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Chapter 52
SOME RESULTS OF SALVATION
A list of results or benefits of salvation could conceivably include hundreds of items.
I only intend to discuss in this chapter some of the principal things God has done, is doing, or will do on the basis of the completed sacrifice of Christ.
I. JUSTIFICATION
Justification is not only one of the great benefits of the death of Christ but is also a cardinal doctrine of Christianity because it distinguishes it as a religion of grace and faith.
And grace and faith are the cornerstones of the doctrine of justification.
A. The Meaning of Justification
To justify means to declare righteous.
Both the Hebrew (sadaq) and the Greek (dikaioo) words mean to announce or pronounce a favorable verdict, to declare righteous.
The concept does not mean to make righteous, but to announce righteousness.
It is a courtroom concept, so that to justify is to give a verdict of righteous.
Notice the contrast between to justify and to condemn in Deuteronomy 25:1; 1 Kings 8:32; and Proverbs 17:15.
Just as announcing condemnation does not make a person wicked, neither does justification make a person righteous.
Condemning or justifying announces the true and actual state of the person.
The wicked person is already wicked when the verdict of condemnation is pronounced.
Likewise, the righteous person is already righteous when the verdict of justification is announced.
B. The Problem in Justification
Since this is a forensic idea, justification is related to the concept of God as Judge.
This theme is found throughout the Bible.
Abraham acknowledged God as the Judge of all the earth who had to do what was right (Gen.
18:25).
In the song of Moses, God’s justice and righteousness were rehearsed (Deut.
32:4).
Paul called God the righteous Judge (2 Tim.
4:8).
The writer of Hebrews called God the Judge of all, and James reminded his readers that the Judge stood at the door (James 5:9).
If God, the Judge, is without injustice and completely righteous in all His decisions, then how can He announce a sinner righteous?
And sinners we all are.
There are only three options open to God as sinners stand in His courtroom.
He must condemn them, compromise His own righteousness to receive them as they are, or change them into righteous people.
If He can exercise the third option, then He can announce them righteous, which is justification.
But any righteousness the sinner has must be actual, not fictitious; real, not imagined; acceptable by God’s standards, and not a whit short.
If this could be accomplished, then, and only then, can He justify.
Job stated the problem accurately when he asked, “How can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2).
C. The Procedure in Justification (Rom.
3:21–26)
God does put into effect that third option: He changes sinners into righteous people.
How?
By making us the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor.
5:21), by making many righteous (Rom.
5:19), by giving believers the gift of righteousness (v.
17).
Five steps were involved in the outworking of this procedure as detailed in the central passage on justification, Romans 3:21–26.
1.
The plan (Rom.
3:21).
God’s plan for providing the needed righteousness centered in Jesus Christ.
It was apart from Law.
The construction is without an article, indicating it was apart from not only the Mosaic Law, which could not provide that righteousness (Acts 13:39) but also from all legal complications.
It was manifested (a perfect passive form) at the Incarnation of Christ, and the effects of that great intervention in history continue.
It is constantly witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, who testified of the coming of Messiah (1 Pet.
1:11).
Thus the plan centers in a person.
2. The prerequisite (Rom.
3:22).
Righteousness comes through faith in the now-revealed Jesus Christ.
The New Testament never says we are saved because of faith (that would require dia with the accusative).
It always makes faith the channel through which we receive salvation (dia with the genitive).
But, of course, faith must have the right object to be effective, and the object of saving faith is Jesus Christ.
3. The price (Rom.
3:24–25).
Quite clearly the price paid was the blood of Christ.
The cost to Him was the greatest.
To us the benefit comes freely (the same word is translated “without a cause” in John 15:25), that is, without any cause in us, and so by His grace.
4. The position.
When the individual receives Christ, he is placed in Christ.
This is what makes him righteous.
We are made the righteousness of God in Him.
This righteousness alone overcomes our desperate, sinful condition and measures up to all the demands of God’s holiness.
5.
The pronouncement (Rom.
3:26).
Not only does Christ’s righteousness, which we have, meet God’s demands, but it also demands that God justify us.
We are in fact, not fiction, righteous; therefore, the holy God can remain just and justify the one who believes in the Lord Jesus.
Therefore, no one can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect, for we are in Christ righteous in God’s sight.
And this is why God can justify us.
D. The Proof of Justification
Justification is proved by personal purity.
“He who has died is freed [lit., justified] from sin” (Rom.
6:7).
We stand acquitted from sin so that it no longer has dominion over us.
Justification before the bar of God is demonstrated by holiness of life here on earth before the bar of men.
This was the perspective of James when he wrote that we are justified by works (James 2:24).
Unproductive faith is not genuine faith; therefore, what we are in Christ will be seen in what we are before men.
Faith and works are like a two-coupon ticket to heaven.
The coupon of works is not good for passage, and the coupon of faith is not valid if detached from works.
One final thought: justification assures us of peace with God (Rom.
5:1).
Our relationship with Him is right, legal, and eternal.
This forms a sure foundation for peace with God.
II.
THE JUDGMENT OF THE SIN NATURE
A second very important benefit of the death of Christ relates His death to the judgment of the believer’s sin nature (Rom.
6:1–14).
Justification, we saw, will be seen in a life of holiness; and the basis for that life of holiness, like the basis for justification, is the death of Christ.
In the preceding chapter Paul used that startling phrase “the gift of righteousness” (5:17).
This raises the question of 6:1.
If righteousness is a gift, then would it not be better to continue in sin in order that grace may increasingly be seen?
If salvation were by works, this question would never be raised, since one would have to keep on doing good works in order to merit salvation.
But if salvation is by grace, then cannot one sin as much as he pleases and will this not actually display grace all the more?
Paul answers the question with an emphatic no.
He gives two reasons that the justified person will not continue in sin.
A. The Judgment Frees Us from the Domain of Sin (Rom.
6:2–10)
1.
Its accomplishment (Rom.
6:2–4).
Being joined to the death and resurrection of Christ is that which actually accomplishes our transference from the domain of the old life to that of the new life.
Death to sin becomes, then, not a hope, but a reality, because Christ died to sin once and we were joined to Him in that death by baptism.
Death means separation, not extinction.
So death to sin in this paragraph means separation from its domain or realm, but not the extinction of its presence.
Baptism means association or identification with someone or something.
Here it refers to our identification with Christ in His death so that we have been separated from the power of sin.
Baptism cannot refer here to a ceremony or even a sacrament, but rather to a relational union to the Lord (similar to the Israelites being relationally united to Moses in the crossing of the Red Sea, 1 Cor.
10:2).
Ritual or water baptism illustrates this union but cannot accomplish it.
Thus this baptism unites us to Christ’s death unto sin (separation from its domain), to His burial (to demonstrate conclusively that His death was actual), and to His resurrection (to give us newness of life).
2. Its accompaniments (Rom.
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