Justified by Faith

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ROMANS 5:1

For some thirteen years, on Friday evenings, Martyn Lloyd-Jones expounded the Epistle to the Romans at Westminster Chapel. He began in 1955 and was still in the fourteenth chapter when illness ended his ministry there in 1968. The sermons, published after his death in fourteen volumes, are perhaps the fullest exposition of the epistle ever preached from an English pulpit. At the centre of them all lies the doctrine he regarded as the heart of the gospel: justification by faith alone.

The question behind all questions

He liked to put it in the form of Job’s ancient question.

How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? JOB 25:4

That, he insisted, is the most important question a human being can ask. Not how can I be happy, or how can I find meaning, or how can I overcome my problems — but how can I, a sinner, stand before a holy God? Every religion and every philosophy offers some answer. Most of them, in the end, say the same thing: do your best, and hope. The gospel says something utterly different.

What justification is

Lloyd-Jones was careful, as a physician is careful, to define his terms. Justification, he taught, is a legal or forensic word. It does not mean to make a man righteous in his character; that is the work of sanctification, which follows. It means to declare a man righteous in his standing before the law. It is the verdict of the Judge.

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. ROMANS 3:24

How can a holy God declare a sinner righteous without ceasing to be holy? That is the problem Paul raises and answers in Romans 3:21–26, a passage to which Lloyd-Jones devoted an entire volume, Atonement and Justification. The answer is the cross. God set forth His Son as a propitiation — a sacrifice that turns away His own wrath — so that He might be both just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus. Our sins were reckoned to Christ and punished in Him. His righteousness is reckoned to us and received by faith.

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. ROMANS 3:26

He loved to point out that justification is complete and final. It is not a process, not a gradual improvement, not something that fluctuates from day to day. The believer who trusted Christ this morning is as fully justified as the apostle Paul. The verdict has been given, and it will never be reversed.

Faith is not a work

He guarded carefully against a subtle error. Faith is the instrument by which we receive justification, but it is not the ground of it. We are not justified because of our faith, as if faith were a new kind of good work that God rewards. We are justified through faith, on the ground of Christ’s work alone. Faith contributes nothing; it simply receives. A beggar’s hand does not earn the gift that is placed in it.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. EPHESIANS 2:8

This mattered pastorally. Many anxious Christians, he observed, are forever examining their faith, wondering whether it is strong enough or real enough to save them. They have made faith into a work. The remedy is to stop looking at their faith and look at Christ. It is not the strength of faith that saves, but the strength of the One in whom it rests.

The test of true preaching

One of the best-known points in his exposition of Romans concerns chapter six. Paul, having set out justification by grace in chapter five, immediately anticipates an objection: shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. ROMANS 6:1–2

Lloyd-Jones drew from this a bold conclusion. If Paul’s preaching of justification could be misunderstood in that way, then true preaching of justification will always be liable to the same misunderstanding. If a man’s preaching of the gospel never exposes him to the charge that he is making sin easy, he has probably not preached the gospel of free grace at all; he has preached salvation by works with a little grace added. It is one of his most searching tests, and it has troubled many a preacher since.

He did not, of course, think the objection was right. Paul’s answer is God forbid, and the rest of Romans 6 shows why: the justified man has died with Christ and been raised to new life; he cannot go on living as before. But the doctrine itself must be preached so freely that the objection arises.

Peace with God

The fruit of justification, Paul says, is peace with God. Lloyd-Jones distinguished this from the peace of God, a feeling of calm that may come and go. Peace with God is a state, a settled relationship. The war is over. The enmity is ended. The believer stands in grace.

By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ROMANS 5:2

His volume on Romans 5, which he called Assurance, dwells on this at length. He was convinced that many Christians live far below their privileges because they have never grasped that their justification is settled. They are still, in their hearts, on trial. They need to hear, again and again, that there is therefore now no condemnation.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROMANS 8:1

Where care is needed

It is possible to hold the doctrine of justification with perfect orthodoxy and to be unchanged by it — to use it as a pillow rather than a foundation. Lloyd-Jones warned against this as sharply as he warned against legalism. Justification is never alone; the one God justifies He also sanctifies. The reader who rejoices in this chapter should read the chapters that follow, on union with Christ and on working out salvation, as its necessary companions.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Answer Job’s question in your own words, in writing, without using any religious jargon.

2. Ask whether you have been treating your faith as a work — examining it anxiously instead of looking to Christ.

3. Read Romans 3:21–26 slowly three times this week. Underline every word that speaks of what God has done.

4. If you are a preacher or teacher, ask whether anyone has ever misunderstood you as making sin easy. What might that tell you?

5. Each morning this week, before anything else, say to yourself: There is therefore now no condemnation. Then live the day in that light.

A PRAYER

Righteous Father, I could never stand before You in my own righteousness. My best works are stained, and my sins are many.

Thank You that You have set forth Your Son as the propitiation for my sins, and that You are just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus.

Take my eyes off my faith, and fix them on Christ. Let me rest in His finished work and in Your final verdict.

And since You have justified me freely, let me never use Your grace as an excuse for sin, but as the reason to live for You. Amen.