Justification and Deliverance from Eternal Condemnation (Doctrinal Bible Church in Huntsville, Alabama)

Doctrinal Bible Church

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Wednesday August 30, 2023

Justification Series: Justification and Deliverance from Eternal Condemnation

Lesson # 13

The apostle Paul in Romans 5:9 writes that if Christ died as a substitute for sinners, how much more then, will He deliver the sinner justified by faith in Jesus Christ from the wrath of God.

Romans 5:9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! (NIV84)

In Romans 5:9, “since” is the emphatic inferential use of the post-positive conjunction oun (οὖν), which denotes that what is introduced at this point is the result of an inference from Paul’s teaching that is contained in Romans 5:1-8.

The expression “His blood” does “not” refer to the literal blood of Christ but is part of a “representative” analogy between the physical death of the animal sacrifice in the Mosaic Law and the spiritual and physical death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The expression pollō mallon (πολλῷ μᾶλλον), “how much more” contains the figure of a fortiori and expresses the idea that if the Father sent His Son to the cross while the believer in Jesus Christ was still an enemy of His, how much more then will He deliver the sinner justified by faith in His Son from God’s wrath.

Christ’s substitutionary spiritual and physical death on the cross on behalf of the believer while he was unregenerate and an enemy of God, guarantees that the believer will be blessed in the future and avoid the wrath of God.

In other words, if God the Father expressed His love for the believer by sending His Son to the cross to die as a substitute for them while they were His enemies, then He will certainly bless the believer now that he is reconciled to God.

A fortiori has two parts: (1) The greater (2) The lesser.

What requires a greater degree of effort is used as the basis for showing what requires less effort and it is a conclusion compared with some other conclusion or recognized fact, as inferred to be even more certain or inescapable than the two conclusions it combines.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a fortiori, “with greater reason or more convincing force-used in drawing a conclusion that is inferred to be even more certain than another.”

A fortiori uses an inferential conclusion as being more conclusive than another reasoned conclusion and is a system of argumentation or debate which takes an accepted fact and by a comparison produces an inescapable fact and confident conclusion.

Therefore, the expression “how much more” emphasizes if God has done the most “difficult” thing for the believer in sending His Son to die as a substitute for them while they were His enemies, how much more can God be depended upon to accomplish the “easier” thing, namely, deliver them from the wrath of God now that they are reconciled to Him.

The expression expresses the idea that if Christ had done the “greater” work of providing the basis for the justification of sinners by dying for them as their substitute, He will certainly then perform the comparatively “lesser” or simple task of delivering them from the Lake of Fire, now that they are reconciled to Him.

The “most difficult” or “greatest” problem facing God when dealing with sinful mankind was that not only did He need to fulfill the demands of His holiness that required that sin and sinners face His righteous indignation but at the same time He also needed to express His love for sinners in providing them a way of avoiding His righteous indignation.

So the logical argument of a fortiori as expressed by the expression “how much more” emphasizes that if Christ died for His enemies, it follows that He will deliver His friends or those who have been reconciled to His Father through faith in Him.

If the greater benefit has been given, the less will not be withheld and if God can do the greater work, it follows a fortiori that He can do the lesser.

The “greater” is the work of salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ’s spiritual and physical deaths on the cross, which is an accomplished fact of history.

The “less” is God protecting, sustaining and delivering the believer in time and blessing him in the future and delivering him from the eternal Lake of Fire.

“We have been justified” is the nominative masculine plural aorist passive participle conjugation of the verb dikaioō (δικαιόω), which appears in Romans 3:20, 24, 26, 28 and 30 and is used in relation in relation to the doctrine of justification and means, “to declare or pronounce righteous.”

By way of definition is a judicial act of God whereby He declares a person to be righteous as a result of crediting or imputing to that person His righteousness the moment they exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

Consequently, God accepts that person and enters that person into a relationship with Himself since they now possess His righteousness.

The participle form of the verb dikaioō (δικαιόω) is a causal, which answers the question as to “why” the believer will certainly be delivered from wrath of God.

The believer will be delivered from the wrath of God “because” he has been declared justified by God through faith in Jesus Christ.

The aorist tense of this verb is a consummative aorist, which emphasizes the cessation of a particular act and thus emphasizes the cessation of the act of the Father declaring the sinner justified through faith in His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

“Now” is adverb of time nun (νῦν), which emphasizes the present state of Paul and his fellow Christians who were declared justified by God the Father in the past when they exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

The word is employed with the aorist tense of the verb dikaioō (δικαιόω) in order to emphasize the believer’s present state of being justified as a result of the past action of the Father declaring them justified through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

“Shall we be saved” is the first person plural future passive indicative form of the verb sōzō (σῴζω), which refers to the believer’s deliverance from eternal condemnation and not their deliverance from the tribulation.

This is indicated in that Paul used this deliverance in the context of Christ’s spiritual and physical death on the cross, which delivers them from spiritual death and eternal condemnation in the eternal Lake of Fire.

Also, up to this point in the book of Romans, Paul has been teaching that the entire human race is under the wrath, or righteous indignation of God due to sin (Romans 1:18:-3:18).

He has pointed out that the sinner can only be declared justified by God the Father and delivered from the wrath of God through faith in His Son Jesus Christ and not by observing the Law or circumcision (Romans 3:19-4:25).

In Romans 5:1-5, Paul presents the results of justification by faith, which is that the believer now has peace with God, permanent access to a relationship with God, confidence that they will be blessed by God through undeserved suffering.

In Romans 5:6-8, he demonstrates that the believer’s confidence in future blessing is not misplaced since Christ died for the believer as a substitute while the believer was still an enemy of God.

Therefore, in Romans 5:9, when Paul uses sōzō (σῴζω) he is speaking in the context of the benefits that accrue to the believer because of the spiritual and physical deaths of Jesus Christ on the cross as their substitute, which delivered them from eternal condemnation and reconciled them to God.

Therefore, in Romans 5:9, the verb sōzō (σῴζω) refers to the believer’s deliverance from eternal condemnation in the eternal Lake of Fire.

The future tense of the verb is a “predictive” future tense indicating that something will take place or come to pass, which emphasizes the certainty of the believer’s deliverance from eternal condemnation in the eternal Lake of Fire and that it “will take place” in the future.

The prepositional phrase apo tēs orgēs (ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς), “from the wrath of God” refers to God’s righteous indignation and is used of God’s settled opposition to and displeasure against sin meaning that God’s holiness cannot and will not coexist with sin in any form whatsoever.

It is not the momentary, emotional, and often uncontrolled anger to which human beings are prone and does not refer to an explosive outburst but rather it refers to an inner, deep resentment that seethes and smolders, often unnoticed by others as in the case of God’s wrath.

God hates sin so much and loves the sinner so much that He judged His Son Jesus Christ for every sin in human history-past, present and future and provided deliverance from sin through faith in His Son Jesus Christ and the only way to avoid God’s righteous indignation is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

The judgment of God is inescapable unless one trusts in Jesus Christ as their Savior.

The fact that unregenerate human beings will receive eternal condemnation in the lake of fire forever and ever is a righteous judgment since as sinners they can never be justified before a holy God and have rejected God’s only provision for sin, which is the Person and Finished Work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

God who is holy and cannot tolerate sin is justified in throwing His creatures into the lake of fire for rebelling against Him but also God, who as to His nature, is love, did everything He could to prevent any of His creatures from going to the lake of fire forever and ever for their rebellion against Him.

The fact that God did not immediately deposit all mankind in the lake of fire for their disobedience is incontrovertible evidence that God loves His creatures and desires none of them to go to the lake of fire.

The fact that God the Father sent His Son into the world to become a human being to satisfy His righteous demands that the sin of men be judged is also incontrovertible evidence that God loves His creatures.

The Lord Jesus Christ will conduct the Great White Throne Judgment as He will all judgments since God the Father has promoted Him to sovereign ruler of creation as a result of His voluntary substitutionary spiritual and physical death on the cross (See Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 1:1-3).

The sins of the unbeliever are never brought up since Christ died for all their sins and instead their self-righteous works that do not measure up to Christ perfection will be used to condemn them to the eternal lake of fire.