How Can We Be Just Before God? This question, expressed by Job (9:2), has crossed the mind of every responsible soul at some time in his life. Much human effort is spent seeking to be just before the great Creator and Judge of all. Thousands of books have probed the question and every religious activity reflects man’s urgent need for acceptance by God. Although man can know that God exists without a Bible, thorough observation of nature (Rom. 1:19-20), he cannot know the answer to our question apart from divine revelation. Only in the gospel of Christ is God’s plan for making man just revealed (Rom. 1:16-17). Men in every age have sought justification in numerous ways. But only those who have sought it in God’s appointed way have been satisfied. I. What Does It Mean To Be Just? “Justify” means that “God treats the sinner as if he had not been a sinner at all” (William Barclay). He does not treat us as sinners deserve to be treated, but as good men deserve to be treated. Justification is the right relationship between God and man and when we are justified, we enter that relationship. II. Things That Cannot Justify a Sinner: No man is justified because of his race. Paul affirms in Galatians 5:6 that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision (Jewishness) or uncircumcision (Gentileness) availeth anything...” This was hard for the Jews to accept, because many of them firmly believed that they would be saved solely on the basis of their kinship to Abraham (Matt. 3:9). The rabbis taught their people that not one son of Abraham would be lost. The Jew who disputed with Justin Martyr in his Dialogue With Trypho wrote, “They who are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh shall in any case, even if they be sinners and unbelieving and disobedient towards God, share in the eternal kingdom” (William Barclay, The Letter to the Romans, p. 35). Even to this day, some have thought that their racial or national group was somehow special to God. Not so! All have been convicted of sin (Rom. 3:9) and all must be justified apart from race (Gal. 6:15). The works of law will justify no man before God. “If there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law” (Gal. 3:21). For 1500 years, Jewish people sought to gain a right standing with God by keeping the law. Not one of them succeeded. God intended that all men for all ages should learn from their experience that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20). The law could identify sin (Rom. 7:7). It could condemn sinners (Rom. 7:9-11). But it could never save a man from sin he had already engaged in. Even the law of Christ, if we were expected by our own efforts to keep it perfectly, would condemn us all as lawbreakers. No one save Christ has ever kept God’s law perfectly. Man under law could only be condemned. He desperately needed divine help if he would be saved. The blood of sacrificial animals could never take away sins so that a man could be just (Heb. 10:4). The thousands, yea millions of bulls, goats and lambs offered by worshipers could do no more than postpone the inevitable judgment of God. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus (I John 1:7). Man cannot be saved by works of his own righteousness (Tit. 3:5). Desperately, men have toiled to gain a right standing with the God they have offended. Great monuments throughout the world demonstrate this vain effort to earn God’s favor. Endless prayers and painful rituals, pilgrimages and fastings have no power to purge sin from the soul. When laid beside our debt of sin, all our righteousness are as a polluted garment (Is. 64:6). (The Hebrew makes this even more vivid, it suggest menstrual cloths. Edward Young, The Book of Isaiah, Vol. 3, p. 496). One cannot purchase pardon with wealth and gifts. First, God has no need for such. “For the world is his and the fulness thereof” (Ps. 50:12b). Silver and gold are not the currency of heaven. Paul reflects this truth by saying, “If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing” (I Cor. 13:3). Many a man who staked his hope for eternity on gifts to churches and charities will stand disappointed before God in judgment. As the hymnist put it, “In my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Human wisdom is incapable of attaining justification. While the Jews vainly sought it by the law, Gentiles were seeking righteousness by human wisdom and philosophy. Paul wrote the Corinthians, “For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, through its wisdom knew not God” (I Cor. 1:21). The greatest minds of human history wrestled with man’s problems of sins and alienation. In the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers, their failure is manifest. “God’s thought are not man’s thoughts, neither are his ways our ways” (Is. 55:8). The way that seems right to man is commonly the way of death (Prov. 16:25). Only Christ has the “words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Will-worship and asceticism are powerless to save (Col. 2:21-23). Men are ever founding new types of churches and instituting new concepts of worship, hoping to draw nigh unto God. Futility is written upon all of these efforts, sincere though the worshipers may be. Only those who do the will of the Father will be accepted on judgment day (Matt. 7:21). Tragically, millions of souls have pursued righteousness in ways that appealed to their own will, but not to God’s will. III. What Doth Jehovah Require of Thee? The answer to our question is the great theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans. “The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17 KJV). We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24-25).Since man is totally unable to saved himself, it was necessary that the great Jehovah extend grace unto him. Grace means unearned and unmerited favor. Now we can be saved even though we sin and fall short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23), not by our merits, but by the merits of Christ’s death for our sins (I Cor. 15:3). But what are the conditions for reception of this great gift of grace? Paul puts it, “By grace have ye been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8). Correctly understood, we can proclaim salvation by faith with no compromise to the cult of faith only. To the apostles, saving faith is “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Paul calls it the “obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). Because we believe in Christ, we gladly do his every wish. We repent and are baptized and he freely grants us remission of sins (Acts 2:38). We would never think that we had thus earned our forgiveness. We worship and serve him all of our days out of love and devotion (John 14:15), but not because we think it would outweigh any sin. When we sin (as we all do daily), we can call upon that grace once more and as we confess those sins, his blood cleanses us (I John 1:7). This is salvation by grace through faith. Rather than deny the role of Christian baptism in man’s salvation, it affirms it. Hear Paul: “When the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward man appeared, not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy (grace) he saved us by the washing of regeneration (baptism) and the renewing (gift) of the Holy Spirit...” (Tit. 3:5; compare Acts 2:38).
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:21:49 +0000
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