GRACE FOR TODAY Radio Message #464
Justified From Eternity
Pastor
Don Fortner
Grace Baptist Church of Danville
2734 Old Stanford Road
Danville,
Kentucky 40422-9438
Faith in Christ is the
evidence and manifestation of our justification, but not the cause of it. God’s
elect were justified in Christ from eternity. Justification is one of those “all spiritual blessings” with which
God’s elect were blessed before the worlds were made (Eph. 1:3).
Christ stood before God as our Surety in the covenant of
grace from eternity. In that covenant the Son of God voluntarily engaged to pay
the debts of his elect and make full satisfaction for them. God the Father
accepted him as our Surety. “Thenceforward,” wrote John Gill, the Father
“looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged,
and so they were in his eternal mind.” As soon as one person becomes surety for
another, the debtor is freed and the Surety is accepted. Thus all God’s elect
were justified in eternity, as soon as Christ became our Surety (Rom. 8:30).
Our
justification did not commence in time, but in eternity. Paul, speaking of
God’s eternal decree of predestination, declares that all of God’s elect were
justified in his eternal purpose of grace (Rom. 8:30). Gill was right on the money when he said, “God’s will to elect is
the election of his people; so also his will to justify them, is the
justification of them.” God’s act of justification is entirely an act of his
grace. It is God accounting and constituting us righteous, through the
righteousness of his Son. From all eternity God has looked upon his Son as our
Substitute, and looking upon us in Christ we are, and always have been,
righteous in his sight. In the mind and
purpose of God, Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev.
13:8; Isa. 53). God set up his darling Son as our Surety, our Substitute, and
our Redeemer before the world began; and as such, in his own mind, he looked
upon Christ as having been slain for us from eternity. Just as Abraham, in his
heart sacrificed his son at Moriah, and looked upon Isaac as one dead, so the
Lord God looked upon his Son as slain from eternity because in his heart the
deed was done.
Because God our Father looked upon Christ
as one already sacrificed for us before the world was, all the blessings of
grace were given to us in him (Eph. 1:3-7; 2 Tim. 1:9). The Holy Spirit
tells us plainly that “all spiritual
blessings” were bestowed upon all God’s elect in Christ before the world
began. All the blessings of salvation and grace were irrevocably given to us in
Christ our covenant Surety in eternity according to the purpose of God in election.
Astonishing grace! Adoption, acceptance with God, redemption, forgiveness, and
an eternal inheritance in Christ, all were given to us in Christ because he
agreed to pay our debt and became totally responsible for all our obligations
as our Surety in eternity. Thomas Goodwin
wrote - “We may say of all spiritual blessings in Christ what is said of Christ
himself, that ‘his goings forth are from everlasting.’ In Christ we are blessed
with all spiritual blessings (Eph. 1:3). As we are blessed with all others, so
with this also, that we were justified then in Christ.” He goes on to say that
God the Father, in that everlasting transaction of grace with his Son, “told
him, as it were, that he would look for (our) debt and satisfaction (from) him
and he did let the sinners go free. So they are in this respect justified from
all eternity.”
In addition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture, two facts compel
us to look upon justification as an eternal act of God. 1st Had it not
been for the fact that God looked upon his elect as being righteous and
justified in Christ from eternity, he would have destroyed our race as soon as
Adam sinned. God spares the wicked for the sake of the righteous. Just as the
wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were preserved for Lot’s sake, so the human
race is preserved for the sake of those who the Father has chosen and justified
in his Son from eternity. 2nd The Old Testament saints were
justified by Christ, just as we are today. Their justification was just as
full, complete, and perfect as ours (Heb. 9:15, 22; Rom. 3:25). If they were
justified before Christ came, it could not be upon any grounds except the fact
that they, like us, were justified by the Lamb of God slain from the foundation
of the earth.
AMEN.