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, October 30, 1994.
About this sermon
Despite the Reformation’s rediscovery of justification by faith, the modern church has drifted back into something like a new Dark Ages on the doctrine, for three specific reasons laid out here. 1 Timothy 3:16’s claim that Christ was ‘justified in the spirit’ is read as a statement about the resurrection itself. Christ’s own justification, in that sense, precedes and grounds ours.
Sermon transcript
Our scripture this morning is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 4, and we’re beginning at verse 13. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy, infallible word. I am reading this morning from the New American Standard Version. For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, Faith is made void and the promise is nullified. So the law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason, it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace, in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, a father of many nations have I made you, in the sight of him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.
In hope against hope he believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations according to that which was spoken. so shall your descendants be.” And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform.
Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now, not only for his sake only was it written that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, him who was delivered up for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.”
Now, if you would turn over to 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. This is 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness, he who was revealed in the flesh was justified in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
Father, what hope do we have in your word, even as we come to it today, that you would address us? Then, O Lord, address us. Speak to us, O God, and may we be prepared for what you have to say. May we not draw back with excuses, but rather move ahead in our faith, which you encourage.
So strengthen us by your Spirit, the Spirit of the living Christ, the Spirit who is present with us now, to bless us in the Word. Amen. What is justification? Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. Such is the response of the Westminster Shorter Catechism to that question, what is justification?
A response that stands well in the line of the great reformer himself, Martin Luther, who on October 31, 1517, nailed 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, thus beginning the Protestant Reformation. In 1950, a theological descendant of Martin Luther, a German historian, stated that ours has been the century of a genuine Luther Renaissance.
Many of us gathered here this morning may be aware of this Renaissance from a variety of angles. Popularly, a great number of people from the 1950s were made aware of this Luther Renaissance through a remarkably successful film produced on the life of the Reformers. But in addition to that 1950s movie on Luther’s wife, the twentieth-century renaissance that surrounds this man found expression in an extraordinary biography written by a Yale professor by the name of Roland Beaton and entitled Here I Stand.
This was a beautiful piece. of theological biography that amazingly communicated well to all who read it, whether highly educated or not. My own personal experience with this Luther Renaissance came at McCartney Library on the campus of Geneva College. as I stood amazed before a shelf-long set of red-bound volumes, at that time, I believe, reaching to over fifty, containing the works of Martin Luther. I became involved in the Luther Renaissance when I plunged myself into those volumes in search of an answer to the question about my own personal justification before God. How could I, a wretched sinner, stand in the presence of a holy God?
But I must say, what I learned from that plunge, and what I have learned since those days, has made it clear that my interest in Luther has been far removed from the majority interest in this century in the Reformers. I’m not concerned this morning to analyze that majority interest and why there has been this sort of rebirth of concern for Martin Luther and his life. Rather, my concern this morning is with the way in which the doctrine of justification by faith has suffered even during this so-called Lutheran Renaissance. My judgment is that despite a sort of mass interest in the man, there has been no rebirth of interest in his doctrinal commitment. In fact, there has been quite the reverse.
In the interest of putting that in front of you, I want to share a bit of history with you in order to help you see that we have entered no Renaissance at all, but instead we have entered a sort of Protestant Dark Ages. Lost is the light of the gospel that Luther rediscovered. Lost, seemingly, from the conscience of the Church, is the doctrine of justification by faith, which Luther saw at the center of that gospel. And this, amazingly, from those churches, that claim Luther as their father. From the last century, the nineteenth century, we observe three emerging convictions that strike at the heart of the doctrine of justification by faith as preached by Luther and the other Reformers.
The first conviction was that all knowledge of what lies beyond this world, all knowledge of what lies beyond this world, beyond our actual experience, beyond our sense perception, is speculative, is theoretical, and ultimately useless and illusionary. You cannot know. You cannot even be certain that there is a heaven or a hell for that matter. Therefore, to ask the question, what must I do to be saved as the Philippian jailer asked that question in Acts 16, or to ask the question, how might I, a wretched sinner, be just, be righteous in the sight of the Holy As far as those questions are concerned with life in the world to come, life in a world beyond this one, is to ask a question that is as essentially stupid as it is meaningless.
That was a conviction that swept through the Church in the nineteenth century. and we are living with the consequences. The second conviction to emerge from the last century affecting commitment to the doctrine of justification as proclaimed by Luther and the Reformers was this.
Paul, the apostle, who presents the doctrine is a secondary and inferior figure for understanding the genius of genuine Christianity. Particularly, it is Paul who, in his doctrine of justification by faith, who held on to a Jewish legal view of the relationship between God and sinners. Paul’s doctrine of justification assumes the culpability, the guiltiness of sinners before God. A guiltiness that is resolved in a legal, underscore that word, a legal resolution in which the sins of the wicked are put upon the Christ, and the righteousness of the Christ is put to the account of the wicked, and they, sinners, are declared just in the sight of God.
In no sense, so the judgment is, in no sense is this courtroom and legal setting where God is judged and sinners sit condemned in the dock appropriate for the religion that Jesus brought to this world. The only setting, so it was held, the only setting that is appropriate to that religion of Jesus is that of a family in which God is a loving Father and all humanity are brothers and sisters.
The third conviction, rising from the last century, that undermines the doctrine of justification by faith. as taught by Luther and the Reformers is bound up with these previous two. Yes, justification as taught by the Reformation assumes another world. Justification as taught by the Reformers is inherently legal in character, and posits a God who is the judge, a humanity that is sinful, and a Christ who is a supernatural substitute and advocate for sinners.
But justification also demands division. It mandates discrimination. You see, the doctrine of justification sets those who are justified over against those who are not. It makes division between those with faith and those without faith. between the Church of Jesus Christ as the assembly of the justified on the one side and the world on the other.
The overwhelming nineteenth-century verdict on such teaching as that was that it was harmful to the true goal of genuine religion. the realization of a world community in which there are no divisions at all, and where all are engaged in the task of improving our one and only world. There is no other. And that for the enjoyment and security of a common humanity. The Church, therefore, is not distinct from the world as the assembly of the justified but an appropriate and useful center from which to advance the global enterprise of world betterment, Jesus himself being an exceptional inspiration to us in pursuing that remarkable goal.
The message of justification by faith as it comes forth from the pages of the New Testament from the Apostle Paul is actually then counterproductive and destructive. To be sure, the twentieth century has witnessed the theological enterprise that has attempted to salvage the doctrine of justification and the Apostle Paul, but always with a backward glance to the nineteenth century. It has therefore concluded, this twentieth century expression of theology, it has therefore concluded that Paul and his doctrine of justification are alright. They are okay.
But only as they are made to support the doctrine of universal salvation. that teaches that everyone, everywhere, is justified whether they know it or not, or whether they even care. 20th century theology that has overrun, then, Protestantism in our time declares, we are all justified. and therefore call to a universal ministry of reconciliation in the interests of social, economic, political, and ecological reform for this world.
What should be obvious to us by now is that in our modern situation, the historic Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is lost. And where it is at least academically and intellectually understood in sophisticated arenas, it is out and out rejected. Despite the claims, therefore, we are hardly in this century experiencing a Luther Renaissance. The disappearance and rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith, with Christendom, particularly Protestant Christendom in its largest and most monolithic expression, Being unanimous in its ignorance of and contempt for this doctrine, we are in a dark ages environment in which the liberating message of the gospel of Jesus Christ lies dormant. In fact, as Dr. Hart has been reminding us this weekend, citing J. Gresham Nation as his authority, Our situation may in some ways be more desperate than that which faced Martin Luther in the sixteenth century.
But I don’t want you to despair because of this. The God who justifies sinners Yes, as Luther taught, as Luther knew, the God who justifies sinners can rescue his Church. Indeed, which is easier? For God to declare your sins to be forgiven, or for him to revive his Church so that it rises and walks?
But hear this, the bleakness of our present predicament calls for a grasp of justification by faith adequate to address that bleakness, sufficient to address that bleakness. If our dreary state perfectly exceeds the dreariness that Luther faced, it may well be that our desperation will here feel for us not only a finer and deeper hold on justification, but a fuller and more profound expression of that doctrine. This desperate situation is the opportunity for God, and into this situation his word comes, and it will have its mighty effect. But you may well ask, how is it possible to improve on Luther’s position? How is it possible to improve on his statement of the doctrine of justification by faith.
Now, it has taken me a long time in this message to get to this question, with less than adequate time left to answer it. So it is obvious that this important question will demand another message and a fuller response, which, God willing, will allow to come from this pulpit. However, in the time we have left this morning, let me suggest the direction our answer must take. I’m saying it. We can and must improve on Luther’s articulation of the doctrine of justification by faith. No, not by refuting any part of what he has already articulated, heaven forbid, but by grasping that doctrine’s glory more comprehensively and more fully.
1 Timothy 3.16 is the key.
If the Church is going to go on to a better grasp of that doctrine and a fuller appropriation of it, it is going to have to come to grips with 1 Timothy 3.16. We, as the people of God, must come to understand what Paul means when he tells us that Christ, yes, Christ, was justified in the Spirit. That is how that text reads. Christ was justified in the Spirit. Now Luther, and all of us who have been dependent upon his marvelous rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith, have been, I would judge properly, concerned with our own justification. And you find that set before us in Question and Answer 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was quoted at the beginning of this message. utterly dependent upon God’s declaration to us that we are righteous in his sight, and that by grace.
But note here that in 1 Timothy 3.16, the great apostle of justification, and this at the end of his ministry, speaks about a justification for Jesus. Now what in the world could he mean by that? We are faced here in this text with at least two problems.
One, we are not accustomed to think about Jesus as in need of a justification. After all, he was sinless. What would we judge would be the point in Jesus’ career when he experienced a justification? When would you say that justification for Jesus took place? In conclusion this morning, I want to concentrate on that second problem. When did it take place? According to the Apostle Paul, the justification of Jesus took place in the resurrection.
When Paul in 1 Timothy 3.16 says that he was justified in the Spirit, he is speaking about Jesus’ resurrection.
And this then opens up to us a fuller significance for that classic text in Romans 4.25.
He was delivered up because of our transgressions, and he was raised for our justification. He was raised on account of our justification. That’s the force of it. In other words, our justification, our personal justification, demanded his resurrection, which is, in fact, a justification for him. That is, the act of God the Father, wherein the Son was declared to be just despite the fact that he carried our sins upon. This means, then, that the deeper and more profound meaning of our justification, our personal justification, is rotated in Christ himself and in his justification.
We are justified because, by faith, we have been enabled by grace to enter into and participate in the justification of Jesus. Before I am justified, he, my Savior, has been justified. And because he was justified, I, believing in him, am now justified. And it is his justification that I partake of, for I have entered into him.
Such is the relationship between him and his people. even as his death and resurrection are understood so as to include me. Do you hear, Paul? I am crucified with Christ. Is he just speaking metaphorically here, folks? Is it just a fanciful simile? Is he just a fine theological poet? This man is serious. I am crucified with Christ. When he died, I died to sin. When he rose, I rose to righteousness. As his death and resurrection, then, are understood to include me. So also through grace and by faith does his justification include me.” And that’s what makes it such a settled matter. It isn’t simply a settled matter because God has declared something in heaven. It is a settled matter because God has done something in the earth. He raised his son from the dead.
Yes, we long for a true Lutheran Renaissance, in which the doctrine of justification by faith would powerfully assert itself again for the Church of Jesus Christ. But in these extreme of our Protestant dark ages, will we not long for an even greater expression of that doctrine that Luther so wonderfully articulated. An expression of that doctrine that shouts out that our salvation, yea, our justification, is all in Christ, who himself was justified in the Spirit by the resurrection from the dead. In fact, you who believe can be as certain of your justification as you are that Jesus rose. our God. If your church appears weak and ineffectual today, and that in heaven, have pity on us and grant us again those who will preach to us without compromise the doctrines of the Reformation and the truth that Luther saw.
But help us at all times that we would do full justice to the wide range of your word. And in this respect, O God, may you be pleased to exalt your Son even more before us as we consider the doctrine of justification by faith. That even at this point we must confess It is all of Christ, and all of it is in Him, and therefore it must be all of grace. It can be no other way. So help us, O Father, even with our confidence at flags. Help us, Father, that we would be strong in our zeal and in the certainty of our conviction. Yes, we who believe, as certain of our justification before you, despite our sins, as we are that Jesus rose again from the dead.
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