The Ground of Justification

Please turn in your Bibles this evening to 2 Corinthians 5. It has been good to welcome back Jim and Stacey Nix. For those who do not know, they were away for a number of months, and then God’s providence has brought them back to Greenville, so we thank the Lord for that. Please pray for them as they settle back into life here.

We are continuing our study in the doctrine of justification, so I come now to look at the ground of justification. We are trying to emphasize the point of what it means to be right before God.

We are going to read from verse 17, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Let us hear God’s Word. I encourage you to pay attention.

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

We will end the reading there at verse 21. Once again, this is the Word of God, which is infallible, inerrant, and eternal. And we are to receive it as such, believing it and obeying it. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let us pray. Lord, help us to do so. Help us not merely to pay lip service to the Word of God. We pray that we would think of what was said of Bunyan, that he bled Bibline, that we would imbibe the Word of God, that it would be to us sweeter than honey in the honeycomb. We pray that we would study it and take to heart all that it says, and that by it we would be transformed. And as we meditate upon it tonight, please give us help. Give us the Holy Spirit. Please make this message come with light, to deepen our understanding of the gospel, to help us on our way to heaven, and to give light to those who perhaps still sit in darkness. So come and give an unusual attentiveness to the voice of God, a hearing ear. Please work now, O Holy Spirit; take ownership of this meeting. Give deliverance from the evil one and everything that would hinder the right receiving of the Word, including me, Lord. Take me out of the way, my folly. Grant me to be a mouthpiece in the King’s business. We pray in our Savior’s name, amen.

I want you to imagine pouring your heart into an area for eighteen months and seeing a church planted in that area; souls being converted, and evidence of the gospel transforming lives in a very evident way. Then, once you leave the area for others to follow, they question your credibility, question your methods, and even question your motives. That is what eventually happened in Corinth.

The apostle Paul went there. You can read about his church-planting efforts in the city in Acts 18—the time that he spent there laboring in the gospel, the discouragement and the weakness that he felt during that time, and yet seeing the evidence of the power of God—not through Paul, not by Paul, but despite Paul—the gospel going forth, souls being converted, and God’s work being extended. But as he leaves, eventually men come in and begin to question him and undo much of the work that he was engaged in.

And the apostle, in the second epistle particularly, instead of getting dragged into a mudslinging match with the critics, puts before those who were still there what it is to understand and to discern an authentic gospel ministry—what it actually looks like.

If you go back to chapter 3, you can see how he feels the impact of the lack of trust, the challenge of them truly listening and hearing him. Do we begin again to commend ourselves? I mean, do we have to come again and find ourselves to be accepted among you? Or do we, as some others, need epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? Do we need to be recommended? Have we not established our credibility with you already?

He goes on then to show the nature of a new covenant ministry. It is not a ministry merely of the letter of the law, but one by the power of the Spirit that truly transforms lives—not merely externally, but from the very heart of the person.

In chapter 4, he argues against those who would emphasize the suffering that he had experienced, showing that despite his suffering, despite his infirmities and weaknesses, the power of God is unleashed upon the world even in these earthen vessels, weak as they may be.

When you come to chapter 5, he continues to drive home what a true ministry is about—elevating the hope of the resurrection, the power of the love of Christ that motivates one in ministry and what they are called to, as well as the real heart of the message: a message of reconciliation.

It brings us then to the end of the chapter, where he concludes, at least at this point, with this tremendous argument of what the ministry of reconciliation is about and what it is based on. If we are going out into the world to call men to be reconciled to God, on what basis can they be reconciled?

Verse 21: “‘He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’” That text rivals any other in the entire canon of Scripture. When rightly understood and pondered and considered, as I trust we will do this evening with God’s help, it shows the uniqueness of Christianity and the position of those who believe in Jesus Christ is unlike any other.

J. I. Packer, whom we criticized at the beginning of our series because of his involvement in trying to bring together or support evangelicals and Catholics, wrote an introductory essay on James Buchanan’s book on justification.

If you read that book, which I commend to you, or if you read also the essay that Packer gave to it, he says this. I want you to listen carefully. It is a longer statement than I would usually like to read, but I will try to read it slowly and follow what he says:

Salvation in the Bible is by substitution and exchange: the imputing of men’s sins to Christ and the imputing of Christ’s righteousness to sinners. By this means, the law and the God whose law it is are satisfied, and the guilty are justly declared immune from punishment. Justice is done, and mercy is made triumphant in the doing of it. The imputing of righteousness to sinners in justification and the imputing of their sins to Christ on Calvary thus belong together. And if, in the manner of so much modern Protestantism, the penal interpretation of the cross is rejected, then there is no ground on which the imputing of righteousness can rest. A groundless imputation of righteousness to sinners would be a mere legal fiction, an arbitrary pretense on God’s part, an overturning of the moral order of the universe and a violation of the law which expresses His own holy nature. In short, it would be a flat impossibility which it would be blasphemous even to contemplate.

If we do not see these two aspects—a true penal substitutionary death and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer—then there is no ground. There is no ground to make an argument. If we do not see that Christ is paying for sin, there is no argument, especially then, to see the imputation of His righteousness to us. This is supernatural; it is powerful, and it is the heart of the gospel.

So, let us consider then the ground of justification. I have just two primary heads this evening. First: the accounting of our debt to Christ. Second: the acquittal by Christ’s merit—the accounting and the acquittal.

The accounting of our debt to Christ is what we find in this text. There are three things I want us to consider here.

First, we should consider the initiator of the decree. Look at what the text says: “He hath made him to be sin for us.” He—who is that? To whom does the apostle refer who has made Him to be sin for us? It is, of course, God the Father. God the Father, who appoints this plan, is the principal agent of the plan. He is the One—Paul writes in Romans 8:32—who spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. God the Father, then, is the One referred to. He hath made Him—that is, Christ—to be sin for us. He is the One who spared not His own Son.

This is an act that is sovereign, in which He deliberately plans, in His infinite wisdom and love, to set apart His Son to be under the fury of the judgment that is necessary to take the place of the guilty and to stand as a substitute on our behalf. What the Lord Jesus Christ is doing is not merely functioning to give us an escape from punishment. He is fulfilling something. He is fulfilling a plan. Theologians sometimes refer to the covenant of redemption. This is a covenant that they foresee, or rather they draw from Scripture as being an agreement within the triune God—an inter-Trinitarian covenant in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are planning. They have planned what we call the plan of redemption.

Now again, some may argue whether or not that is explicitly revealed in the Word of God. I think it is implied by certain things that one can read in Scripture and then deduce. You see our Lord Jesus referring to the fact that the Father gave the Son a people, John 17:6. So when did the Father give the Son a people? When did that occur? It is understood to be before the Son ever came into the world, before the world was ever even founded. The Father gave to the Son a people.

In Psalm 40, which we have quoted in Hebrews, where we see the Son taking on this position of delighting to do Thy will, you see again the Son standing in this place where He is taking on a responsibility of a plan to fulfill the Father’s will. When does that discussion unfold? When is that happening? I think it is reflective of something that occurred before the very foundation of the world. The Spirit, of course, is the one who is going to apply the work. He is going to make it real in the life of the people of God. But you have the Father appointing this, you have the Son appropriating it—if you want to alliterate it all—and the Spirit applying it. It is a triune work of redemption in order to save those who are lost.

The prophets saw this. They were well aware of certain passages that in a very powerful way show us this—like in Isaiah 53:10, that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. The servant of Jehovah, it is said of him, that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. But it is not the only passage. In Zechariah 13—you may wish to make a mark there—I do not have time to really go and spend any time there, but in Zechariah 13:7 the prophet speaks: “‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow,’ saith the Lord of hosts.” So you have God saying that the sword should awake against the shepherd, against the man that is my fellow. And then it goes on to say, “‘Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.’”

That passage is quoted in the Gospels. It is applied to the Lord Himself. He is the one who is smitten so that the sheep are scattered. That is in Matthew 26. But think of the context. See what it is saying—where Jehovah is saying that He is lifting up a sword, which is a sign of it, lifting up a sword to smite the shepherd against the man that is my fellow. Who is that man? Who is that shepherd? It is none other than the Son. The Son is the one appointed to be in this position—the one who is co-equal, co-eternal with the Father, and yet is willing to take this position in order to redeem the lost.

So, as I said, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. The initiator of the decree is the Father. It pleased the Father to bruise the Son. It is by that way, and only by that way, that He satisfies the demands of eternal justice and achieves the redemption of His people. This is the wonder of His love. He spared not His own Son. He spared not—just that language—He spared Him not. He was not permitted to go without taking the responsibility of the mediator.

The Son takes the place for sinners. He does so in a way that is discriminatory, if you like. The glory of the angels and their fall meets with no such plan to redeem them or reconcile them. Satan and those who fell with him are permitted to plunge into that condition of broken fellowship with God with no answer for the problem. But for the fallen sons of Adam—for us, men and women—God spared not His own Son. For us and all of our guilt, the Father ordains a substitute. He hath made Him to be sin for us—for us. He has made Him to be sin for us. The Father has in this decree appointed; the Son embraces the responsibility; the Spirit is going to apply it to the people; but it all comes down to this wonder of wonders: the Father did not spare His Son. So the initiator of the decree is the Father. He is the one, for He hath made Him to be sin for us.

But also consider, in this accounting of our debt to Christ, the innocence of the substitute. The innocence of the substitute. There is a qualifying clause here: “He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin.” There’s what’s amazing: He made Him to be sin for us, even though He knew no sin. And this is a prerequisite for Him to be a true substitute, because if He’s going to stand in the place of the guilty, then He must not have any guilt Himself. He must be impeccable. He must be a spotless sacrifice.

So the high priest, our Lord Jesus Christ, is not merely less sinful than us; He is perfect. He is forensically or legally perfect before the Father. There is no sin in Him at all. He did no sin. He knew no sin.

This can be easily missed, but in one sense you can’t help but notice the overlapping of the theme leading up to the cross. You have repetition of testimony concerning the sinlessness of Jesus Christ—not from His friends, not from His disciples, but from those who had no real allegiance to Him. The one who betrayed Him, Judas, comes around to say, “I have betrayed the innocent blood.” You have Pilate’s wife as well, coming to her husband to say, “Have thou nothing to do with this just man.” You have the testimony of the centurion as well: “Truly this is the Son of God.” There are other arguments where you have the one who is on the cross, also arguing in their discussion between the two malefactors, and one is trying to convince the other, “This man hath done nothing amiss. Unlike us, He has done nothing amiss.” You have these constant testimonies concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, showing that this is no ordinary person.

“He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” said Peter. He is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” Hebrews 7:26. He knew no sin. It is not just that he did not commit sin. He never had any inward acquaintance with sin. He never loved sin, ever. Never desired sin, imagined sin, or made room for sin. Now, compare that with your experience in this world. There was never a moment in his life in which sin had any foothold. It never had any welcome. It never found a place within his heart.

Compare that with your life. Here the Lord Jesus Christ is distinct. Not only did he not sin, but he was sinless. The theologians, of course, dispute this point, but we affirm that he was not able to sin. The prince of this world came to him and found nothing in him.

Let us think of the distinction then. I have made mention of this before, how in the pictures of the Old Testament, you have some things, some pictures that show a sense of comparison. They show what the Lord Jesus Christ is going to do. In other ways, it is by contrast, in which you show that this is completely opposite. And so, think for a moment of the Day of Atonement, that great high day of the Jewish calendar. The whole country comes to a standstill. Everyone comes to ponder this day of atonement for the sins of the nation.

The high priest takes this role of conferring guilt upon a substitute and sprinkling the blood upon the mercy seat in the most holy place and so on. But before he goes through his responsibilities, there has to be a sacrifice for his own sin. He has to go through a procedure in which he recognizes his own shortcomings before he can stand in that place, and that finds no equal in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There was no sin in Him—conceived without the defilement of original sin, living a life of unbroken obedience, a seamless tapestry of perfection. He knew no sin. This, of course, is crucial. An imperfect substitute could not offer a perfect sacrifice, and an imperfect sacrifice could not satisfy an infinite debt—the debt of our sin before God. The substitute’s record has to be spotless. His obedience has to be without question. Only by that can He truly be the one who reconciles us to God. He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.

The initiator of the decree, the innocence of the substitute, but also note here in this accounting of our debt to Christ: the imputation of our guilt. Here is the scandal, isn’t it? That He has made Him to be sin for us. To be sin for us. Have you ever thought about those words? He hath made this innocent one to be the guilty party, as it were, judicially to stand in a position of guilt—to be sin for us.

Not merely, I might add—though I think this is implied; though it is not what the apostle says—it is more than just a sin offering, though I think that certainly is implied and involved. Representatively, He is made sin for us.

In Buchanan’s book on justification, he quotes the church father John Chrysostom, noting this: “he made, says the apostle, a righteous person to be a sinner in order that he might make sinners righteous.” Now we may quibble over the right way to represent what is contained in this text. Is it right to say he made him to be a sinner? Maybe that communicates the wrong idea, because Christ Himself does not become a sinner, but made in the sense judicially—he is perceived then legally to be as a sinner. And we dare not weaken the text. He hath made Him to be sin for us. Let’s not try to change the language. We may stand in amazement at what it says. We may be brought to worship even with a sense of the mystery of all that is involved.

But there is a strict forensic parallel here. He is made sin that we might be—note—made the righteousness of God. He is made to be sin that we might be made the righteousness of God. And this is vital, vital to see the parallel of the argument.

I want you to listen here because for many reasons this is vital for us to understand, not least of which is to counter the Roman Catholic view of justification, a false view of this text, which suggests that it means the infusing of righteousness—that we might be infused with the righteousness of God. That is their understanding: that we who believe might be infused with the righteousness of God.

What we are doing, what is the procedure through sacramentalism and our good works, is that the believer is becoming more morally holy in character by means of a process. And that is what the text refers to: this process by which we are infused with the righteousness of God. That is what they say. But if that is the case, the parallel breaks down. Because if righteousness is infused into the believer, then sin is infused into Christ. And that is not the case. And not even Roman Catholicism would argue that. That would be heretical even by their own judgment—that Christ would be infused with righteousness or infused with sin.

So the only way to get around it is to say that it is not a strict parallel. But you ask yourself, in the language, is it a strict parallel? He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. The parallel breaks down if you take the view of Catholicism. They may argue and deny that it is an identical parallel, but that is not intended.

But that means that before God—listen, follow me now—that means, before God, that if you think about it, the believer in this text becomes something he never was, right? He becomes righteous. That is something he never was. The same has to be true of Christ. He has to become something he never was. We become righteous; he becomes sin. This is the amazing thing about the cross. This is not something that is gradual. This is something that is definitive.

The people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—though they be guilty of lying, of theft, of lust, of blasphemous rebellion, of idolatry—that Christ takes ownership of that. That is before the Father. His lot is to take responsibility for the punishment of all those sins. And when you think about it, even if you step back a moment and look at the context, the whole context is about a ministry of reconciliation, is it not? That Paul is called to, that believers are called to. Look at verse 20: “Then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God does beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God.” That is the whole argument there—that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, verse 19. So there is this sense of reconciliation.

And so when you think about that, it cannot be that those who believe go through a gradual improvement before God, where they are more infused with righteousness. It has to be a judicial settlement for there to be reconciliation. The law demands full payment before the reconciliation. The ministry of the gospel is that you can be reconciled to God today. Not beginning a process. No—you become sons. Reconciled. It is instantaneous, beloved. It is instantaneous.

The gospel then is to communicate to the world a message of reconciliation in which legally the sinner becomes something that by nature he cannot be because Christ becomes something that by nature he is not. This sin then is laid upon Christ. He has made sin for us. There is no escaping this. In God’s universe, no sin simply evaporates. Every sin ever committed will be punished, either in the sinner or in the substitute. The holiness of God requires full satisfaction across the board for all sins ever committed.

So for you and me, the question is: will I bear the guilt of my sin, or has another borne the guilt of my sin? And the gospel message is, you can stand in a place confident, knowing that another has borne all the responsibility of your sin. And the amazing way in which you obtain that standing is by faith. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Reconcile to God.

A Christian has confidence because Christ is treated as if He had committed our sins so that we are treated as if we lived as He did. The wrath of God—the full fury of His righteous indignation against our rebellion that ought to have fallen upon me and you—instead fell upon Him. He spared not His own Son. Do you have this? Do you know that in Jesus Christ your sins have been paid for in full? This is the need for us all.

Christ, then, is our representative, or we may use the term federal head. He is the one who represents us. We are in covenant union. He takes our nature. He stands in our place. He owns our obligations. He has made Him to be sin for us. Oh, I do not pretend to fully understand the depth of that statement—I do not. And what I put before you tonight, it is what is obvious from the text. There may be depths to the text that I cannot plumb. But I do know this: this is the heart of how you as a sinner can be reconciled to an infinitely holy God. That no matter what your past, your guilt, your sin, your shame—whatever you feel ashamed of in your life, whether present or in your history—God spared not His Son. He delivered Him up. He was made sin. As we shall see, you will be made the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God. This is why we preach the cross of Jesus Christ. This is what we are pointing you to: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Look to Him and live.

Why stand in a condition of death? Why live with condemnation hanging over your head? You walk around your life—you go to work, you go to school, you engage in all your responsibilities—and there is this hanging over you like a big sign, not physically there, but truly there. It says, “guilty, condemned, under judgment.” In one moment of trust in God’s provision in His Son, a condemnation is legally transferred. The payment is seen to have been paid in Christ’s once-offering Himself up to God. So this is the accounting of our debt to Christ.

But also, just these two points—these two main heads—the acquittal by Christ’s merit. The acquittal by Christ’s merit. It is not just that He has made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin; it elevates us to see the standing that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is not just the transfer of guilt and sin; it is the transfer of righteousness to us who believe.

Note the goal of the divine plan. The goal of the divine plan is to make us the righteousness of God in Him. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” That is the purpose. Here is the purpose. He has taken this position. He stands in our place. He is the substitute, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The scheme of redemption is to bring us to this standing. It is not just aimed at the forgiveness of our sin, but the imputation of a perfect righteousness.

I want you to see this. Yes, Jesus paid for all my sin. If you can think of it like a cup—the psalmist speaks of his cup running over—there is a sense, and it is in some of the language of the hymn we just sang. There is a cup which is filled with our sins, which Christ takes and is responsible for. But He does not just empty it in the taking away of our sins. He then fills it with all good things—even His own perfect obedience. And as it were, if we were to take the imagery of Psalm 23, that “my cup runneth over,” it is that there is a superabundance. There is this righteousness beyond which can be fully fathomed or calculated. “My cup runneth over” with the righteousness of God in Him.

This is the plan of redemption—not just to remove what would condemn us to hell, but to bring us to be valued and accepted in heaven. Now, as He does not leave us naked, He clothes us, as He did for Adam and Eve. Feeling their guilt and their shame, they sew their fig leaves together in the best effort to try and cover themselves. God comes. This will never do; it will never do. But He makes for them coats of skins—clothes pointing to what the plan will lead to: the clothing of the sinner in the garments of another.

So this is what we have in our standing. Our salvation is thorough. Our Lord Jesus has done something for us—procured for us a standing so secure that no demon in hell, no charge from the law, no pang of the conscience can stand before it. When the demons cry, “Guilt,” I say, the righteousness of Christ is mine. My own conscience accuses me. I make my appeal to the obedience of Christ. This is the gospel, and this is what even the Old Testament saints had put before them in the imagery of the sacrifices, but also even in the language of the prophets.

Isaiah again—Isaiah 61:10—he says, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”

I could not miss that in the choices this evening, over which I was not in control, we had included the testimony poem of McShane’s “Jehovah’s Akenyu, the Lord our righteousness.” And this is what the Old Testament saints understood as well. This was what was put before them. Did they fully fathom it all? Did they comprehend the details or the particulars? No. I don’t believe so. But this is what they understood their God of salvation to be. He is providing more than just the taking away of my sin. He is covering me in a robe of righteousness. The reason I can stand before Him is not merely because of the removal of my guilt, but a clothing that makes me accepted. I can stand before Him as a righteous man, as an obedient servant. I go before my King and rather than be banished from His presence because of my failure to do what He requires, I stand with the imputation of an obedience that says, “You’re accepted.”

By faith, we put this robe on. When we come here to celebrate it, we do not come here to try and weave it. You do not come to church to try and make up a robe. You come to church to celebrate a robe that is gifted graciously and received by faith. This is not about our sincerity. Church attendance and good works and the things we can do—this righteousness, this robe of righteousness, is a gift. It is like that coat of many colors that the Father gave to His Son. He was favored, and He gave Him a coat, a beautiful coat. That is what Christ has done for us.

This is the goal of the divine plan—that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him—but also the greatness of the righteousness. Not just the goal of the divine plan, but the greatness of the righteousness. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. Ponder this. The righteousness of God. Not just the obedience or righteousness of some ascetic monk who lived isolated from the world. No—the perfect righteousness of the God-man who fulfilled the law.

This righteousness is forensic. It is perceived in the courtroom of heaven as sufficient. It is not righteous because some man has said, “It looks like righteousness to me,” but God says it is righteous. It is gifted; it is imputed; it is reckoned to our account; it is not infused. It is not gradual. Think of it. Think of the ludicrousness of the sinner in his fallen state trying to weave out righteousness—a righteousness that can be described as the righteousness of God—gradually worked by the ongoing conferring of grace through the sacraments and so on. What nonsense is this? The only way you get to that is you diminish that righteousness. You have to make it less, but it cannot be less. It is the righteousness of God. And so it must be imputed, not infused—imputed, credited, reckoned. We are reckoned to have the righteousness of one who is the God-man. And this we obtain by placing our faith in Christ, by believing on Him.

This is what men struggle with. They say, “Well, what must I do to be saved? There must be something I have to work out and accomplish. I must do penance and try to do all these things, and then maybe I can earn salvation.” No, no, no—abandon that thought. It will always fall short. Always. And I do not care if you add a made-up concept of purgatory to achieve it, which has no foundation in the Word of God whatsoever. You can add that if you like. You still will not achieve this. You still will not understand.

Purging removes; it does not credit. This is talking about something credited. This is the glory of this. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. So this is what we have in Jesus Christ. This is where the righteousness comes from. It is Christ and His obedience, as we have covered on several occasions, but we see very directly here.

He kept the law—His obedience to the Father in both His passive offering of Himself to pay for sin, but more particularly in this account, the life of obedience. He lived on our behalf. And so they would try to depict it in the Old Testament, would they not? They were told to find a lamb without blemish. Do not pick the lamb that you do not like, the one that you do not care for—the one that you would not use to breed with. God says, “No, you are going to take that and you are going to offer that as a sacrifice. It is the most valuable.” It was imagery designed to communicate the value of the Son unlike any other.

So this is what you have. This is what you can possess tonight if you are not yet saved. You are not justified before God because of anything wrought in you. It is not about what you do. It is because of what Christ has wrought for you. Yes, faith and repentance are necessary. Believe. Confess your sin. Say the same things about your sin that God says about your sin. Do not hide it. Do not reframe it. Confess it honestly. Own it. Own it. But your salvation is not in the strength of your faith or the depth and extent of your repentance. It is in Jesus Christ. That is where you find peace and rest.

Your faith and repentance are not without their flaws and imperfections, but it is Christ. It is on account of Christ that God accepts us. This is the ground of your justification. It is holy outside of you. It is the work of Christ. Your faith is the hand that reaches out and receives Him, but it is not the faith itself that saves. It is Christ, whom you believe in, who saves.

This brings us then to consider the gratuitous standing of the believer. We are made the righteousness of God in Him, not detached from Him. This is crucial. You cannot separate these two. The security of the believer is that the righteousness of God is connected to their union—their union with Christ. This is your standing. You are in Him.

I encourage you as you read your Bible to note the apostolic repetition of speaking of the believer’s position as being “in Christ,” “in Him,” “in whom,” and so on. Noting that, noting that it is foundational to the arguments that he presents, to the blessings that he enumerates.

We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Him. It is union with Christ—that is the fountainhead. It is being joined to Him that we see all these other things spring forth. And so how then am I seen to be legally righteous, to have the righteousness of God? It is because I am in Him—the One who lived that righteousness, the One who obeyed without fault. So my union with Him necessarily makes me have this standing. This is such a wonderful thing. It drives us away from seeking to accomplish anything of ourselves. Where do I need to be? I need to be in Him.

I remember hearing a preacher—I think it was the Reverend Greer—dealing with union, the union of believers with Christ. He took the listener to consider the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ. Note the language of the Father on that occasion when He declares from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

He argued from that, saying, “If you want to have that position, to be seen, accepted before God, you need to be in the Son. ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ I need to be there. I need to be in the place where the Father is pleased. And He is only pleased in the Son. This is where you need to get to. In Christ. Get into Christ. Be joined to Christ by faith. Abandon what separates you from Christ: your sin, your unbelief. Run from that, but run into Christ. Be joined to Christ so that you can have the standing—by being in Him. Then you are made the righteousness of God. It can be said then of you that your life is hid with Christ in God. Because He is accepted, I am accepted. Because He lives, I will live.”

These are the arguments that we find in Scripture. So this is the certainty of your salvation. It is not growth in righteousness. It is not infused righteousness. It is not sacramental righteousness. It is a legal justification seen as credited and reckoned to be righteous because you are in Christ. It could not be more certain. It could not be more reassuring.

So are you there? Do you have this standing? Are you justified? Are you accepted in the beloved? Are you right before God? Are your sins all pardoned? Are you seen as righteous before Him? This is the gospel. This is good news. And you can have it here tonight—here and now. It can be here. This could be the most glorious moment of all your living memory—the moment you were converted, justified freely by the grace of the gospel of Christ.

So what stands in your way? What is it that seems more precious to you than this? Is it some sin? Are you holding on to some sin? You do not want to let go, and you are holding on to it. Maybe you have already improved your life in some ways. You have gotten rid of some things. You have abandoned certain things. You are doing better. You are a better person than you once were. But are you the righteousness of God? Do you have the standing of being seen as possessing the righteousness of God? It is not enough to be better. You have to be perfect.

So abandon all sin that holds you away from Christ, that pulls you from a full belief and trust in Christ. Abandon it all. Leave behind all the fear, the bondage, the concerns about what people might think.

What of people? You need to be right with God. These people are not going to argue your case on the Day of Judgment. You will stand before God. You will give an account of yourself before God. That is what the Bible says. Every one of us will give an account of ourselves before God. And the standing we must have is one that is credited to us so that there is no condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus.

Each of your sins will never be ignored; not one of them. They are either paid for by Christ or will be paid for by you. And the wise person will make swift movement into Christ, will they not? I do not want to bear the guilt. I do not want the debt of my sin upon me. The cross—the cross—is my only answer. And so you run there. You go to Calvary, and you see the bleeding wounds of the Son of God. You see the answer that the Father accepts. You see Him rise from the dead on the third day, and you say, the Father accepts Him. I accept Him.

And so you possess, by faith, this standing: the righteousness of God in Him. There is no other option. Either you bear the judgment or Christ does. There is no alternative. So this is why we appeal to you with this closing remark—the very apostolic call of verse 20. We pray to you. We beg you. We urge you. We press upon you in Christ’s stead, as if Christ was saying it. As if Christ was saying it, as He stands there with all of His riches to save and pardon sinners, He comes to you and says, “Be reconciled to God.”

And in His place, the preacher makes this pronouncement, gives this invitation, appeals to you with all urgency and earnestness: “Be reconciled to God.” And the ground of it is this: “The Father hath made the Son to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we the sinful might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” You can have that assurance right now, right here. Let us bow together in prayer.

I say to you again: it is not enough that you are better than you were. You need to be saved. And by repentance and faith, turn your gaze to the Lord Jesus Christ. Confess that you are a sinner before God, and believe in the sufficiency of what Jesus Christ did for us. Believe it is sufficient for you. It is enough for you. He will save you.

If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to meet with me after this meeting. Lord, bless Thy Word. Bless Thy Word. We pray that the Spirit who imparts life will take the very Word that He has given and drive it home with power to every heart. Gracious God, show Thy glory and Thy power in the salvation of a soul this evening. Draw them. Reconcile them. Bring them in.

Bless our time of fellowship. Strengthen us for the week that lies ahead. Support us amidst all the temptations we face and empower us to be those who communicate this ministry of reconciliation. Hear now our prayers, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of every child of God now and evermore. Amen.