THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"Faith Is the End of All Boasting”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
Today we rejoice in
and praise God for the Reformation of the church. This Reformation was begun on October 31,
1517, by Martin Luther. Of that glorious
Reformation we sing with Psalm
126: “When in His might the Lord
arose to set us free, and
You ask, “Why is
that such an important event? Why are
you filled with praise for God for a Reformation of the church? Wasn’t that division of the body of Christ?” We answer, “We rejoice in that Reformation
because, at that time, the answer to the most important question of life was
given back to the soul of the church.”
That most important question is this:
How can I be made right with God?
Slowly, after the
death of the apostles, and in the following hundreds and even thousand years,
the devil stole away the right answer to that question and put a false answer
in its place. To the question, “How can
I be made right with God?” the answer of the church was this: By works, by the merit or intercession of
saints, through the virgin Mary, by the activity of a
priest, by money. To the languishing
soul of the child of God who was asking the question: How can I be made right with God? the church was feeding the child of God sawdust, not the
Bread of Life.
What is the
answer to that question? In the
Reformation God brought back the biblical answer, the gospel—brought back the right
answer. We can be made right with God
only through the work of another, through the work of Jesus Christ, a perfect
work upon the cross—when Jesus Christ actually stood in the place of all God’s
elect and actually bore all their guilt and, in the place of that guilt, gave
them a spotless and perfect righteousness.
The apostle Paul
celebrates this glorious truth in his epistles, especially in Romans
3:21ff. There, in that passage, the
apostle teaches us that God has given us a righteousness
in Jesus Christ. Through the redemption
that is in Jesus Christ, He has freely imputed to us a
righteousness. Now we appear
before God, on the basis of the work of Christ once upon the cross, as forever
pardoned of all of our sins and as perfectly righteous in His sight. We could put it in these words. The apostle is teaching in that beautiful passage
that God took all that was upon my ledger, all of my guilt and all of my debt,
and reckoned that to the account of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ bore that guilt and suffered for
that sin upon the cross. Then God put
all that was upon Christ’s record, His perfect innocence and obedience, and He
reckoned that to me—so that now, in Jesus Christ, He declares me
righteous. And I receive all of this by
faith: God’s gift to me. I am justified, in the sight of God, by faith
in Jesus Christ alone.
That was the heart
of the Reformation of the church.
Now I know that if
you are a student of Protestant history, you will know that there were more
issues involved in the Reformation than just that of justification by
faith. There was the truth of Scripture
alone as the authority for faith and life.
There was the truth that salvation was solely and entirely of
grace. There was the glorious truth of soli Deo gloria, to God alone the glory. But the heart of the Reformation was
this: How can a soul be
made right with God? Only, only and
surely, through the perfect work of Jesus Christ once offered and finished on
the cross in our behalf.
Are you a child of
this Reformation? When I say “October
31” what comes to your mind? Candy? Or this treasure beyond all treasure: the gospel of salvation freely by grace
through the merits of Jesus Christ alone.
We should ask
ourselves this week this question as Protestants: “Are we Protestants like the Pharisees of
Jesus’ day?” Jesus said of them
in Matthew
23 that the Pharisees decorated the graves of the prophets. They built the tombs of the prophets and
garnished the sepulchers of the righteous.
They had great swelling praise for the prophets who had gone before
them. But they did not their words. And they did not believe the teaching of the
prophets. Are we like them as
Protestants? May it be that among
Protestants this glorious gospel of justification by faith lives in the heart.
If that is so, then
there will be one trait in us above all others.
That trait is humility. The
apostle speaks of that in Romans
3, the passage to which I was referring, in the verses 27 and 28. There we read: “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified
by faith without the deeds of the law.”
The apostle Paul, as I said, has been teaching the glorious truth of
justification by faith, that God has imputed to Jesus Christ the guilt of our
sin and has imputed or reckoned to us the righteousness of Christ. Then he says, “And what will be the result of
that, if you truly know the wonder of God’s grace?” His answer is: humility.
Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law? By the law of faith. Paul has taught the truth of justification by
faith—how God could remain holy and just and yet be the justifier of him who believes
in Jesus.
And as a good
teacher, Paul immediately applies his lessons.
He says to us, “If you understand this truth of justification by grace
through faith, then you will be a humble person. You will be profoundly humble.” You will say with Paul in Galatians
6:14, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” We will put to death all of our
own pride and we will exalt in God and in God alone. We will say, “To God, and to God alone, be
all the glory.”
Where is boasting,
then? asked the apostle Paul. It is excluded. It is excluded from your soul if you
understand how you were made right with God.
If you understand that you were made right with God only by a mere grace
of God, through the work of another, Jesus Christ, by that alone—if you know
that, then all boasting will forever be excluded from your soul, your heart,
your mouth, your mind, your entire being.
To boast is to attribute
something to ourselves as the basis on which we may claim honor. It is to say, “This is mine. I did this.”
Now the apostle
Paul (I should say, the Holy Spirit) is saying this: “If you have truly tasted the wonder of
justification, of how a proud and arrogant sinner can be made right with God,
you will expel boasting from your heart.”
And, conversely, He means to say this:
“If you, or I, boast, if it comes up in us as we look upon ourselves as
Christians that we are better than others; or this, that our salvation is owed
to us—then even if we could write a book on the truth of justification, we do
not know in our heart one word of what we are saying.” You can put it this way: If salvation does not root up, stamp out, and
destroy pride in your heart, then your salvation is something other than true
salvation. If the knowledge of how you
have been made right with God by grace alone in Christ does not destroy all
boasting, then you have no saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The slayer of pride, the killer of boasting,
is the biblical, Reformed truth of justification by faith alone.
The apostle Paul is
bringing up the matter of boasting in connection with the truth of
justification. He asks, “Now as you have
understood the truth of how a sinner is made right with God, how a sinner is
justified, is there anything there of which we may boast? Is there anything there of which we may say, This is mine?” The
apostle says, “It is excluded.” Where is
boasting then? It is excluded. That word “excluded” is strong. It means “keep out.” It is the “no trespassing” sign. In other words, the apostle says that when
you enter into the realm of justification by faith; when by grace you come to
understand how it is that you have been made right with God through the work of
another (Jesus Christ); when you understand that you have received the full
pardon of all of your sins only in the work of Christ upon the cross and that,
because of that work, God now looks upon you as spotlessly righteous—if you
understand all of those things, then boasting is excluded. When you enter into that realm of
justification, there is a sign posted.
And that sign reads: “Boasting
excluded. Boasters will be
prosecuted.”
When you look today
to God and to yourself and you ask, “Lord, how can I ever be restored to Thy
favor? How can I, a sinner, be made
right with God?”—when you know the answer to that question from the gospel,
then you will say, “All boasting, Lord, is forever banished from my
heart.” Supposing that, confessing that
you are a Protestant, confessing that you believe the gospel of justification
by faith alone, you nevertheless still say in your heart, “Lord, remember, I
raised my kids. That stands for
something doesn’t it? I sat in
church. Through it all I lived a
Christian life. Don’t all these acts
count for something? I paid a lot of
money for Christian education.” The
answer of justification by faith is this:
No, those acts count for nothing.
They do not add to your salvation.
They are not the basis of your salvation. You are not saved on the basis of any work
that you have done, could do, or do do as a child of
God. Your salvation is based solely upon
Jesus Christ alone.
Where is boasting
then? It is excluded. Do not run ahead and say that I just said
that the entire Christian life is unnecessary—that it is unnecessary for us to
raise our kids properly or to sit in church.
No. That is the fruit. That will all flow out of an irresistible
impulse in your heart of thankfulness to God.
But get it straight. Does any of
that count, does any of that form any part of the basis of your being declared
righteous with God? The answer of God
is: No!
Where is
boasting? It is excluded. When it comes to receiving a right standing before
God, keep out all boasting, all works (also the good works of the Holy Spirit
performed in your heart). Our standing
righteous with God must be attributed only, solely, completely to
Jesus Christ—His work upon
Are we,
nevertheless, guilty of pride? We will
admit all kinds of defects, indiscretions, and mistakes, but sinners will never
admit their awful, stinking pride. But
when grace comes to us, we see that pride.
For the pride we deserve hell.
How can I, who have so belittled God; how can I, who have dishonored His
majesty; how can I ever be made right with Him?
Here is the answer: Romans
3:24, “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus.”
Let me read to you
what Martin Luther wrote:
Thou [he is referring to
Christ] art my righteousness; but I am Thy sin.
Thou hast taken what belonged to me and Thou hast given me what is Thine. Thou became
what You were not so that I might become what I was
not.
Boasting is
excluded.
Why is boasting
excluded? Because of the way God has
justified us. I am not again going to go
into the explanation of justification as is given by the apostle in Romans
3:21-26, but would point out to you that all of that happened before you or
I had anything to do with it. God sent
His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to suffer and die in the place of proud,
ungodly sinners so that the wrath we deserved would be absorbed by Jesus. An infinitely valuable sacrifice was
accomplished by Jesus Christ when He cried out, “It is finished.” God did all of this before you or I had
anything to say about it. It was done
for us. Of what, then, shall we
boast?
Justification
undercuts all boasting. It means that we
cannot and did not save ourselves. We
are not saved because of anything we have done but only in the work of Jesus
Christ.
But there was
another reason. And the apostle gives
that reason. We do not boast if we know
that we are justified by faith because the way we receive the consciousness or
assurance of justification is a way calculated by God to exclude our
boasting. Listen carefully to what the
apostle says. “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law?” Now when he asks, “By what law?” he means, by
what “rule,” or by what “principle”? By
what rule is boasting excluded? “Of
works?” asks the apostle. Is the
principle of works the reason we should not boast? “Nay:
but by the law of faith.
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds
of the law.” The apostle says, “If the
rule was that we were justified by works, then we would indeed boast. Boasting would not be excluded. If we were justified by works or by the deeds
of the law, boasting would be demanded.”
If your standing with God were adjusted, were improved, were repaired in
the slightest way by your works, you may certainly boast. And you may boast before the very face of
God, if you dare.
The deeds of the
law refer to the works or the deeds that the law calls for. But the apostle says that we are not
justified by works. If we were justified
by works, then boasting would not be excluded.
Boasting, as I said, would be demanded.
Boasting is not excluded by a gospel of works. If the gospel is this, that you go and you
do, and because you do, you shall live—if that is the gospel, then boasting is
not excluded. But if the gospel is
this: Live, live because of what He did
for you, and then go and do, then all of our boasting
is excluded.
Boasting is
excluded by the law of faith. When God
gives us faith, He gives us the knowledge of what He has done. Faith is not now a work that we perform,
whereby we attach ourselves to Jesus Christ.
Oh no. Faith is a gift that God
gives to us whereby we are attached to Jesus Christ. Through the conduit of faith, through the
vehicle of faith, we receive the assurance of all that God has done for us in
Jesus Christ. And because faith tells me
all that Christ has done for me, I know that I have been justified entirely of
grace. And, therefore, by the law of
faith, boasting is excluded.
Who then is exalted
in salvation? God! Jesus saves, saves alone, saves
by grace.
So let us have done
with it. Who saves? Jesus.
Whose is all the glory? Jesus. Who did all things necessary to make me right
with God? Jesus. Who made me right now innocent,
free from all condemnation, so righteous that it is as if I had never
sinned? Jesus. Who makes me so righteous that the devil
cannot find a speck, cannot find a sin not forgiven in me, though he go over my
life with a magnifying glass?
Jesus. Who has made me spotless
and forgiven all my sin in the sight of heaven?
Jesus. All hail the power of
Jesus’ name. Let him that glorieth, glory in the Lord! God forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. That is
the gospel—the gospel that saves. That
is the true gospel. And all who, by
faith, embrace it with all their heart are truly saved.
Humble yourself
under His name. Turn from all of your
pride and all of your self-reliance.
Trust in Him and in Him alone.
You see, Jesus Christ is not one among many others. He is not one mediator among other mediators. He is not one advocate with other
advocates. Mary is no advocate. Mary is no mediator. No priest, no man, no work that you perform
as a child of God is a mediator.
Nothing, nothing can make you righteous in the sight of God save
Jesus—Jesus only upon the cross of
So, humble
yourself.
The result of
justification by faith is profound humility, unquenchable joy, and resounding
praise to God. That is a child of the
Reformation. That is one who knows that
he is justified by faith. If you know
you are justified today, if you are an heir of this glorious Reformation
gospel, you will not lift up yourself above another. You will not say, “There’s no hope for that
sinner over there.” But you will say
this: “I am what I am by the grace of
God.” You will have a zeal for missions,
for justification by faith declares that salvation is not for one race or for
one nationality or for one social status.
It is not for those people “who’ve got it all together.” But God justifies the ungodly from all over
the world.
And when you know
that you are justified by faith, you will live a godly life. You will show the place of the law of God in
your life. For you will say, “I am not
saved on the basis of the law, but I am saved now on the basis of Christ in
order that I might be to the praise of His grace, by observing and doing from
the heart all of His commandments.”
And then you will
rest and have peace. For you are
justified in the sight of heaven. Jesus
Christ, the Mediator, sent of God, your Mediator and Advocate, has performed a
perfect work for you upon the cross, a spotless work to which nothing need be
added, nothing can be added, a perfect work that shall stand. It will stand throughout the days of this
earth. It will stand in the day of His
judgment and throughout all eternity. We
are righteous in what He has done for us.
And you will praise
God. In God will you boast all the day. In Him you will
glory. You will say, “God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” When we know that we are justified by faith
through grace, boasting in ourselves is excluded. And we will boast in Him.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy precious Word. Seal it to
our hearts today. We pray in Jesus’
name, Amen.
Last modified: 15-nov-2006