" I AM RIGHTEOUS BEFORE GOD THROUGH FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST."

59. Q. But what does it help you now that you believe all this?
A. In Christ I am righteous before God and heir to life everlasting.[1]
[1] Hab. 2:4; John 3:36; Rom. 1:17; 5:1, 2.

60. Q. How are you righteous before God?
A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.[1] Although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God's commandments, have never kept any of them,[2] and am still inclined to all evil,[3] yet God, without any merit of my own,[4] out of mere grace,[5] imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ.[6] He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me,[7] if only I accept this gift with a believing heart.[8]
[1] Rom. 3:21-28; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8, 9; Phil. 3:8-11. [2] Rom. 3:9, 10. [3] Rom. 7:23. [4] Deut. 9:6; Ezek. 36:22; Tit. 3:4, 5. [5] Rom. 3:24; Eph. 2:8. [6] Rom. 4:3-5; II Cor. 5:17-19; I John 2:1, 2. [7] Rom. 4:24, 25; II Cor. 5:21. [8] John 3:18; Acts 16:30, 31; Rom. 3:22.

61. Q. Why do you say that you are righteous only by faith?
A. Not that I am acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, for only the satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God.[1] I can receive this righteousness and make it mine my own by faith only.[2]
[1] I Cor. 1:30, 31; 2:2. [2] Rom. 10:10; I John 5:10-12.

Scripture Reading:
Zecheriah 3

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 23:1,2
Psalm 115:6
Psalm 130:2
Psalm 34:8,9
Hymn 24:1,5,6,7

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Over the years, the Form for the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper has become rather well known to us. Yet it’s contents, brothers and sisters, remain so incredibly, delightfully rich. After that Form has explained the work of Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross, it summarizes the wealth of the celebration like this:

"From this institution of the holy supper of our Lord Jesus Christ we learn that He directs our faith and trust to His perfect sacrifice, once offered on the cross. It is the only ground of our salvation."

As it is, Lord’s Day 23 does the same thing. We’ve spent 15 Lord’s Days discussing the faith confessed in the Apostles’ Creed, including the fact that Jesus is Saviour, that He suffered for our sins, that He died on the cross, that He arose, etc. Hence the question of our Lord’s Day: "What does it help you now that you believe all this?" The wonderful answer we’ve learned from Scripture is this: "in Christ I am righteous before God, and heir to life everlasting." That is: Christ "is the only ground of our salvation."

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. I have no righteousness of my own.
2. I am granted the righteousness of Christ.
3. I am responsible to embrace this free gift.

What, my brothers and sisters, is meant by the word ‘righteous’? I suspect that to many of us the term has us thinking about people, and then specifically that people live in a certain way. To our minds, the term describes the person who doesn’t give himself to sin, who lives uprightly. So the word ‘righteous’ comes to mean the same thing as the word ‘holy’.

As it is, congregation, the term first of all says something not about people but about God. The term describes the notion that God deals uprightly with people. Yet the point is not that God deals with people according to what people deserve (for people never deserve anything; we are but creatures); the point is rather that God deals with people as He said He would; the term is first of all covenantal. And how has God promised to deal with people?

Out of the fallen human race the Lord God established with some His covenant of grace, and that’s to say that the Lord claimed these persons for Himself as His special people, and so promised to forgive their sins and give them life everlasting. God’s righteousness is that He deals uprightly with these people, deals with them as He said He would, and that means that He in fact does forgive their sins and grant them life eternal with Him. As to the rest of mankind, God has not established with them His covenant of grace, and so the promise of Paradise remains: if you sin, you die. God’s righteousness is that He gives these people the penalty they deserve – hell.

God is righteous; He deals with people according to the promises He made with people. That – O delightful gospel!- is what makes us righteous before God in turn. To draw that all out this afternoon, I ask your attention for Zech 3.

The prophet Zechariah was shown a remarkable vision. Though he himself lived in Jerusalem (shortly after the people of Israel returned from their exile in the land of Babylon), he was taken into heaven to see what was happening there. He saw, we read, "Joshua the high priest." Zechariah knew Joshua, for Joshua was the actual high priest labouring in Jerusalem in the days of Zechariah. According to God’s law in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, Joshua’s task as high priest was to represent God’s covenant people to God, was also to lay God’s blessing on God’s covenant people. Zechariah sees the high priest in his vision, and yet it’s not simply the high priest as a person that Zechariah sees; in the figure of Joshua all the people of Israel were present in heaven. But these people are characterized by sin. That’s pointed out in the vision by the fact that Joshua –vs 3- "was clothed in filthy garments"; those filthy garments symbolize the sins of the people.

Joshua –and in him the people- is "standing before the Angel of the Lord." This is not just any angel; in the Old Testament the phrase "the Angel of the Lord" describes the second Person of the holy Trinity – the One who would one day come in the flesh from the virgin Mary and die on Calvary’s cross. Joshua, then, representing God’s covenant people, sinners all, is standing in the presence of God.

The third figure Zechariah sees is Satan, "standing at [Joshua’s] right hand to oppose him." That’s language from a court setting. Satan is the prosecution, Joshua (and that’s to say: God’s covenant people Israel) is the accused, and the Lord God is the Judge. That’s the vision.

Now Joshua hears words. Vs 2: the Lord says to Satan, "the Lord rebuke you, Satan." That is: the Lord is telling Satan off. Why is He telling Satan off? Because Satan is opposing Joshua. How is Satan opposing Joshua? As the prosecution in this trial, Satan was outlining to God all the evils of which Joshua was guilty.

What might the details be of what Satan was saying? In our chapter Zechariah doesn’t tell us the details in so many words. But we now details from other parts of the bible. I will summarize the charges under three headings, headings that we find back in our Lord’s Day.

The first charge is this: Lord God, Joshua, the people of Israel, "have grievously sinned against all [Your] commands."

· You told them to have no other gods before you, but look at all the idolatry Israel has committed over the years. The Baals and the Molechs and the Asherahs have been served over the years. And even now they’re serving other gods, for they’re not finishing the temple because they want to build houses for themselves first; their own comforts come before You.

· In the second commandment You told them to serve You only as You commanded in Your word, but they don’t. They have their own self-chosen ways of going about Your service; see, Lord God, how sinful this man is who wants to come into your presence.

· You told them never to dishonour Your name, always to uphold Your reputation. But their lack of trust in You makes the other peoples laugh you to scorn.

· In the fourth commandment You told them to keep the Sabbath day holy, but the returned exiles don’t mind at all to do some business on the Sabbath.

· Etc, etc, congregation, through all the commandments.

They "have grievously sinned against all [Your] commands," and so are deserving of Your wrath. And the horrible thing, beloved, is that Satan is correct! Listen to God’s holy Word in Rom 3: "There is none righteous, no, not one…; there is none who seeks after God" (vss 10f). In fact, "all the world [is] guilty before God" (vs 19). Must a righteous God not condemn this people, send them to the hell they deserve?!

Satan’s second charge is no better. Joshua, says Satan, and the people he represents, "have never kept any of Your commands." As children, as teenagers, as parents, as elders, as priests, as old people: it all makes no difference; from cradle to grave, by day and by night, they sin against You, Lord! There’s not a shred of good in Joshua, in Your covenant people; You must condemn them, send them into my hell. And again, beloved, the horrible thing is that Satan is correct! Said God in Gen 6: "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and … every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (vs 5).

So too the third charge. Lord, they’re "still inclined to all evil." Joshua has seen Your holiness in heaven, Lord, but You let him return to His task in Jerusalem, and what He’s seen here will make no difference, he’ll keep on sinning; Your people are depraved to the core. And here too, Satan is so correct. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit Paul groaned out his frustration, "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it! … Wretched man that I am; who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom 7).

Three charges. By God’s leading, our consciences accuse us of exactly the same things. So in our Lord’s Day we join Satan in self-accusation before God: "I have grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, and have never kept any of them, and am still inclined to all evil."

What, now, does the heavenly Judge say in the face of Satan’s accusations? O yes, with very many the Lord God certainly agrees, and these people who have no regard for God and His word in any way, shape or form will receive the punishment God promised in Paradise; "if you sin you shall die." For God deals with man according to His promise. But God does not respond in that way to Satan’s accusations concerning Joshua and so concerning His covenant people Israel! That brings us to our second point:

For see what happens! In the face of Satan’s accusations, the Lord rebukes Satan, tells him off. And instead of condemning Joshua –sinner though he certainly is!- the righteous Judge commands that Joshua’s dirty clothes –those sins!- be taken from him and he be clothed with "rich robes" (vs 4). That’s to say: Joshua’s sins, Israel’s sins, are forgiven; God will not deal with Joshua according to those sins! Why not? Because, congregation, God is righteous! That is, God deals uprightly with Joshua, with Israel. No, not according to what Joshua and the people deserve, but according to His promise in the covenant! And what’s the promise of the covenant? This: I will be your God, and you My people. That’s to say: I look at You through the blood of Jesus Christ, and so take all your sins away.

This is something that the prosecution in heaven’s courts should have known, for Satan knows the Old Testament Scriptures so very well. That God would forgive the sins of His people was the good news proclaimed in the temple of the Old Testament through the centuries. You sinned, then had to take a ram from the flock and bring it to the tabernacle. There you had to lay your hand on the head of the animal and confess your sin over it. Point: your sin was transferred from yourself onto the animal. Then the animal was killed, and that’s to say that it died on account of your sin, and you got to go free; there was no condemnation from God for you! And if you stayed behind at the temple long enough you’d see the high priest come out of the temple, and extend his hands over the people in order to lay God’s blessing on the people; "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you…." In a word: though you came to God’s presence in the temple as one guilty of this and this sin –dirty clothes- you left with God’s blessing upon you – the clean clothes of Christ! Why could you go home assured that your sins were washed away? Because God had established His covenant of grace with you, promised for the sake of His coming Son to "wash us with Him in His blood from all our sins and unite us with Him in His death and resurrection" so that "we are freed from our sins and accounted righteous before God" – as the Form for Baptism has it. That was the gospel of the temple through the centuries, and God –righteous that He is- deals with His people according to His promise.

That’s why God, in the vision He showed to Zechariah, does not agree with Satan’s charges! God does not issue a verdict upon Joshua to the effect that he is Guilty-as-charged. Instead, the Lord God rebukes Satan, tells Satan to work with God’s covenant promises to Israel, and gives Joshua a change of clothes, forgiveness of sins – and all of it means that God declares Joshua Not Guilty! Here’s what the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, and what we confess in the Doxology of the Lord’s supper form:

"God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Rom 5:8ff).

That’s why we confess so enthusiastically in our Lord’s Day that though "I have grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, and have never kept any of them, and am still inclined to all evil, yet God, without any merit of my own, out of mere grace, imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ." I deserve damnation, but I receive salvation! And why? Because Satan does such a poor job in prosecuting us? Or because we’re pretty decent people after all? No, no! We receive forgiveness, salvation, because of God’s promise in the covenant; He deals with us according to that promise – pours out His wrath onto Christ so that we might go free. And so strongly does God want to impress that gospel upon us that He set us at His table today so that we might eat and drink these symbols of His mercy to us. See there, beloved, how exceedingly gracious this God is to the unworthy!

Then yes, our consciences may continue to accuse us that we don’t deserve to sit at this table and we don’t deserve forgiveness and life eternal, and our consciences are so correct. But there’s a reality greater than our depravity, beloved, and that’s the reality of God’s covenant promises, and His pledge to deal with us according to those promises. That is why I may not doubt that my sins are truly forgiven in Jesus’ blood as certainly as I ate and drank those tokens of Christ’s atoning sacrifice at the table today. For God is righteous, and that’s why He declares me Not Guilty, righteous.

But if that’s the gospel, beloved, why would God ever be angry with us? We’re God’s people by covenant; shouldn’t we then skip over all further talk about God’s wrath and punishment on our sins – be it in this life or the life to come?

Let it first be fixed in our minds, beloved: there is no cost on our side for God’s forgiving grace. The Lord God does not put a price tag on forgiveness or on redemption, be it a price of $20,000 or a price of seven prayers a day or a price of going faithfully to church, or a price of shunning the pub, or any such thing. That is what the Bible means when it says that "you have been saved by grace…; it is a gift of God, not of works" (Eph 4:8f). The price is Zero; it doesn’t cost you a penny. God came to us with His covenant of grace while we were infants, not able to offer God a thing to earn that covenant with its promises. He came to us with His gift of forgiveness, of salvation, and He asks no price for it; it’s free! That’s also the point of our Lord’s Day, where we say in A 60: "He grants … me [Christ’s perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness] as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me." He knows well I don’t deserve redemption, but He gives it to me freely nevertheless! That’s the marvel of the gospel, it’s the wonderful grace of God!

Yet there is, congregation, another side to this coin. For the Lord had created us in the beginning to have responsibility. Though we’ve fallen into sin and become inclined to all evil, the Lord does not annul that responsibility. That is why the Bible is full of commands to God’s people to respond to God’s covenant promises; time and again there’s instruction to repent and believe. And the structure of the covenant makes it plain: you will not receive the promises God gave in the covenant unless you repent from sin and believe the promises God has given. For the covenant has two sides, a promise and an obligation. And it’s for us to answer to the obligation; else we’ll not get what’s promised – including the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Jesus Christ.

But what is this responding then? How does one do that? I said already: God’s gift of redemption carries no price tag, and so I don’t have to do anything to earn it. Neither $20,000 nor diligent praying nor faithful church attendance or being a decent citizen of the community will earn me God’s Not Guilty verdict. Instead, that verdict is promised already in the covenant, and that covenant is mine; at baptism my name was mentioned in relation to that covenant! But now I need to reach out to receive what God has prepared for me. I’ve mentioned before the example of the box of chocolates. I offer you this box, it’s got your name written on it, and I say it’s for you. You don’t have to do anything to earn it; I’m holding it out to you. But we all understand you have to do something before you can sink your teeth into the chocolates, and that is that you need to receive my gift. If you keep your hands in your pockets, you’ll not be able to enjoy that box. So it is with God’s gift of forgiveness and righteousness in Christ. It’s promised to you in the covenant, your name was mentioned at baptism; it’s really for you. But you’ll not be able to enjoy it unless you receive it. Then yes, it’s so true that it’s the Holy Spirit who makes you able to receive it, makes you want to receive it. But He does so through your taking seriously the responsibility God has given you; never may you say that you’ll just sit there until the Holy Spirit makes you receive the gift of God. You have to work, you have to make a point of receiving His gift. That act of receiving it, accepting it, embracing it: that is faith. That is what we mean in our Lord’s Day when we say that we are righteous before God "only by true faith in Jesus Christ." No, "not that I’m acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith" – as if that reaching out to receive were my contribution to earning God’s favour, were somehow the way in which I become righteous before God. Rather, "I can receive this righteousness and make it my own by faith only;" faith is the hand of the soul by which I receive the treasure God is giving to me. That’s how I respond to God’s gift.

And that’s what I did at the table today. As I reached out with the hand of the body to receive the bread and drink, so with the hand of the soul I reach out day by day to accept, to embrace, to receive the gift of redemption God gives me in Christ. Faith!

But faith never comes by itself. "Faith without works is dead," declares James. That is: you can’t separate faith from obedience. Where the soul reaches out to receive what God in mercy gives in Christ, there will be also works of obedience, conduct pleasing to the Lord God. That’s why a life of disobedience is so telling as to whether or not you are forgiven of your sins; where you give yourself to sin you simply don’t have forgiveness. And no, that doesn’t mean that God suddenly is not acting toward you as He said He’d act toward you, for in His covenant He promised not only blessings; in His covenant He promised also His curse – where the receiver of the promises refused to accept the treasures God gives! You see: God is always faithful! But you need to make it your business to take your own responsibility seriously!

We’ve sat today at the table of the Lord. What we were told at the table? This: "in Christ I am righteous before God." Satan wants to throw me off balance, to doubt God’s promises, to fall for his accusations. But, by the grace of God, I may believe the promise of the gospel: God deals with me uprightly, according to the promise of the covenant. So I’m righteous, accounted by God as Not Guilty of my sins. God said so, and that’s why I believe it.  Amen.