righteous in Christ — C. H. Spurgeon

“As Christ was made sin, and yet never sinned, so are we made righteousness, though we cannot claim to have been righteous in and of ourselves. Sinners though we be, and forced to confess it with grief, yet the Lord doth cover us so completely with the righteousness of Christ, that only his righteousness is seen, and we are made the righteousness of God in him. This is true of all the saints, even of as many as believe on his name. Oh, the splendor of this doctrine! Canst thou see it, my friend? Sinner though thou be, and in thyself defiled, deformed, and debased, yet if thou wilt accept the great Substitute which God provide for in the person of his dear Son, thy sins are gone from thee, and righteousness has come to thee. Thy sins were laid on Jesus, the scapegoat: they are thine no longer, he has put them away. I may say that his righteousness is imputed unto thee; but I go further, and say with the text, "Thou art made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).”

— C. H. Spurgeon, The Heart of The Gospel

http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/1910.htm

A just salvation — C. H. Spurgeon

“I love to think of the vindication of divine justice upon the cross; I am never weary of it. Some cannot bear the thought; but to me it seems inevitable that sin must be punished, or else the foundations of society would be removed. If sin becomes a trifle, virtue will be a toy. Society cannot stand if laws are left without penal sanction, or if that sanction is to be a mere empty threat. Men in their own governments every now and then cry out for greater severity. When a certain offense abounds, and ordinary means fail, they demand exemplary punishment; and it is but natural that they should do so; for deep in the conscience of every man there is the conviction that sin must be punished to secure the general good. Justice must reign, even benevolence demands it. If there could have been salvation without an atonement it would have been a calamity; righteous men, and even benevolent men, might deprecate the setting aside of law in order to save the guilty from the natural result of their crimes.

For my own part I value a just salvation: an unjust salvation would never have satisfied the apprehensions and demands of my conscience. No, let God be just, if the heavens fall; let God carry out the sentence of his law, or the universe will suspect that it was not righteous; and when such a suspicion rules the general mind, all respect for God will be gone. The Lord carries out the decree of his justice even to the bitter end, abating not a jot of its requirements. Brethren, there was an infinite efficacy in the death of such a one as our Lord Jesus Christ to vindicate the law. Though he is man, yet is he also God; and in his passion and death he offered to the justice of God a vindication not at all inferior to the punishment of hell. God is just indeed when Jesus dies upon the cross rather than that God’s law should be dishonored. When our august Lord himself bore the wrath that was due for human sin, it was made evident to all that law is not to be trifled with. We glory in the cross, for there the debt was paid, our sums on Jesus laid.”

C. H. Spurgeon, The cross our glory

Justified by faith — J. Gresham Machen

“The beginning of the Christian life is not an act of man but a wonderful act of the Spirit of God.

But it is accompanied by a conscious act of man; it is accompanied by the act of faith. Faith is not a meritorious work; the New Testament never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through his faith. Faith is the means which the Holy Spirit uses to apply to the individual soul the benefits of Christ’s death.

And faith is a very simple thing; it simply means the receiving of a gift; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning our way into God’s presence we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free. Such is the doctrine – let us not be afraid of the word – such is the doctrine of justification by faith.

That has been a liberating doctrine; to it is due most of the freedom that we possess today, and if it is abandoned freedom will soon depart. If we are interested in what God thinks of us, we shall not be deterred by what men think; the very desire for justification before God makes us independent of the judgments of men. And if the very desire for justification is liberating, how much more the attainment of it! The man who has been justified by God, the man who has accepted as a free gift this condition of rightness with God, is not a man who hopes that possibly, with due effort, if he does not fail, he may win through to become a child of God. But he is a man who has already become a child of God. If our being children of God depended in the slightest measure upon ourselves, we could never be sure that we had attained the highest estate. But it does not depend upon ourselves; it depends only upon God. It is not a reward that we have earned but a gift that we received.

A hard battle indeed lies before us. This faith of ours, if we be true Christians, is a faith that works; and it is a faith that fights – against sin. But we begin the battle not with God as our reward, but with God as our ally. There is the high liberty of the Christian man. Let us not throw our liberty away; let us not descend into the bondage of dependence upon ourselves, let us not descend into the hard bondage of agnostic Modernism. But having received the gospel – this great Magna Charta of Christian liberty – let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.”

— J. Gresham Machen, God transcendent, sermon Justified by faith

“Christ is given us to use” — C.H. Spurgeon

“I will give You for a covenant of the people.” — Isaiah 49:8

“Christ is in the covenant to be used. God never gives his children a promise which he does not intend them to use…Christ is given us to use. Believer, use him! I tell thee again, as I told thee before, that thou dost not use thy Christ as thou ought to do. Why, man, when thou art in trouble, why dost thou not go and tell him? Has he not a sympathizing heart, and can he not comfort and relieve thee? No, thou art gadding about to all thy friends save thy best friend, and telling thy tale everywhere except into the bosom of thy Lord. Oh, use him, use him. Art thou black with yesterday’s sins? Here is a fountain filled with blood; use it, saint, use it. Has thy guilt returned again? Well his power has been proved again and again; come use him! use him! Dost thou feel naked? Come hither, soul, put on the robe. Stand not staring at it; put it on. Strip, sir, strip thine own righteousness off, and thine own fears too. Put this on, and wear it, for it was meant to wear. Dost thou feel thyself sick? What, wilt thou not go and pull the night-bell of prayer, and wake up thy physician? I beseech thee go and stir him up betimes, and he will give the cordial that will revive thee…

Oh, believer, do use Christ, I beseech thee. There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for his people to make a show-thing of him and not to use him. He loves to be worked. He is a great laborer; he always was for his Father, and now he loves to be a great laborer for his brethren. The more burdens you put on his shoulders the better he will love you. Cast your burden on him. You will never know the sympathy of Christ’s heart and the love of his soul so well as when you have heaved a very mountain of trouble from yourself to his shoulders, and have found that he does not stagger under the weight. Are your troubles like huge mountains of snow upon your spirit? Bid them rumble like an avalanche upon the shoulders of the Almighty Christ. He can bear them all away, and carry them into the depths of the sea. Do use your Master, for for this very purpose he was put into the covenant, that you might use him whenever you need him.”

— C.H. Spurgeon, Christ in the Covenant

http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0103.htm

Pleading the Atonement - Isaac Watts

“Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!” Psalm 84:9

“Father, God, who seest in me
Only sin and misery,
Turn to Thy anointed One,
Look on Thy beloved Son;
Him, and then the sinner see;
Look through Jesus’ wounds on me.

Heavenly Father, Lord of all,
Hear, and show thou hear'st my call!
Bow Thine ear, in mercy bow,
Smile on me a sinner now!
Now the stone to flesh convert,
Cast a look, and melt my heart.

Lord, I cannot let Thee go,
Till a blessing Thou bestow;
Hear my Advocate divine,
Lo! to His, my suit I join;
Join'd with His, it cannot fail:
Let me now with Thee prevail!

Turn, from me, Thy glorious eyes
To His bloody sacrifice,—
To the full atonement made,
To the utmost ransom paid:
And, if mine, through Him, Thou art,
Speak Thy mercy to my heart.

Jesus, answer from above,
Is not all Thy nature love!
Pity from Thine eye let fall;
Bless me whilst on Thee I call:
Am I thine, thou Son of God?
Take the purchase of Thy blood.

Father, see the victim slain,
Offer'd up for guilty men:
Hear his blood-prevailing cry;
Let Thy bowels then reply!
Then through Him the sinner see;
Then, in Jesus, look on me!”

- Isaac Watts

“You were enslaved to righteousness” – Romans 6:18; an exposition by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” - Romans 6:18

“A better translation is, ‘You were enslaved to righteousness’; that is exactly what the Apostle says. Not only have we ‘become’ slaves; but we have been ‘enslaved to righteousness’. We were before ‘enslaved to sin’, we have now become ‘enslaved to righteousness’.
Our position, as Christians, is that we have been ‘enslaved to righteousness’. This does not mean that we admire righteousness, not that we desire to be righteous; it does not mean that we are attempting to be righteous, or attempting to practice righteousness in our daily life. It includes all these things but has a much wider content. What the Apostle says is, that we have become ‘slaves to righteousness’ – nothing less. Not ‘servants’, but ‘slaves’ of righteousness! That means that we have come under the power and control and influence of righteousness. As once we were tyrannized over and ruled by, and governed by sin, we are now, we may say, tyrannized over, and governed, and ruled by righteousness. Furthermore, this is something that is true of every one of us from the moment of our regeneration. The Apostle is talking about Christians – any Christian. From the moment we are regenerate it is true to say of us that we are no longer slaves of sin; we are the slaves of righteousness.”

- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans: Exposition of Chapter 6 : The New Man

http://www.amazon.com/Romans-Exposition-Chapter-New-Man/dp/0851511589

http://www.mlj-usa.org/mlj.nsf/(PRODUCTS-BYCODE-WEB)/MLJ.MP05R

The man who is truly blessed by God - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
"Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin." – Romans 4:5-8

“The man who is truly blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven as debt, whose sin is covered up so that God will never look at it again. He is one to whom it is never going to be imputed as a crime. There is the negative aspect. But it goes beyond that; he is also one to whom God reckons this righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is the doctrine of justification by faith. Here are we – all of us – sinners in the sight of God. What does the doctrine tell me? It tells me that as I stand there on trial, my debt is cancelled, my sin is covered. God has cast my sin ‘behind his back’. He will never look at it again; He will never see it again. It is blotted out – out of His sight for all eternity. And I shall never be charged with it as a crime. I’m completely delivered from it. But over and above that, God puts to my account, and reckons to me, this righteousness of Jesus Christ His Son.
What the Apostle has clearly demonstrated is that that has always been God’s way and method of dealing with man in sin. It was what He did to Abraham. David says that He does it…
God took our sins, and instead of imputing them to us and to our account, He put them to His Son’s account. He put them on Him and He punished them in Him. Christ came into the world deliberately in order to do it. This is how we are saved and reconciled to God – instead of reckoning my sins to me God reckoned them to Christ, and punished them in Him…We had no righteousness at all. He has a perfect righteousness. God reckons His righteousness to us.”

- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans: An Exposition of Chapters 3.20-4.25 Atonement and Justification

'Thy righteousness is in heaven'

“229. But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, 'Thy righteousness is in heaven'; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever (Heb. 13.8).

230. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations had fled away; so that, from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me now; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God. So when I came home, I looked to see if I could find that sentence, Thy righteousness is in heaven; but could not find such a saying, wherefore my heart began to sink again, only that was brought to my remembrance, He 'of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption' by this word I saw the other sentence true (1 Cor. 1.30).

231. For by this scripture, I saw that the man Christ Jesus, as He is distinct from us, as touching His bodily presence, so He is our righteousness and sanctification before God. Here, therefore, I lived for some time, very sweetly at peace with God through Christ; Oh, methought, Christ! Christ! there was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes, I was not only for looking upon this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of His blood, burial, or resurrection, but considered Him as a whole Christ! As He in whom all these, and all other His virtues, relations, offices, and operations met together, and that as He sat on the right hand of God in heaven.[Eph. 1:3]

232. It was glorious to me to see His exaltation, and the worth and prevalency of all His benefits, and that because of this: now I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at home! Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ, my Lord and Saviour! Now Christ was all; all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption.

233. Further, the Lord did also lead me into the mystery of union with the Son of God, that I was joined to Him, that I was flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone, and now was that a sweet word to me in Ephesians 5.30. By this also was my faith in Him, as my righteousness, the more confirmed to me; for if He and I were one, then His righteousness was mine, His merits mine, His victory also mine. Now could I see myself in heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my head, by my righteousness and life, though on earth by my body or person.

234. Now I saw Christ Jesus was looked on of God, and should also be looked on by us, as that common or public person, in whom all the whole body of His elect are always to be considered and reckoned; that we fulfilled the law by Him, rose from the dead by Him, got the victory over sin, death, the devil, and hell, by Him; when He died, we died; and so of His resurrection. 'Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise,' saith he (Isa. 26.19). And again, 'After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight' (Hos. 6.2); which is now fulfilled by the sitting down of the Son of Man on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, according to that to the Ephesians, He 'hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus' (Eph. 2.6).”

- “Grace Abounding to Chief of Sinners” by John Bunyan