"BELIEVERS ARE RIGHTEOUS BEFORE GOD FOR CHRIST’S SAKE."

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:
Romans 3:9-26
Habakkuk 1:1-2:4

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 103:1
Psalm 25:7,8
Hymn 24:1,5,7
Psalm 103:4,5,6
Psalm 145:2,3

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Question & Answer 59 queries what it help you "now that you believe all this?" "All this": what do those last two words refer to? As it turns out, they are a reference to the entirety of the Apostles’ Creed. Back in Question & Answer 22 we had wondered what a Christian must believe in order to be saved, and answered that we must believe "all that is promised us in the gospel, which the articles of our catholic and undoubted Christian faith teach us in a summary." The subsequent Lord’s Days explained the various articles of this Apostles’ Creed –about the Father creating the world and upholding, about His sending His Son and the Son suffering for us, dying, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven, about the gift of the Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sins, life everlasting- and now the Catechism ties it altogether: so you believe all this; what’s the benefit? How does believing all this help you in the nuts and bolts of daily living?

The answer is this: in Christ I am righteous before God and heir to life everlasting. Those are the benefits, say the Catechism: righteousness before God and life everlasting. Last week, with Lord’s Day 22.58, we spoke of "life everlasting". Today, with Lord’s Day 23, we focus on that other benefit, being "righteous before God".

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

To lesser or greater degree, we are all somewhat sensitive to what others think of us – especially our peer group. The question sits on our minds: do they like my shoes, my hairstyle, my sense of humor, etc. We want approval.

At end of day, congregation, what others think of us is not so important. When others don’t like us, there are options open to us. We could, for example, move away. Or we could opt to ignore the other’s dislike, stand above another’s negative opinion. And as to ourselves, we must –as Paul writes to the Romans- live at peace with all, as much as it depends on us (Rom 12:18). In the process of time frictions and dislikes may dissipate. Certainly, in due time critics all die, as do we…. In a word: what other people think of us is never eternal.

But what God thinks of us is a different matter. After all, He is the Judge of all the earth, and we –like all men- are to appear before Him. Then His thoughts concerning us will not have short-term consequences, but eternal consequences; His thoughts about us determine whether we spend eternity in the pleasures of heaven or in the agonies of hell. You see, what God thinks of us is vitally important!

Well now, in Lord’s Day 23.60 believers make confession of what God has revealed in His Word about His thoughts concerning these believers – you and me. Yet before we make that confession, we first speak candidly about ourselves. That is, we confess God’s thoughts about us in a context. What we say about ourselves? This: "my conscience accuses me that 1. I have grievously sinned against all God’s commands, 2. never kept any of them, and 3. am still inclined to all evil."

Question. Do you agree with this self-condemnation in our Lord’s Day? Ie, does your conscience accuse you of these three things? I’m sure we’ll all agree that we’ve sinned. But what do you think of the word "grievously"? And the statement that you’ve sinned "against all God’s commands"? Isn’t that over the top…? And what do you think about the second statement, that we’ve "never kept any of them"? Never? Any? We list the commandments in mind, and while we acknowledge that we’ve sinned, we feel that this type of self-accusation is overdone; we’d prefer to be more muted. And as to no. 3: "still inclined to all evil": yes, we’d agree that there’s evil inclinations in us, but "inclined to all evil"? Is it in me to hijack an aircraft and use it as a missile to kill thousands? Is it in me to murder a pregnant wife & child – as happened recently in the Eastern States? My mind and conscience agree: this is over stated….

Yet, brothers and sisters, we need to set aside our feelings, and listen carefully to what the Lord has told us in His Word. The believer humbly accepts God’s instruction. The person who speaks the words of Lord’s Day 23 is not an unregenerate heathen. Rather, the conscience that speaks here is that of believer, the one who knows and loves Lord. The person who says these condemning things about himself is the same person who first said with Lord’s Day 1 that I belong with body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Over the years the conscience of such a person has been taught by godly parents, by the preaching, in the school, has been taught by the Holy Spirit to accept with humility God’s holy assessment of himself. The conscience of the believer knows the commandments of Lord, has learned to look into mirror of God’s law, and to describe not what the eye of flesh sees but describe and accept what the Lord God says a sinner is like. The believer will echo with humility the words of Paul in Rom 3:9ff: "both Jews and Greeks … are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understand; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside…." Because that is God’s assessment of human nature, the believer says with humility that yes, "I have grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, and have never kept any of them." And the believer echoes with equal humility the struggle of the apostle in Rom 7, how the apostle loathes the battle within himself, how he can will what is right but cannot do it, and so cries out his despair: "Wretched man that I am!", and the so the believer will repeat Paul’s frustration in his own words and say with our Lord’s Day: "I am still inclined to all evil." The believer, taught by the Spirit of holy God, shows nothing of the spirit of the Pharisee of Luke 18:9ff – that man who came to the temple to boast before God of how good he was, certainly better than yonder tax collector. No, the believer taught by the Spirit of God reflect the attitude of the tax collector, has small thoughts about himself, knows very well that he’s sinned against all God’s commandments, has never kept any of them, and tomorrow will continue to sin. That attitude is the fruit of being taught by God’s Word.

So the question, congregation, is this: how do you see yourself? Do you find the language of Question & Answer 60 over the top? Or is this language you humbly adopt for yourself? I realize: our sinful nature protests this sort of language. We need to learn to think and feel in these terms – just as with Question & Answer 58 we had to learn to experience joy in our hearts. But this is the way the Lord speaks about sinners, and so we humbly echo it, indeed, we train our consciences to feel the way the Lord describes us.

And this is nothing new. This is exactly how we speak in the Lord’s Supper Form. Pg 596: "we are dead in ourselves. We also are aware of our many sins and shortcomings. We do not have perfect faith and we do not serve God with such zeal as He requires. Daily we have to contend with the weakness of our faith and with the evil desires of our flesh…." I mention also the first prayer listed in the Book of Praise, pg 641: "O eternal and merciful God and Father, we humble ourselves before Your great majesty, for we have frequently and grievously sinned against You. We acknowledge that if You should enter into judgment with us, we would deserve nothing but temporal and eternal death. We are deeply conscious of the fact that we are conceived and born in sin, and that all manner of evil desires against You and our neighbor fill our hearts. We continually transgress Your commandments, failing to do what You have commanded us, and doing that which You have expressly forbidden…." In fact, Question & Answer 60 simply repeats what we say about ourselves in the first Lord’s Days of the Catechism. No, there is nothing new here. The attitude does not sit well with us, but it is a self-assessment we need to learn more and more to adopt and echo.

That brings us to our second point:

The Lord God, then, has taught us in His Word not to have high thoughts of self; He wishes us to confess with humility that we condemnable before Him. Now, why does the Lord tell us that? To put the question better: why do we make confession of our depravity in the first part of Question & Answer 60? The reason, beloved, is this: white is never so white as against a background of black! We describe what God tells us about ourselves so that we may marvel the more on how God sees us! Notice how A 60 is put together; the confession of our depravity is a sub-clause in the big sentence describing God’s thoughts about us. The sub-clause begins with the word ‘although’ (and describes our depravity), and then the main part of sentence is this: "yet God, without any merit of my own, out of mere grace, imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ." More: "He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin…!" Do you see the contrast, beloved? I am black, black as black can be. But God accepts me anyway for Jesus’ sake – how glorious! What my contribution is to His accepting me? What I have done to impress God, make Him happy with me? Nothing, nothing! On the contrary, I have sinned against all His commandments, I have never kept any of them, and I am still inclined to all evil. "Yet God" accepts me! There’s no merit on my part, it’s all grace alone, but here’s how God sees me: He takes Christ’s righteous and imputes that to me, writes Christ’s righteous onto my account! So when God from heaven looks down to earth upon me, He does not see me as the sinner I am, but He sees me instead as righteous, holy! This is so undeserved! This is such a surprise!!

Try, beloved, to wrap your mind around it. Holy God, says Habakkuk, can stand to look upon evil. Holy God knows very well how evil I am – He made a point of describing it to me in His word, and that’s why I confess it in Lord’s Day 23. Yet when this God from heaven on high looks upon me, He does not see the black sinner I am, but He sees me as righteous in Christ! Think about it: He takes Christ’s work and lays it over me, ie, He covers me with Christ’s righteousness as with a blanket. So God sees me as perfect! God sees me as without sin. God sees me as one who paid for my past sins. That’s the language of A 60: "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."

That’s language, we need to know, that the church has learned to speak on the authority of God Himself. 2 Cor 5: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation." John says the same: "if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins" (vss 1f). And again: "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (4:9f). In a word: though God knows how broken and miserable we are, He yet looks upon us as completely righteous, not guilty of the sins we committed! For Jesus’ sake the Judge of all the world declares us innocent!

How awesome, beloved, this gospel is! What makes it so remarkable is that God does not ignore my sins or my sinfulness, does not belittle my sins or my sinfulness, but He makes work to cover those sins, and He grants righteousness precisely to sinners. That’s the point of Question & Answer 60: "although" I am so evil, "yet God … imputes." My mind cannot comprehend it, and it’s certainly not how I am inclined to act towards sinners, but this is the gospel: Christ took my iniquities on Himself – including those I’m not even aware of. Christ satisfied God’s justice and His wrath. So God sees me as blameless, righteous, not guilty of my transgressions.

That, of course, is why His smile rests upon us (cf last week). This is life!! I know I’m guilty, but I hear God declare that I’m innocent – and that’s 100% grace, undeserved. How awesome!!

In truth, what God thinks of me is so important. I might not like me, but I can’t essentially change me or my circumstances. People may not like me, but people can’t essentially change me either – and after my death they certainly can’t touch me. But God is the Judge of all the earth, and He has power to cast into hell (Mt 10:28). And this God makes a declaration today concerning a sinner as I am; He says I’m not guilty! It’s a verdict that colors His approach to me today and forever! How rich, how incredibly rich! So I need not fear His judgment - ever. Cf Rom 8:1.

We come to our last point:

We appreciate: this gospel is so very rich. That raises the question: is this wealth true for all people? The answer of the Catechism is a loud No. In fact, this gospel is not even true for all and everyone who attends church! Q 59 insists that one needs to believe all this. A 60c says the same thing: this wealth is mine "if only I accept this gift with a believing heart." So too A 61: "I can receive this righteousness and make it my own by faith only." Faith: its presence or absence determines whether you can claim righteousness for yourself, its presence or absence determines whether God sees you as a sinner still (and therefore to be judged to hell) or as righteous in Jesus’ blood – and therefore an heir to eternal life.

If faith, then, is so decisive, what is this faith? What role does faith precisely play in one’s being righteous before God? The function of faith, brothers and sisters, is drawn out in Rom 1:17. You know how Luther struggled to understand this text, to come to grips with Paul’s words: "the just shall live by faith." And we need equally to understand the apostle’s point here.

To help us understand the apostle, congregation, I mention that the verse in question is a quote from Hab 2:4. Habakkuk was a prophet in Jerusalem, after northern tribes had gone into exile on account of their wickedness. Despite the example of the northern tribes, however, sin continued to abound in the city of Jerusalem. That disturbed the prophet greatly, and so he uttered the complaint of chap1:2-4. How long would God allow Jerusalem’s iniquity to go unpunished? Had God not, way back at Mt Sinai, promised punishment on sin (Lev 26)? So why were things going well for the wicked of the city?

God’s answer is contained in 1:5-11: God will send Babylonians to Jerusalem, to punish God’s erring people. Those Babylonians: "they are terrible and dreadful" (vs 7). So: punishment will come, for God is faithful; Habakkuk just needs to be patient.

Habakkuk replies in turn in 1:12-2:1. His reaction: Lord, isn’t this over the top?! Those Babylonians are so much worse than your people in Jerusalem; they will destroy your people!

To that complaint the Lord responds in turn in 2:2ff. God tells Habakkuk to prepare sign in big letters, and on the sign must be the words of vs 4, with the warning ("Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him") and the promise ("But the just shall live by his faith"). It’s the promise that needs our attention. It’s point is this: the just shall survive the conflagration. How shall they survive the onslaught of the evil Babylonians? Shall they survive on account of their personal justice? Or on account of their obedience? Not at all! Rather, they shall survive because they accept what the Lord says. And what does the Lord say? This: that they will survive. The just do not challenge God’s words, but accept them for truth. I draw your attention to Abram. God spoke a word to Abram about receiving as many descendants as there were stars in the heavens (Gen 15:6), and Abram accepted what God said, accepted God’s word, and therefore God accounted him as righteous. So also the just in Habakkuk’s time. Those who accept what God says will see for themselves that God’s word comes to pass, ie, they will survive the Babylonian nightmare.

That’s the text Paul quotes in the context of being righteous before God. His point is the same as Habakkuk’s: those sinners shall escape God’s judgment who accept what God says. Particular inhabitants of Jerusalem, those who accepted what God said, would survive the judgment of the Babylonians. And equally, particular sinners can stand before God, be declared Not Guilty –who?- those sinners who accept what God says. For that is faith. Faith is the action of accepting God’s word. Faith is embracing as true whatever God declares.

And what is it, brothers and sisters, that God has declared concerning you? Back in your baptism already, when you were still so small, God declared that He saw you as Innocent, told you that He covered your sins with Jesus’ blood. Certainly, He knew at the time what you actually were: a sinner inclined to all evil. But God claimed you as His, despite your blackness, told you in baptism that He washed your sins away in Jesus’ blood so that you were white before Him. So: how you respond to what God said to you? Do you scoff at God’s words? Or do you accept it? Note: scoffing at it is unbelief, accepting it is faith!

That is what the Lord meant with Hab 2:4. "The just shall live by faith," ie, those shall survive who accept God’s judgment on the city and trust His compassion. That’s to say: they lay their lot in His hands. So it is here: those shall survive God’s judgment over sin who accept that He gave Son to pay for such depraved folk as we are. Such persons have no condemnation today or forever. That is the role of faith.

Does faith then save? That is, does my doing something (believing) save me from God’s judgment? No, certainly not! I remind you again of the first part of A 60: I am corrupt, too corrupt to be able to contribute something to God for my salvation. I remind you of the second part of A 60: God imputes Christ’s righteous to us out of grace alone. This is the gospel: God in mercy spares the unworthy, saves the damnable from the damnation they deserve. That’s God’s grace, and it’s give for free, without price to the sinner. That’s God’s word, God’s promise to you. Who actually receive that wealth? Only those who accept this word as true. That is ‘by faith’.

So that’s the question: what do you think of God’s promises to you?? Amen.