LAST TIME, we established the Bible’s teaching about ‘credited righteousness’. We learnt that when we put our faith in the atoning sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for our eternal salvation and submit to Him as Lord – then God not only forgives our sins past present and future, BUT ALSO credits us with the righteous (perfect) life of Christ. This enables God to accept us, reconciling us to Himself without contravening His own justice – for He cannot ignore sin. This double act of forgiveness and crediting, we call our JUSTIFICATION – which means being declared ‘not guilty’ before God. So we know God’s verdict on us on the Day of Judgement NOW! Our justification is through faith alone and by God’s Grace alone.  

It follows then that we are not saved on the basis of our own goodness or ‘good works’ (Rom.11:6, Eph.2:8-9, Gal.3:10-14, Phil.3:9). Compared with Christ’s perfection our good deeds are worthless (Is.64:6). There is nothing we can add to Christ!  

But what about the teaching of James? Christians are often worried by what he says - for example 2:24 ‘You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone’. But James’ concern here is not with how we are saved, but that our salvation has results in our lives. He is saying in effect that if we claim to have faith in Christ but it does not SHOW in our lives then our faith is false:  ‘faith without works is dead’ 2:14,17. He is quite right. Our lives, while founded on faith, must demonstrate, what we might call, ‘faith-obedience’.  Heb.11:8 ‘By faith Abraham…obeyed and went…’ The fact that ‘faith’ is the essential requirement is demonstrated by the thief on the Cross. He trusted in Christ but had no time to live a life of obedience. But Christ still said ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). The thief could not earn forgiveness and neither can we. The whole of James’ letter is concerned with authentic Christian living. Listen to John Stott ‘For the proper response to the gospel is faith, indeed faith alone. Yet a true and living faith in Jesus Christ…… leads inevitably into a lifetime of obedience.’ (His commentary on Romans p.52).  

OUR JUSTIFICATION IS AN EVENT; it takes place ONCE AND FOR ALL when we put our faith in Christ. But the life of obedience that grows afterwards is a process that continues to our death - and will never be completed. This PROCESS is called OUR SANCTIFICATION. John 17:17-19, 1 Thess.4:3a and 5:23.  

But how can this sanctifying process possibly happen, knowing our weakness? Again God provides the answer ..…  

In His Grace, in addition to our FORGIVENESS and CREDITED RIGHTEOUSNESS, God give us a THIRD GIFT – THE HOLY SPIRIT.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to Christ, to guide and empower us for our sanctification and to deliver us to heaven.  

SANCTIFICATION has two meanings (1) to be set apart for God [like the sacred utensils in the OT temple] – see Eph.1:13,14. This is an event. (2) the process by which we undergo life-long moral transformation to make us more like Christ. This is the work of the Holy Spirit with which we must co-operate Rom.12:1,2; Thess.2:13 and 1 Pet.1:2.2 (more on this when we study the Holy Spirit).  

In talking about living the Christian life we must not think we are moving away from the Gospel. In Rom.1:16 Paul says ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes …’ In Paul’s writings ‘salvation’ does not mean just ‘conversion’. It means being saved from the penalty of sin (conversion) being saved from the power of sin (sanctification) and being saved from the presence of sin (going to heaven – our glorification). We never move on from the gospel: Christ’s death and resurrection is the power for it all. At this point, let’s clearly differentiate between justification and sanctification …

SPIRITUAL HEALTH WARNING: There is a serious trap in our thinking we can sometimes fall into - either out of confusion, or because deep in our psyche we naturally want to retain some vestige of earning our way to heaven. We think like this … BUT ITS WRONG!

We think we move on from justification to sanctification and then to glorification, as it were in sequence. Or we may even believe that we can add to our justification by the good deeds that we do in God's power.  But do you see how this way of thinking tends to suggest that it is our sanctification that takes us into heaven? In other words, in this way of thinking, how we perform in the Christian life (or God's acquittal plus our performance) is STILL the basis for our acceptance into heaven. But this is quite wrong. It is biblical to think as follows:

We must insist that it is our justification - our once and for all - acquittal by God - that carries us through and gains us entrance into heaven, with absolutely no contribution from us! Do we seriously think that anything we could add by way of our imperfect good living could make what Christ did perfectly more effective? So the Gospel is the dynamic for our living as well as our conversion.

We must NOT leave our justification behind and look for some other basis by which to live. We live our Christian lives under the protection of our justification.

With acknowledgements to Rev Geoffrey Paxton

YOUR NOTES

  Re-read Rom.3:21-30

In the commentaries you will find pages of closely argued analysis: I have distilled them here.  

James’s letter is thought to be the notes of a sermon – given very passionately.