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).

the redeeming Angel of the covenant — C. H. Spurgeon

“Let us declare concerning our Lord that we found him better and better and better and better, even till we entered into his rest. He has been at first better than our fears, then better than our hopes, and finally better than our desires. So good, so blessed a God do we serve, that he always by his deeds of grace outruns our largest expectations. What cause we have for the worship of grateful praise; let us not be slow to render it…

Do you remember when he [Jesus Christ] came to you personally, and wrestled with you and tore away your self-righteousness, and made you limp upon your thigh? This it may be was your first introduction to him. You saw him by night, and thought him at the first to be rather your enemy than your friend. Do you recollect when he took your strength away from you, and then at last saved you, because in utter weakness, as you were about to fall to the ground, you laid hold of him and said, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,” and so you won a blessing from him? You had thought aforetime that you had strength in yourself, but now you learned that you were weakness itself, and that only as you became consciously weak would you become actually strong. You learned to look out of self to him, and do you not bless him for having taught you such a lesson? Will you not when you come to die bless him for what he did for you then, and all your life long? O my brethren, we owe all things to the redeeming Angel of the covenant [Jesus Christ]. The evils which he has warded off from us are terrible beyond conception, and the blessings he has brought us are rich beyond imagination. We must adore him, and, though we see him not, we must in life and in death by faith worship him with lowly love."

— C. H. Spurgeon (1878). The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 24, pp. 130).

suffering, futility, sin and hope — John Piper

Sermon text: Romans 8:18–25

"The meaning of all the misery in the world is that sin is horrific. All natural evil is a statement about the horror of moral evil. If you see a suffering in the world that is unspeakably horrible, let it make you shudder at how unspeakably horrible sin is against an infinitely holy God. The meaning of futility and the meaning of corruption and the meaning of our groaning is that sin – falling short of the glory of God – is ghastly, hideous, repulsive beyond imagination.

Unless you have some sense of the infinite holiness of God and the unspeakable outrage of sin against this God, you will inevitably see the futility and suffering of the universe as an overreaction. But in fact the point of our miseries, our futility, our corruption, our groaning is to teach us the horror of sin. And the preciousness of redemption and hope."

— John Piper, Subjected to Futility in Hope, Part 1

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"There are only two ultimate possibilities in life. We are, all of us, either for God or else we are against Him, and nothing else matters. The color of your skin does not matter at all; you may be very clever, you may be very learned, or you may be ignorant and illiterate—it does not matter. The one question is: Are you one of God’s people, or are you one of the people who are against Him?

There is no other possibility. There is no such thing as neutrality in the realm of the spirit.

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God, for we are all by nature against Him.

“The carnal [natural] mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). We are all born God-haters; we are all against God. Some people, I know, say, “I’ve always believed in God.” But that means that they have never believed in Him. What they have believed in is some figment of their own imagination. If you confront such people with the God of the Bible, they will soon begin to show their hatred of Him. They have a God whom they can manipulate and handle, a God made after their own image and likeness, and they hate the living God who is revealed in the Bible.

So there is no such thing as neutrality. I repeat that we are either for God or we are against Him. There is no no-man’s-land in this matter. We all of us are inevitably in one of two camps. Our Lord Himself said it: “He that is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30)."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2004). Vol. 4: Glorious Christianity (1st U.S. ed.). Studies in the Book of Acts (252–253). Wheaton, IL: Crossway 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.

It is a most delightful felicitating knowledge, to know that Christ is in you — Richard Baxter

"It is a most delightful felicitating knowledge, to know that Christ is in you. If it be delightful to the rich to see their wealth, their houses, and lands, and goods, and money: and if it be delightful to the honourable to see their attendance, and hear their own commendations and applause; how delightful must it be to a true believer to find Christ within him, and to know his title to eternal life? If the knowledge of “full barns,” and “much goods laid up for many years,” can make a sensual worldling say, “Soul, take thy ease, eat, drink and be merry,” (Luke 12:19, 20,) methinks the knowledge of our interest in Christ and heaven, should make us say, “Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and wine increased,” (that is, more than corn and wine could put into theirs.) (Psal. 4:7.) “Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.” (Psal. 116:7.)" 

— Richard Baxter