Pulpit Magazine

(By Nathan Williams)

If you could give one word to describe the human race, what would it be? Sinful? Hopeless? Evil? Perverse? Obviously, there are an almost endless number of words you could employ to depict the state of affairs we as humans find ourselves in, but the word I’m thinking of touches at the very heart of man’s greatest problem. That word is guilty.

Truly, we as humans find ourselves in the very unenviable position of being declared guilty by the Almighty God of the universe. God is the righteous judge and He has set the standards which we must live up to. God makes the law and also judges those who do not keep the law. He acts as lawgiver, law upholder, and executioner.

In Job 9:2-3 Job explained the problem, “In truth I know that this is so; but how can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to dispute with Him, he could not answer him once in a thousand times.” God has declared us guilty and there is no way we can stand before Him fittingly. In a human courtroom, the judge could make a mistake and declare an innocent man guilty. The man would not have any actual guilt; he would only have a declaration of guilt from the judge. That is not the case with us. The declaration of our guilt is not some divine mistake. It only comes as the result of the findings of the divine court. God has looked at mankind and knows that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

It is not only that we are guilty before God, but we are guilty of sinning against God. Every misdeed, sinister thought, and malevolent word against our fellow man is ultimately in hostility to our perfect judge. Scripture declares that “there is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one” (Rom. 3:10).

The problem with our situation is multi-faceted. It is not as if we can simply keep track of our good deeds and have our good deeds outweigh the bad. God demands perfect righteousness from us. As mere humans we can never justify ourselves. We are in desperate need of help. “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3). It is impossible for us to stand righteous before our Holy God.

James tells us that “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” The standard that God has set for fellowship with Him is complete obedience and impeccable righteousness. The moment we break that standard we have no more hope of living without the verdict of guilty on our heads. In fact, we literally have no hope from the moment of birth. Scripture tells us that we are born into sin (Ps. 51:5). We come out of the womb with a penchant for transgression.

God must condemn sin. He is absolutely holy and hates the very sight of iniquity (Ps. 143:2). For God to be a just judge He must punish sin. This leaves us in a most terrible predicament. We stand before the righteous judge, whom we have offended with our sin. He sits on His throne and glares at us and our sin with all the anger of His offended holiness (Rom. 1:18-32).

Because of our predicament, our greatest need is justification. The most important question we can ask is: how can sinful man be in a right relationship with God? It the one word that most sums up the position of humanity is guilty, how can our status be changed from guilty to righteous. That is precisely the question with which the doctrine of justification deals. How does the verdict placed upon us in the courtroom of God change?

Perhaps you as a Christian have not pondered this question of late. How amazing is it that you are justified before God? You had the pronouncement of guilty on your life and now you stand clothed in the very righteousness of Christ. How does this happen? I want to look at this doctrine over the next few Saturdays and attempt to help us understand the importance of this central doctrine of our faith called justification. I leave you with an extended quote from John Murray regarding the question of how can we be right with God and how pondering this question will challenge the Christian.

The answer, of course, is that we cannot be right with him; we are all wrong with him. And we are all wrong with him because we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Far too frequently we fail to entertain the gravity of this fact. Hence the reality of our sin and the reality of the wrath of God upon us for our sin do not come into our reckoning. This is the reason why the grand article of justification does not ring the bells in the innermost depths of our spirit. And this is the reason why the gospel of justification is to such an extent a meaningless sound in the world and in the church of the twentieth century. We are not imbued with the profound sense of the reality of God, of his majesty and holiness. And sin, if reckoned with at all, is little more than a misfortune or maladjustment.

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