Ground Of Christian Living


“Ground Of Christian Living” is a sermon preached from Selected Scriptures, by Michael Beatty, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin – a confessional Reformed Baptist church subscribing to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
Introduction: The Ground of the Christian Life
So where we’re at this morning, I want to look at the sort of ground of the Christian life. By that, I simply mean the basis for the way that we can claim the promises of Christ as our own. That’s where we’re going to be heading this morning.
Review of Last Week: Covenantal Approaches to Life
Just by way of review, last week we looked at a variety of different ways that we could approach life in general. If you recall, there was the one under the Garden, which was: we would work, there would be judgment, and there was a promise of rest if we did well. Adam and Eve sadly didn’t do that, and they ended up simply having judgment. We know that we’ve received that too because we have death and all sorts of corruption present in all of us this morning. I don’t really need to explain that to any of us because we know that even this morning on our way here and throughout the day we’ll have a full taste of that.
Life Under the Covenant of the Flood
Secondly, we also looked at life under the Flood. You know, we’ve seen some rainbows this week with the various rain. There’s a promise that God won’t judge the earth again by flooding. But under that covenant, there is only work and delayed judgment. There’s no rest. God will continue to allow life to go on. People will continue to be born, to get married in different orders, and they also then continue to have this sort of sustaining life. But there’s no rest in that. In other words, you can’t get saved by the Noahic covenant. No one gets saved under that. There’s simply a sort of waiting until the end. God is being patient with creation until that last day, until the fullness of time, to bring things to their complete end.
The Christian Life: Hope for Rest
We saw then that the Christian life is the only one that still has this sort of hope for rest, the one that we really want. And rest, remember, is not just in a negative sense of we’re not working, but rest in the sense of fully entering into communion with God and enjoying all the promises He’s given to us. It’s negative in the sense of we’re no longer working, we no longer struggle, but there’s the promised rest in terms of fully entering into all the realities that we see in the gospel and knowing them in the fullest sense. We have a taste of them now, but we will have them in the fullest sense in the days which are yet to come. That’s really what we want.
Outline of Today’s Teaching
Today, I want to work that out by looking at a variety of Scripture verses together to see that the Christian life then is judgment in the sense that there is a verdict that’s rendered—something has been said. Then there is something that we’ll look at in the weeks ahead about the work of the Christian life—sanctification—and then there is rest held out to us at the end.
This morning, I want to look at three points to drive that home:
- Justification is a salvific act.
- Justification is a forensic act.
- Justification is definitive.
I’m going to break for questions after each point. Depending on how much time or how long I talk, we’ll have differing amounts of time, but my intention is to have questions. If you have lots of questions, we can always break this up into other weeks, so feel free to ask as many questions as you want. I won’t wait until the end of the point; if you have questions to help clarify in the moment, please raise your hand. I want to address those so I can be as clear as possible.
Point 1: Justification is a Salvific Act
This is really important because of certain trends that we see throughout Christianity in the current day. I’m not going to talk about those for now for the sake of time, but we could talk about it offline if you’d like. There are a lot of folks who want to say that justification is not a saving act. It’s sort of locating someone in a covenant community of sorts.
I want to begin by looking in Romans chapter 1 to show that Paul is emphasizing in a variety of places that justification is indeed a saving act or a salvific act. In Romans 1:18 to 3:19, which we won’t read for the sake of time, Paul is establishing the sinfulness of every person, Jew and Gentile. In other words, it’s a problem that’s not unique to any particular group. It’s something that is a universal problem, and that means there has to be a solution that’s good for both Jew and Gentile—for all the people of the world.
Romans 3: All Are Under Sin
Romans 3:9, notice then, Paul wants to answer about if there is a sort of order in the people of God based on birth. He says,
“What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written: none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
So everyone has this particular problem and is in need of saving—Jews and Gentiles. Neither one is better off. In one sense, this is bad news for everyone, but in another sense it is good news for everyone as well because of what he’s going to develop here in terms of justification.
The Law Establishes Guilt
Look down then at verse 19 of the same chapter:
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”
Ultimately, the law will establish everyone’s guilt. We’re going to develop this more under the second point of the forensic sense. Everyone is then liable to judgment, and every mouth will be stopped. Sometimes you’ll talk to folks—and we may not admit it, but probably at times we have that impulse in ourselves—of saying that we’re going to say something to God on the last day in a variety of ways. That’s not going to happen, because we see right here every mouth will be stopped by the law. It will be established: the guilt of each and every person.
No Justification by Works
Moving along to verse 20:
“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
This is why we need to understand the Christian life in terms of a judgment that must occur, because we can’t work to secure that judgment. If we say, “I want to be held accountable by the standard of the law, and by the law I want my righteousness to be supported,” no one will have that happen because we have guilt and corruption from the beginning, which means we’re fallen, we’re sinful, we’re already liable. Then we’ve all committed actual sin.
By “actual sin,” I mean in contrast to original sin—actual sin meaning that we in our own person, with our own knowledge, have done things which are contrary to the law of God. We have left undone those things that we should do, and we have done what we shouldn’t do. By that, our guilt is all the more increased.
The Need for Another Source of Righteousness
Ultimately then, if we want to have rest or a judgment with any outcome other than “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” we need to look for something else besides our works. We see in verse 21, Paul does that very thing:
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Justification: By Faith and Grace Alone
So the judgment we’re looking for in terms of being righteous before the Lord is only on the basis of faith in Christ and only on the basis of grace that we receive that. The judgment we see is salvific. It accomplishes our salvation, as it describes here in verse 24: we’re justified by His grace because of what Christ has done.
Application: The Ground of the Christian Life
That’s very important. There are a variety of other passages we could look at, but what we say then is that the Christian life is grounded upon that reality—that we have been saved by faith, by grace, because of Christ. Hopefully, nothing here is rocket science for any of us or new news, but it’s important to remember these things because we’re going to apply them at a later date to the outworkings of the Christian life, whether it be here in the church, in the home, or in the workplace. We need to remember this fact. Otherwise, it can get flipped on its head, where we begin thinking our work will establish our righteousness. That if I’m a good [fill in the blank], then God will be happy with me.
What we’re saying here is that we’re already as righteous as we will ever be because of what Christ has done. Ultimately, the Christian life is grounded upon that fact.
Confessional Reference: Chapter 11, Paragraph 1
I like what our confession says. If you have the hymnal with you or not, you can look later at page 676. Just to remind us of what it says in chapter 11, paragraph 1:
“Those whom God effectually calleth, He also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone.”
What’s important there are those two previous clauses: not for anything wrought in them or done by them. In other words, we’re not accounted righteous because it’s grace and cooperating with grace, as our Roman Catholic friends would say. If you ask them, they’ll say they’re justified by grace. But when you really push, it’s because of what God is working in them—that there’s something being wrought in them. We’re saying that’s not the case. It’s not something done by us, but rather it’s done for Christ’s sake alone. That ultimately is the saving ground.
Summary of Point One
That’s what our confession holds out, and what I think Romans chapter 3 is highlighting so nicely for us. What we need to see then about the Christian life is that justification is salvific.
Point 2: Justification is a Forensic Act
Now, justification is a forensic act. We’re seeing it not as something which is transformative or an inner renewal over the course of our lives, but rather something that occurs in a forensic sense at a specific time.
If you’ve ever had any dealings with the law—for instance, when my parents were divorced, we were waiting for this sort of rendering of the law to come down. There was all this buildup to what the judge would say. There would be a decree, some sort of outcome. Everyone was talking to the judge and so on. We were waiting for a forensic act, waiting for the judge to say, “We’re going to do this and not that.” After that was done, everyone was held accountable to that decree.
That’s what we’re saying justification is, in a much more important sense than any sort of legal outcome we might have here. If you’ve had dealings with the law, you know that. If you haven’t, you can imagine it: there is all this buildup, and ultimately, the judge renders a decision. That’s what the judgment is—a forensic act. It’s saying before the law, how do we find this person? Guilty or not guilty? Corrupt or righteous?
Not a Legal Fiction but a Real Act
We want to highlight a couple of things to show that this is indeed the case. Sometimes you’ll talk to people about this and they’ll say that the Protestant view of justification by faith alone is a sort of legal fiction. In other words, it’s like something just on paper. If you’ve ever had some sort of legal contract to relieve yourself of an asset, you sign it, then another document, then another document—ultimately, there’s no real reason to do that except you need the paper trail. We’re not saying this is merely a paper trail sort of action. We’re saying it’s a real forensic activity and that something is actually occurring—the law is being fulfilled. That’s very important.
Did Christ actually fulfill the law on our behalf or not? Do we have His real righteousness, or is it only a paper righteousness or a legal fiction? It has a lot of bearing on the Christian life.
God Judges Truly: Exodus 23
Let’s look at Exodus chapter 23, beginning in verse 6 for context, down to verse 9:
“You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
If you notice, this series of verses is grounded in verse 7: “I will not acquit the wicked.” Why won’t you do these things? Because God sees, God knows, God will judge. He tells His people to be holy as He is holy elsewhere. We imitate Him by not perverting justice and keeping far from false charges, having this reality of justice before our eyes because that’s how God ultimately will act as well. He wants us to imitate Him in that regard.
God is Consistent in His Justice
This judgment, this courtroom scene, is real. God is consistent throughout. It’s not like He was one God in the Old Testament and then acts differently in the New. It’s the same Lord of all, and He affects His salvation the same way across the periods of time. Even as we saw in Romans 3, Jew and Gentile alike are in need of this; there is no distinction.
Acquitting the Innocent and Condemning the Guilty: Deuteronomy 25
Look with me at Deuteronomy 25:
“If there is a dispute between men and they come into court, and the judges decide between them, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty, then if the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with a number of stripes in proportion to his offense.”
In other words, righteousness belongs to the righteous, and condemnation belongs to the wicked. God will promote those that do well and fulfill His law. He will punish those who don’t. There is a forensic activity in the declaration of various instruments of government or the court system under the Old Covenant law.
God’s Declarations Are Real and Final
Under the New Covenant, we’re not under Moses, but the same principle applies: whatever God declares regarding righteousness is real. It’s not a paper trail. We need to keep in mind that we’re looking at a real action that is taking place.
Vindicating the Righteous: 1 Kings 8
In 1 Kings 8:32:
“Then hear in heaven and act and judge your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing his conduct on his own head, and vindicating the righteous by rewarding him according to his righteousness.”
It only makes sense to pray this way if the justification they’re seeking is judicial. So judge, look at what’s here, and make a judgment.
Christ’s Righteousness Imputed
Ultimately, in justification, God is looking at Christ’s righteousness and saying Christ truly fulfilled the entirety of the law. He has imputed that to each of His children, to His brethren, to us if we’re in Christ today. We are truly declared righteous, not based on a myth or a paper trail, but by actual judgment that we are righteous.
Not a Piece of Paper but True Righteousness
That’s important as we go through life to think about: am I righteous because I have a piece of paper that says I am, or because I actually am, having been clothed in Christ’s righteousness? It’s a big difference. If it’s just a piece of paper, you can lose it. Someone could shred it. It could be overturned by another judicial act. We see that happening in courts today—one court rules this, another overturns it, back and forth. Those are judicial fictions. They’re not saying “here’s what the law says; this is what we have to say,” otherwise they wouldn’t be overturning each other left and right.
God’s Judgment Cannot Be Overturned
God’s action will not be overturned by any lower court because He is the highest. He has told us so, and He hates violations of justice.
Proverbs 17: Justifying the Wicked is an Abomination
Proverbs 17:15:
“He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.”
That’s the end of the story on this point. God is not going to say, “This person did more good than bad, so let’s let it pan out,” or “You did pretty well, but let’s send you to purgatory for a few thousand years.” Instead, He has declared us righteous because of Christ. We truly are righteous because of what Christ has done for us by imputing His righteousness to us, and we are judged accordingly. We already have our judgment.
Questions on Point 2
I want to open it up for questions on this particular point before we move on to the third point next week.
Any questions?
Conclusion of Points 1 and 2
So, just in conclusion for both of these first points—in terms of justification being forensic and also being salvific—we will begin to see, with our study over this time and with what we already know but are perhaps being reminded of, that since we’ve already received our judgment as those who are righteous, that really frees us up.
Application: Assurance and Freedom
We have a lot of difficulties still in this life, whether it be with our own conscience, because we do continue to sin and it reminds us of what we did in the past. Even if we have confessed and repented of it, we can be plagued by those who hold out to us all our various sins—the accuser of the brethren. We need to be reminded that we’ve already been judged righteous because of what Christ has done for us, and that we truly are righteous. Someone can’t take that away from us.
Encouragement to Put on Christ
It is important, as we’ll see, to continue to put on Christ and put off the things of the world. But when we do struggle, when we are downtrodden, we can see that ultimately this grounding of our life is not something that is up to chance or that anyone else can take away from us. Christ has done this for us, and God the Father has declared it so for us. We already have the Holy Spirit as that seal, that down payment of the outcome that we will ultimately have at the end of the age.
Our Certain Future: Rest in Christ
When we close our eyes in death—if the Lord does not return prior to that, which would be wonderful, but if He does not—we can fully expect to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into My rest,” because of what’s already been declared. We’re not waiting for something; something has already been declared.
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