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).

Thankfulness —John Calvin

“Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things (or in heavenly places) in Christ.” – Ephesians 1:3

“The chief sacrifice which God requires at men’s hands is that they should acknowledge His benefits and be thankful to Him for them…

For if a man asks us why we are found in this world, why God has such a care for us, why His goodness feeds and cherishes us, and finally why He, as it were, dazzles us with the great number of benefits He bestows upon us, it is in order that we should yield some acknowledgement of them to Him. For (as it is said in the psalm) we for our part cannot profit him at all, neither does He require anything else of us in exchange, but thanksgiving, according as it is said in Psalm 116, ‘What shall I render to the Lord for all the benefits which I have received from Him, except to take the cup of salvation at His hand and to call upon His name?’…

It is true that the Holy Spirit often sets forth other reasons why we should magnify God’s name, as (for example) the order of nature, the fruits which the earth yields, the aid and help which God gives us, and other such things. And these are sufficient matter for which to praise God. But St. Paul leads us higher here, and will have us to glorify God above all things. He thinks it is not enough to own that God has placed us in the world and that he nourishes us here, and he provides all things needful during the passing of this transitory life, but he also says that God has chosen us to be heirs of His kingdom and of the heavenly life.

We are then doubly bound to God, and that, much more closely then ignorant and unbelieving wretches are. For although they are sufficiently indebted already, yet the good He has done us in Jesus Christ is beyond all comparison more excellent and noble, because He has adopted us to be His children.”

—John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians

Substitution —Donald Grey Barnhouse

"Barabbas was the only man in the world who could say that Jesus Christ took his physical place. But I can say that Jesus Christ took my spiritual place. For it was I who deserved to die. It was I who deserved that the wrath of God should be poured upon me. I deserved the eternal punishment of the lake of fire. He was delivered up for my offenses. He was handed over to judgment because of my sins. This is why we speak of the substitutionary atonement. Christ was my substitute. He was satisfying the debt of divine justice and holiness. That is why I say that Christianity can be expressed in the three phrases: I deserved Hell; Jesus took my Hell; there is nothing left for me but his Heaven."

—Donald Grey Barnhouse, Romans, Vol. 2, “God’s Remedy” (Fincastle, VA: Scripture Truth, 1954), p. 378.

The most terrible thing about us… —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"This is the most terrible thing about man. It is bad enough that he should be breaking God's law. It is bad enough that he should be transgressing, that he should be falling short of the pattern and the standard. But, my friends, that is not the most terrible thing about us by nature. The most terrible thing about us is that even when we are offered salvation, we do not take it. We resent it. We reject it.

Listen: "Who hath believed our report?" (Isa. 53:1). Here is the question and here is the "report": "My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled" (Isa. 52:13). He will "sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider" (Isa. 52:15). Here is the message, but "Who hath believed our report?" Here is the trouble with humanity, and here in this rejection you see it at its very worst. Man is perverted; he has become depraved. He is offered a way of salvation, but he will not believe it or receive it. He still prefers to trust to his own philosophies, his own knowledge, his own efforts, his own understanding. Here is God's offered way of salvation, but "Who hath believed our report?" (Isa. 53:1)"

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Compelling Christianity