Sermon Tone Analysis

Counted as righteousness

Abraham’s faith

old, yet promised heirs

promised land

given a timeline

after this God calls Abraham to commence a covenant ceremony.

but there is one verse that pulls all of this together and I think serves as a helpful outline or guide for our conversation this morning

God had promised a son, even in his old age - he believed

he didn’t believe his own ability, he believed God

not his own planning or vision casting

not his own strategy

he believed God.

as a result, it was credited or imputed to him as righteousness.

This encounter between God and Abraham is the one of the first instances we see in Scripture regarding the doctrine of Sola Fide, the next of the five solas that we are considering.

If you remember for our previous discussions, in the 1500s, the reformers sought to bring about some changes/reformations in the church.

As a result, they produced Five Solas or five “alones” that marked where these reformations should take place.

Generally, these five solas are distinctive markers in protestant churches today.

As we began by considering 2 weeks ago:

Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone is our inspired, inerrant authority for the church - not tradition, councils, or certain people.

Solus Christus - Christ Alone is our means of salvation - not sacraments, or mediation by the church - but Christ alone.

Today, we consider the next Sola - Sola Fide - justification by faith alone.

Justification and Righteousness are closely related.

For example, when a person is justified - they are declared righteous - or right according to a legal standard.

Just as Abraham was credited with righteousness, sola fide deals with the doctrine and its application toward Christians.

Joel Beeke defines justification in this way:

“Justification is God’s gracious forensic declaration that guilty sinners are forgiven (and thus freed from condemnation) and reckoned [or counted] as obedient to the law (and thus worthy of eternal life), both on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ received by faith alone.”

(p.

517)

So, let’s consider some element of this definition...

Justification is received by Faith Alone in Christ Alone

When Abraham believed God… he had faith.

He didn't know who Christ would be, but He was growing in knowledge of God and demonstrated faith in him.

This sort of begs the question:

What is Faith?

confidence not based on visual evidence but on something more.

According to the Westminister Confession of Faith:

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word...”

Sproul defines “faith” simply as “Believing God”.

He says...

It’s believing God.

The Christian life is about believing God.

It is about living by every word that proceeds from His mouth (Deut.

8:3; Matt.

4:4).

It is about following Him into places where we’ve never been, into situations that we’ve never experienced, into countries that we’ve never seen—because we know who He is.

So the essence of faith is trusting or believing in who Jesus is and in what He has done.

But there is an on-going element of faith.

Gerard Wisse notes

Faith is...the channel through which all the benefits of Christ grow.

We receive everything we have from Jesus by faith.

It’s not something earned.

It’s not something physically handed off to us from him.

Everything we receive is by faith - including justification.

So this justification - or declaration of righteousness is by faith alone in Christ alone.

We read earlier a bit of what this means.

When we were dead in our sins and hopeless, God did something about that through Jesus Christ...

The key concepts in this passage are that we are “saved by grace [which we’ll get to next week] through faith.”

The reason we’re saved by faith is two-fold.

because we are unable to do so - dead people don’t walk, talk, move, think, act.

Our sinfulness left us spiritually dead.

But even if we did have some sort of a Zombie resurrection, we also receive this salvation by faith...

so we can’t boast - we trust by faith that God has accomplished what we could never accomplish.

So we are saved from the consequences, punishment, or guilt of our sin through faith in Jesus Christ.

But not only do we receive salvation, we receive justification through faith - a declaration of righteousness.

The object of that faith is...

Jesus Christ

lived a perfect life (he knew no sin) - 2 Cor.

5:21.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled all that the law required -

He perfectly obeyed all that the Father called him to do - especially in his work on the cross

Schreiner writes:

he obeyed his Father, that he did everything the Father called him to do, for the Father mandated him to do many things that were not written in the law.

Jesus, as the Son of the Father, did what his Father commanded on all occasions and in every circumstance, and so his obedience transcends keeping the Torah.

Jesus’ obedience is displayed supremely in the cross, his taking the punishment upon himself that human beings deserved.

In any case, when we put our faith in Jesus, we are given the whole Christ, so that both his sin-bearing death and his obedience are counted to us.

Philippians 2 further illustrates this:

Philippians 2:5–11 (ESV)

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Titus summarizes the work of Christ in this way.

So, with the foundation of what justification is and how we receive it - let’s consider a couple of elements what Sola Fide means.

First of all...

Justification By Faith Alone is Forensic, not Transformative

This word “forensic” has often puzzled me.

We might hear of forensics in a legal show.

The forensic detectives might come onto a scene to analyze data in order to help prosecutors use that evidence to help a judge come to the a verdict based on forensic evidence.

The evidence points clearly to a specific verdict.

All of this kind of clicked for me when Thomas Schreiner explained it this way...

justification is forensic rather than transformative, denoting a change in status rather than a change in nature.

It’s as though the crime scene of our lives is analyzed.

For those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ - His DNA is all over the scene.

The only right outcome is to declare this sinner justified because of Jesus.

Paul writes in Galatians

So, why the contrast with “transformative”

In the time leading up to the reformation, many church leaders taught that justification was in Christ AND our actions.

That the righteousness of Christ would then work to transform us and so then our justification would be based on our transformation.

the reformers challenged that the church leaders were mixing up “justification” and “sanctification.”

Sanctification is essentially the process of becoming more and more like Christ.

John Brown of Wamphray compares and contrasts Justification and Sanctification in this way (Beeke, 531)

Justification: Change in relation to God and his law

Sanctification: Change in nature

Justification: Judicial act of God acquitting believers