The Need of Justification

Turning in the Word of God this evening to Isaiah 64. Isaiah 64. I mentioned a little while ago my intention to begin a series on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and I want to commence that series this evening with the Lord’s help.

Whatever we understand of God’s salvation, it ought to have the response within us articulated in the hymn we just sang. How can it be? How is it that God should love a soul like me?

One of the ways you can often discern a spiritual problem in someone is a want of the sense of amazement. Now, the expression of that amazement comes and goes. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed, emotionally moved. But it ought to be discernible—the heartbeat of the believer—that he lives in a sense of amazement. How can it be that God should love a soul like me?

I would hate—I’m using that word intentionally—I would hate to minister in a congregation of people who had no understanding of that, or people who had lost the sense of it and drifted from the amazing grace that we have in Christ. And so I trust that there is within you a sense—and even now in your heart, Lord, revive that. Revive my sense of amazement at your grace. How can it be? To never become so conditioned, so accustomed, so familiar, that the gospel’s just like every other news we hear. It’s amazing. Let it ever be real to you and to me that that deadness, the deadness of our soul would never be allowed to abide.

Isaiah 64, turn your attention to this passage. I had a number of ways that I worked through—what do I want to do with this doctrine of justification, how do I want to, how many sermons, all of that. One of the things I sat down to do was actually work through each aspect of justification through the book of Romans, and just move through parts of the book of Romans, addressing the various aspects of justification that the Apostle Paul brings out in that tremendous epistle. And I almost went down that way, I almost did, but I decided, no, I want, instead of just looking at one book of the Bible, I’m going to go to different books of the Bible to draw from a text to show you that right across God’s Word, it addresses the various things that we are looking at.

So they begin in Isaiah 64, verses—the familiar words of verses six and seven. Isaiah 64, verse six. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” Amen. We’ll end the reading there at the end of verse 7.

What you have heard is the word of the eternal God, which is infallible and inerrant, and you are to receive, believe, and obey, and the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray. Lord, help us here tonight as we begin a journey. I pray that it may have—it may bear fruit beyond even what I’ve prayed for. I pray that it would solidify the understanding of what we have in Christ, that it would cement in each mind what it is that thou hast provided in thy Son. And I pray especially for this evening that it would deepen our understanding of our need before God. So please, have mercy on me. Have mercy upon all who hear. May this occasion be somewhat akin to that which occurred in Cornelius’ home when the Holy Ghost fell upon them that heard the Word. So please come, Holy Spirit, make much of this tremendous truth and help all to understand it, to the saving of their souls, to the restoring of their love for Christ, and to the cementing of the joy of thy people over what Christ has accomplished. Give ear, O God, now, for thy Word we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Our journey into this subject, beloved, begins with a recognition of the crisis that is upon every man by birth—the standing of each man as he is born into this world. Who are we before God? How does man stand before God by nature?

Leading evangelicals, along with Roman Catholic figures, issued a joint ecumenical document called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” And they hoped to articulate a shared expression of Christian witness as they stood on the cusp of the third millennium. The document’s quite long. It does present some matters of distinction between evangelicals and Catholics, but also points of similarity.

Some of the signers to that document included Pat Robertson, J.I. Packer, and Bill Bright. Charles or Chuck Colson also was involved in the very drafting of the document. And the document identifies Christ as, quote, “the one sent by God to be Lord and Savior of all,” end quote. It declares that the scriptures are divinely inspired and infallible. It affirms the Apostles’ Creed as an accurate statement of scriptural truth. And regarding salvation, it notes the following, quote, “We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. We affirm together”—note that. We affirm together, evangelicals and Catholics, we affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ.

Was there any problem with that statement? Absolutely.

Now, we’ll use John MacArthur’s recollection of that occasion. And just use his words, because he was there in what he said concerning that time. Quote, “During the controversy over Evangelicals and Catholics Together, or ECT, in the late 1990s, I participated in a private summit meeting in Florida, where R.C. Sproul, James Kennedy, John Ankerberg, and I met with Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, and Bill Bright to express our concerns about the ecumenical drift of the ECT document. R.C. pointed out that the document’s discussion of justification by faith omitted the all-important word alone—the sola in sola fide. This was and always has been the central point of disagreement”—omitting that word, or disagreement—”between Roman Catholics and Protestants. He said, by deliberately omitting that word and acting as if it were a non-issue, Protestants who helped draft the ECT document were deliberately capitulating to the main Roman Catholic error and undermining the gospel itself.”

He goes on then to speak about the late Dr. Sproul, saying this, “At one point”—now this is the dignified R.C. Sproul, right? There he is, in a room, with his chalkboard, speaking in that sonorous voice. Picture this. “At one point, he became so passionate in making his argument that he literally climbed on the table, making the plea on his hands and knees from the tabletop until each person on the other side of the table had made direct eye contact with him. There wasn’t a hint of malice in the gesture, and everyone in the room understood that. The passion that motivated R.C. was his love of the gospel and his zeal for making sure that the message is proclaimed without compromise or confusion.”

I don’t know about you, but that brings a tear to my eye because we are in dire need. I say the church—the Protestant church in America—is in dire need of that clarity and conviction to defend the essence of the gospel itself.

I’m beginning this series because I believe there is a tragic ignorance when it comes to what is necessary for a man to be justified before God—even as you have seen all those videos of the late Charlie Kirk. When you note videos where he marks the distinction, why he’s not a Roman Catholic, he gives three reasons, but he missed the main one. And because he didn’t understand the main one, it led to, and has now been taken full advantage of, a compromise.

If we are not clear on this, we lose everything. And there’s hardly—I would guess, I would love to do a poll, do some kind of test of all the pastors in Greenville, and put to them the statement, “We are justified by grace through faith because of Christ.” Agree or disagree? Is that sufficient expression of the gospel? Because just as the ones named, including J.I. Packer, failed to see what was so clear to Kennedy, MacArthur, and Sproul, it should be clear to us.

As we consider the doctrine of justification, we begin with the why. Why? Why must man be justified? We will only understand when we understand the why.

Isaiah says, “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” That’s the darkness of man’s position before God. Paul says that God’s wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. His wrath is against ungodliness and unrighteousness. And here, Isaiah does not point out the flaw in the sense of pointing out man is unrighteous. He actually takes that where there’s an expression of righteousness of man. His own best effort is yet filthy rags before God.

Man is ruined, and the gospel is the remedy. And when you realize the full extent of man’s problem, then you’re going to understand the full extent of the gospel and why it is necessary that it’s by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

We’re told in our substandards that man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether averse from good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto.

I say again, this is why justification must be by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. So we’re going to see a number of things here tonight as we set the stage for the why. So I’ve titled the message, “The Need of Justification.”

First we’re going to see the pollution. It’s very simple. Most of you will be able to follow this very easily, but see first of all the pollution. Look at the text. “We are all as an unclean thing.” We are all as an unclean thing. Unclean, that is to say, ritually defiled. Defiled so as to be barred from the presence of God. We have no right into His presence. The point is to argue that this is not some mere mistake, but this is a defilement that disqualifies. We are all as an unclean thing.

And we are all—that’s the universal expression of it, isn’t it? We are all as an unclean thing. No exceptions. Every single one of us in this position. And so you can sit here tonight and you can say, I’m included in that. By nature, I am as an unclean thing. I am ritually, spiritually separated from God.

Why is this a problem? Well, because of who God is. The nature of God makes this a problem, makes it a problem that cannot be overlooked. If God was like man, man, God would maybe overlook. You say, well, it’s no big deal or I can find some way to circumvent this problem. But the nature of God makes it impossible to circumvent.

God is holy, Leviticus 11, verses 44 and 45, “I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” It goes on then to say, “ye shall therefore be holy; for I am holy.” Peter quotes the same thing. It doesn’t become redundant in the New Testament, in the age in which we’re living. Peter uses the same language to argue that we are to be holy because God is holy.

God is perfect. His law is described as such in Psalm 19, “the law of the LORD is perfect.” “The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.” The prophet Habakkuk says that he is of purer eyes than to behold evil.

God has a problem with that which is unclean, and that’s what we are. We are unclean. You are unclean. “There’s none righteous,” Paul writes in Romans 3. We’ll go there a little later. Romans 3 tells us “there’s none righteous, no, not one.” “None that understandeth, none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way,” and so on and so forth. We have come short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23. The psalmist remarks that we are shapen in iniquity. In sin did his mother conceive him, Psalm 51. And so when Isaiah says we’re all as an unclean thing, that’s true.

Now theologically we refer to this as total depravity, that man is totally depraved. This does not mean that every person is as bad as he possibly can be. Because you look around and you can see people who are worse than you, at least as best as you can tell. So it doesn’t mean that every person is as bad as they can be. Nor does it mean that the image of God has been erased or eradicated or eroded from any individual. They’re still made in the image of God. Nor does it mean that the body is in itself inherently evil or that people cannot perform civil good at times. It doesn’t mean any of that.

Total depravity means the whole scope of man has been affected. His mind, his affections, his will, all impacted by this condition. And so left to ourselves, we cannot do what is spiritually pleasing to God. It’s impossible. We cannot believe. We cannot repent. We cannot do spiritual good. Our corruption is extensive. It reaches every part of us, though it’s not as intensive as it might be. You can be worse. But that does not mean that there’s any part of you untouched by this problem. All of you is unclean, as it were.

The Apostle argues that we’re dead in trespasses and sins. Later on in the same chapter of Ephesians 2, he says that we are without Christ, having no hope, without God in the world. We are people cut off, separated from God. In Romans, he argues that the carnal mind is enmity against God. He also argues in 1 Corinthians 2 that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. There is an impossibility here. There is a problem with man.

We speak of moral inability, that man is morally unable or incapable. And it’s not to suggest then that man is without a will—he has a will—but he lacks a holy will. He cannot do what is holy. The will cannot be exercised in that which pleases God. Jesus said in John 5:40, “ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” You won’t come because of your will, you will not come. There’s no desire, no interest. In John 3:19, he says that men love darkness rather than light. That’s their preference. That’s their bent, as it were.

And so when we talk about the will, sometimes we can be accused of saying you don’t believe in free will. We believe in free will. But we believe the will of man is affected by the fall in such a case so that he is as telling a bird with a broken wing that it may fly. It lacks the ability. It cannot take flight. A man has a will, but he cannot exercise it in a way that pleases God. He does not have that power.

So our will then is a fallen will. We run to that which is wrong. We prefer that which is sin. And so we cannot originate any love for God. To do so is to ask water to run uphill. It’s not going to happen. It’s just—you have a will, but the predisposition, the inclination, the volition of man is bent spiritually away from God.

And so the Apostle Paul speaks of the mind of man then in Ephesians 4:18, “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” As such, when they hear the gospel, their natural response is to see that it is folly. To them that perish it is foolishness. And so he’s captive. In fact, he’s described as being captive to the devil in 2 Timothy 2:26. And the strong man keeps his goods, as it were. Satan holds on to the soul of man until the stronger than the strong man, Jesus Christ, sets the prisoner free. He cannot set himself free. He is bound by his nature and his enslavement to Satan.

And our Lord Jesus spoke in John 8:34. He said, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant,” or the slave, “of sin.” That’s the position of man. He’s enslaved to his sin. And so while we may speak of having a certain freedom of the will, that there’s a will there that can do what it likes, Luther was right. The will exists, but it’s in bondage. In bondage to its nature. It cannot do anything but what comes naturally to it.

And so we need divine intervention. We need regeneration. God must open eyes. He must turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, Acts 26:18. He must give the new birth, without which we cannot see the kingdom of God. He must raise the dead with the same power with which He raised Christ, Ephesians 1. And unless that happens, then man stands in this position. He is polluted. We are all as an unclean thing. We cannot clean ourselves up. We cannot change our standing. We cannot renew our own heart. We cannot remove the scales from our eyes.

The pollution. But note also the pretense. The pretense. “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. He speaks of righteousnesses in the plural. He’s expressing here like the plurality of our best efforts. And he says these best efforts of man are as filthy rags.

The Hebrew evokes an image of that which is impure, unfit, especially for worship. Someone suggests it refers to a menstrual cloth, and that might be the case, because that would bring about the sense of it—cut off spiritually from God, unable to approach unto God, ceremonially unclean, unable to enter into His presence.

So this is with reference—this is with reference not to the sins of man, note this, but the righteousness of men. If you had the Bible describe, man’s sin is like filthy rags, you’d say, yes, I get that. That’s not what is said here. His righteousness, his best efforts, you in all your striving to do better, to give yourself to religious activity, to perform things that you believe are pleasing before God, all those things, those most holy deeds, most charitable actions—it’s those things that God’s Word says are like filthy rags.

In Roman Catholicism, it denies this. Rome will teach that man is fallen, yes, but in a wounded way, not a way in which he’s entirely ruined. The catechism speaks in that way, the Roman Catholic catechism, that man being wounded but has not been totally corrupted. And so his free will—Trent records back in the 16th century—was by no means extinguished. So his will is still there in order to do that which is right, that’s the sense of what they’re saying.

And so in order for a man to be right before God, there’s a process here. He is infused with righteousness at baptism. And from there then he has a platform in which he is to preserve that standing through good works, multiplying those good works. But when you read through the documents, ultimately you recognize that what Rome understands of human nature is that he has a wound but he’s not dead, like the Scripture says, that there’s a problem but he can overcome it if he but tries.

Eastern Orthodoxy is not much different. They don’t have the same catechisms that can be quoted and read, and so sometimes nailing them down is a little more difficult. But they would appear to deny original guilt. There’s corruption, yes. But salvation becomes a process, theosis, becoming more like God. So justification becomes swallowed up in that process. It’s not a sense of an absolute pardon before God and a righteousness that is given as a gift. It’s a process.

The Bible speaks otherwise. We are not sick, we are dead, Ephesians 2, verse 1. We are not men who are dying and need a physician to help us. We are dead and we are condemned already. Paul writes, “by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” We’re going to look more at Adam’s place in all of this, but it’s important to understand that “by one man’s disobedience,” namely Adam, “many were made sinners.” And that position then, Paul says, again in Ephesians 2, that we are by nature, because we descend from Adam. Because the effect of Adam’s disobedience has come upon us all, he says that we are by nature the children of wrath.

So justification isn’t some therapeutic process in us, it’s judicial, which is what we will see. It’s an act of God, something God does in which He declares someone to be righteous. It happens in a moment of time.

Note also in this text the poverty, the poverty of man. “We all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Man is depicted as a dry leaf severed from the living tree, and so obviously it fades. There’s no life in him. There’s no inner life to sustain us. We fade because we’re detached from the source of life. The image exposes any delusion that is there of spiritual self-sufficiency. We fade as a leaf. We cannot reattach ourselves to the tree. We cannot cause ourselves to continue on existing in life vibrantly, no. And our sins become as the storm that carries us away from God. “Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” We’re cut off, removed from God.

So this is man’s poverty. He lacks the ability to have the source of life in himself, and his sins take him away from God, take him away from the riches that are found only in God, only in Christ. This is the standing of all. Again, “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” This is a condition of poverty. We don’t have anything to offer to God, none of us. So we find ourselves in poverty.

Now if you were in poverty and you had an opportunity to be gifted tremendous riches, would you give up whatever you had to to acquire those riches? Let’s say you had all sorts of—maybe you have a good name, and you have other favorable things that have come upon you by your birth and by your family connections and so on. But you recognize that you have nothing. Whatever the good name or whatever the standing you have in society, it has resulted in nothing. You are without anything. And someone comes and says, turn away from that and look unto this, you will have all the riches you ever need.

That’s what the Apostle Paul does to describe his spiritual standing. In Philippians 3, he talks about having all this to boast in. I’m a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin. My particular devotion to my religion was to be a Pharisee, the strictest sect among the Jews. When I gave myself to what they required, I was found blameless. There was no want of zeal, no lack of effort. I lived it through and through, 100%. “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.” I gave it all up, I counted it, he says, dung that I might win Christ and be found in Him.

Everything he could boast in, all of his accumulated good things, he surrendered in light of the need that through Jesus Christ he would obtain a righteousness that would finally and fully please God. He understood his poverty. He didn’t as a young man, he didn’t. As a young man he thought, look how favored I am. Look at all these credentials as he grew into a young man and matured and he sought to harness and lay hold upon all those advantages. Make use of them. It wasn’t like he was favored with all these things, being circumcised the eighth day and so on and so forth. It wasn’t like he looked at all those things and favored them. And then looked at them in such a way and thought, well, they’re not that important to me. No, he understood the importance of them, the value of them. But still he counted it dung.

This is why so-called quote-unquote good people need to be justified. “We all do fade as a leaf. And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” There that dead leaf detached from the tree, severed from the source of life, is swallowed up in its own sin, blown away, away from God. This is true of you, true of me.

Yes, there’s such a thing as what we describe as common grace. This term is used to denote the things we observe in our world that we can say that’s a work of kindness, that’s a commendable act. And so many unregenerate, unbelieving men do acts that are morally good as far as we can assess them. They love their family. They work hard to provide for those they care for. They build hospitals. They keep their word and contracts. They do things that are honorable. But those acts lack the one motive that makes them pleasing to God. They do not act in faith. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” And they that are in the flesh cannot please God, Romans 8. They’re in the flesh. Whatever they do is done in the flesh, and that which is in the flesh cannot please God. Cannot. Not struggles to, but cannot.

Fourthly, then, you have the peril. Peril, verse 7. “And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” They are suffering at the hand of God. And they have a spiritual paralysis, which they cannot overcome themselves. Look at it. “There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.”

There’s an inability in man. He cannot stir himself up. He cannot rouse himself to seek God. He is incapable. Again, this is a problem with our will. It’s a problem with the will. Again, sometimes you look at things, you see God as sovereign and you say, well, He’s sovereign and man has no will in the matter. No, no, no. He has a will. He has a will. But without divine intervention, that will is bent away from God.

So here we stand. We have no hope. We stand in this peril, consumed because of our iniquities. So we’re told “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,” Hebrews 9:27. Because of our sins, not only are we consumed in this life, but more to the point, we’re going to be consumed later on. There’s a real hell that awaits the real sins of men. Because of our disobedience, there is a judgment that will fall upon men without Christ.

Our Lord Jesus spoke more of that place, spoke more of the judgment upon men than anyone else. He was very clear, those without pardon, those who do not know God will be sent to that place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” They will suffer untold agony and they will continue in that place exercising their will in rebellion against God. There in hell they will continue their life. Yet without some of the restraint that they received here on earth, they will sin more freely, they will rebel more fully, and they will gnash with their teeth against the living God, blaspheming Him in that place.

Yes, this is where we are. Adam stood as our covenant head, disobeyed God and plunged himself and all his posterity into sin and misery. And the peril of it then is judgment. Judgment. You may think it’s severe, but it only appears severe because we don’t understand the extent of our sin. It only seems severe because we lack the ability to fully fathom what it is for that which is created by God to rebel against the Creator.

Think of the grief that a parent has when they have lavished upon a child such love and care and provision, put a roof over their head, provided for them in every material way, loved them, cared for them, hugged them, showed affection toward them, did everything that they could to put them in the best position, educating them, sacrificing for them. Constantly, their whole life revolves around the betterment of the child. Their whole life revolves around benefiting the child. And that child grows up, turns their back on the parent.

Now, I’m not talking here about looking into little nuanced things about what may have happened in the relationship. Just take it at face value. Take it at face value. You have a loving, caring parent who has given everything, sacrificed everything, done everything that could be done, showing affection, showing care, all that could be done for the child. And the child turns its back. And you assess everything. You look at the details. You analyze. You take reports. You ask the individual. You speak to the child. You say, what made you turn your back? And they just tell you. I just don’t like them. I hate them. I’m not interested in them. I have no reason. They have done nothing but love me and care for me and provide for me. I’m just not interested.

And you would say, what? You can’t get your head around it. And you think it angers you. And that in no way even approaches what man has done before God. So man stands in peril, consumed because of our iniquities, cut off from God, without hope. Can the Ethiopian change his skin of himself? Can the leopard change his spots? Man can’t save himself.

This brings us then to the provision. This is what we’re going to spend most of our time looking at through the course of the weeks ahead, God willing, looking at the provision. The text that we have before us does not articulate that provision in any real or meaningful way. But I want you to go with me to Romans 3 just before we close. Turn to Romans 3.

In Romans 3, the apostle has presented both the equivalent, like the ways in which Jews and Gentiles are the same, and he’s also dealt with the ways in which they’re different. The Jews have advantages, they have privileges, of that there is no doubt. But those advantages and those privileges have not made any difference, or the lack of those advantages and privileges has not made any difference for the Gentile. They stand in a universal position of condemnation before God. So it doesn’t matter where in the world they’re from. It doesn’t matter what age they live in.

The Apostle Paul in Romans 3 is writing this centuries after what we read in Isaiah. And in part of the section that we have here, I’m not going to spend time going through everything in any detail, but part of what he does is he actually takes, in presenting his argument, he takes six quotations from the Old Testament Scriptures to verify the fallen condition of man, the hopeless condition of man. And sometimes when the question comes up about, you know, God choosing man, man choosing God, and we look at all these things and the fruit of it, we try to figure it all out, really it comes down to, what does the Bible say about man? What does the Bible say about man? And when you understand what the Bible says about man, then you will conclude the obvious. Salvation is all of grace. Divine intervention is necessary. Without it, we perish.

Look at verse nine of Romans 3. “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” They are under sin. That’s their condition, under sin. We are all as an unclean thing. All of us, Jew and Gentile, under sin. What a description, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

If I could summarize this, it’s simple. This is why the provision is needed. This is summarizing what we’ve already looked at. This is putting arms around everything we’ve already said. Man is lost, lost, lost. Regardless of where he’s from, regardless of who he is, he is lost. And there’s not some little speck of light within all men that will cause him to seek after God. “There is none that seeketh after God.”

When it is marketed that you want to become a seeker-sensitive church, in one sense, there is no such thing as the origin of seeking within man, that man, the seeking begins with man. Now, there is a process in which many of us come to know Christ, and sometimes there are stirrings that begin within us. But whenever the Bible describes a seeking one, it is with emphasis upon not the sheep, but the shepherd. It is the sheep that are lost. He leaves the 99 to go after that which is lost, wandering then, and “we all, like sheep, have gone astray.” And we need the shepherd to seek. He must seek. “There’s none that seeketh.” None. No one. No interest. Man has no interest.

So both Jew and Gentile are in this condition. The stringing of these texts together from the Old Testament proved the corruption of humanity in its heart, in its speech, in its conduct. The world stands guilty before God. Every mouth is silenced. There’s nothing they can say. There’s no but, but God, no. Guilty.

Verse 21. Here’s where the provision is identified. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” Here is what man needs, that the Old Testament Scriptures have always declared, “even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” In other words, they all need the same thing, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation”—that is, the sacrifice that ends His wrath. Set forth to be a propitiation—”through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Now, we will come back to this a little more, but recognizing God, who is looking at the sinner, who is dealing with the problem of man’s sin, seeing this fallen humanity—and if he just looks over the sin, says, I’m going to ignore that sin, then he’s unjust. And so to maintain his status as being a just God, he must through the gospel deal with the problem, which he does through Jesus Christ, making him a propitiation for sin. The wrath-ending sacrifice, the substitute for the guilty, the remedy appointed by God from all eternity. The lamb chosen from before the foundation of the world. This is the only hope. And it is by faith alone we acquire or we are brought to stand justified before God.

Which is confirmed in verse 27, “Where is boasting then?” Where is boasting then? Where can man make a proud boast of his accomplishment? “It is excluded.” There is no room for it, no place for it, no argument for it. “By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” He is justified. He is put in a standing of just—being just before God. Justified before God by faith.

This is the argument to say, they’ll say, well the Bible doesn’t say faith alone. In what other way could you say faith alone without just using the words? Is this not what the Apostle says? “Justified by faith without the deeds of the law,” without any additional work on their behalf, without anything they perform, justified by faith. Without any additional thing.

Here’s the bottom line for tonight. The need of justification is because we are hopelessly lost by nature. The people you work with are not in some way spiritually capable of responding to the gospel. Your frustration at the darkness that they display, at the ignorance that you hear from them, their lack of interest and desire—you dealing with family members who seem to be without any interest in the things of God and you’re wondering what’s wrong with them. What’s wrong with them is what’s wrong with all. Without God intervening. Without God raising the dead. They remain dead. You’re trying to give medicine to a corpse.

The miracle is this, that by presenting Jesus Christ the medicine, the Spirit of God takes that message and the promise of eternal life through Christ and sovereignly, like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, it moves as it pleases. We’re not in control of it, but these occasions where we utter the precious promises of the gospel, and God raises them to life. The will that was bent to do evil is renewed by an act of God. And while at one point there was no beauty, no beauty in Jesus that they would ever desire, all of a sudden their eyes just fill with a hope for Him and a longing for Him.

Have you ever seen someone converted? Have you ever been in the presence of someone when it just all—the darkness just removes, goes away? You never need to convince them. You never need to persuade them. You don’t have to grab them and shake them and say, just believe. You present the gospel and God by His Spirit takes that word and you become a spectator of His activity in their darkened soul. It’s the most glorious thing and it can be nothing but a miracle of His grace. We’re going to see more of that as the weeks go on.

Let’s bow together in prayer to still ourselves before God. Maybe you’re not yet saved, not yet justified. You’re lost. You need a new heart. You need eternal life. The bottom line of tonight’s message is this. You are unclean. You cannot clean yourself. Your best works are seen as unrighteousness before God. There’s no good. There’s only wrath. And God’s answer for you is in His Son, Jesus Christ, and you simply believing in Him, coming to Him by faith, asking Him to pardon your sin, to receive you as He has promised to receive you. He has promised to receive you. “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Look away from yourself, look to Christ. He will save you tonight.

Lord, have mercy. I pray that we would understand our guilt and our sin, and that Jesus in all His purity and His willingness to receive us would be the most precious, most precious thing in the world to us. “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious.” I pray that thou wilt have mercy on those here not saved and solidify in the mind of each one of us the grace of thy salvation. Be with us. Grant to thy people help to live for thee this week. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God, now and evermore. Amen.