This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 13, 1994.
About this sermon
The modern church fixes on a single, identifiable moment of conversion, as Luther did, but Vos’s account of justification does not depend on that kind of experience. Romans 3:22’s ‘faith of Christ’ points to Christ’s own faithfulness more than to the believer’s feelings. Justification rests on more than a memorable moment.
Sermon transcript
This morning we are reading, first of all, from Romans chapter three, rather than chapter four, as we did in the bulletin, is Romans chapter three, and we are beginning with verse nine. I give you attention to the reading of God’s holy and infallible word.
Are we better than they? No, and no wise. For we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin, as it is written. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used a deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now, we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin, that now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of words? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it as one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith. We do not then make void the law through faith. God forbid, yea, we established the law.”
1 Timothy 3.16, and by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
Help us all Lord. That we might give ourselves to your word. And we get past personalities of preachers. To the Christ who even presently in his exaltation teaches his people through the spirit. We would ask you, Lord, therefore, that your word would be paramount to us. May this be an opportunity for us to profit from that word, even as we learn from our Savior. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
She sat there for the longest time. It seemed like an eternity to her. She had only one thought, a question that was being put to her, and that question coming to her again and again. was the moment of my conversion. It was a spiritual emphasis week on the campus of a Christian college she attended. And that emphasis, all during the week, had been upon a crisis experience by which she and all the others who heard the messages might be certain of their right relationship with Jesus Christ. Was she aware, then, of the moment that she passed from an unconverted estate to a converted estate? Was she aware of the date the precise time she passed from wrath to grace. It seemed from what was being said by the speaker in those meetings during the week, if she could not put an exact date upon her conversion, if she did not know the exact moment of her transformation spiritually, then she had to be brought to such a moment. And it was the task of the special services and of the speaker to accomplish just that.
But she was struggling. Because she had always, at least in her own estimation, She had always, as long as she could remember, believed in and trusted Jesus Christ for her salvation. But now, without this crisis experience she feared, she lacked what was absolutely necessary for a certifiable and true salvation. Hardly did she know it, that day she sat there, that she was a victim. She was sort of a victim of Martin Luther, the great reformer whose resistance to Rome gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. and that the reformer himself, in a certain sense, was preying upon her mind and playing with her soul.
Now, what could I possibly mean by that? Luther is a hero, after all, is he not? Well, let me explain. For any who knows the story of Luther’s conversion, it is truly one of the grandest and most dramatic accounts in the history of Christianity with respect to spiritual transformation. As Luther recalled it, I had been captivated with an extraordinary ardor to understand Paul in the epistle to the Romans. that Luther was stumbling over a particular phrase early on in that epistle. The words, the righteousness of God, in chapter 1, verse 17, were the cause of his stumbling. This verse, Romans 1, 17, speaks about the fact that in the gospel, you can check it there, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. But for Luther, understand him now. It is going to be difficult for you to understand him because he’s speaking now out of a medieval mindset.
For Luther, the righteousness of God was always and only that active righteousness with which God is righteous in himself and punishes unrighteous sinners. There is no other righteousness of God. Luther concluded, therefore, that Paul was saying that the Gospel, according to this text, Romans 117, revealed God’s righteous anger against sinners. But where, Luther asked, was there a sinner greater than himself?
His interpretation of this verse brought his sinfulness out all the more. And in response to it, he said, I did not love God, I hated Him. Secretly, if not blasphemously, I was angry with God, and I said inside myself, as if it was not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost to original sin, are crushed by the law. without having God add the pain of the gospel, and also by the gospel, threatening us with his righteousness and his wrath. With such soft Luther raged, he said, with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, he went on, I beat upon Paul. most anxiously desiring to know what he meant, what he could have possibly meant.
After days and nights of anguished meditation on this text, Luther saw the Spirit’s meaning. I began to understand, he explained, that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by the gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning of the text. Namely, the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, specifically that passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live. Luther now saw the righteousness of God in an entirely new light. It reveals itself in the gospel to those who believe, not as wrath, but as gift, a righteousness given to us, a righteousness found in Christ alone. On the basis of this gift, true-faith sinners like Luther are declared to be just, that is, justified in God’s sight. to have gone through open doors into paradise.
As I stated, this is truly one of the grandest and most dramatic accounts of personal transformation in the annals of Christianity, heightened because of the historical circumstances in which it occurred. And I must tell you that I am thrilled by it to the depths of my soul each time I am reminded of it or reread it. But as glorious and as genuine as it is, and I believe it to be genuine and glorious with every ounce of my spiritual energy, this testimony by Luther was subjected to an unhappy subsequent history. After Luther died, his wonderful conversion began to be connected in the minds of many who followed after him with the experience of Paul on the Damascus Road, and the account of it in Acts chapter 9.
And thus, the experience itself was given biblical validation and looked upon as the justification for sinners. The experience itself was looked upon as the justification for sinners. Increasingly, as the evangelical and pious traditions took shape, a crisis experience such as Paul’s on the Damascus Road and Luther’s in the 16th century absorbed justification. And in the thinking and teaching of many began to define, yes, even exclusively, what true conversion is.
In other words, if you’re missing the drift, in other words, if you cannot point in your life to a crisis experience, you are not regenerated. If you cannot pinpoint the day and the hour, you are not saved. A difficulty faced by that young woman mentioned at the beginning of this message was the result of just such thinking. Now she may have needed to be converted, having rested all of her life in a false assurance. That is, yes, a possibility. But at the same time, Neither that institution where she was enrolled, nor the speaker under whom she then sat, had the biblical right to mandate a crisis experience as the universal and indispensable credential for a genuine conversion.”
Now, interestingly, Luther himself was moving in a direction that suggested a much higher and more satisfying level of entrance into genuine spiritual life. And I bring this up and proceed along this course not to discount Luther’s marvelous record concerning his own conversion, or to qualify that conversion in any way, nor by way of extension to discount the testimony that some of you have with respect to your conversion, you being able to pinpoint that conversion, yes, day and hour. Praise God! Still, when we study Luther and his message, even as we look at the account of his conversion that he gives, we discover that it is other-directed. That is, it is directed away from himself and even his experience toward Christ and toward Christ’s sufficient righteousness.
Luther had been moving profoundly in this direction even before he struggled with Romans 1.17.
His earlier lectures on the Psalms found him struck by Christ’s recitation of Psalm 22, verse 1, from the cross, “‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Luther was being forced in his consideration of the Psalter to see the utter desolation that Jesus himself underwent for our salvation. In other words, the experience of Christ was being brought into focus as it was being set center stage. Luther was being compelled to see the objective outside of Luther’s experience, which Jesus had undergone, and that this experience of Jesus was determinative for his—that is, Luther’s—salvation.
And it was precisely here that Luther was locating the true ground of our hope and our deliverance. But the full impact, believe it or not, of this revolutionary insight into the biblical gospel lay undeveloped in subsequent Protestant history, until things began to open up at the beginning of the century. In 1912, Johannes Voss published a monumental study to mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Princeton Theological Center. That monumental study had to do with the relationship of the Holy Spirit to Paul’s doctrine of the last things, or what we call eschatology.
Voss, in that article, made the observation that Jesus’ resurrection was Jesus’ justification. We do not ordinarily think of Jesus being justified or even being in need of a justification. Voss states that Jesus’ resurrection was Jesus’ justification, and that in this complexion of resurrection, justification for Jesus, the believer finds the true ground for his own justification. Jesus first set up And only us, because of Jesus first.
Roth cited as biblical proof 1 Timothy 3.16, which we read this morning. A text overlooked by the Reformers and the Reformed tradition, overlooked by those who were dealing most judiciously with the issue of justification. A text that speaks about the justification of the Son. He was justified in the Spirit. That’s what the text says.
This line of thinking, then, takes us in the direction of grounding our entire experience of salvation in Christ, in Jesus. And specifically, grounding our entire experience of salvation in the experience of Jesus. But further, it would become apparent the course of this century, how thoroughly comprehensive the range of Christ’s experience and our dependence upon it are. And that, by way of the opening up of another exegetical enigma in the Apostles’ writings. I have in mind Romans 3, verse 22. It finds parallel in Galatians 2, 16 and 20, and also in Ephesians 3, verse 12. The question is being asked, how are we to translate this verse?
Modern translators have uniformly followed the line that Paul’s mention of faith in this verse refers to the believers then. Therefore, if you have a New American Standard in front of you, or a New International, you can see the force of that approach to translating this text. The New American Standard puts it this way, with respect to this righteousness now that has been manifest in Jesus Christ and through the gospel, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, that is, our faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
But not a few have noted The redundancy of this translation. You might have picked it up. You might have noted it yourself. A redundancy brought out, if we paraphrase the verse this way, with respect to this righteousness of God now manifested, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, because of this obvious convolution grammatically, an alternative has been proposed. One that, interestingly, tries to do justice to the literal Greek of the text, but also, of all things, to the King James rendering. That rendering, if you don’t have a King James, you can find at the top of your bulletin above the Order of Service. We read it this morning as our call to worship. It goes like this.
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ, not in Jesus Christ, but of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. Now, I am not certain as to exactly how the King James translators took this text as they were translating it. But their literal translation lays open the possibility for the removal of the redundancy. And the suggestion, you see, that Paul’s mention of faith in that verse does not have in mind the believer’s faith, but Jesus’ faith. This would mean, then, that Paul’s meaning is communicated along these lines. Even the righteousness of God, which is by Jesus Christ’s faith unto all and upon all them that believe. In the first instance, speaking of Christ’s faith. In the second instance, as the verse concludes, speaking about believers’ faith. No redundancy. If this is the case, if this is the case, then not only our justification, as Roth suggested, but also our faith by which we are justified. is rooted in Jesus and in his experience.
Before I was justified, Jesus was justified, and his justification is my hope of justification. Before I believed, Jesus believed, and he believed perfectly. I now have been blessed by grace to enter into Jesus’ justification, and I have been blessed by grace to enter into the faith that he himself expressed. It is his faith that has gained the victory, and I am a beneficiary of it.
We can take nothing away from Luther and even the great reform statements on justification by faith. By what we have said here this morning, we take nothing away from the marvelous statements on justification that appear in the Westminster Confession and the Catechism. But we do see just how much of grace our salvation is. Truly, it is even more of grace than we ever imagined. Thus, the increase of our gratitude And the absence, yes, the absolute absence. Of our confidence in our works. And our marriage. And certainly. As Paul says. Boasting is excluded. I dare not even both.
About my faith. for it is God’s gift in and through Jesus Christ. And yes, whether I was converted with a marvelous transformation, which I can pinpoint day and hour, or whether I was from a child always conscious of my faith and my Whether I am a young lady at the Christian College or a Luther struggling with Romans 117, my eyes are directed to Jesus Christ alone. It is at that point, my friends, that the Reformation progresses. You have heard of Scripture alone. You have heard of faith alone. You have heard of grace alone. Add to it Christ alone. So then, my eyes, with the eyes of all others who would truly believe, are directed to Jesus Christ alone, who was justified in the Spirit. to a faith which he expressed.
And I am constrained to confess. More than I ever imagined. That my life. Is here. With him. In God. Lord, it is possible that we would underestimate. The sufficiency of our faith. And it is possible that. Your church would underestimate that sufficiency.
But Lord, draw us on now, whereby we would see the grand and glorious sufficiency of our Savior, and even the fact that our justification and the faith by which we are justified are, first of all, located in Him, even as they come to expression in us. And therefore, regardless of our experience, there is the experience of Jesus, and He is the object of our trust. Help us all that we might be mature in our walk. For we praise Christ. We praise Him even as we pray through Him.
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