1. The Fear of God, Justification and Ethics

What would you think of a fellow who tried to show you some picture slides of his latest overseas trip and did not bother to put up a background screen but simply focused his pictures out in midair? Of course, his pictures would not make sense. Just so, the great Biblical truth of justification by faith does not make sense unless it is focused against the background of the fear of God.

"The fear of God is the soul of godliness."—John Murray, Principles of Conduct (The Tyndale Press), p. 229. The Bible says it is the beginning of wisdom (Prov.9:10), the foundation of piety (Job 1:8), the soul of obedience (Eccl. 12:13; Gen. 22:11,12), the basis of ethical integrity (Gen. 20:11; Prov. 8:13:16:6) and the foundation of sanctification (2 Cor. 7:1). The Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit. . . of the fear of the Lord." Isa. 11:2.

To fear God means to respond to Him with reverential awe, humble respect and profound adoration. This attitude toward God comes by a lively sense of the majesty of Him who is constantly aflame with holiness, truth and goodness, and of the wrath of Him whose justice is fiery indignation against sin.

Whenever men are taught the fear of the Lord by a confrontation with God's righteousness and His claims upon their lives, they are led to cry out, "How can I be just with God?" They do not take it for granted that God forgives, but they are so impressed with the righteousness of God that their own conscience demands, "How can God justly forgive me?" They feel like Spurgeon, who cried out, "I felt I could not be forgiven unless I could be forgiven justly." This is the great problem that St. Paul solves for us in his message to the Romans—how God demonstrates His justice in the remission of sins (Rom. 3:25, 26).

When we look at the current religious scene, there is little evidence that people are asking such theocentric (God-centered) questions. Instead, they are asking anthropocentric (man-centered) questions like, "How can God make me happy? How can Christ make my life run smoothly and joyously? How can I solve my [petty] problems and find fulfillment in life?" Never has so much religious activity been so disinterested in the question of justification with God. Why? Because there is so little fear of God. People can wave their arms or jump up and down "in the Spirit." But if the religious interest is not marked by a great fear of God, it is not the work of the Holy Spirit, for He is "the Spirit . . . of the fear of the Lord."

Again, why is there such an appalling disinterest in justification by faith? Because people are taking it for granted that God is gracious and forgiving. In fact, they feel that they are on such good terms with Him that they talk to Him as if He were (to use Luther's complaint against the Enthusiasts) "a shoemaker's apprentice." How can justification be a burning question when there is no marked fear of God?

Consider how these man-centered questions are patently foolish in the light of man's predicament. Here is a wretched sinner, bound hand and foot and consigned to hell for his great crimes against his Maker. Standing on the threshold of eternal damnation, he presumes to ask, "How can God make me happy?" (as if God were in his debt). Such a question shows he has no true sense of his awful predicament. If the Spirit gives him any true enlightenment of his situation, he will rather cry out, "How can I be right with God?"

We are not suggesting that God is indifferent to the happiness of His earthly children. But we do not find happiness in trying to use God as if He were our lackey. Nowhere do we find such genuine, exultant joy as in Romans 5 and 8.

This holy, sacred joy comes to the man who, because of Christ, has found justification at the hand of a just and merciful God. Such a man Is ready to follow Christ anywhere, to make any sacrifice, to perform any duty, to obey any commandment, and to count it all a "reasonable service" from an "unprofitable servant." He does not take his forgiveness for granted or begin to walk before God with irreverent familiarity, but with the Psalmist, he prays, "There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." Ps. 130:4.

A pastor asked me, "My congregation has no vital joy in the Lord. They're not Spirit-filled Christians. What can I do?" I replied, "Teach them salvation and what it means to be just with God." "Oh," he rejoined, "they all know that—they've been saved." Great fallacy of much modern evangelicalism! That is the very condition Paul says would exist in the church—". . . unthankful, unholy. . ." Imagine saying to the man who wrote Romans, "Paul, I accept your doctrine of justification by faith, I thank God that I'm not a legalist like those Free Will Baptists. But can you tell me how my life can be vitalized with Christian joy?" With one fell stroke of the Word, the apostle would say, "Happy are they whose iniquities are forgiven." "We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." Rom.4:7; 5:11. Justification without joy in the Holy Spirit is unthinkable!

The message of justification by grace, because of Christ, through faith, is the sweetest and most joyful melody that can ever come to the human heart. Then why are people rushing off to find "the Spirit" a la the second blessing, tongues or some guru of victorious living fame? It is because the fear of God is the one great ingredient most lacking in the current religious scene, and therefore the truth of justification is unappreciated as the only doorway to the Spirit.

The New Testament teaches the fear of God as much as does the Old Testament. Luke describes the church as "walking in the fear of the Lord." Acts 9:31. The writer to the Hebrew Christians exhorts the believers not to "draw back" and find that it "is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Heb. 10:38, 31. And Paul exhorts the Gentile Christians, "Be not high minded, but fear: for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee." Rom. 11:20, 21.

We are not unmindful that gratitude for salvation motivates the man who knows that he has been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. But the tendency in a lot of modern evangelicalism is to strain out the sterner element of "fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12) and insist on nothing but gratitude for being saved as a motive for Christian ethics. Many want to talk about nothing but "confidence," 'boldness" and "assurance" (which are very needful too), but they fall into the heresy that comes by stressing only one side of the paradox. The Christian life must be lived in the tension of fear and trembling on the one hand, and faith and confidence on the other.

God is not a popular somebody with whom sinners may fraternize on their own level. He is so high, so holy, that He can have no direct fellowship with any man except through Jesus Christ. Christ's person alone will He accept, and Christ's righteousness alone makes Him propitious toward us. Well may the most holy saint flee from His throne with dread and terror except that he may keep on looking to his Substitute at God's right hand and keep on believing the good news that he is justified in God's sight solely because Jesus stands there instead of him and for him. This is the only atmosphere in which the Christian continues to live and breathe. Such a Christian will never look on sin as if it were as harmless as a Sabbath afternoon frolic.

In short, two things belong together—the fear of God and Christian ethics—just as Solomon declares, "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." Eccl 12:13. And the last book of the Bible declares, "Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth . . . ". Rev. 14:7.  

2. The Atonement, Justification and Ethics

St. Paul did not write the book of Romans just to tell us that God is willing to forgive. The Old Testament had already made that abundantly clear. Nor did he write Romans just to tell us that we should live by trusting in God's mercy. The Old Testament was clear enough on that too. The central issue that the Epistle deals with is this: How can the God of law and justice forgive sin? How can the moral Governor of the universe justify people who deserve to be blamed? It is important to see that the theme of Romans, therefore, is not merely the justification of sinners, but the vindication of God in His justification of sinners.

God's justice in passing over sins was prefigured in types and shadows of the old dispensation. The prophets who "prophesied of the grace that should come" "inquired and searched diligently" into God's answer to the problem of sin (1 Peter 1:10,11).

So often God had revealed Himself as gracious and forgiving. He passed over the sins of Israel times without number. He passed over the sins of David without inflicting upon him what justice required. He even forgave the sins of Manasseh, who filled Jerusalem with the blood of God's saints. How is all this consistent with justice? Does the supreme Judge treat His law as a mere bylaw to be modified, relaxed or set aside at pleasure? Should not the Judge uphold the law irrespective of any person? We might even say that God's passing by the sins of men might look like moments of weak leniency on the part of the great Judge, and therefore His act of pardon might appear as a scandal against the divine government.

Then God Himself answers in the bolts of holy wrath that fell on Himself in the person of Christ. Never had earth or heaven beheld such a display of awful, infinite justice as when God spared not His only Son. So Paul points to the cross of Christ and declares:

God meant by this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had overlooked the sins of the past [i.e., in past ages]—to demonstrate His justice now in the present, showing that He is Himself just and also justifies any man who puts his faith in Jesus. Rom. 3:25, 26, N.E.B.

Death is the doom of sin, the sanction, the curse, the sentence of the law; and in dying for us Christ recognized without abatement the utmost claims of the law as expressive of the holy will of God. It is in this sense that He is said to have become a curse for us, and to have been made sin for us by God; it is in this sense also that God is said in Him to have condemned sin in the flesh. All these passages (Galatians iii.13; iv.4f; 2 Corinthians v.21; Romans viii.3) describe the same thing: the absolute honor paid to the law by Christ in freely submitting to that death in which the law's condemnation of humanity is expressed (James Denney, Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Article Law [In New Testament], Vol. III, p.80). Fascinated by the simplicities of forgiveness some writers have mistaken the part for the whole and have denied any deep relation between our Lord's work and the Law of God; but the relation of our Lord's work to the Law of God is undeniable. By His complete fulfillment of it and His utter satisfaction in respect of our transgressions of it, His atonement becomes what E. Y. Mullins describes as "the "transformation and glorification of law" (E. Y. Mullins The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression, p. 322).—E. F. Kevan, The Evangelical Doctrine of Law, pp.21, 22.

3. Faith, Justification and Ethics

We must now consider the nature and action of faith in the sinner's justification. Faith is the root of every good work, the tree that blossoms and bears a harvest of ethical action.

When the nature and action of faith are misunderstood, people are not too concerned about being "zealous of good works." For instance, people listen to a preacher who keeps harping, "We are not saved by living a life of good works, but by faith. Keeping the Law does not justify us with God, but faith does." In the first place, the hearers may easily conclude that God is not too concerned about good works and the honor of His Law, so why should they be too concerned about it? In the second place, they may also conclude that a certain quality in their own hearts called "faith" is going to please God and move Him to open heaven for them.

Each of these conclusions is a terrible mistake, for:

a. God does care for good works and the honor of His law. His holy nature demands a righteousness that conforms to His commandments without variableness or shadow of turning. St. Paul declares,". . . the doers of the law shall be justified." Rom. 2:13. Perfect obedience to His law is the only condition upon which God will give any man eternal life (Matt. 19:17). As Luther said, "The law must be fulfilled so that not a jot or tittle shall be lost, otherwise man will be condemned without hope." —Luther's Works, Vol.31, pp.348, 349.

The good news of the gospel is that Christ has lived this life of perfect obedience. He has fulfilled the conditions upon which God will justify unto life eternal. He lived this life of perfect obedience in our name and on our behalf. This is why the apostle says that we are justified by Christ (Gal. 3:17), by His obedience (Rom. 5:18,19). So it is perfectly true to say that the "meritorious cause" or meritorious basis of our justification is a life of good works — not ours, of course, but His. While the atoning death of Jesus (His passive obedience) is the basis upon which God forgives sin, the sinless life of Jesus (His active obedience) is the basis upon which God can impute or reckon to us a life of perfect obedience. We need to hear more about the redemptive nature of Christ's perfect life, for this is what fulfills the Law and entitles us to eternal life.

b. God does not justify us because of our faith—as if faith had any redemptive value. Neither does God now accept faith instead of perfect obedience to His law. (This is the error of neo-nomianism, which says that Christ died to change the conditions, to make it possible for God to demand an easier standard.) Faith is not the meritorious cause of justification but merely the instrumental cause, i.e.: Here is a poor sinner who hears that God will accept nothing but a life of perfect righteousness. Then he hears how Christ kept the Law of God for him and so provided this perfect life. This good news kindles faith and repentance in his heart by the working of the Holy Spirit. He cries out, "Mine are Christ's living, His doing and dying; mine as much as if I had lived, spoken, suffered and died as He did." By faith he identifies himself with Christ's life of perfect obedience and presents it to God on his behalf. Divine justice acknowledges that this life, which the repentant sinner now accepts as his, meets the demands of the Law, and God pronounces him justified.

This instrumental action of faith by the repentant sinner is not a mere relic of Protestant orthodoxy. It is necessary to give the sinner a high view of God's Law and an appreciation of His unalterable demand for a righteous life. How can the believing sinner identify himself with Christ's obedient living, how can he present that life to God in faith, how can he rejoice in the law-abiding life of Jesus Christ as his hope of salvation, unless that life he holds to in faith becomes his own standard of conduct? Faith honors the perfection of God in concrete obedience.

4. The Dynamic Nature of Justification and Ethics

Every well-informed Protestant knows that justification by faith is "the article of the standing or falling church" (Luther). This doctrine must be guarded with special care, and, as Luther constantly affirmed, it cannot be learned too well.

Just as Luther and Calvin were the two principal Reformers, so two streams emerged from the Reformation — Lutheran and Reformed. We are all greatly indebted to the contribution made by these two branches of the Reformation. But has the ethical fruit of these two movements always adorned the doctrine of Christ?

In his monumental History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff cites these remarks of Bishop Martensen of Denmark:

I am more and more convinced that the deepest defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore has been a lack of the full appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This becomes manifest so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is lacking the tenderness of conscience and thorough moral culture which deals conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith is made to cover, in advance, all sins, even the future ones; and this is only another form of indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at the principle, to an establishment of ethics on the deepest foundation. But many treat justification, not only as the beginning, but also as the goal. Hence we see not seldom the justified and the old man side by side, and the old man is not a bit changed. Lutherans who show in their literary and social conduct the stamp of the old Adam would deal more strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from grace by such conduct, if they had a keener conscience, and could see the necessary requirements of the principle of justification; for then they would shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine of justification is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep, instead of quickening it.—Vol. 7, p.667.

Those who stand in the Reformed tradition have often been careful to guard the proper forensic meaning of justification, and they have come in for not a little criticism for making justification sound like some dry, legal procedure of celestial credit. Although the criticism is often made by those who want to eliminate all legal categories from salvation, there is some truth to their criticism. Reformed theology, for all its strength, does tend to fail to capture the dynamic spirit of Hebrew thinking that is so characteristic of the Bible writers. And without a dynamic personal view of justification, the church fights a losing battle against sterile orthodoxy. How many Reformed men lament the deadness of their church!

What do we mean by a dynamic view of justification? It is perfectly true that we are here dealing with a legal word, a term of the law court. The sinner who hears⁴ the gospel knows he is a wretched captive of the devil. He knows that the enemy of God and man has destroyed the dignity and freedom of his manhood and robbed him of his original inheritance. Yet through the convicting, drawing and wooing power of the Holy Spirit attending the proclamation of the gospel of Christ this sinner has faith to know that his case can be heard at the court of divine judgment. The moment of justification is the moment of judgment. The Judge is about to render His verdict. Now we must not think of this court scene as if this poor man were like a defendant in the dock hoping at best for mere acquittal or pardon. We must picture the scene more like a civil case where the believing sinner is the plaintiff. He knows the rights and titles Christ has won for him. He is confident that by coming in Christ's name he has a good case. If he is declared to be right with God, then he may proceed to exercise his rights as a son of God, as a righteous man. With this verdict he through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit may walk out of the miserable service of the devil, live in the restored dignity of God-given manhood and walk in "the way of the King's pilgrims." So he presses his case to the Judge that he may gain those rights and titles. The verdict of justification and forgiveness sets him free to act. He is delivered out of the hand of the enemy that He may now serve God in holiness and righteousness all the days of his life (Luke 1:74, 75). He is purged from the guilt of dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:14). Justification means he is set free for a new life of ethical action. It means he is set free for loving service to his neighbor.

A "justification" that does not release the sinner for ethical action becomes stagnant and stoic. Charles Wesley captured the dynamic spirit of justification in these lines from "Amazing Love":

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night.
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth and followed thee.

So far we have considered some rights and titles that justification gives to the believing sinner. Now let us take a higher view and see what rights and titles justification gives to God. God can only be in fellowship with those who are perfectly righteous. He cannot take charge of the life that does not belong to Him. The moment God pronounces the repentant believer righteous because of Christ (not because of faith), He can then, with perfect justice, begin to treat him as a righteous man. How does God treat the repentant believer as righteous? By giving him the indwelling Holy Spirit—"the Spirit of holiness." The Spirit inspires and empowers every justified believer to follow after "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." It is certain that those who have not the Spirit of holiness are not justified. These two cannot be separated — justification and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Justification is God's title to pour out His Spirit. It sets Him free to act dynamically within so we may live fruitfully unto every good work. While the overwhelming sense of God's sin-pardoning love enters into the deepest motives of conduct, the Holy Spirit provides the believer with power for brotherly loving conduct. We must remember that two streams flowed from the pierced side of the Crucified — blood and water. They represent the legal and the personal aspects of salvation, which must be distinguished but never separated. Wherever the blood delivers from the curse and condemnation of the law, the Spirit is present to cleanse the heart from the pollution and power of sin. There is good theology in that grand old hymn:

Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

5. The Concrete Nature of Justification and Ethics

Hebraic or Biblical modes of thinking are not only dynamic but concrete. Justification is a law term. Sin means nonconformity to the Law, and righteousness means conformity to the Law.⁵ The Bible is as simple and as concrete as that. Justification is God's verdict that the believer in Jesus conforms to the Law of God. As a response to this gracious verdict, the believer will henceforth strive to conform his life to the Law of God. It is inconceivable that he could do otherwise.

Again ,justification, as a term of law, means " setting one right before law."—A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology, p.856. Justification means establishing a right relationship to the Law as well as a right relationship with God (for how can God and the expression of His will be separated). Before faith comes, the sinner is "enmity against God . . . not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8:7. And the Law works condemnation and wrath against this enemy sinner (Rom. 4:15). Where there is justification and forgiveness, there is reconciliation. The Law is able to regard the believing repentant sinner as righteous. The believing forgiven sinner is able to regard the Law as "a friendly guide" (Berkouwer).

This changed relationship of law and the believing repentant sinner is nothing short of astounding—it is a miracle. The legal change becomes effective in a vital and dynamic personal change. The holy commandments, once "grievous" (1 John 5:3), become delightsome (Rom. 7:22). According to the new covenant promise, the Holy Spirit writes the law in the believer's heart (Heb. 8:10), and he now reflects the spirit of the man who wrote Psalm 119: "O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day." So the great Puritan divine, Thomas Watson, could say:

The Ten Commandments are a chain of pearls to adorn us; they are our treasury to enrich us; they are more precious than lands of spices, or rocks of diamonds. The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver!—Thomas Watson, The Ten Commandments (The Banner of Truth Trust), p.14.

The Reformers clearly saw that the Law of God has three uses, viz.:

a. First Use — usus civilis (civil use) — as a social use to restrain sin and punish law breakers in "civilized" society.

b. Second Use — usus pedagogicus (stern sin-convicting "schoolmaster" use) — the Holy Spirit uses the Law of God to convict of sin and lead the guilt ridden sinner to Christ for forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

c. Third Use — tertius usus legis — the Holy Spirit uses the Law of God to be a rule of life and moral guide to write its precepts upon the hearts of believing repentant Christians.

In the last one hundred years it has become quite a popular doctrine to reject "the third use of the law." This is antinomianism (Greek: anti- against nomos- law). It undermines the whole structure of Christian ethics, destroys all ethical content of justification by faith and betrays the cause of the Reformation.

When we say that the Christian is not under the obligation to the Law, we had better be clear that we mean obligation to satisfy its claims for perfect righteousness and not obligation to obey it as a rule of life. But many fail to make that distinction. Does the justified forgiven believer have any further dealings with the Law? As a means of salvation, No! In connection with a loving response, Yes! The atonement should be to us a constant reminder of the unrelieved heinousness of breaking God's Law. The freedom of justification by faith is freedom to obey, the privilege to obey a Law so royal, so holy (Rom. 7:6,12, 25; James 2:10). Far from not being under obligation to keep it, love puts us under double obligation to keep it. Says Carl Henry, "The growing hostility in contemporary statements of Christian ethics to keeping the commandments is profoundly in error."—Carl Henry, Personal Christian Ethics, p.361.

There are four kinds of teachings that effectively deny "the third use of the law" and open the door to antinomianism:

a. Making Grace Antagonistic to Law. The Reformers made a sharp distinction between the Law and the gospel, but they were careful to write into all the great confessions that the Law of God always remains valid as a rule of life for believers. But in the last one hundred years there has developed a kind of teaching that sets the law in opposition to grace and discards the concept of the Law's third use. Reformed scholar, Oswald T Allis, makes these observations in reference to this teaching:

The gospel age is the age of the new covenant; and it is not marked by freedom from the law, by return to a dispensation of promise which knew nothing of obedience as a condition. Rather is it pre-eminently the age when the law of God, the revealed will of God, is and will be kept as never before — not as the means of salvation, but as the fruit of a life that is hid with Christ in God! . . . But this erroneous conception of the relation in which the promise, the law, and the gospel stand to one another could not but have serious consequences. The most important of these is the failure to apprehend correctly the close and intimate relation which exists between Justification and sanctification—Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.), pp.42, 43.

b. Enthusiasm. By "Enthusiasm" we do not mean religious fanaticism which causes people to jump up and down in spiritual ecstasy. "Enthusiasm" is a teaching which claims a direct guidance from the Holy Spirit apart from the written, outside-of-me Word of God. Instead of a sound teaching on the third use of the Law, there are many today who feel that the Holy Spirit dwells in them and tells them what to do quite apart from any teaching of the Law. Luther had to meet this error from those whom he called "Enthusiasts." The Reformer saw that their basic error was to make a dangerous separation of Word and Spirit. Luther and Calvin had to maintain that the Holy Spirit works in the Word and never apart from the Word. The only way to hear the Holy Spirit speak to us is to listen to the Word, and the only way to obey the Spirit is to obey that objective Word of God. We must have none of this notion that we can get a private word from the Lord. We need the Law as that outside-of-me direction; otherwise we must live by the uncertain voices within.

The charismatics who claim visions, private revelations and direct information from God are only carrying what has been a popular notion to its logical end. 'Enthusiasm" sets up a mystical inner witness and inner light instead of the objective Word of God. Under the guise of honoring the Holy Spirit, the Enthusiast's inner voices become a norm to replace the (absolute) norm of God's Law. Says Carl Henry:

The rule of the Spirit does not remove man from the will of God objectively revealed in the Bible, and emancipate him to moral self-sufficiency. The Spirit rules in and through the written Word, which He has inspired. The spiritual discernment of the regenerate man is not relieved of the need for ethical instruction and guidance . . . Paul does not arrive at a 'Spirit ethics."—Henry, op. cit, p.360.

c. Quietism. Quietism is the teaching that the Christian life is lived by being a passive channel for the operation of the Holy Spirit. The victorious life is said to be lived when the believer stops trying and lets God do it all. ("Let go and let God.")

The error of Quietism is that it tends to make the Holy Spirit's work in the heart substitutionary. This is the result of an inadequate focus on the grand facts of Christ's substitutionary work. The work Christ did in His life and His death on the cross was substitutionary — it was in our place and instead of us. The justification and forgiveness of repentant sinners comes by the passive acceptance of what was done on the cross apart from any effort of ours. But the same thing cannot be said about the inward, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not replace human effort. He does not substitute for human obedience. The Christian life is not a matter of refraining from effort while the Spirit does it all. The Christian life is a struggle, a race, a fight; and the Spirit stirs the believer up and empowers him for holy warfare. Faith is not an opiate but a stimulant. It does not compose us for sleep but for action. As Bishop J. C. Ryle well said, if this is not the teaching of the Bible, we ought to throw Bunyan's great allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, into the fire.

d. Easy Believism. Easy Believism has come about by a gross perversion of Calvin's doctrine of "the perseverance of the saints." Calvin taught that the elect would never fall from grace; but he also noted that the only sign of election was that the believer persevered in faith and repentance. That Reformed concept is a far cry from the popular notion that "faith for one moment brings life for eternity."

Repentant sinners posses justification only by "repentance towards God and faith in Christ" as Savior and Lord. He who has no present continuous faith has no present justification. Saving faith is in Christ, not in some past experience of being born again! There is a popular doctrine which says that a man can be eternally saved whether he pursues sanctification or not. But the pursuit of holiness is not optional. The repentant sinner who does not begin to obey does not believe, and he who does not believe and keep on believing will not be saved. Says John Murray, former Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary: