The Unchanging Christ and Other Sermons, 2. Ungodly Sinners Justified (4:4-5)
Text: “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Rom. 4:4 and 5.)
I WANT to emphasize the central words of that fifth verse, “Him that justifieth the ungodly.” “Him”— that refers, of course, to God Himself, God the infinitely righteous One, the holy One. Yet we are told that this righteous God, this holy God justifies ungodly sinners! This is surely an amazing statement. Can it possibly be true? What is it to justify? It is to pronounce one to be righteous. According to some theologies, justification is said to be that act of God whereby He maketh a sinner righteous. But that is clearly a mistake. In justification God is not making the sinner righteous. He does that in sanctification, but justification is a forensic act of God in which He declares a sinner to be righteous.
In the book of the prophet Isaiah we have a very solemn woe pronounced upon those who justify the wicked, It is a very wrong thing for a judge to justify a wicked person, and we have had a great many complaints in our great cities because public enemies, racketeers, and hoodlums of all kinds have been arrested, and when they have come before corrupt judges, they have been allowed to go free and to prey once more upon the community. People are rightly indignant about it. It is a thoroughly wicked thing for a judge to declare a criminal righteous, yet the singular thing is that this text tells us that it is the very thing God does! God justifies, — not the righteous, not good people, not holy people, but the ungodly. How can this be?
What is it to be ungodly? The word really means those who are not pious, not godlike, and that is true of all men by nature. I do not know of any unsaved man who is godlike. I have never met an unconverted person that was truly pious, and an ungodly man is one who is unlike God, impious, yet Scripture says that God justifies the ungodly. Whatever does it mean? There is no other religion that teaches anything like this. I am somewhat conversant with practically every well-known religious system in the world. I have been studying these things almost exclusively for over forty years, and I think I can say without boasting that I know pretty well what they all teach in regard to the justification of mankind. I do not know one of them that does not tell men they must produce some kind of a righteousness in order to suit God, before they can ever be justified or accepted of Him. The Christian message stands alone in this respect, for it tells us that God justifies the ungodly. That is one reason why I am absolutely certain this Book is inspired of God. Man would never have thought out anything of the kind. It would never have occurred to him that a Holy God, a righteous God might justify the ungodly. He would take it for granted that before God could justify a man he must do something to deserve that justification, but the sad thing is that nobody can do anything to deserve it.
Have you ever read the Epistle to the Romans carefully? If not, I wish you would begin today and read it right through. It is the most closely reasoned, logical presentation of God’s dealings with sinful men that has ever been penned. I look sometimes on the shelves of my own library, and I suppose I have dozens and scores of books written on this little Book of sixteen chapters, and then when I have gone through them all, I can ransack the libraries of my friends and find hundreds more. I have often thought, “What a marvelous Book it is that could inspire so many writers.” And these few with which I have come in contact are just a fraction of the many books that have been written by some of the most learned, the most intellectual and the most spiritual of men. If you have not studied this book, your education has been tremendously neglected. Do not call yourself a cultured person, an educated person, if you are not familiar with the Epistle of the Romans, because it is one of the most important pieces of literature ever produced.
In the first chapter God is looking down upon this poor world, seeing the condition of mankind and He finds that all men are living in sin. He looks over the heathen world, looks upon men in their ignorance, in their wickedness as they are in idolatrous countries and gives His judgment concerning them. I often meet people who say, “What are you going to do with the heathen?” I am not going to do anything with them! It is not up to me to do anything with the heathen except to get the Gospel to them. But people say, “Are they going to be judged when they have never heard of Christ? Are they going to be damned for rejecting Christ when they have never known of Him?” No, they are not going to be judged for rejecting Christ about whom they have never heard, but the first chapter of Romans shows that they are going to be judged for their own sins; and the heathen are sinners, and more than that, they are not living up to the light they have. People sometimes say, “Why, they have beautiful religions of their own and they are all feeling after God. We need only to give them a little encouragement.” We have heard a great deal about this in the recent Laymen’s Commission, which is composed of unconverted professors who have been going over mission fields and making what they call an investigation of missions, and they have decided that it is an impertinence for Christian people to go to pagans and give them the Gospel.
A young and green student had just been graduated from the theological seminary. Although I am a teacher in one for a part of the year, yet I can say that very often a theological seminary is a place where young men learn how not to, preach! Take a young man who is on fire for God, and if you want to spoil him so that he won’t know how or what to preach, send him to a modernist theological seminary and he will be so filled with pride and conceit and a little smattering of Greek, Hebrew, and “philosophy” that he will never be able to preach the Gospel, until he unlearns the rubbish he has been taught. This young fellow had just been graduated from the seminary; he had also been ordained. Spurgeon once said about ordination, “If it is not the scriptural kind, it is laying empty hands on an empty head.” It doesn’t amount to anything. This young man was going out as a missionary. He was giving his valedictory address, and said, “I am not going to tell the heathen that I have a better message than they have; I am not going to give them a gospel that they do not know anything about; but I am going to take my heathen brother by the hand and say, ‘Come with me, my brother, we will go together on a quest for God.’ Just imagine a man like that being lent out as a Christian missionary! No gospel to preach! No Christ to proclaim He had far better stay at home.
According to the first chapter of Romans the heathen are not on a quest for God. We read in the third chapter, “There is none that seeketh after God.” The heathen have turned away from what they did know of God. Why? Because it made them uncomfortable in their sins. You who are out of Christ know what that means. You were brought up perhaps in Christian homes and have come to this great godless city and have gotten away from righteousness and decency and goodness and purity, and have launched out into the world. You think you are seeing life when in reality you are simply tasting death. You know how you have to try to forget what that godly mother used to teach you, what that Christian father once taught you. You know you do not like to retain these things in your knowledge; you wish you could forget that you ever knelt at a praying mother’s knee, that you were ever taught the Bible. Then you think you could sin with impunity.
There was a time when the heathen knew a great deal better than they do now, but they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, so turned away to worship images of all kinds, and even stooped so low as to worship beasts and creeping things. Three times we read in this first chapter, “For this cause God gave them up.” In vs. 24 we read, “Wherefore ‘God also gave then up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts;” vs. 26, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections.” I cannot read the rest of it in an audience like this. You say, “What, so you think there are things in the Bible too nasty to read in public?” Yes, because they are depicting the sins that men and women commit, and commit with impunity, and those things are in every ungodly person’s heart. Read it alone in the presence of God and let Him speak to you through these passages and show you what the human heart is capable of, things that men and women today unblushingly. Those things that Christless college professors now call Behaviorism; simply letting nature have its way, God declares to be the lust of uncleanness, and men are going to be damned for these things. That is why the heathen are to be judged; that is why they are lost without Christ.
In vs. 28 we read, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” The apostle shows the terrible sins they are guilty of, because they have turned from the light they once had. These are the heathen, and they are lost, and people in Christendom are doing the same things and they too are lost. All alike need a Saviour. None can save themselves.
Turn to chapter two and you will find that in the first part you have another class, a cultured, educated group such as the philosophers, who prided themselves upon their knowledge and gloried in not being so low and vulgar and degraded as the more ignorant heathen. They sat in judgment on others, and God says, as it were, “You who judge others, you are doing the same things only you keep your sins covered up a little more; you are guilty of the same wicked things only you are not so openly brazen about them, but you are committing them just the same and are therefore just as guilty and subject to the righteous judgment of God.” Anyone familiar with ancient history knows how terribly true this was.
Then he turns to the third class, a people who had the Bible and had received instruction out of the law of God, the Jews. They had the Old Testament, they prided themselves on belonging to God’s covenant people. To them, He says, “Very well, you are called a Jew and rest in the law and make your boast of God and know His will and profess to approve the things that are excellent; — are you any better in heart, are you purer in your life than your Gentile neighbor?” Not a bit. He declares, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.” They looked at the Jew and said, “He professes to have the true God and yet he lives just like the rest of us.” That is what they are saying about a lot of professing Christians today. “They belong to the church, they have been baptized, they partake of the sacrament, but they are just like the rest of us.”
A gentleman told me one day that he went to a certain church and they were going to have the Lord’s Supper. He got up to move away, for he did not feel that he ought to partake. Just then he noticed a business associate of his, who leaned over and put his hand on his shoulder and said, “Just take it with the rest of us. We are all a lot of hypocrites anyway.” And he drank of that cup and ate of that bread! What a shame that people are forever covering up, covering up, covering up, and yet know in their own hearts that they are guilty before God; “eating and drinking judgment to themselves.”
Paul concludes this review of all mankind in chapter three, and says, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” They are all under sin. How many righteous? Not one. Not even you? No. Not even me? Oh, no, I found that out long ago about myself. “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “There is none that doeth goad no, not (so much as) one.” What a wretched condition we are in. Nobody but righteous and good people will ever be in heaven and here is a world filled with unrighteous and ungodly sinners! We cannot help ourselves, we cannot cleanse our awn hearts, we cannot make ourselves any better, try and struggle as we may. We cannot purify that cesspool of iniquity in our breasts. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, fornication, and adultery.” These could not come out of the heart if they were not there beforehand. But what are we going to do about it? God says, “The thing for you to learn is that you cannot do anything.”
The next part of the Epistle to the Romans opens that up to us. In ch. 3, vs. 21, we read, “But now”— “now” is an adverb of time. When? After he has proven that all have sinned, that all are ungodly, that all are unrighteous, that there is none that doeth good, “now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.” God has a righteousness for unrighteous sinners who have nothing of goodness to plead. And what is this righteousness of God? God looked in pity upon men in their sins and iniquity, His holy nature demanded that sin be dealt with, so He came down into this world in the person of His own blessed Son, and there on Calvary’s cross drank to the very depth the cup of judgment that our sins deserved. Think of it! The Lord Jesus, the holy One, the just One, suffered on Calvary’s cross that which your sins and my sins deserved, as though He had been as corrupt, wicked, licentious, untruthful, unholy, and unchaste as men and women in this world are today. He who is absolutely pure and undefiled, drank to the depth the cup of judgment.
This explains that cry from Calvary, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was because you and I deserved to be forsaken, because you and I were so utterly unfit for God that He could do nothing but turn His face from us. He was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and so God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). God had to act in consistency with His own character before He could offer a righteous salvation to anyone. He did this on the cross.
He has set Christ forth a prince and a Saviour. He died for our sins; He has been raised from the dead for our justification, and now God comes to guilty men and women and says, “You need no longer be debarred from heaven because of your sins, I have provided a ransom; I have a Deliverer for you, and if you will put your trust in my blessed Son, take Him as your Saviour, give up all pretension of righteousness, come to Him just as you are, I stand ready to justify the ungodly.”
But somebody says, “I would like to come to a God like that, who is so good and so gracious, but I do not feel good enough.” You are barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of being good enough; the question is, are you bad enough? When He was here on earth, the Pharisees derided Him and said, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them” (Luke 15:2), but He said, “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matt. 9:13). If there is a man or woman who can prove that he has never sinned, I can prove from this Book that there is po Saviour for him. There is no Saviour for righteous people, for good people, but Christ is the Saviour of sinners. “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick” (Luke 5:31).
A young man who often listened to a great Scotch preacher wanted to be saved. He had a great longing in his heart to know Christ as his deliverer, to know the blessedness of God’s salvation, and although he wept and prayed and sought, he could get no sense of forgiveness, no assurance that he was received by God. One night the minister preached on those words, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9), and he showed that “any man” took in poor sinners no matter how vile, how wicked, how corrupt they were. As he preached, he could see the cloud lift from this young man’s face, and at the close of the meeting he came to the front and said, “I got in tonight.”
“What do you mean,” asked the preacher.
“Why, I got in, at the open door tonight while you were preaching.”
“I am glad to hear it. But why did you not get in before? You have been troubled for a fortnight and I have been trying to help you, and others have been doing their best to help you. How was it that you did not get in until tonight?”
“Well,” said the young man, “I have been at the wrong door all the time. I have been knocking at the saints’ door and I found it locked against me. I thought I had to become good enough for God to save me, but I said tonight, I will try the sinner’s door, and when I came to it, it was open and I got right inside.”
A great many people are not saved because they will not take the place of a lost sinner; they will never bow low enough.
There is a story told of an old man who owned a little narrow lot, with a poor miserable cabin on it. Lots in his neighborhood had been selling for fabulous prices and he felt that someday his place would make his fortune. By and by a millionaire came along and seeing the possibilities of that block, said, “I want the whole thing.” He sent his agent to go and buy up the block, and when he came to the old man, he said “What would you sell your place for?” He had waited long for this opportunity and so he put up what he thought was a tremendously big figure. “Very well,” said the agent, “I will take it.” “When do you want it?” the old man asked. “In about two weeks I will be around with the deed and you can be ready to sign it. Here is a thousand dollars to bind the sale,” replied the agent. The old man was simply delighted and thought, “Well, if somebody has bought this place who is able to pay all that money, I ought to fix it up a bit.” And so he bought some paint and went to work painting the old cabin. He bought some glass to replace the broken panes, and for two weeks he worked on the cabin. When this millionaire purchaser and his agent brought the papers for him to sign, he was so nervous about it he could hardly hold the pen. He was surprised that the purchaser did not say anything about the shack and so he said, “You see how beautifully I have painted it up and have put in some new windows. It is going to make a nice place. I hope you will be very comfortable in it.” “Oh,” said the millionaire, “but I didn’t buy this place for what is on it, but for what I am going to put on it.” That is how God justifies the ungodly. It is not because of what He finds in men, but He saves them for what He is going to put in them, for what He is going to do for them. When they put their trust in Him, they get everlasting life, they are justified, and all their sins are forgiven. Then God proceeds to make them fit for His own blessed presence, and when we get Home to heaven, we will give Him all the glory.
Have you trusted Him? He justifies the ungodly. Are you ungodly? He is waiting to justify you. “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38 and 39).