Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and may our Lord and Savior sanctify you in the truth, for His word is truth. Amen

The Third Sunday after Pentecost (2010)

Justified by Faith Rev. Toby Byrd

Galatians 2:15-16 (ESV)

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; [16] yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

This morning we stand in awe as St. Paul clarifies for all men the one, true way of salvation. Here, within these few, simple words of St. Paul’s letter to the church of Galatia rest the central doctrine of Holy Scripture and, as the reformers of the church said, in the words of the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, “this article of justification by faith is ‘the chief article of the entire Christian doctrine,without which no poor conscience can have any abiding comfort or rightly understand the riches of the grace of Christ.’” Moreover, Martin Luther declared: “Where this single article remains pure, Christendom will remain pure, in beautiful harmony, and without any schisms. But where it does not remain pure, it is impossible to repel any error or heretical spirit.”

Therefore, we hold fast to the testimony of the Formula of Concord, which states, “Concerning the righteousness of faith before God we believe, teach, and confess unanimously, in accord with the summary formulation of our Christian faith and confession. . . . that a poor sinner is justified before God (that is, he is absolved and declared utterly free from all his sins, and from the verdict of well deserved damnation, and is adopted as a child of God and an heir of eternal life) without any merit or worthiness on our part, and without any preceding, present, or subsequent works, by sheer grace, solely through the merit of the total obedience, the bitter passion, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, our Lord, whose obedience is reckoned to us as righteousness.”

Seems simple enough, we are saved by believing that the efforts of our Lord Jesus Christ: His life, His death, and His resurrection save us. It is not by our work or our effort, as St. Paul says, “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28 ESV).

Justification or justified is a term that seems quite confusing to many people. Just what does God mean when He says we are justified? To begin with only God justifies (Rom. 8:33) and in the content of Holy Scripture it means that God declares a sinner righteous, free from sin and eternal punishment solely on account of the righteousness of Christ, which God grants through the blessed gift of faith. Thus, as a judge can declare the presumed guilty, innocent; God declares the truly guilty, innocent on account of the saving work of our Lord, Jesus Christ. His life, His death, and His resurrection paid the ransom for our guilt. Justification is God’s mercy, through Christ, applied to the life of the sinner. Therefore, we maintain that the essential and necessary elements of justification are the grace of God, the merit of Christ, and faith which apprehends the merits of Christ in the promise of the Gospel.

God’s grace is His unswerving desire to shower His love upon all mankind, granting us an eternal existence with Him in His heavenly kingdom. His love is seen in His work of Creation whereby He brought all things into existence. His love is further shown by His merciful attitude toward Adam and Eve, promising them a Savior after they had rejected His love and fallen into sin. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s grace is exemplified in His saving acts of the people. His grace is seen in the flood, in the exodus, in the establishment of Israel, and finally, in the sending of His promised Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. In this one, miraculous act, God, out of His grace, overcame the law and reversed the curse of sin. Furthermore, God’s grace is seen today in the proclamation of the Gospel and in His means of grace, Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Through these means God showers us with His grace, cleansing us of sin while strengthening our faith. To be sure, God’s grace is the beginning of justification.

The merit of Christ is His life, death, and resurrection whereby we obtain salvation through faith. Who would have thought that a merciful and gracious God would have selected such an insignificant event as a human birth to fulfill His promise of a Savior? Rather than grand fanfare, shouting crowds, rockets and bright lights, God chose a quite, peaceful manager and a non-descript virgin to bring His one and only Son into the world to fulfill the law and save all men. Like a hushed whisper, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ went mostly unnoticed, this was God’s plan. Moreover, His life was without circumstance and pomp, to many he was nothing more than a simple carpenter’s son. So humble was His life that His ignominious death on the altar of the cross was seen by many as nothing more than another criminal’s death. Yet, throughout His ministry, our Lord touched and changed the lives of many; the sick and the lame were healed, the dead were raised to life, and those dead in the trespass of sin were given new lives as He forgave their sins and brought them the blessed hope of life eternal in heaven. Our Lord Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; His work is what merits our justification before God.

Justification is then applied to the sinner only through apprehending the merit of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That is, faith in the work of Christ is what justifies. Faith grabs hold of Christ like a ring holds a precious stone for it is the stone that makes the ring beautiful and it is our Lord Jesus alone, the precious Stone of faith that saves. Jesus is the object of our faith. It is His fulfilling of the law; it is His perfect and sinless life on which we rely on for our salvation. There is nothing inherit in us that would merit salvation. Trying to rely on our goodness for salvation is like trying to cross the Grand Canyon on a bridge made of a single strand of hair. Needless to say, we wouldn’t get very far. Crossing such a wide abyss requires something substantial, something sturdy; it requires a bridge made of unbending and unbreakable steel. This is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Moreover, faith is not a natural human quality. It is not something that lies dormant in us and then because of a loving attitude it is brought to light. On the contrary, from the day of our conception we are alien to God, even hostile to His love, to His grace (Ps. 51:5). From the day of our birth we seek after the world and worldly things. Yet, in spite of our lovelessness and uncaring attitude toward God, He, solely out of the goodness of His grace, saves us; granting us the gift of faith to believe in the saving work of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ. What a marvelous, loving, and gracious God we have!

St. Paul tells us, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17 ESV). So, if you want to know where faith comes from, there it is. It is this wonderful gift from a loving God, which He gives us only through His revealed Word of Holy Scripture. Thus, it is not ours naturally it is ours only through divine intervention. Through the preaching of God’s Word, the Holy Spirit places the gift of faith into our hearts opening the door to the truth of Christ’s work which merits our salvation. Faith grabs hold of Christ and His work believing that God in His mercy graciously sent us His promised Savior to save us from sin, death, and the devil so we could live for eternity with Him and all the saints who have gone before us. This is the truth of justification by faith and this is why it is the central and most important doctrine of Holy Scripture.

Furthermore, St. Paul tells us, “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The righteous shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:11 ESV). It is only through faith that the righteousness of Christ is reckoned to us. Citing the Psalms and Ecclesiastics, St. Paul describes the lack of righteousness in man when he writes to the church in Rome, “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. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18 ESV). What an incredible indictment of man’s sinful nature, the very nature which is not held against us when faith grabs hold of the merits of Christ for salvation.

We are made righteous by Christ through faith. It is through His righteousness that we obtain the forgiveness of sins. It is the righteousness of Christ that reconciles us to God, adopts us as His children, and grants us the inheritance of eternal life. Robed in the righteousness of Christ we become dead to the law and alive in Christ.

How truly gracious is a loving God who sacrificed His one and only Son to fulfill His promise and bring us salvation? Gracious enough to say to all who apprehend the merits of Christ through faith, I declare you innocent of all sin solely for the sake of my Son, Jesus Christ. What a marvelous God we have who justifies us by faith. Amen.

May the Peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.