Must God be condemned for you to be justified? —Timothy Keller

"Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?" —Job 40:8

"Look at verse 8. Do you see the place where God asks this question? Literally he says, “Must I be condemned that you be justified?” See that? That’s a question where he’s coming after Job, is he not? He’s saying, “How dare you vilify me and say, ‘Well, I’m living a good life, so I don’t know what the heck God is doing here’?”

God says, “In order to justify yourself, you’re condemning me.” He says, “Must I be condemned for you to be justified?” In the micro at that moment, the answer, of course, is “No.” Job needs to be quiet. Job needs to rest in the will of God. But in the macro, in the long run, the most amazing answer possible … The Bible says, the gospel says, Jesus Christ says, the answer to this question, “Must God be condemned for you to be justified?” is “Yes.”

Unless Jesus Christ came to the cross and was condemned, you can’t be justified. Do you see what happens? Jesus Christ, when he went to the cross and died for our sins … This means the infinite stormy justice of God is satisfied, but also the incredible love of God is satisfied at the same time. You now have a terrible but wonderful God, a God who’s so holy and yet so loving, so holy Jesus had to die, and so loving Jesus was willing and glad to die.

The cross makes God able, you might say, to be both holy and loving toward us … infinitely holy and infinitely loving at the same time. It’s because Jesus Christ bowed his head into the ultimate storm of divine justice and let it crush him. He was condemned in your place. Now, out of the storm of God’s holiness, all that comes for you, like Job, is a voice of love. That is your vindication. Who cares what the world thinks? God loves you. God knows you. That’s all Job needed.

What’s amazing here is Job actually says … Do you see? He says, “I heard of you with my ear, but now I see you with my eye.” Do you know what he’s saying? He is saying, “I had an abstract idea of the greatness of God, but now I’m having the experience of the might and wonder and size of God, so I don’t need an explanation.

Secondly, I kind of understood the grace of God in general, but now I actually see the infinite power of God, and somehow …” See, Job didn’t understand how. “Somehow, in spite of this infinite power and infinite holiness, you still love me. Therefore, I don’t need any other vindication.” When he says, “I repent,” literally the word means “I take back. I retract what I said. I take back my demand for an explanation. I take back my demand for vindication.”

He says, “As I see the size of God, I don’t need an explanation, and as I see the grace of God now, I don’t need a vindication. It’s enough that he loves me, and I know he knows what he’s doing, and I don’t have to.” He’s healed and is content, and it’ll heal you too."

—Timothy Keller, My servant Job

the effectual working of God's power —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power." —Ephesians 3:7

"One of the most fundamental questions confronting us as we preach the gospel is, What can turn any man from being a hater of God into one who loves God? What is it that can turn the natural man, to whom the things of God are ‘foolishness’, into a man who delights in them, and enjoys them, and lives for them, and whose highest ambition is to know them more and more? According to the Apostle there is only one answer; it is the ‘effectual working’ of the power of God—nothing else!

The Apostle Paul himself was very conscious of this power. Had he been left to himself he would still have been the persecuting, blaspheming Pharisee. He had heard about the preaching of Christ, he had heard the preaching of Stephen; he knew all that Christians claimed. But he hated the ‘good news’: he saw nothing in it except blasphemy. What happened to this man? There is only one answer; he had been made a new man. He had been regenerated, born again, ‘a new creation’, nothing less than that! And this was the result of the ‘effectual working’ of the power of God.

It is the effectual working of the power of God that makes anyone a Christian. It means a rebirth, a regeneration. It is not the result of our decision, it is not something that you and I decide to do; it is what is done to us! ‘The effectual working of his power!’ Paul would never have been a Christian at all were it not for this power. But even after becoming a Christian he would have been ineffective apart from this same power. It is this working, it is this power of God, that not only transformed his whole outlook, but it called him into the ministry and gave him the gifts that are requisite to the ministry, the understanding of the truth, the power to speak, the power to write, the power to teach. It was all of God."

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1972). The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3 (p. 55).

why did our Lord weep? — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"We are modern people, are we not, men and women of great understanding? So I am going to ask you the question that Philip put to the Ethiopian eunuch. I am going to test your understanding. The poor eunuch was dealing with Isaiah 53, which all expositors agree is an extremely difficult passage to expound. So we have every sympathy with him. But here is a very simple problem. I am asking you to expound a verse of two words, the shortest verse in the whole Bible: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Do you understand it?

"Oh, yes," you say, "it's quite simple."

All right, what does it mean?

"Well," you say, "this happened at the grave of a man called Lazarus, a friend of the Lord Jesus Christ, who had been dead for four days. And it was there, standing by that grave, that Jesus wept. Next to him were Lazarus's two sisters-Martha and Mary-and other people were also weeping and bewailing their loss. So the reason Jesus wept was because He had lost a great friend. It is very natural that when one loses a close friend one is filled with sorrow; and He was but a man, after all, and He wept as others weep."

 Yes, that is one suggested explanation.

"Not only that," says somebody else, "He wept also because of His sympathy with the sisters. They had lost their darling brother, and it was only natural that He should be sympathetic toward them."

I believe those explanations are all wrong. I can prove that to you quite simply from John 11. The first reason I would give is that when our Lord was first told about the illness of His friend Lazarus, instead of at once setting off to heal him, He delayed going-deliberately. Check the account for yourselves. He even gave the reason for not going. When the message of Lazarus's illness reached Him, He said, "This sickness is . . . for the glory of God" (v. 4). So He deliberately did not go to save the man's life. And John says, "When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Then after that said he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again. His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee" (vv. 6-8), and so on. So there is the first answer.

But there is a greater answer, of course, which is this: when our Lord did go to the grave, He knew perfectly well that He was going to raise this man Lazarus. This is what we read: "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him" (vv. 14-15). He went in order to raise Lazarus from the dead. So if He knew He was going to raise him from the dead, why waste time weeping because he was dead? Why waste tears in sympathy with the sisters when He knew that in the next moment He would restore Lazarus to them? That is not why Jesus wept!

So why did our Lord weep? It is the reason why he was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." It was not natural human sympathy or concern about the loss of His friend. It was this terrible thing called death, this thing that comes in and robs a man of his friend and sisters of their brother, this thing that breaks people's hearts and spoils life-this horrible thing! What causes death? Is it the course of nature? No, it is sin, it is evil, it is hell, it is the devil; it is this thing that is fighting His Father. He saw it there, and it made Him weep. Not only that, He realized that before He could deal with it He had to die Himself.

So never interpret "Jesus wept" sentimentally. I say again that it was this horror of sin, this horror of evil, this terrible problem of the human race that made Him cry. It is there in the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept." And that was not the only time. I read in John 12, the very next chapter, that when He was dealing with the whole question of His death, He said, "Now is my soul troubled" (v. 27). Indeed, I should have pointed out to you that over this very question of the resurrection of Lazarus we read, "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled" (John 11:33). Why? Because He knew He was going to raise him? No. Again it was because of this terrible, evil problem of sin, the thing that gets us down and makes us fools and the slaves of sin and causes death. It is this thing that has raised itself up against God and brought about the ruination of God's universe. He saw it, and knowing that He had to die, He said again, "Now is my soul troubled."

Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Compelling Christianity (Studies in the Book of Acts)

the doctrine of election and evangelism — James M. Boice

“and all who were appointed for eternal life believed” — Acts 13:48

"Isn’t it interesting that we should have this statement of the doctrine of election right in the middle of this great evangelistic story? There are people who cannot imagine how anybody can be an evangelist if God decides who will be saved and then saves them. The argument goes, “If God is going to save certain people, God will save them regardless. What I do doesn’t matter. Or, if it depends on me, then it depends on me and you must not talk about election.”
Actually, those who have had the greatest faith in God’s electing power are also those who, by the grace of God, have proved to be the most effective evangelists. Virtually all the famous missionary pioneers were believers in election.
“Why did they go out to evangelize, then, if they believed God was going to save people anyway?”
That isn’t quite the way to put it. If God is going to save someone, God will save them. That is true. But it is not quite correct to say that God will save them anyway, because when we say, “God will save them anyway,” we mean that God will save them apart from our (or another’s) witness, and that is not true. The God who appoints the ends also appoints the means, and the means he has appointed in the evangelization of other people is our witness.
We are to take the gospel into all the world. But as we go we are to know that God will work through that witness to bring to faith those he has appointed.
I sometimes say I do not know how you can evangelize any other way, at least not in a thinking manner. Suppose it does not depend on God; suppose it depends on you. Suppose people are saved because you are eloquent or because you have the right answers or because you happen to be in the right place at just the right time—entirely apart from God’s election. If that is true, it means that if you do not have the right answers, if you are not in the right place, if you do not present the gospel in just the right way, then these people will perish and it will be your fault. I do not know how anybody can live with that.
On the other hand, if you believe that God has appointed some for eternal life and that as you testify God will use that testimony to bring those persons to faith, the burden is removed and witnessing becomes what it was meant to be: a joy, as it obviously was for Paul and Barnabas."

— James M. Boice (1997). Acts: an expositional commentary (pp. 248–249). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

God is no philosophic concept — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"My dear friends, God is no philosophic concept! God is a person and, as a person, God is, and God loves, and the essence of the life of the blessed Trinity is the love of the Father to the Son and the Spirit, and the love of the Son to the Father and the Spirit, and the love of the Spirit to the Father and the Son. We cannot conceive of that perfect unity, that perfect bliss, that absolute love, and yet it is all found in salvation. ‘God so loved the world that he gave …’ (John 3:16)—yes, and I put it negatively, too, as Paul puts it in writing to the Romans: ‘He that spared not his own Son’ (Romans 8:32). It is there, you see, the love of God, in that he sent the Son of his love, the only begotten Son, into this cruel, sinful world; allowed him to live life in that way as a man, and allowed him to suffer ‘such contradiction of sinners against himself’ (Hebrews 12:3). And he placed your sins and mine upon him on the cross in such a way that at that moment Father and Son were separated, and the Son cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46) When I believe that that is possible within the Father-heart of God, then I cannot believe the doctrine of the impassivity of God. I say that God in his love suffered in his Son, and it is there I see the marvellous love of God displayed. And this great gospel manifests, too, the glory of God in revealing his character in this way."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2000). The assurance of our salvation: Exploring the depth of Jesus' prayer for His own: Studies in John 17 (51). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.