GOD justifies all who believe in His Son, and all who believe in His Son are, by God’s power, a new creation in Christ.
“Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24), the believer is accounted by God as a righteous person, and is no longer regarded as a sinner in his guilt; his sins are pardoned, and he is free from every charge, and stands before God a free man. Being in Christ, the believer is by the work of God a new creation. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17); he is in Christ, who is risen from among the dead, and who lives beyond death; he is in Christ, who has borne the judgment due to sin, and has died because of it, and who now lives beyond judgment. The believer is before God a new creation, having the life of Christ communicated to him in the power of Christ’s resurrection.
JUSTIFICATION.
In order to our having peace with God as once guilty sinners, we need to be built up in His grace in justifying us. God justifies the sinner from his sins, God justifies the ungodly; and He does so on the ground of the sinner’s belief of His word. By this truth our hearts are made strong in God, and we are taken out of the misery of trying to get rid of our sins in order to merit God’s favor, and out of the hopelessness of trying to justify ourselves by our works. Our good works do not come into account until after our justification. All that we may do, before we believe, is absolutely worthless, for until we believe, we are in the relation only of the guilty to our Judge; we are justified by God on our faith.
God has, in His grace, laid down in His word the terms upon which He justifies the ungodly.
The Lord Jesus was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification, and God’s righteousness is shown by the death His Son suffered for sinners, by the judgment He bore, and the wrath He endured on account of sin; and it is shown also by God raising up from among the dead the Substitute for sinners, after He had satisfied every claim of divine righteousness in respect of sin by His death.
On man’s side there is nothing to be done by the guilty sinner in the way of righteousness. All that he can do is to cast himself in his guilt upon the work which Jesus has accomplished; and all who trust God and believe in Jesus, by whom the righteousness of God has been magnified, are justified by God on the ground of what has been done, and done forever, by Christ.
When a sinner believes God, God justifies that sinner, and he is absolutely justified. “By Him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39); all persons who believe, whoever they may be, are justified by God from all things, whatever these may be. On our side it is not a question of much faith, or little faith, but of faith in God. We must have, each one of us, real dealing with God for ourselves about our sins, and about Christ who died for us. Historic faith is not saving faith: “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” (Rom. 10:10).
Obviously everyman’s faith is his own faith. We cannot believe God for one another; faith is a matter entirely between ourselves and our God. And on God’s side, when He sees in us this faith, He Himself justifies us, and as God is the Justifier, the justification is absolute, for it is divine. No creature, neither man nor devil, can interfere in respect of this great work of God for us. It is God that justifieth: who is he that condemneth? (Rom. 8:33, 34)
Let us emphasize the fact that God justifies the believer absolutely, and that the believer is cleared from every charge that could be laid against him, the measure of the clearance being the perfection of Christ’s work on the cross in putting away sins, and the glory of God the Father in raising Him up from the dead.
Now, we say, as we are built up in this grace of God in justifying us, we have peace with God. We have nothing to fear from God; we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Rom. 5:2-11).
NEW CREATION.
Not only does God justify the guilty sinner who believes, and forever free him from his guilt, God also new-creates the believer: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” —or, “there is a new creation.” (2 Cor. 5:17).
We sin by nature, and hence are sinners; but, in addition to the fact of our sinning, we have a sinful nature, and this the Scripture teaches is dead to God. Life God wards will never arise from it. We may conceive a guilty man allowed a fresh chance, and sent out into the world to try to become a different person; but when the guilty man has died, all probation, all testing is over for him. God declares of us, as natural men, that we are dead. There is no exception to this state, any more than there is to the sinning of men; hence there is no probation for man now—he is not only a creature who commits sinful acts, he is a sinner, dead in his nature to God. The Scripture speaks both of our acts and of our nature.
We can suppose a thief being forgiven for stealing, or a blasphemer for blasphemy, but we cannot conceive the root-principle of evil which produced the theft or the blasphemy being forgiven. We pardon our child who has done evil, but we cannot pardon or wish to pardon, the principle in him that led to the evil doing. Now God pardons our offenses, but He does not—nay, He could not as the Holy One—pardon the root-principle of sin in us. Life to God will never, can never arise out of this root-principle. God says of man, as a fallen creature, that he is dead, and God’s gracious way of deliverance for man, as dead to Himself, is to give man life in Christ, who is risen from the dead, and who lives to God Himself.
Let us place together the old and the new —the state, which is ours as born into the world, and the state into which we are placed by God as believers:—
Life from out of the dead, life after death, life after the judgment due to sin has been borne, and the root-principle of sin has been condemned, is here presented. The believer has a new life in Christ, and is no longer dead to God, as he was before he believed, and this life comes to him from Christ risen; it is life after death—a life, therefore, which is altogether of a new character and nature from that which he received at his birth into this world. Life from Christ risen, comes to us from Him after He had died for our sins, and was raised again for our justification. This life from Him is outside the world, outside sin, outside all the evil that is in the world through the first Adam’s disobedience. And being partaker in this life in Christ, the believer is a new creation.
Upon the absolute security of this position we do not enlarge. We are perfectly secure; being justified by God from all things, yet we may say, having life in Christ, who has died for us, and who lives to die no more, is more than security! God shows us that we are His in Christ, who lives to Him in the bright glory on high, having left this world by the door of death.
The practical result of our being in Christ, and a new creation, is very great.
As Christ risen from the dead lives to God, so is the believer exhorted, being in Christ, to live to God. (Rom. 6:10. 11).
The believer is exhorted to yield himself to God as alive from the dead, and his members as instruments of righteousness to God. (v. 13).
As those who live, believers are told they “should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again.” (2 Cor. 5:15).
Here are motives of Christian life distinct from every other that ever were on the earth before Christ rose up from among the dead, and went back to God. The kingdom—if we may so term it—wherein these motives have a place, is that of life beyond death, and where the power of sin and the world cannot enter. Too well does the believer know that sin is in him, the flesh is in him, and that, though of him God has said “there is a new creation,” he is in the world, subject to temptation. He knows, too, that he has his old nature as before, but because of what is true concerning him in Christ, he is to live out the truth practically—he is to live to God, to yield himself as one who, by the power of God, is alive from the dead in Christ.
The believer is not only to walk on earth in the joy and liberty of justification, but he is to witness, by his ways and character, that in Christ he is a new creation.