Justification by Faith

[Excerpt from the sermon, Justification by Faith, by J. Gregory Machen]

 

The beginning of true nobility comes when a man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men and becomes interested in the judgment of God.

 

But if we can gain that much insight: if we have become interested in the judgment of God, how shall we stand in that judgment? How shall we become right with God? The most obvious answer is, By obeying God's law, by being what God wants us to be. There is absolutely nothing wrong in theory about the answer; the only trouble is that for us it does not work. If we had obeyed the law of God, if we were what God wants us to be, all would no doubt be well; we could approach the judgment seat of God and trust simply in God's just recognition of the facts. But, alas, we have not obeyed God's law, but transgressed it in thought, word and deed; and far from being what God wants us to be we are stained and soiled with sin. The stain is not merely on the surface; it is not a thing which can be wiped off by a damp cloth; but it permeates the recesses of our souls. And the clearer be our understanding of God's law, the deeper becomes our despair. Some men seek a refuge from condemnation by a low view of the law of God; they limit the law to external commands and by obeying those commands they hope to buy God's favor. But the moment a man gains a view of the law as it is— especially as it is revealed in the words and example of Jesus—at that moment he knows that he is undone. If our being right with God depends upon anything that is in us, we are without hope.

 

But another way into God's presence has been opened, and the opening of that way is set forth in the gospel. We deserve eternal death; we deserve exclusion from God's righteous presence; but the Lord Jesus took upon Himself all the guilt of our sins and died instead of us on the cross. Henceforth the law's demands have been satisfied for us by Christ, its terror for us is gone, and clothed no longer in our righteousness but in the righteousness of Christ we stand without fear as Christ would stand without fear before the judgment seat of God. Men say that that is an intricate theory of the atonement; but surely the adjective is misplaced. It is mysterious, but it is not intricate; it is wonderful, but it is so simple that a child can understand.

 

No doubt the application of this redeeming work of Christ to the individual soul is mysterious enough. It is far beyond the wisdom and power of man. It is not a thing that can be effected by human reasoning or human effort; the beginning of the Christian life is not an achievement but an experience. Those who have passed through that experience are new creatures; they wonder at their former blindness; they wonder how there ever could have been a time when, with the scoffing world, they did not understand. The beginning of the Christian life is not an act of man but a wonderful act of the Spirit of God.

 

But it is accompanied by a conscious act of man; it is accompanied by the act of faith. Faith is not a meritorious work; the New Testament never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through his faith. Faith is the means which the Holy Spirit uses to apply to the individual soul the benefits of Christ's death.

 

And faith is a very simple thing; it simply means the receiving of a gift; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning our way into God's presence we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free. Such is the doctrine—let us not be afraid of the word—such is the doctrine of justification by faith.

 

That has been a liberating doctrine; to it is due most of the freedom that we possess today, and if it is abandoned freedom will soon depart. If we are interested in what God thinks of us, we shall not be deterred by what men think; the very desire for justification before God makes us independent of the judgments of men. And if the very desire for justification is liberating, how much more the attainment of it! The man who has been justified by God, the man who has accepted as a free gift this condition of rightness with God, is not a man who hopes that possibly, with due effort, if he does not fail, he may win through to become a child of God. But he is a man who has already become a child of God. If our being children of God depended in slightest measure upon ourselves, we could never be sure that we had attained the high estate. But it does not depend upon ourselves; it depends only upon God. It is not a reward that we have earned but a gift that we received. A hard battle indeed lies before us. This faith of ours, if we be true Christians, is a faith that works; and it is a faith that fights—against sin. But we begin the battle not with God as our reward, but with God as our ally. There is the high liberty of the Christian man. Let us not throw our liberty away; let us not descend into the bondage of dependence upon ourselves, let us not descend into the hard bondage of agnostic Modernism. But having received the gospel— this great Magna Charta of Christian liberty—let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.

 

God Transcendent, J. Gregory Machan, Justification by Faith, 1921