as it is revealed in the word of God, and if he has opened your heart to embrace this true method of justification by embracing Christ alone for your salvation, then you are indeed blessed and your justification before God can serve as a wonderful foretaste of the everlasting happiness the everlasting joy that you will be experiencing in heaven.
Dear listener, are you justified before God, and do you know it? If you believe that you are, then what is the basis for your confidence? These are the matters that we are going to consider on this Lord’s Day evening. Now, on this Lord’s Day evening, as we continue our study of this vital gospel doctrine known as justification by faith alone, or to use the Latin, sola We understand and we remember the fact that this doctrine was at the heart and center of the Protestant Reformation. This doctrine was rediscovered in its full biblical clarity in that great move of God known as the Protestant Reformation. In the medieval church, this precious gospel truth had been greatly obscured and all but buried under a mass of papal superstition and Roman priestcraft for centuries. And pun is intended there, by the way, buried under a mass of superstition.
But in God’s kind providence, he raised up an Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther, who became a great reformer and also the likes of John Calvin. And these men and men like them rediscovered and reaffirmed this great gospel truth of sola fide, bringing eternal hope and peace to multitudes of souls, and as a result, transforming Western civilization and culture. That was sort of a ripple effect of the Protestant Reformation. Let us praise God for this precious truth of sola fide, and let us make sure that we understand and appreciate the precious heritage of faith that has been passed on to us from our Reformation forefathers. so that we might pass it on to our children, and by the grace of God should Jesus carry to our children’s children.” Now, again, what does this term, justification, mean?
Obviously, the Apostle Paul loves this term. He uses it often in this epistle especially, as well as in the epistle to the Galatians. It shows up in Philippians and so forth. What is justification? Well, it’s actually a legal term. It has in view a courtroom scene. Justification is a legal term that means to declare righteous. If you are accused of a crime and you come before a judge, there’s one of two verdicts that can be passed. Either you will be found guilty or not guilty. Either you will be justified or condemned with respect to the crime of which you are accused. And this is very important because the term justification throughout the history of the got confused in the minds of some, even some otherwise great men of God, who confused justification with sanctification. They can’t be separated, but they must be distinguished.
Justification does not mean to make righteous or to infuse righteousness, but to declare one to be righteous. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, as our shorter catechism rightly puts it. in distinction from sanctification, which is a work of God’s free grace. Sanctification is something that God does within your soul. Justification takes place outside of you. It takes place in the courtroom of heaven. When God justifies a sinner, the gavel of God in heaven goes down and declares that sinner to be righteous in his sight, not because the sinner is righteous in himself. He’s a sinner. He’s fallen short. He’s missed the mark. but because of the perfect, everlasting righteousness of Christ, credited to that sinner, received by faith, that is, personal trust in Christ and Christ alone. The central truth that we consider on the last Lord’s Day was the truth that it is impossible for law-breaking sinners, and that would be each and every one of us, apart from grace, it is impossible for law-breaking sinners like me and like you to be justified before God or saved. on the basis of our own keeping of God’s moral law, our own good deeds, our own personal merits, for we have none.
This is why justification must be by faith alone. There’s nothing meritorious in faith. There’s nothing in our faith that we give to God that earns his favor or gets his attention or makes him pleased with us. Of course, God is pleased with faith, but faith itself is a gift of God. purchased by the blood of Christ for elect sinners to whom it is bestowed. And so we learned last week that we cannot be justified on the basis of our keeping, our own keeping, of God’s moral law. And this is why, again, justification is by faith alone apart from works of the law or apart from law obedience. The central truth of this sermon this evening is that God’s provision for the sinner’s justification has its foundation in God’s grace, its basis in Christ’s sacrifice, and is received by the sinner through the appropriating instrument, that is, through the means of faith in Christ alone.
So let’s first of all consider the foundation of our justification. This is, if you’re following along in your sermon outline, this is the first main point. Consider the foundation of our justification, and that foundation is God’s free grace. Look at verse 24. We’ve already established the fact on the last Lord’s Day that is spoken of in verse 23, that all have sinned, both Jew and Gentile, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Verse 24, being justified as a gift by His grace. By His grace. The foundation For our justification before God is God’s grace. Justification is not something we earn. It is not something we deserve. It’s not something we work for. It’s not something we contribute to. It is something that comes gratis as a gift. Again, as I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day, which shows us why we need God’s grace. as the foundation for our justification.
We considered on the last Lord’s Day that the law of God reveals God’s unchanging standard of ethics. Again, Romans 3.23 demonstrates that all mankind has fallen short of the divine standard and therefore we have fallen short of the glory of God. We also considered that the law of God condemns those who remain in Adam and therefore who remain under the demands of the original covenant of works that God made with Adam and his posterity before Adam’s fall. That was the point that we considered based on verse 19, where it says, Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world become accountable to God. The law of God silences our excuses and lays us bare before the infinitely holy God who created us.
We also considered that the purpose, one of the foundational major purposes or uses of God’s law is that it reveals the knowledge of sin, as verse 20 says, because by works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes what? The knowledge of sin. We know our sin and lawlessness when we reflect upon the law, when the law is like a mirror that shows us our own sinful heart. And this, again, is why we must be justified by faith alone. on the foundation or basis of grace. Contrary to what many folks think today, God’s word emphatically denies that it is possible to gain a just standing before God or to enter into heaven by the method of good works. Because of our sin, even our best attempts to keep God’s holy law are imperfect and tainted with our original corruption, and therefore they’re totally inadequate as the basis for our justification before God of infinite holiness.
Dr. G. James Kennedy, and I had issues with some of the late Dr. Kennedy’s approaches to preaching and so forth, but in his Evangelism Explosion program he offers an interesting illustration. Let’s say, as an illustration of this, let’s say that I invite you over, my wife and I invite you over one morning for breakfast, and I’m cooking up some omelets, and let’s say that I want to cook up an omelet that has five eggs in it, okay? And let’s say that four of those five eggs are fine, but the last egg that I crack into the skittle is a rotten egg. It stinks. Now, what if I reason this way, and I say, well, you know, four of those eggs are fine. They’re good eggs. If I just mix this rotten egg in with the rest of them, no one’s going to notice, are they?
Of course you would notice. Trying to present our good works to God as a basis for our justification is like trying to offer that omelet to a friend. That omelet that has just a little bit of rottenness in it. You wouldn’t be a very good friend if you tried to offer that omelet to And of course, the problem is not just that one of the eggs, spiritually speaking, if we’re talking about the human heart, it’s not just that there’s a little badness in there, it’s that we are totally depraved. That is to say, sin has impacted the totality of our being. It doesn’t mean that we’re as nasty or bad as we possibly could be, but we are as radically corrupt in our sin as we possibly could be. And only God’s common grace and restraining providence keeps us from acting out that sin nature as we would without those constraints.
And again, this is why we need Christ’s perfect righteousness credited or imputed to our spiritual account. You say, well, why can’t God kind of take it easy on us? Why can’t God grade on a curve? You know, you might remember your school days when if your professor or a teacher gave you a test and Everyone in the class fails, he might say, okay, those of you who didn’t fail so bad, I’ll kind of grade on a curve. I’ll kind of, you know, lower my standards to meet your performance on the test. And a lot of people think that that’s the way God works. That if our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds and the scales of justice, that God will have to let us into having the problem, my friends. And I mentioned this last week.
Remember, God is perfect. infinitely holy, righteous, and perfect. Heaven is a perfect, sinless place. You need a perfect righteousness to get there. You need more than just to have your sins forgiven. Praise God, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, his substitutionary atonement on the cross is a propitiation, it’s satisfaction for our sins. But we also need a positive righteousness in order to gain access into heaven, to serve as our title to heaven. And we don’t have it. Even those who are born again by the Spirit, though we are renewed and regenerated and are enabled to do works that are pleasing to God through the Spirit. Nevertheless, even those good works are still tainted with sin. So there’s that mixture there. It’s like the omelet. They cannot serve those good works insofar as they are done in union with Christ.
They are good. and accepted through the mediation of Christ, but they’re not the basis of our acceptance with God. They’re the fruit and evidence of the new life that the Spirit has wrought within us. And so again, Christ’s obedience and sacrifice must serve as the basis and grounds for our justification. And that is why God’s amazing, free, and sovereign grace must serve as the very cornerstone and foundation of our justification before God. It can be no other way. It must be by grace or it will not happen at all. What is grace? Have you ever heard a definition of grace? I’m guessing that the definition you’ve heard is probably God’s unmerited favor. And that’s true so far as it goes. Yes, grace is God’s unmerited favor. But I would suggest to you that it is much more than that.
In particular, it is actually God’s demerited favor. It is God’s love and mercy and favor given to you in spite of the fact that you and I deserve his wrath and judgment and justice. It is God’s demerited favor. In the larger context of Romans, as Paul uses this term grace, he uses it, I believe, with some different nuances depending upon the context. But in the larger context of Romans, it’s clear that the term grace that by this term Paul has in mind the sovereign grace of God, that grace which unconditionally elects hell-deserving sinners to receive his undeserved, unmerited gift of salvation. If you skip ahead to chapter 4 in verses 4 and 5, Paul brings this out, especially as he just discussed the patriarch Abraham who was justified by faith, by trusting in God’s promise, and it says this, Now, to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due.
You go to work and you get a paycheck, right? It’s the wage that you have earned. If your boss comes up to you one day with your paycheck and says, hey, I’ve got a gift for you. Here’s your paycheck. You might not say it out loud because it’s your boss, but you might be thinking, this is not a gift. I earned this. I worked for this. That’s not how it works with justification. It says now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But verse five in Romans four, verse five, to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. Think about it. The righteous God graciously justifies the ungodly. It’s amazing. one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.
His faith is credited as righteousness.” That faith which receives the righteousness of Christ is what Paul is speaking of there. There’s a big difference between a paycheck and a birthday gift check. You know, if your mother or father or friend comes to you on your birthday, gives you a birthday check, But then expects you to kind of pay it back. You’d be insulted, right? That’s not a real gift. Just as the paycheck is not a real gift. But God gives salvation as a gift. Something that we don’t deserve. Something that we don’t earn. Believer, your justification is grounded in God’s rich and free grace. Revel in that. Rejoice in it. It’s a gift, it’s absolutely free, it’s absolutely undeserved, absolutely unmerited, and it’s given to you without any regard to your religious performance or your moral living, though indeed, if you experience God’s grace, it will bear fruit in your life, there will be a change, there will be a reorientation of your life, but you don’t have to improve yourself first.
Don’t fall in for the error, I would call it a heresy of preparationism, the idea that that first, before God is willing to deign to give you His mercy, you’ve got to clean up your life. No. You come to God as the sinner you are, receiving His grace freely, and then He begins to clean up your life. That’s the way it goes. So, dear listener, you know, we’ve all got a little Pharisee living in our hearts, a little legalist within our souls. Crucify that little Pharisee in your soul, that little Pharisee who’s always trying to assert his self-righteousness and contribute at least something to your salvation. When you hear that little voice saying, surely there’s some fine print, surely I’ve got to do something to contribute to my justification. Oh, take that little Pharisee out to the woodshed and don’t just give it a whipping, put it to death.
Get off the treadmill of works righteousness and stay off Only then will your walking after a new obedience be pleasing to God through Christ, for it will be motivated by gratitude and love for the God who loved you and redeemed you in Christ, not motivated by a craven fear or an attempt to merit God’s favor or bargain with God. Dear Christian listener, stand fast in the liberty that you have in Christ and realize that God’s amazing grace and His grace alone is the foundation of your justification, and do not ever let anyone bring you back again into the bondage of legalism. So we see that the foundation of our justification is God’s grace, His demerited favor, His mercy and love given to us in spite of the fact that we deserve His wrath and judgment.
But consider next, and this is point two in your outline, consider the objective basis of our justification, and that is Christ redemptive work. The objective basis of our justification is Christ’s redemptive work. Getting back to verses 24 and 25 of our passage for this evening. Being justified as a gift by his grace through what? Through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. There’s no redemption outside of Christ, outside of union with Christ. Redemption is in union with Christ Jesus. And then verse 25. whom God, meaning God the Father, displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed and so forth. This word redemption is a very important biblical word that we find here in verse 24.
What does that word mean? To quote from one scholar, it means freedom gained through the payment of a price. Here specifically released from the former condition of bondage and sin. This is accomplished through Christ’s death, the ransom price for our salvation. We believing sinners have been bought back to God through Jesus’s payment for our sins on the cross of Calvary. Thank God Jesus paid it all as we love to sing in that that beautiful hymn. He paid it all. We owe it all to him. He did it all for us. And through his sacrifice, he took our place. He died as our sin bearer, our substitute, in our stead. He paid the price for our sin in his own person as he died on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we in him might become the righteousness of God.
Through his vicarious substitutionary atonement, an atonement which we celebrate and remember whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Christ has redeemed us to God by his own precious blood. And as verse 25 says, in this God, God displayed publicly Christ publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. What does that word propitiation mean? In the Greek, it is the word hilasterion. And it’s interesting, this word is often translated in the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. It is translated as mercy seat. Get the imagery there, mercy seat. The mercy seat refers to the lid or cover that was placed on the Ark of the Covenant, where the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled once a year on the Day of Atonement. It indicates the appeasement of God’s righteous wrath through the satisfaction of his just demands.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is said to be a propitiation in his blood. In other words, by his death on the cross, Christ, the Son of God, satisfies the demands of God’s justice against our sins. and thereby appeased God’s wrath, which had burned against us. He did that through his blood. And remember, in the Bible, the blood symbolizes or represents the life. When we say that Jesus poured out his blood for us, shed his blood for us, that means that Jesus gave his life in substitution for ours as our sin bearer, our substitute, and thus rendered a full, complete satisfaction to the Father. to the Father’s wrath against our sin. Jesus took that wrath upon himself. Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice on the cross demonstrates the infinitely deep love of God even for sinners who are under his wrath and curse.
Isn’t that amazing? Amazing grace indeed. My dear Christian friends, our Lord Jesus Christ offered up a propitiatory sacrifice on the cross as the sin bearer and substitute for his people. Through his perfect obedience to God’s law and through his death on the cross for our sins, Jesus has secured for us everlasting justification. Here’s the thing. Praise God that when God justifies you, you can’t become unjustified. That doesn’t mean you should live in a presumptuous or sinful way. That doesn’t give you a free ticket to live in sin. In fact, if you think that grace gives you the freedom to live in sin, you’ve misunderstood grace. The grace of God teaches us to pursue godliness out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation. But nevertheless, you are secure, believer, in God’s everlasting love. And therefore, through His perfect obedience and death on the cross, we have everlasting justification.
You can’t bounce in and out of a state of justification. You can’t lose your justification. When the gavel of God goes down in the courtroom of heaven to declare you righteous in His sight and your justification, It goes down once and for all and forever. It’s irreversible. We’ll talk more about the finality of justification on the following Lord’s Day evening. But dear listeners, let this truth of the gospel bring comfort to your soul, joy to your life, and power to your walk with Christ. You know, one of the precious practical truths of this doctrine is that our Heavenly Father is no longer angry with us. He’s no longer wrathful toward us. Yes, our father in heaven does graciously discipline us, train us so that we may share in his holiness. He works in our lives and our sanctification and so forth.
But he’s not angry with you in the sense of wrath. If you are in Christ, he sees you in Christ and he is just as pleased with you as he is pleased with his son because you are in the son. So walk in freedom. You belong, both now and forever, to the Lord Jesus Christ. Your justification makes it secure. But that raises the question, how does what Christ did on the cross get applied to the sinner? How is it that the elect come to receive the gift of justification, that gift which has its foundation in God’s sovereign grace and its ground and basis in Christ’s all-sufficient redemptive work on the cross? Well, that leads me to my final point, and it’s going to be a brief point, I promise you. Take to heart, beloved, the appropriating instrument of our justification, and that is faith in Jesus Christ.
Notice in the context of this passage how often Paul mentions faith. Look at verse 22. Even the righteousness of God through what? Through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. Skip down to verse 25. whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through what? Through faith. Let’s get down again to verse 26. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has what? Faith in Jesus. And then verses 28 to 30. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law, or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God will justify the circumcised by what?
By faith and the uncircumcised through faith. That God is one. It’s not that the Jews are justified by faith plus law keeping, that the Gentiles get in by faith alone. No. Whether you’re Jew or Gentile in your background. The method of justification is one and the same. It’s by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And what is this justifying faith of which Paul speaks in this passage and in many other parts of his writings that is spoken of throughout the scriptures? Again, I think our short of catechism offers a wonderful Bible-based definition. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace. In other words, it’s not something you work up or within yourself. It is something that is given by God’s grace. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he’s offered to us in the gospel.
This evening I look out in this congregation and I see all of you resting in the pews that you are sitting on. What does it mean to rest? the weight of your body on those pews. It means you trust the pews to hold up your weight. That’s a wonderful picture of faith. It’s simply resting. Resting the weight of your eternal salvation upon Christ and what he has done and upon him alone. Not upon what you do to prove yourself or prove your worthiness to God or demonstrate your faith even. Faith in Jesus Christ receives and rests. doesn’t give to God anything, although once we receive faith, it does work itself out through love. But nevertheless, to receive the gift of salvation, purely passive, purely receptive. And of course, the theologians speak of the three basic elements of justifying and saving faith.
And those elements are knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge of at least the basic truths and facts of the gospel. You may have a childlike understanding of the gospel, But if the one that you are trusting in is the biblical Christ, that childlike trust is sufficient to connect you to him and to receive that grace that he offers in the gospel. But it’s not enough to know the basic truths and facts about the gospel. For example, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose from the dead so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. You can know about those truths but reject them. So true justifying faith involves not only knowledge, but assent to those truths and facts. But the crowning element of true saving faith, justifying faith, is personal trust in Jesus Christ as one’s very own Lord and Savior.
Fiducia, trust. Do you trust Jesus? Do you rely upon him alone for your salvation? Oh, I don’t know, Pastor, my faith is so weak. It’s not the amount of faith that you have that matters. Remember, Jesus talks about faith the size of a mustard seed. And Jesus often rebuked his disciples, oh, you have little faith. You may have little faith. You may have weak faith. You may have small faith. But if that faith is directed to the Lord Jesus Christ, who conquered death on the cross and rose from the dead, then that little faith is enough to connect you to him and to receive all of the benefits of his redemption, including justification before the Father. So the object of our faith, again, is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ as he is offered in the gospel.
The bottom line is that faith equals forsaking all, I trust him. As we are told in passages, and there’s many passages I could quote to illustrate this, but I want to leave us with one of my favorites from John chapter 1. verses 12 and 13. In this particular passage, he’s talking about our adoption, but he says this, As many as received him, that is, received Christ, the Word made flesh, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. It’s clear that in verse 12 there in John 1, receiving Christ and believing in his name are one and the same actions. who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. Faith is resting in Jesus, recognizing that in him you have a merciful, forgiving God.
Dear listener, do you have this kind of faith in Christ? Have you forsaken all of your self-righteousness, all of your idols, all of the known sins in your life that you may trust and take him alone to be your Lord and Savior? And by the way, once you come to Christ in faith, The Holy Spirit is going to come and show you more sin that needs to be dealt with. Initial conversion leads to a lifetime of daily renewed repentance and faith. But our justification occurs once and for all and forever as we put our faith and trust in Him alone to save us from our sins. May God give you the grace to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And what does the scripture say? Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
That’s God’s promise. He doesn’t make his promises with his fingers crossed behind his back. So rest in him. Trust in him. He is trustworthy. And if you’re looking to Christ alone for your salvation, God’s word assures you the gavel of God in heaven has gone down and he has declared you, dear believing sinner, to be just in his sight. Justify, not because you’re righteous in yourself. but because of Christ’s righteousness given to you as a gift, imputed to you, received by faith alone. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you for your amazing, sovereign grace. We thank you for the redemptive work of Christ, our Savior. We thank you for your Holy Spirit who calls us through the gospel to receive and rest upon Christ. Lord, we pray, Heavenly Father, that you would indeed enable us to simply rest in Jesus and to know the joy that comes from resting in Him.
And may that joy work itself out in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
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