Dale Partridge - February 07, 2023


The Great Equalizing Power of Justification by Faith


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

175.51915

Word count

1,389

Sentence count

75

Harmful content

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the role of faith in justification by faith in the life of Abraham and how it relates to his faith in God's Word and His plan for the future of his descendants. We also discuss the difference between Abraham's faith and that of the thief on the cross.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 R.C. Sproul, one of my favorite theologians said,
00:00:02.100 quote, salvation is by faith alone,
00:00:03.940 but not by faith that is alone.
00:00:05.920 Namely, saving faith will always be accompanied
00:00:09.560 by good works.
00:00:11.020 That's a reality.
00:00:13.020 Saved people obey.
00:00:15.180 Those good works are not the means of your justification.
00:00:17.740 They are the means to please God.
00:00:20.600 And you may have heard the other famous saying,
00:00:22.900 good works are the fruit of salvation,
00:00:24.300 but they are not the root of salvation.
00:00:25.960 We know that the fruit of salvation is good works
00:00:28.440 because it's coming from the motive of a saved heart
00:00:30.360 and a desire to please God and a desire to save yourself.
00:00:34.020 But the root of salvation is the perfect obedience of Christ
00:00:36.480 who kept the law and fulfilled the righteous demands
00:00:38.260 of the law on your behalf.
00:00:40.900 And his righteousness was imputed to you by faith.
00:00:43.020 So essentially Paul is demonstrating
00:00:44.400 the great equalizing power of justification by faith alone.
00:00:49.540 He's continuing to prove his point
00:00:51.960 regarding the exclusion of boasting
00:00:53.620 by showing that even the greatest man known to the Jews 0.54
00:00:57.340 had no grounds for boasting because he was not justified by his obedience to circumcision or
00:01:03.140 obedience to the law. He was justified by his faith in his belief of God's promise.
00:01:09.580 And so as it pertains to being found right before God, Abraham and the thief on the cross,
00:01:15.040 they're the same. Peter and the Philippian jailer, they're the same. The former slave trader,
00:01:21.480 John Newton, who wrote the song Amazing Grace and the theologian, Jonathan Edwards, they're the same.
00:01:26.940 The murdering cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer who came to Christ
00:01:30.120 and John MacArthur, they're the same before the Lord
00:01:33.920 in the way that we are justified.
00:01:35.300 We're not justified by our works.
00:01:36.640 We're justified by our faith in Jesus,
00:01:39.320 which is a gift of God by the grace of God
00:01:41.700 to the glory of God.
00:01:43.040 William Newell writes, quote,
00:01:45.840 to discover that the greatest saints
00:01:47.820 have no better standing than the weakest saints
00:01:51.100 is a lesson that is difficult for all of us. 0.94
00:01:54.280 So now for the Jew to find that the great Abraham has nothing in the flesh, but must be justified by simple faith, like any other sinner, is a great shock.
00:02:05.760 So ultimately, Abraham's salvation was never built upon his circumcision or his obedience or his good works, but on the gift of faith given to him by God. 0.89
00:02:17.920 So Paul goes on to prove this in verse three.
00:02:21.600 he says, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as
00:02:28.480 righteousness. So first let's just take note that Paul appeals to scripture here, which indirectly
00:02:35.420 affirms that Paul trusts the infallibility of the Old Testament. And in particular, he's talking
00:02:42.120 about the book of Genesis, which is vital because the book of Genesis essentially sets the stage for
00:02:47.800 the entire Bible. So just that's a little sidetrack. But second, Paul is referring to
00:02:53.180 Genesis 15, six, which says, quote, and he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him
00:02:59.700 as righteousness, end quote. So it's easy to minimize the degree of faith that we see in
00:03:03.740 Abraham if we forget the context of the promise that was made to Abraham and the reality of
00:03:08.460 Abraham's life at the time. And so this is important because it demonstrates a magnitude
00:03:12.940 of faith that is supernatural and significant. Genesis 15, Abraham believed from a vision
00:03:19.140 that God was going to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. Now, this promise was
00:03:25.760 made to a man who had no child and was married to a woman who was way beyond the years of 0.53
00:03:33.100 procreation. In other words, Abraham believed in the impossible. I mean, this is a miracle 0.67
00:03:39.680 that is going to occur here in Abraham's life
00:03:41.960 because God gave him the gift of supernatural faith.
00:03:46.620 In Romans 4, 16 through 22,
00:03:49.240 which we'll get to in a few episodes,
00:03:51.280 Paul illustrates the degree of this faith
00:03:53.660 and affirms us that our faith as Abraham's children
00:03:58.640 will be like his faith, which is important
00:04:01.800 because he is the father of the faith
00:04:03.920 and our faith will be like his faith.
00:04:06.180 And we all have the same faith
00:04:07.680 because our faith is given to us as a gift of God.
00:04:09.680 and I'll read this passage for you.
00:04:13.480 Again, it's chapter four, 16 through 22.
00:04:14.960 It says, this is why it depends on faith
00:04:17.520 in order that the promise may rest on grace
00:04:20.260 and be guaranteed to all his offspring,
00:04:23.400 not only to the adherent of the law,
00:04:26.020 but also to the ones who share the faith of Abraham,
00:04:30.260 who is the father of us all.
00:04:31.960 As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations
00:04:35.520 in the presence of the God in whom he believed,
00:04:38.900 who gives life to the dead and calls into existence
00:04:41.320 the things that do not exist.
00:04:43.580 In hope, he believed against hope
00:04:45.920 that he should become the father of many nations.
00:04:48.860 As he had been told, quote, so shall your offspring be.
00:04:53.020 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body,
00:04:56.660 which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old,
00:05:01.100 or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.
00:05:04.400 No, unbelief made him waver concerning the promises of God,
00:05:08.480 but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
00:05:11.720 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
00:05:16.100 This is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness,
00:05:19.440 but the words it was counted to him
00:05:21.760 were not written for his sake alone, but also for ours.
00:05:25.220 It'll be counted to us who believe in him
00:05:27.020 who was raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord,
00:05:29.980 who was delivered up for our trespasses 0.92
00:05:32.520 and raised for our justification."
00:05:34.260 Man, what a powerful passage of scripture.
00:05:36.200 We are going to demolish that thing.
00:05:38.700 We're going to eat it all up once we get there later in Romans chapter four.
00:05:42.360 Ultimately, Paul is reaffirming that it's not just,
00:05:46.340 or it's not man's work that brings about justification,
00:05:48.840 but again, the workless means of faith.
00:05:52.460 Now, to be clear, faith itself is not what makes anyone righteous.
00:05:57.060 It's simply the means or the vehicle or the channel
00:06:00.120 by which the righteousness is delivered to us.
00:06:03.400 The thing that makes us saved is the righteousness of Christ.
00:06:08.600 So we get that delivered through faith.
00:06:11.100 And when the channel remains by God's grace, because it's God's power, it's a gift.
00:06:16.820 Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.
00:06:19.460 He who began a good work and you will finish it.
00:06:21.720 When that channel of faith remains by God's power, the righteousness will remain by God's power.
00:06:28.000 This is part of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints that once saved, always saved.
00:06:32.060 If you're truly saved, you won't lose your salvation because the faith that actually makes your salvation possible, the channel that receives the righteousness of Christ is not going to go away because the faith is a gift of God that's being sustained by God and kept on your behalf.
00:06:48.480 And we see this plainly in the sinfulness of Abraham.
00:06:52.200 If you've read the book of Genesis,
00:06:54.300 you understand the poor decisions he's made
00:06:56.060 regarding his wife,
00:06:57.400 the sinful decisions that he made 0.61
00:06:58.960 with his relations with Hagar,
00:07:01.540 Hagar, Hagar,
00:07:02.700 and the many sinful acts that he did in his life
00:07:07.280 that didn't dismantle his salvation.
00:07:10.600 And so again, it wasn't resting upon his obedience.
00:07:12.940 It was resting upon his faith.
00:07:15.580 And so like us,
00:07:16.480 his righteousness was secured by the just and the justifier of the one who has faith. And for us,
00:07:23.840 it's faith in Christ. For him, it was faith in the promise of God. Essentially, the Old Testament
00:07:28.760 and the New Testament were both saved by faith. Just the content of our faith is slightly
00:07:33.500 different. The faith is the promises that God made regarding the Messiah. And for us, it's in
00:07:40.020 the righteousness and trust of Jesus Christ himself. And so again, all this points back to
00:07:44.380 the mega theme of Romans,
00:07:46.000 that justification is by faith alone in Christ alone. 0.90
00:07:50.040 And for that reason, no man, including Abraham
00:07:52.000 or you or me can boast.