Justified by Faith – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

our scripture reading tonight comes from the book of Romans 3: 21- 28 but now a righteousness from God apart from the law has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are Justified freely by his grace through the Redemption that came by Christ Jesus God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood he did this to demonstrate his Justice

because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished he did it to demonstrate his Justice at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies Those Who Have Faith In Jesus where then is boasting it is excluded on what principle on that of observing the law no but on that of faith for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law this is the word of the Lord now every single week we are looking at the story arc of the whole Bible uh we're

understanding that the Bible is not so much a set of disconnected stories each with a little lesson on how to live your life but the Bible actually comprises a single story that tells us what's wrong with the human race and the world what God has done to put it right in Jesus Christ and then as a result how history is going to uh turn out in the end and we're looking at Romans 1 2 3 and 4 because here we have Paul summarizing the story of the Bible and here in chapter 3 the last half

of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 we probably have the uh Paul's most uh best most essential summary of what he thinks the Bible's all about and what this salvation is that God has done to put the world right and there's three phrases that are that actually are in a sense repeated and they're brought into relationships with each other in different ways throughout these few verses but those three phrases are we are Justified freely by faith through the blood of Christ free justification all by faith because of through the blood of Jesus and

for three weeks we're actually going to look at essentially these these P these same verses chapter 3 in the beginning of chapter 4 for three weeks to look at each of those phrases and during these and the reason why um is because actually as you know if you've ever been here before we actually talk about these three things every week but what I want to do for three weeks is I want to be as clear and as practical as about what these things are and how you have to relate to these three things and I

want to I I'm I'm concerned to be practical and clear more than inspirational I want to I'm I'm going to aim for clarity and practicality more than being inspirational I can't promise I might not occasionally get excited though on the day you've lost an hour of sleep it's a lot easier to not be excited but you never know because of the theme so what we're going to look at tonight is the first of these three ideas free justification what is that why do we need it what is it and how do we receive it why

do we need it what is it how do we receive it now why we need it the top of this passage the very famous beginning of this passage but now our righteousness from God apart from the law law has been made known this righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe let me show you how absolutely radical that is this word righteousness I know does not compute much it doesn't connect to us English speakers uh it's almost a negative word in our language so but let me explain how it functions

what we're really talking about here righteousness is a validating performance record which open doors which opens doors it's a validating performance record which opens doors so for example you want a job you get out a resume that resume is your vocational record it should have all your accomplishments and experiences and if you want a job you take it to the employer or whoever you have to apply to and it's your validating performance record and you say this means I'm worthy of this position accept me and if your performance record is good enough if you're good

enough the door opens or let's say you want a to get an advanced degree you know and you uh and uh you want to get into a degree program what do you do well in that case you bring out not your vocational record you bring out your academic record you bring out your your grades and these Now function as a validating performance record and you say look at this because of these grades I am worthy of this position accept me please accept me and if you're good enough you're accepted and because that's the way it

is in all of life see everybody has these performance records these validating performance records by which I get jobs by which I get into school by which I you know do all these various things it's that's the reason why every religion in every culture everywhere in the world believes it's the same with God that if you're going to have a spir if there is a God and you're going to have a spiritual connection it's the same it's not a vocational record or a an academic record it's a moral record but this is how you get

connected to God this is how you go to heaven this is how you find Enlightenment or whatever here's how you connect to the Divine you get out your performance record you develop a righteousness and you offer it and if you're good enough you're worthy and you're accepted and then Paul comes along and says but now for the first time in history and by the way may I add the last time in history an absolute absolutely unheard of spirituality an absolutely totally unheard of approach to God has been revealed what he says there's not just a

good record or a a great record but a Divine righteousness a perfect record and it is available as a gift it comes to us it's it it it lights upon us and when we we have it it's the end of our struggle for validation for worthy for worth and for and for acceptability and we don't know any apart from the Christian Gospel there is nobody else no other place that offers anything like that because all anyone else knows is a righteousness that we develop and then we offer to God or we offer to the powers

that be and say now accept me but the gospel is that God develops a perfect righteousness and he offers it to us and by it we're accepted as Paul says but now means that's never been ever heard of before and it never has been heard of since the Christian Gospel is absolutely and utterly and totally unique and the reverse of what anybody else any other religion any other culture any any other philosophy and any human heart actually believes well now somebody says I'm going to listen I'm going to I'm me trying to be as clear

and as practical as I can be if you're a thoughtful person you may be out there saying yeah but I'm not a religious person I'm not into righteousness and moral records I'm a secular person or I'm not sure what I believe about God and so uh that this is nice for you religious people but this says nothing to say to me no I beg to differ with you because properly understood everybody is seeking righteousness now here's the way to understand that better is the word righteousness and the word justification in this text are actually the

same Greek word uh you know in English righteousness and to be justified is one thing to be righteous is a very another thing but it's actually the same concept so let's look at that term let me show you that everybody is trying to find a way to be justified uh in the Chariots of Fire there's uh one of the characters he's a he's a runner he's an athlete he's an Olympic runner and he's going for the gold in the 100 yard dash remember it was that and when somebody says why are you working so hard

you to why are you training so hard he actually says when that gun goes off I have 10 seconds to justify my existence and here's what he's saying he says you know I want to know that I am justified being here I want to know that my life is worth something I want to know that what I'm what I'm that my life counts I want to know that I'm a person worthy to be known and accept CED and the way I'm doing that the way the way I'm convincing myself and other people that my existence

is Justified is I'm going to be a runner and that means that and of course as you know how the movie goes the cheering of the crown and the gold medal he wins is his justification it's not just a gold medal it's not just cheering it's just justification it makes him feel validated worthy accepted Sydney Pollock was a uh just died a couple years ago and he was a Movie Maker and he made a lot of movies I liked actually and uh but I found that uh he died in 2007 but I found that uh

a newspaper article about him not too long before he died and uh it said that he though he was getting obviously old and he was sick and dying he couldn't stop working even when his family said please stop working you're shortening your life we want more time with you he couldn't stop working and here's why this is from the newspaper article movie Mogul Sydney Pollock says that although the grueling film making process is wearing him down he can't justify his existence if he stops he explained quote every time I finish a picture I feel I've

earned my stay for another year or so what's he saying it's the same thing as the the runner in Chariots of Fire he says you know everybody needs to feel that there's that they're doing something that justifies their being here I feel like need to earn my stay I feel I need to need to say here's why my life counts here's why my life is worthwhile here's why I here's how I get a sense of validity and and acceptability I make movies and notice he says and I have to keep doing it because I make

a movie and for a while I feel I've earned my stay and then I got to go back and do another to keep up that sense of justification which means movie making isn't enough actually and then he died I was reading an article by a writer a guy who felt his writing career was just not going anywhere he wanted to be a writer he wanted to make a difference and you know nobody was buying his stuff and he and and he and he said occasionally I start to wonder well then what am I really here

for what am I really living for and then he said in the article but then when I look at my two little daughters my two little girls then I know that my existence is Justified they justify my existence now that you know you know I don't know the guy and I don't know it could have been Hyperbole and it might just be a way of saying I just love my daughters but I also know that there are parents quite a lot of parents that look at their children and say you know there's really nothing else

I do in life that really justifies my being here that makes me feel like a worthwhile person that makes me feel like I'm you know my life is worthwhile and acceptable and valid but the fact is I'm a father I'm a mother my children are happy my children successful I'm living for them well I want you to know that if your children are the justification of your existence if that's how they you justify your being here you're going to destroy them parents who do this never believe and therefore I don't even try to tell them

uh but their passion for their children's happiness and success is utterly selfish it's not about the kids it's about them it's their justification it's their righteousness it's their validating performance record if I'm a good parent and my kids are happy and successful then I have but you know what if anything goes wrong with them and something will you will melt down and not be in a position to help them you won't really be the parent you really always thought you you were well now some so do you understand everybody struggling for righteousness everybody's struggling to

justify their existence everybody is is is wrestling and struggling for righteousness and validation and worth and acceptability and I some of you are saying okay I see your point but actually these people you just gave me the do these what what these people really need is not righteousness they need counseling you know they need a good therapist you know they're just they're making too much of their children too much of their writing too much of their of their movie making they need counseling it's really a psychological problem and I beg to differ again no it's

a psychological manifest station of a an underlying condition there's a man who lives near the York railway station in northern England and he's a secular man and he wrote an article about an interesting some thoughts he had about this he's a secular man he's not a religious man but every day he has to go by a billboard at the York railway station and somebody evidently put up a sign and on it is a Bible verse Romans 14:12 and every day has to go buy this Bible verse it says so then every one of us shall

give an account of himself to God and he writes irrespective of whether you you are religious or not the longer you live the idea of being able to Justify Your Existence crops up more and more and he goes on to say you know I'm not a religious person when I go by that I realize the older I get that I really need to justify why I'm even here and he says he goes on he says some of his secular friends and his religious friends say that's ridiculous why do you need to justify your exist why

do you need to prove to you to somebody else that you are worthy of being here you you are who you are and you live the way you live and who cares what anybody else thinks and he says you know people who actually believe that that they don't care what anybody else thinks they don't need to justify themselves they don't need to prove them themselves those are sociopaths those are people who eventually are capable of very bad things he says every single person whether you're religious or not really begins to know you need to justify

you're even being here but he says the problem comes that if you start to say okay what what does justify my being here is you say well I have what justifies is I'm living the kind of life I think people should live I'm the person that I think I should be I'm the kind of person I think other people should be and I'm not he actually says here's the problem with justifying my existence it's very hard not because I'm a really bad person but because I could be I know I should be far better than

I am and he's experiencing what we talked about two weeks ago if you were here in Romans Chapter 2 we're told that every single person whether they believe in God or not does understand that they have they've got a conscience and they do know that they ought to be living in a certain way and that justifies their being here and if you remember Romans 2 says that God is actually going to judge people by what they know in their conscience and the illustration that somebody some other minister once gave was the little the little uh

you know uh recorder the little invisible tape recorder around the neck that only picks up as it were the things you say to other people about how they should live and that on Judgment Day this Minister once said Romans 2 is saying that God will take that invisible taper quarter off he'll put it in front of you and he says you know I'm going to be very fair I'm not going to judge you by the Ten Commandments if you didn't believe in it I'm not going to judge you by the Bible if you've never read

it I'm going to judge you by what you say your own standards are for people let's see how you do play and nobody will be able to stand on that Judgment Day because nobody can justify their existence even by their own standards and this guy know it on the way to the York railway station so I'm not I'm not even religious and I realized that as time goes on how can I justify my being here everybody's struggling for righteousness and nobody is getting there you know why because Sydney paa kept knowing he had to keep

doing movies and one gold Med medals never enough and John D Rockefeller said one more million dollars and then I'll feel I'm okay so that's why we need it and Paul says there is a solution that it is possible through the gospel to end your struggle for righteousness validation worth and acceptability what is it it's free justification now what is free justification let's break this down free justification put it this way Justified free freely it's in verse 24 and I'd like to say show you that the gospel is talking about something that I have to

say people can be around church or in church for years and years and not even understand it's almost like free justification is a piece of furniture in the living room that's the main piece and people know a lot of things could you imagine coming into a big grand ballroom and we're going to have this incredible feast and there's chairs and there's you know you know everything else and there's uh you know there's shelves and there's all the other pieces of furniture and there's a rug but there's no table and what I'm about to tell you

is the table if you want to understand free justification you have to understand that on the one hand it is far more than forgiveness and pardon but on the other hand it is distinctly distinctly different than moral goodness it's more than pardon and it's distinct from being morally a good person it's neither of those things first it's more than pardon when most people hear oh you're justified by Grace because of Jesus death on the cross right away they say oh we're forgiven and that's true but that's not what justification is it's more infinitely more forgiveness

is basically a negative it's mean it means you're now free from the liability to punishment but justification is a positive it's the bestowal of a status with all the right and Privileges and benefits pertaining there unto so as one person once said Marcus lone years ago to speak of of forgiveness is to say you may go you have been let off of your penalty but to speak of justification is to say you may come you are welcome into all my love and my presence and therefore as great as forgiveness is it's basically a negative justification

is a positive forgiveness is you may go I'm not going to punish you but for justification is you may come and you are welcome into all my love and presence why forgiveness is like getting uh a pardon so you're out of jail and now you have the freedom of not being afraid that you know somebody's going to come around and arrest you and put you back in but justification is so much more than that it's not just a pardon from jail it's more like getting the Congressional Medal of Honor bestowed upon you so that you

everyone salutes you and so every uh so you have now access to circles and corridors of claim and honor and therefore it's possible to understand that justification is in infinitely infinitely more in fact it's more than that when you see me say that the righteousness of God comes to us you might might look at this as abstractly a perfect record and it is a perfect record but it's more than that because the righteousness of God has to be the righteousness of Christ the righteousness of God is a performance record well what what what did God

ever do for us he came to Earth and not only that something happened even before you know one of the most amazing passages in the Bible and I I don't understand it and that's why I like it because there's it seems like there's infinite depths behind it and I I it's like a lozen you know you put it in there and it you just it just goes on and on and on it never goes away and it's a place in the Book of Revelation where it says Jesus Christ was slain before the foundation of the

world and it it seems to be saying that outside of history on some kind of cosmic Battlefield before he ever entered into history and acted it out Jesus Christ already on some Cosmic Battlefield faced down our in faced down our enemies of sin and death and evil and he was slain in order to free us and that means what you're getting but justification is this perfect righteous is not just a good it's not just a goody two shoes record Jesus Christ was not just a good person Jesus Christ was Brave Jesus Christ was bold Jesus

Christ was a man of Courage of nobility of love he sacrifice for us we're talking about we're talking about bravery Beyond above and beyond the Call of Duty we're talking about self-sacrificial uh Noble bravery and he did all that for us on the on the battlefield of the cosmos he won all this for us and it's his medals his decorations that now are all over us and therefore when 2 Corinthians 5:21 says God made him sin to be sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him what that has to mean is on

the cross he was treated as if he' done everything we had done so that when we believe we are treated as if we've done everything he's done and what has he done on the battlefield what does he deserve and all that's ours and that's the reason why old Richard hooker from the the 17th century Anglican has this marvelous statement in which he says let it be counted as folly or frenzy or Fury whatsoever it is our comfort and our wisdom we care for no knowledge in the world but this that God has made himself our

sin and that we have been made his righteousness therefore we are in the sight of God the father as is the very Son of God himself justification is infinitely more than pardon but on the other hand the other thing you have to know is is this justification this righteousness that comes on upon us is not in any way a kind of moral goodness inside look we have low church and we have high church we have lurgical smells and bells we have you know Bible believing Evangelical you know sawdust Trail churches and we all have a

problem with something we actually don't believe the gospel let me let me start with the Evangelical types all right how do most people in these kinds of churches believe salvation Works here's what they think I have to really give my life to Jesus I have to really surrender to Jesus I have to really I just have to be open and just unconditionally committed to Jesus and I say oh Lord I'm open to you I'm committed to you I'm going to lift you I'm surrendering to you come into my life and save me and forgive me

fill my life you hear what you just did I clean up my heart a little bit I make myself righteous a bit you know I purge myself and cleanse myself of these other kinds of feeling and I feelings and I I Surrender myself and I put myself in a committed State and then God comes in and does the rest in other words I make myself a little righteous then God comes in and does the rest and you know there's a high Church version of that there's a lurgical version of that is I take the sacraments

I give myself to that and then you know so I'm making myself available and I take the supper and I I'm baptized and then God comes in and does the rest but in chapter 4 verse we'll get to in a couple weeks but it's right nearby here in this passage Paul actually goes so far as to say that God justifies the ungodly and that means that when you're Justified when you're absolutely righteous and loved absolutely accepted in yourself you're absolutely unworthy absolutely sinful you're ungodly and therefore there is absolutely nothing in you that is the

basis for this justification nothing now people have a lot of problem with that and they say oh my goodness they say I've got to be good a little bit I mean I mean and I had somebody once say to me if I really believe what you say that salvation is absolutely by free Grace and I don't have to be good at all I don't even have to screw up my heart into a kind of you know you know good State at all said if I if I believe what you believe I'd have no incentive to

live a good life and by the way there's plenty of people that say have said that to me over the years if I really believ that I was totally saved had nothing to do with how I lived it was completely free then I'd have no incentive to live a good life and here's the proper I think response if when you lose all fear of punishment you also lose your incentive for living a good life then the only incentive you had to live a good life was fear see if when you lose your fear you lose

your incentive to be good then the only incentive you had to be good was the fear and here's the ironic thing the fear is not the fear is selfish fear is always selfish because I might lose I might this might happen that might happen I better be good well what is goodness well goodness is unselfish living unselfish service to God unselfish service to the poor unselfish service to my neighbor I'm scared that I might be lost unless I'm good and what is goodness being unselfish but don't you realize that's incredibly selfish when you live a

good life so that God will bless you and take you to heaven it's by definition not good because it's all for you all of it's for you you're not helping the poor you're helping yourself you're not helping God you're helping yourself this is a reason why the belgic confession an old Reformation document from the 17th century puts it like this far from making people cold toward living in a holy way justifying faith so Works within them that apart from it they will never do a thing out of love for God but only out of love

for themselves and fear of being condemned did you hear that yeah let me tell you what that's saying put on your thinking cap and don't laugh too much when I tell you if you think your good deeds are good if you think your unselfish Good Deeds are good they're no good in other words if you think they're good and therefore God owes you something then they're not good by definition they're not good by your own definition your selflessness is really selfishness but if you say oh my good deeds are worthless I need to be saved

by grace I am saved by grace now I want to please God I want to resemble God I want to Delight God I want to get near god well how do I do that by serving him by serving other people and here's the real if you think your good deeds are good they're no good but if you think your good deeds are absolutely worthless and you're saved by grace that makes your Deeds good so if you think they're good they're no good if you think think they're no good they're good they start to get good

because you see when you realize they're worthless and therefore you're doing them just to please God they're actually for God they're actually for the person that you're you're helping you see why CS Lewis said the reason he knew that Christianity must be true is when he actually looked at it he realized that nobody could have ever thought this up and you see the reason why Richard hooker would say let it be counted as folly or frenzy or Fury whatsoever this is our comfort and wisdom we care for no other knowledge in the world but this

now let's move to the final point and here's the final point if you don't understand that this justification this free justification is on the one hand infinitely more than pardon but separate and distinct from being morally good in yourself if you don't understand that it's like having that banquet without a table and what I've seen people over the years in come in and out of churches like this they understand forgiveness and they understand moral goodness but they don't understand free justification they understand that if I confess my sins I have a forgiven God Jesus died

on the cross and I get forgiven and now that I'm forgiven I need to really live for him and that's how most people think so people come in and out of the church they cycle over the years you know they come in as kids and they cycle out as teenagers they come in as young adults when they start to have problems and they cycle out of it as little slightly older adults they come in as they get old what's going on they try hard to live like they should and they something makes them fail or

they just sort of fade away and then things go wrong they know they need God then they come back in and they recommit and they ask for forgiveness they ask for forgiveness and they try their best to live a moral life a good life and then they sort of slip away and then they have to ask for forgiveness again and that's how they go on and on and they never get to this at all they actually never become Christians because a Christian is someone who is Justified freely by faith through his blood here's what I

like you to do to help you break through and break out of that cycle I want you to stop looking for a minute at your sins now don't anybody go home and blog Tim Keller says your sins don't matter listen if you're sinning I would like you to stop and get forgiveness let that's let the record show but I want you to consider this that Pharisees are very concerned about their sins Pharisees self-justifying moral legalistic miserable people Pharisees when they sin they're very upset they repent they confess their sins and when they're all done they're

still Pharisees they're not Christians here's what will make you a Christian don't look at your sins look at your boasting look at what you boast in look at the things that you are your justification look at the things that you look at and say that justif ifies my existence that validates me that's what makes me worthy see Paul says where is boasting the justification by free justification destroys it well then let's find it what makes you a Christian is not so much that you repent of your sins you should repent of your sins but that

could just make you just another Pharisee or just another person that cycle no what makes you a Christian is you repent of your justification your false justification your false righteousness Nathan koh's 1730s and 40s a Connecticut farmer tells a story about how he was converted listening to the great evangelist George Whitfield and he says my hearing him preach gave me a heart wound and by God's blessing my old Foundation was broken up and I saw that my righteousness could not save me by God's grace my old Foundation was broken up and I saw that my

righteousness could not save me that's what makes you a Christian not just a person trying harder confession trying harder confession because free justification is infinitely more than just pardon but radically different than just trying harder so for example this week yesterday actually I was at a retreat and I heard a man get up and give a testimony let me close with this testimony because this tells it all he says three years ago I was at this Retreat this Retreat is an annual and at that Retreat I became a Christian I gave my life to Christ

but when you talked when you and he went through and explained he says he he he broke through and understood the gospel in other words he had had an identity a justification based in his performance and because of the Gospel seeing what Jesus Christ had done for him he shifted his trust he repented of his old justification and he he he he rooted his justification he rooted his identity in the costly infinitely costly Grace of of Christ and it changed his life now here's what he said that was 3 years ago he says I want

to give you this testimony this year because four years later I want you to know I'm in a job it's I'm in a field that we used to call Wealth Management but we now call Wealth preservation and survival and he says I want you to know and a lot of you do know because he was talking to a a group of people who are mainly in that business I have lost an enormous amount of money this year and he had lost an enormous amount of money and a lot of the other people had and he

was really he was he saying I lost an incredible amount of money and here's what I want you to know I've never been happier in my life and he said because if this had happened four years ago if this year if the Great Recession happened four years ago when my justification was still in my my performance he says I not we the vodka bottle is and I would have drank I would I just would have driven myself right into the ground but what has changed his wealth used to be his justification his wealth used to

be his righteousness and now it's just wealth it's only wealth and you if you want to become a Christian you've got to say these aren't just my children these are my justification this is not just my wealth or my career it's my justification and therefore you will not be impervious to the slings and arrows of Outrageous Fortune but when he looked to Jesus Christ not just as his forgiveness but as his crown and as his glory and as his righteousness he was able to handle anything are you have you figured this out have you figured

out what it means to be a Christian is not just to repent of your sins but to repent of your false righteousness to repent of your false your false justifications to transfer your trust from that to what Jesus has done and dear Christian friends those of you who say well I do believe this and I do understand this and I know what free justification is if you really really believed in the heart of hearts what you know with your head would you really be anxious see won't you admit in many of your cases though you're

a Christian your wealth is not just your wealth your beauty isn't just your beauty your youth isn't just your youth your family is not just your family they're your righteousness but now a perfect righteousness is revealed apart from the law for your performance it's a righteousness that comes upon you it's the righteousness that that a lights on you it's it comes to you and it's the end of your struggle let's pray we thank you Lord God that this gospel is so counterintuitive it is so different but now for the first time and the last time

in history a righteousness is revealed apart from the law and we ask that everybody hearing this message would see what that means for him or her and I ask that for the people who have known about all the other chairs in the room all the other kind of Christian doctrines and teachings and stories but have never understood free justification never had the table in the center of their understanding I pray Lord that now it would be there and that they would begin to sit down and eat at it and for all those of us who

believe in free justification with our head but it hasn't really worked into our hearts so we're we're still Bound in shallows and misery miseries we're we're still anxious we're still angry we're still running scared I pray that the gospel would change our lives absolutely thoroughly not just relate us to you but transform every aspect of Our Lives thank you that this is possible thank you for speaking to us tonight we pray this in Jesus name amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit www.gsp.ro