The Journey Begins

You can’t go on a journey without stepping through the door. Last week we started our preparation for the Journey, recognizing the Holy Spirit’s voice calling us before we ever called to the Spirit. We wouldn’t even know that there’s a journey to go on were it not for the Spirit, who calls us to Himself.  We call this “Prevenient Grace” – the Holy Spirit calling us to Himself, awakening the image of God in us.

One of our most important recognitions is that we are helpless on our own. In our sinful state, we cannot even think of going on a journey toward perfection. The best we could hope for would be “good enough” and, to be frank, “good enough” isn’t good enough. Without God’s direct intervention, we are doomed.

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus makes a radical command: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Think about it: if the aim is perfection, unless you’ve already been perfect for all of your life, that goal is unattainable. Think of a baseball pitcher: suppose the pitcher’s first pitch is hit out of the ballpark for a home run. After that pitch, the pitcher goes on to throw exactly 81 pitches: three strikes apiece to three batters each inning. Did the pitcher throw a perfect game? Nope. An unbelievably amazing game, yes, but not perfect.

Because of our sin problem, we are unable to come into God’s presence. It’s kind of like being under house arrest with one of those cute ankle bracelets on. Except it functions more like a shock collar. We are unable to overcome it; no matter how good we are, we cannot erase our own sin. Paul wrote to Jews in Rome about this. In Romans 2, he calls them out: Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. (Romans 2:25). This seems like an obscure passage, but circumcision was the mark of God’s people. If you were circumcised, you were one of God’s people, and the Jews believed that if someone was uncircumcised, they couldn’t be one of God’s followers. Paul is saying, “Fine, if you are circumcised, you’re God’s people, but only if you keep the law.” Our word “observe” doesn’t exactly match the Greek: prassēs means “to perform” or “to accomplish.” So Paul says, “If you are circumcised, as long as you accomplish all of the requirements of the law, you’re fine. But as soon as you break the law, you’re toast.”

One of the most quoted scriptures comes from Romans 3:23: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but did you notice that it ends in a comma? The sentence continues in Romans 3:24: and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

This brings us to a really nice seminary word: justification. An easy way to think of justification is this: it is “just as if” I had never sinned. This is an important concept in Christianity; it changes everything. Unlike every other religion, where adherents are expected to work their way to salvation, Christianity has no such demands. In fact, Christianity says that we cannot work our way out of the hole we’re in. So Jesus gives himself to pay the penalty of our sins. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!  (Romans 5:8-9)

Justification is the first step of the journey. We might putter around the house, getting our stuff together for ages, but there comes a moment when we step through the door and begin our journey. Now the rest of our lives are spent on the journey. Next week we will get to this aspect: sanctification, which is both instantaneous and a gradual changing of a person from the sinful state to becoming increasingly perfect.

But today we are stepping through the door. Justification is this step. Once we realize that we are sinners and admit that we need Jesus Christ to save us, and when we, by faith, accept Him, we receive pardon. Justification is the legal state in which we, as sinners, receive pardon because Jesus Christ’s righteousness is credited to us. This doesn’t mean we’ve been declared innocent (we’ll get to that next week); in fact, it means we’ve been declared guilty. Imagine a courtroom where you are the defendant. Witnesses have been called, and the evidence has been brought.  Everything you ever did or even thought was brought before the court, and you have been justly declared guilty. Now it’s time for sentencing, and you already know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), that you face eternal separation from God.

But then Jesus steps in and says, “I have already paid the penalty.” He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification (Romans 4:25). There is no longer any punishment for our sin, because that would be double jeopardy. We do not have to face trial a second time for a crime we’ve already been declared guilty of.  I know some people who carry around with them the guilt of things they have long-since been forgiven of. Some of us weren’t the nicest people before you came to Christ. Some of us have done all sorts of things. Many people have lots of regrets for sins and for missed opportunities. Yes, by all means, take and learn from those sins. But your punishment has already been paid. You are free. You have been saved from the guilt and punishment of your sin!

It is important to note that salvation is not only our ticket to heaven. Salvation is present tense! Ephesians 2 twice tells us It is by grace you have been saved. (2:5, 8) Have been saved. We are already saved! We don’t have to wait for salvation! We can be free from the guilt of sin now!

So the big question is what do we have to do to receive this justification? There is one condition to justification: faith. The Ephesians 2 passage I referenced before, says It is by grace you have been saved, (meaning that it’s a free gift from God that we didn’t deserve) through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The condition of justification is faith. God’s grace gives humans the ability to respond, and God will not save them unless they do so. God does not force us to love him or to receive.

So what is this faith? Faith is what brings us to repentance. Repentance should be understood as a kind of low-level faith, where we understand that we have sinned and need God. We recognize that we need a change of heart, but we can’t do it ourselves. At the moment of justification, God gives saving faith to the believer and the believer trusts in God for salvation.

In his sermon “Circumcision of the Heart,” John Wesley defines faith as “an unshaken assent to all that God hath revealed in Scripture.” There is a cognitive component to faith, belief in God’s work in Jesus Christ. In other words, you actually have to accept that your debt has been paid.

But saving faith is more than intellectual assent. Theoretical belief doesn’t mean anything unless it motivates you to action. This is why Jesus told parables about a man finding treasure. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” (Matthew 13:44). The man believed the treasure was valuable. He believed it enough that he sold everything in order to buy the field. There are a lot of so-called Christians who made an intellectual decision at some point in their lives and it hasn’t changed anything about their lives.

If your faith hasn’t made that short journey from your head to your heart, then it’s not really faith. If your faith doesn’t lead you to do anything about it, then it’s probably not saving faith at all. Evangelical Christians have for a long time focused on an individualistic faith that doesn’t do anything, as if somehow, since we “believe” then we don’t have to obey Jesus’ teachings. That’s not belief. That’s not faith. Faith doesn’t mean anything unless it’s willing to do something.

But faith is more. It’s a gift that enables a believer to perceive and understand things that were previously hidden. It allows someone to believe that God will provide for them, even though they don’t know where the money will come from. It allows someone to know that God will deliver them through their time of struggle or grief.

I want to quickly get to the results of justification. First is the negative result: what we are saved from. According to Romans 5:9, we are saved from God’s wrath. We do not have to worry about whether or not we’ll end up in Hell.

But we’re not just saved from Hell. We’re saved for glory. Romans 8:30 says: Those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. People like to get all caught up in the word predestined. All it means is “predestined.” A good way to understand predestination is like a bus heading for New York City. God has ordained that the bus will go to NYC, and it’s going there. But we have the responsibility to get on the bus. When we get on the bus, we have the responsibility to stay on the bus. But the result is glory. The result is eternal perfection.

Other results are that we have peace with God. Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1). The price for our sin has been paid, so nothing stands between us and our God. So God gives us access to his grace. Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2). We also receive the promise of the redemption of the body (Romans 8:23) and an eternal inheritance (Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 1:4).

We are stepping through the door into a new reality, into a new state, a state of forgiveness, of right relationship with God through Jesus Christ.