Thank you, Ron, for that, and
thanks for reading that passage, Romans 8. All right, so I hope
you guys didn't lose your place in Romans there. We're gonna
turn back to it, and we're gonna focus on one verse there. Romans
8, verse 33. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. It is God that justifies. So
we have to ask ourselves, how can God justify? Ask yourself
that question. How can God justify? Now let's
go ahead and turn over to Revelation chapter 13. I'm going to start
reading in verse 1. Revelation 13 verse 1. And I
stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of
the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns
ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the
beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were
as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion.
And the dragon gave him his power and his seat in great authority.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, And
his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after
the beast. And they worshipped the dragon,
which gave power unto the beast. And they worshipped the beast,
saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war
with him? And there was given unto him
a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was
given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened
his mouth in blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name and
his tabernacle and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given
unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.
And power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and
nations and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose
names are not written in the book of life of the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. So kind of obscure passages there. Well, they don't seem to relate
to each other so much, but that last verse, we're going to get
back to. So the topic of the sermon is God's justification,
specifically the beginning of justification. So I have another
question for you, other than how can God justify, where does
the justification of God's people begin and end? And I think the
answer is right there in that verse A, which we read. I'll
read it again. And all that dwell upon the earth
shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of
life of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Jesus
Christ, Christ Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of
the world. So that's an answer to our question
there. And I'm gonna talk to you today
on the doctrine or the teaching of eternal justification, or
as John Gill, one of my favorite theologians of the past used
to call it, justification from eternity. So for your reference,
Ron, tonight's message is titled God's Eternal Justification. And this doctrine, this teaching,
some have called it a deep doctrine, one that we shouldn't make a
big deal about, but it's a big deal to me. I think it's a very
big deal to me because of the practical implications of this
teaching, which I'll get to at the end of the sermon. You see,
the doctrine of God's justification of his people, it has a beginning. And this beginning, it's not
necessarily when one comes to believe the gospel, as is often
taught. It's not when Christ died on
the cross, but the beginning of justification, the beginning
is found in God. It's found in his purpose. And
since God is eternal, and his counsel is eternal, then God's
justification of his people is also eternal. Meaning it's before
the world even began. And before the foundation of
the world, there were many predestinated and chosen in Christ. They were
predestinated to the adoption of God's children, which is made
evident in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 and 5, which I read
earlier. I'm going to try to read again
later. And if you read in 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 9, it's evident
that God's people were given in Christ Jesus before the world
began. This means that Before the world
began, you and I, who now rest in Christ, well, we were viewed
in union with Christ. We were given to Christ, and
we were viewed in Christ. And all of this was in eternity. And it's this union with Christ,
this is the grounds for every saving benefit that we receive. There is nothing that we have
received in terms of grace and mercy that cannot be traced back
to this union. All of our salvation, it was
all purposed and declared in God's eternal counsel from before
the foundation of the world, which also includes before time
itself. And all of this purposing and
declaring of grace from God's eternal counsel included nothing
about our own personal merit or inherent worth. It didn't
include any action on our part, but strictly focused on our Lord. It's focused on the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. Now, that's not to say our salvation
doesn't comprise of many different parts. Theologians like to refer
to the term ordus salutis, which means the order of salvation. It's a Latin term. And so there's
an order to God's predestinating plan of salvation. And if you
do a Google search or look up the term Ordis Salutis on Wikipedia,
you can see a chart that shows where all the different theological
camps considered to be the order of salvation. And on this chart
on Wikipedia, you can look it up, you can see they've got different
camps. You've got the Calvinist camp,
the Armenian camp, the Lutheran camp, et cetera. I was looking
at this chart earlier this week, and not one of these camps, in
my opinion, lists justification where it belongs. Every single
camp, at least according to Wikipedia, has justification appearing in
the order of salvation sometime after we experience the gift
of faith. But that's really inaccurate, if you ask me about it. And it's
true that we experience our justification through faith, but our actual
justification before God, well, that took place in an eternity.
And I think the reason people either exclude this teaching
or flat out reject it, I think it's because it stems from a
lack of knowledge of the scriptures. And in my opinion, the doctrine
or teaching of justification, it's really a lost teaching today.
You don't hear it taught from most of the pulpits. You don't
hear it preached on the radio. Instead, you hear platitudes
and self-help being preached. But I believe that this doctrine
of justification is a core teaching of the scriptures. And sadly
enough, I don't even hear it preached in the so-called Calvinistic
circles. And I don't really like using
that term, but it's a popular label. And if you do hear it preached,
you don't usually hear it preached to the point where it's traced
back to its origin, from before the foundation of the world.
The lamb slain from the foundation of the world is hardly ever mentioned. And I believe if this teaching
is left out of the preaching and teaching, then you're left
having a watered down gospel, one that has no guidance. And
by not including this doctrine of justification, specifically
justification from eternity in preaching today, I believe that
a giant void is left in the Christian message. I think it's a void
that's so large that the space that it leaves, it
can be filled with countless errors generated by the vain
imagination of men's minds. John Gill, like I said, one of
my favorite theologians, he once wrote that the doctrine of justification
by the righteousness of Christ is one of great importance. And
the Apostle Paul spoke of it as if the essence of the gospel
lay in it. So to rephrase that into a question,
we must ask ourselves, is there a gospel if the doctrine of justification
is not included in its message? Well, John Gill answers that
question for us. He says, it is a fundamental
article of the gospel, and so much so that some have called
it the basis of Christianity. And I agree. I agree with that.
The doctrine of justification, the teaching of justification,
is the basis of Christianity. We hear Jim preach over and over
with the question, how can God be just and the justifier of
him which believeth in Christ? It's the basis of our faith.
So what exactly is it? We hear terms thrown around all
the time and sometimes we just gloss over the terms. I know
I used to do that when I was a kid reading the scriptures.
I'd be reading along in the Bible and I'd see this word predestination. What does that mean? Well, I
don't know. I'm just going to keep on reading. But we shouldn't do that because
justification, to justify, to be made just, those are biblical
terms. And it's not made up in some
theological textbook. It's right here in the scriptures.
Paul talks about this term quite a bit in the book of Romans.
In Romans 4.25, he says, Christ was delivered for our offenses
and was raised again for our justification. In the next chapter,
in verse 16, Paul wrote, in Romans 5.16, and not as it was by one
that sinned, so was the gift, for the judgment was by one to
condemnation but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification."
And two verses down, he says again, therefore, as by the offense
of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so
by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men
unto justification of life. So what does this term mean?
What does justification mean? What does it mean to justify
someone? Well, I think when you answer questions like that, when
you're presented with a question like that where you don't know,
I think it's sometimes best to start with answering in the negative
or answering what justification is not. So I'm just going to
flat out tell you what I think. Justification, it's not a feeling. It's not conversion. It's not
believing on Christ. It's not a change of our inward
heart. It's not an infusion of goodness
into our being. And I think that, to the surprise
of many, the word justified can also be applied to God Himself.
Let's take a look at Luke 7 verse 29. You don't have to turn there,
I'll read it to you. But Christ in the previous version,
previous verses of Luke chapter seven, he was talking about John
the Baptist and the people that were gathered around him there.
And he wrote in verse 29 of Luke seven, and all the publicans
that heard him and the publicans justified God being baptized
with the baptism of John. They justified God. So ask yourself,
did they make God righteous? Do they put righteousness into
God? It's kind of a ridiculous question if you ask me, because
nobody can make God righteous, can they? Now let's take a look
at 1 Timothy 3.16, and you don't have to turn there, I'll read
it to you. 1 Timothy 3.16, and without controversy,
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. It says right there that God
in the flesh of Christ was justified in the spirit. Now let's bounce
back to Luke 10, 29. And you don't need to turn there
if you don't want to. But Luke writes, but he willing
to justify himself, said unto Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
And so this is a lawyer that's talking to Jesus and asking himself,
who is my neighbor? And Jesus responds to him with
the parable of the Good Samaritan. But this lawyer wanted to justify
himself. And in Luke 6.15, Jesus said
to the Pharisees that they justify themselves before men. I'm going
to dig some more into the scriptures here. In Romans 3, verse 4, Paul
writes, God forbid, yea, let God be true, but every man a
liar, as it is written, that thou mightest be justified in
thy sayings and mightest overcome when thou art judged. And this
is written with Psalm 51 verse four in mind, which reads, against
thee the only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that
thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when
thou judges. To justify someone does not mean
to make someone righteous, but to declare someone as righteous. When the people justified God,
they constituted or declared God as righteous in their minds,
and with their mouths declared He was righteous. And that's
what it means to justify. And that is because He is righteous.
And when the self-righteous Pharisees, they wanted to justify themselves,
well, they falsely declared themselves to be righteous. They were declaring
that they were righteous in and of themselves. Their justification
was a false justification. They had deluded themselves into
thinking they were righteous. They stated they were righteous
by their seemingly good deeds, but that doesn't mean God saw
them as righteous, and that's what's important. He's the one
who matters. He's the one that matters the
most because he's the judge of all the earth. And I'll remind
you of our opening text today, Romans 8 and verse 33. Ron read
it earlier. Paul stated that it is God that
justifies. Not men, not the court system,
not churches, not denominations, but God. So I hope you understand
what it means to justify now. And if you don't, we can talk
after the service. But it means to declare righteous. And then
there are also different aspects or perspectives of this word
justification. And Paul speaks of these different
aspects. And I think the first perspective is seen in Romans
3, verse 24. And you can go ahead and turn
there if you like. Romans 3, verse 24. One of my
favorite passages in the whole Bible. Paul writes, being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. To be justified freely by his grace in Christ means
without any cause or action being performed by the person that
is being justified. Now turn over a couple chapters
to chapter five and look at verse one, and this is another aspect. It's written from the perspective
of the one being justified, the one being declared righteous
by God, which will be us. Therefore, Romans 5 verse 1,
therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Or in other words, we experience
God's justification of our souls through faith, and that faith
is alone. Skip to verse 9. much more than being now justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." Okay,
now that's an actual time where we're justified. That's Christ's
death on the cross. We're justified by His blood.
That's just another perspective of justification. It's the time
where Christ procured our justification in fulfilling the covenant He
made with His Father and the Spirit to justify His people
through His blood. But let's go back even further.
Let's trace our justification back to the origin, back to the
beginning, back to its first cause. Where does justification
first appear? Does it appear in time? Or does
it appear first in eternity? John Gill. Oh, I can't say enough
about the guy. I really like him. But he wrote
the following. He says, justification is a sentence
conceived in the mind of God as a decree from eternity. This
justification of us believers originates in the mind of God. That is, it was an eternal and
imminent act. The word imminent means in the
mind. And this justification of ours, it was in the mind of
God. God is eternal. as He is eternity itself. I don't
have time to get into the scriptures on that, but I'd be happy to
talk to you all about that later, too. Time itself flows from the
mind of God because He is transcendent of all time and all of space
itself. In another sermon I preached
last year, I explained how God does not change, that is, He
is immutable. It means our justification originates
in the mind and purpose of God, and not after we fell into sin
in time. God didn't change his mind about
us. He didn't change his mind when
Christ died on the cross, nor after we were brought to repentance
and faith. Our justification from God originates
in eternity and the eternal covenant of grace. And this line of thought
Having received all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus from
before the foundation of the world, which we read earlier,
this line of thoughts almost always immediately met with skepticism
and criticism in the Christian world, the so-called Christian
world. And I've even seen sovereign
grace preachers who cannot understand this call what I'm talking about
here heresy, because they just can't understand it. Some of
them have even broken off fellowship with this church over it, believe
it or not. They can't wrap their minds around this line of thought
and reasoning. They ask us, well, how in the
world can God justify us before we've sinned, before Christ atoned
for our sins, and before we demonstrated faith in Christ? Well, I'll answer
their question with a question. How is it that Christ is said
to be the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world?
We read that earlier, Revelation 13, 8. How is that possible?
For me, the answer is rather simple, at least to my mind.
Christ, the Lamb, was foreordained before the foundation of the
world. He was the perfect Lamb. He was without spot or blemish. He was the perfect substitute.
And His foreordination to die for us was not after man had
sinned either. We've heard it said from this
pulpit many, many times. Before there ever was a sinner,
there was a savior. Before there ever was a world
created, there was a union between Christ and his elect people.
Before the world, from the very beginning in God's eternal purpose,
in God's eternal covenant of grace and redemption, And it
was there, in God's mind, in His purpose, the elect of God
are seen, constituted, and declared as being in the Son, Jesus Christ
the Lord, and therefore justified. It is there that God the Son
became the surety of all of His people. We see this in Hebrews
7, verse 22. Let me read it to you. Hebrews
7, 22. By so much was Jesus made a surety
of a better testament. Jesus, he was the answer to our
sin debt. He made himself to be held to
account for his people so that all that was required of us as
debtors would be satisfied and paid in full. We read about surety
ship of Christ in Genesis chapter 43 in verse 8 when Judah pledged
himself as a surety for Benjamin. All of us here tonight, we're
God's little Benjamins. We're little Benjamins to be
brought safely into an everlasting relationship with the Father.
So if Christ was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the
world, that means the Father viewed Christ's atonement as
our surety as having happened, His death, before it even happened. Speaking of sureties, This was
interesting. Solomon warns that it's not good
to become a surety for a stranger. You can read that in Proverbs
chapter 6. But why does he say that? Well,
if the debtor fails, then the surety's got to pay. Imagine
walking up to a stranger down at the Kroger or Walmart or at
the car dealership. And let's say you're at the car
dealership the stranger wants to get a loan. And you just walk
in and say, yeah, I'll agree to cosign for that loan for you.
Well, if that stranger doesn't pay back the loan, you're the
one that has to pay back the loan. That's why it's not good
to be a surety for a stranger. But in the covenant of grace,
our Lord knew there was no way that we could pay back our debt.
Yet he still agreed to be our surety. But we're no strangers
to Christ. He counts us as his brothers
and sisters. We are given to him. The Father counts us as
his children. Most of us, we might co-sign
a loan for those we hold most dear to us. Maybe not everyone,
everybody in our family, but we might consider co-signing
a loan for our children, our sons and daughters, our mothers
and fathers, Definitely you would for your wife, but we wouldn't
do it for a stranger, would we? Not unless we were Donald Trump
and had that kind of money, but I don't think I'd do it even
then. But all of our sins, every last one of them, they were imputed
to our surety, Christ. In other words, they were charged
to Him. He was made to pay our sin debt.
They were imputed to him, our Lord, our surety. And our sins,
they've never been charged to us. We're racking up a debt,
but we don't have to pay the bill. Somebody already did for
us. And our sins will never be imputed
to us, ever. My old standby writer, Augustus
Toplady, he once wrote the following. Thou hast my discharge procured,
and freely in my place endured, the whole of wrath divine, payment
God will not twice demand, first at my bleeding surety's hand,
and then again at mine. And God, who viewed all of this
from eternity, he saw it as already complete and finished. It was
done and finished in the mind of God before the world even
began. Remember, God doesn't view the
events of this world simply as an observer. He's not watching
things and changing his mind based on what's happening around
us. He's immutable. He changes not. His mind does
not change. And we've been safe and secure
in him from eternity and for all eternity. And all the things
that he's decreed that will happen throughout history, They've already
been done, good is done from our Lord's perspective. And this
includes our salvation and our justification. Jesus, he's always
been our surety, and hence our justification has always been
sure. So to further answer the critics
of this teaching of justification from eternity, or their question
on how can God justify before creation, Remember how Paul said
that Abraham was the father of many nations even before it happened?
Look at Romans 4 and verse 17. You don't have to turn there,
I'll read it to you. As it is written, I have made thee a father
of many nations before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth
the dead and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
Abraham was without child and had a barren life. But in the
mind of God, and enough so with enough confidence, he was the
father. He could say that Abraham was the father of many nations.
That's because God is all-powerful and sovereign. Everything he's
decreed will come to pass with absolute certainty. And he's
so powerful, he doesn't need to wait to see his decree played
out in time. It's as good as done. Because
God is transcendent of time. He sees all of time at once.
I like to think of eternity in time like this. Imagine God looking
over the entire history of time. He sees this creation. He sees
Adam's fall into sin. He sees Christ dying for his
people. And he sees us being born and
being brought to faith. And he sees this all at once
because he decreed it. He's not subject to the change
of time. He's not changed by the things of time. Time itself,
if you look it up in a dictionary, it's going to be defined as a
change from one moment to the next. But not God. He's timeless. He doesn't change. That's what
it means to be timeless, not to change. He creates time, but
he isn't changed by it. Did you ever see that movie,
Back to the Future? or the main character, Marty, travels into
the future. Well, if you could build a time
machine, you could not escape the attention of an all-seeing
lord. If you could go back in time,
you're not escaping his presence. He sees all of time, all from
eternity, which is his inhabitants. And eternity is not an extension
of time either. And I've heard many Christian
writers and speakers use the term eternity past or eternity
future to try to explain before the foundation of the world and
heaven and whatnot. But in my opinion, these terms
are really misnomers. Time in all actuality cannot
extend into eternity. Everything is timeless in eternity.
We only speak of so-called eternity past or eternity future because
our feeble minds which are subject to time, have difficulty describing
something that is timeless. So, I like to imagine all of
time laid out before God, sort of like on a ruler. This is a
little analogy I've kind of come up with in my mind, where he
sees the creation of the world at the beginning of the ruler,
and at the end of the ruler, he sees all of us being glorified
in heaven. And in the middle of the ruler,
it's Christ dying for our sins. And he's looking down on this
ruler and he sees it all at once. It's a very crude demonstration
of what I think it means for God to view the events of time
from eternity. But, you know, it's hard to talk
about the timelessness of God without using timely words to
describe his timelessness. God is so much bigger than our
feeble minds can comprehend. My mind just boggles trying to
think of who God is, and what he is, and all of his attributes.
And when you sit and contemplate on them, my mind just blows up,
just trying to even comprehend it. How can us as creatures describe
the Creator without the perspective of the Creator? Imagine you've
got a little child, or a pet dog, or a pet cat. How could
they talk about our perspective of them? You know, I had to take a cat
to the vet today. Well, the cat doesn't know what's going on. Because that pet has such a limited
view of the world and a limited view of its master. And the same
is true for us and our Creator. We can only go by to try to understand
our Lord by what's written in His Word. But to get back on topic, there's
neither past nor future in eternity. There is, however, an order,
a logical order of God's decrees, but order and planning doesn't
necessitate time. There is an order to His plans,
but those orders are not necessarily in relation to time. So the decrees
of God from eternity, while eternity may be timeless, nevertheless
it's very real. And our justification, while
it is from eternity, doesn't make it less real from God's
perspective. It's so real that God's will or purpose to justify
his people from eternity is the justification of his people.
His purpose is that strong, so sure and so strong that nothing
can be done to change the outcome. God himself, theoretically, he
cannot change the outcome because he said that he doesn't change.
He's not going to change his mind at a later date. He's not even in a later date.
He's in eternity, directing all things, all the things of time. And when he decreed our salvation,
it was as good as done. It also follows that our purpose,
that God's purpose to adopt us is our adoption. His purpose
to sanctify us is our sanctification. His purpose to glorify us in
His Son is our glorification. In God's mind and purpose, we
are glorified. We haven't yet experienced it
yet. We haven't yet experienced glorification, but just like
our justification, it's as good as done. The accomplishment of
our glorification is sure, and I'm so certain that it cannot
and will not fail because God has purposed it in his eternal
decree. We read about it in the scriptures. We're already glorified
in God's sight, although we have yet to experience it. And furthermore,
you could say that God's purpose to elect us to salvation, that
was our election. God's will to save, that was
our salvation. God's will that the Son would
die in time, guaranteed that Christ would die. And God's will
to justify his people is our justification. And that statement
right there is going to be met with objections by people everywhere.
And I've seen many skeptics of this teaching. I've seen the
topic hotly debated before by free wheelers and people online
that like to call themselves Calvinists. They talk about what
they call the heresy of eternal justification. That's because
their minds cannot comprehend an eternal God. One that is timeless
and immutable. They can't conceive of justification
as an eternal and imminent act of God. I think it's because
those that argue against justification being from eternity get hung
up on the term of justification itself. They're only familiar
with the experiential aspect of justification. That is what
we experience by faith. But in my opinion, I think what
is really happening is they just have a wrong understanding of
God. They don't understand who he is. They don't know what his
inhabitants is. They don't understand that he
inhabits eternity. Indeed, that he is eternity.
And that all of his purpose flows from eternity. In all actuality,
they have a God that is affected by the things of time. They have
a God sitting somewhere in the heavens, watching the things
of the earth play out, and then making decisions based on what
happens in time. The avowed free willer, for example,
they think their God is watching our lives, watching us go through
life, and then seeing faith in us, and then saving us because
God saw our faith. That, quite frankly, is not only
a false understanding of salvation, but it's also a false understanding
of God. And even so-called Calvinists,
the reformed persuasion, they look at it almost in the
same way sometimes, or a good chunk of the time. They see a
God in the heavens watching the events of time, and God sees
our faith, and they say it's at that exact moment when we
demonstrate faith that we are now justified in God's sight.
Their view of God is not much different than the free will
or understanding, if you ask me. They still have a God that
changes based on what's happening. And so I would say the two systems
of thought are not dissimilar. They're very similar to each
other. They both have a God that's dependent upon things happening
in time before he can justify. So if you strip eternity, or
the true meaning of eternity from God, and replace its meaning
with one that defines eternity as something that is an extension
of time, well, I think you're left with a shell of a God. You're
left with a false God, to be frank with you. And not the God
of Daniel 435, who says, and all the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in
the army heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and
none can stay his hand or say unto him what doest thou." I
know that's a favorite verse of Jim's. And I know I started out this
evening service with Ephesians 1 and we read it again, we read
it on Sunday night, but I'm going to ask you to turn there again
just to let it sink in. And we'll start in verse 3. Ephesians
1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. According as he has
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love. having predestinated
us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will. Take a look at that verse one
again. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. All spiritual blessings. Would
you not suppose that justification is a spiritual blessing? And
did we not have all spiritual blessings in Christ before the
foundation of the world as verse two states? And isn't eternity from before
the foundation of the world? It's pretty plain to see from
this passage alone that we've been justified from before the
foundation of the world. That's my opinion, that we've
been justified from eternity. Before we were born or even committed
sin against our Lord, we were justified. And we read in 2 Thessalonians
2.13 and 2 Timothy 1.9 that we were given grace before the foundation
of the world. Why would we not think justification
was a part of that? And let's think back to the saints
of the Old Testament. Were they justified before Christ
came into the world and died for their sins? Some people say
no. But Romans 4, Paul says in Romans
4, he says that Abraham was justified. And if you look in Romans 8,
Noah found favor in the eyes of God. The only way they could
be justified was by Christ's death and satisfaction on the
cross, long after the events of their time had passed. Yet
these saints of God were justified by Christ. So, I believe that the scriptures
are confident in saying that we're justified because Christ
had a view to that future event of Christ dying and viewed that
event as it had already happened. That's why he could say, you're
justified, Abraham. You're justified, Noah. It was
a done deal in the mind of God. And then I love this verse, Jeremiah
31.3. It says that the Lord loved us
with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness,
he has drawn thee. God doesn't love the wicked,
but he loves the righteous. And the righteous have always
been seen as righteous in God's sight. In Ephesians 1, Paul states
that this love was manifested in Christ's atoning sacrifice
on the cross. Our justification, it's found
in the mind and the purpose of God. It finds its substance in
Jesus Christ, the lamb slain from before the foundation of
the world. Our justification and no doubt in my mind, it's
from eternity. So I spent the last several minutes
here going into a very short, but not nearly exhaustive enough
of a study on this topic. So why did I do it? It's because
I believe this teaching comes with some very real and important
implications, as well as practical applications to our lives. It's
not just a Bible study. When we read the Scriptures,
we have to say, well, what are the implications for me? What
are the practical applications for me? That's what we should
do every time we sit down to read, even just a simple Bible
story from the Old Testament. We need to see, how does that
apply to us? And so this doctrine, it's special
to me. And I've talked about it a lot
over the years. I've written about it. And it's also historically
considered to be very important, too. Martin Luther. Martin Luther
himself said that justification is the article by which the church
stands and falls. Luther, of course, is most famous
for his stand against the oppression and the errors of the Roman Catholic
Church. In particular, he's most famous for his stance on justification
by faith alone, not works. Which means justification by
faith means we come to our knowledge of our justification before God in Christ through faith and faith
alone. and nothing but faith. It's not
through our works that we become aware of what Christ has done
for us. And it's critical that we understand this. For salvation
were to come to us, or knowledge of our salvation were to come
to us in any other way, it's not a true saving knowledge. If you think you can earn your
way into a saving knowledge with Christ, you're sorely mistaken.
Yet, sadly, so many people today still think they can earn their
justification, just like those Pharisees. But I don't think
Luther really went far enough on justification. He got the
experiential aspect of it down. He got it down pat, I think.
And he managed to explain our perspective of justification,
I think, quite well. But he didn't get into too much
from God's perspective. the teaching of justification
from eternity is really about God's perspective. And it's such
a sweet revelation of grace to me to know that our Lord Jesus
Christ is the Lord our righteousness from all of eternity. It brings
me such joy. The implication for me is I know
I'm accepted and beloved from before the foundation of the
world. In and of myself, I'm nothing but a giant ball of sin. But before the world began, I've
been accepted. I've been seen as justified. I was accepted when Christ died
on the cross for me. I was already accepted. I was
accepted before I was even born. or heard the call of the gospel.
I was never in danger of falling into hell. My surety had already
paid my sin debt. And I'm accepted even when my
heart waxes cold in unbelief and wanes in this fallen world.
And this acceptance as a righteous person before the Lord, it's
not gonna change. The Lord's not gonna stop loving
me. He's not gonna stop accepting me. God's view of me is immutable
and not subject to any change. And I have no worries about falling
out of favor with Him. His mind is set like a stone.
The events of time cannot change His mind. And that's exactly
because the events of time are happening exactly as He decreed
them to happen. I'm accepted in God's Son. You
are accepted in God's Son if you believe. I'm righteous. If you believe you're righteous,
I'm accepted. I'm justified. I'm pardoned. And I'm accepted and holy as
Christ is holy. I've been blessed with every
spiritual blessing in the land slain from the foundation of
the world. And because of this, nobody, no corrupt judge can
charge my soul with sin. And that's exactly what this
teaching on justification for eternity means to me. And to
me, that gives me such sweet relief. And that's the main practical
application of that teaching to me. But I'm going to close
the sermon out now. And you know, the last couple
sermons I've had, I can't seem to avoid reciting a poem to you. So I've got a little poem I'll
read and then we'll close out the service. All right. It's not very good, but it explains
how I feel. As time goes on, I've learned
to see the many facets of justification you see. From God's perspective,
it starts in eternity where his will to justify his people has
always been free. He loves his people, we understand.
And his eyes were already complete and grand. For God sees all things
from start to end. And in his mind, we were justified,
my friend. Then Christ came, walked on earth's
floor. His death and resurrection, our
souls he bore. For all believers, this is justification's
pinnacle. And we obtain salvation from
Christ alone, the miracle. At conversion, justification
we receive by faith, it brings peace to our conscience, assurance
in place. It's not our faith, but Christ
on the cross, the object of our justification without any loss.
On judgment day, we'll be declared righteous before all. A day of
glory will answer the call to inherit the kingdom from the
start prepared and receive the crown of righteousness, God's
love shared. These are the different views,
the aspects of truth, of God's justification that we hold with
proof. May we always remember in all
we do, that our justification is found in Christ alone, forever
true. So, thanks for listening to me
tonight, I really appreciate that. And we're going to close out
tonight's service with a hymn. It is the Solid Rock. Let's see
what number is that. That is number 272.