Listen to sermons at FreeGraceRadio.com

Wicked Balances and Deceitful Weights

“Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?” (Micah 6:11)

God does not use wicked balances and deceitful weights when He makes sinners the righteousness of God in Christ. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ was so completely made to be sin for us that He fully deserved to die under the furious wrath of the holy Lord God, so all God’s elect, all for whom Christ was made sin, all for whom He died at Calvary are made the very righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our great and righteous God accepts His elect, embraces us, and assures us of everlasting blessedness in heaven righteously and justly.

Redemption

As all human beings were made sinners by Adam’s disobedience, so all God’s elect were made righteous before God by Christ’s obedience unto death (Romans 4:25-5:2). God does not count us pure with wicked balances and a bag of deceitful weights. He does not bend His law and compromise His justice to save His chosen. Rather, by the wondrous works of His grace in Christ, He makes His chosen righteous. By the obedience of His Son as our Representative, we have fulfilled all righteousness. By the sin-atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ as our Substitute, justice has been satisfied for us, for we were crucified with Him (Romans 5:19; Galatians 2:20).

Regeneration

In the new birth God the Holy Spirit makes every chosen, redeemed sinner a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). All who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ have been made “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). That new man created in us is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), “created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). That new man is not going to be righteous and worthy of heaven some day. He was “created in righteousness and true holiness.” He is right now born of God and “cannot sin because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9).

Because we have been made righteous by redemption and regeneration, all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ are “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). If I am in Christ and Christ is in me, I am really and truly righteous, so perfectly righteous in Him that I am worthy of God’s approval, worthy of heavenly glory, worthy of eternal life! Yes, we who live in hope of eternal life have a good hope through grace, a confident “assurance of hope,” because we are worthy of heaven in our Savior!

“With His spotless garments on,

I am as holy as God’s Son!”

Grace Experienced

When Paul tells us that Christ is made of God to us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption, he is telling us what transpires in the experience of grace, when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Our experience of grace does not make Christ our Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption; and our faith in Christ does not make Him our Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption. — But you will never know that Christ is your Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption until you trust Him, until you believe on the Son of God. That is what the Holy Spirit tells us, when He describes Abraham’s faith as an illustration of saving faith. When Abraham believed the record of God concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus, it was imputed to him (conscientiously) for righteousness (Romans 3:24-26; 4:3-11; 6:11). As our Lord Jesus was “numbered” with transgressors when He experienced being made sin for us, we are numbered with Him when we experience being made the righteousness of God in Him. It is in this experience of grace, as the sinner believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, that all that Christ is is consciously imputed to him.

“The moment a sinner believes and trusts in his crucified God,

His pardon at once he receives, redemption in full through His blood!”

To say, as many do, that God treats sinners as though they were righteous, but does not actually make sinners righteous by His grace, is to declare that the God of heaven “counts them pure with the wicked balances and with the bag of deceitful weights.”

Don Fortner

Pastor Fortner’s