93-11 – Do You Know Your Spiritual Birth Line? – Justification by Faith

In this scripture-packed series, Dr. Betters discusses regeneration, effectual calling, conversion, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance and glorification. Come along on this journey and find great joy in discovering many treasures in your journey along your spiritual birthline. Peter’s spiritual journey is a clear picture of a man intrigued by the Messiah, but not converted. In this message we watch as God removes Peter’s spiritual blindness. Peter’s journey helps us see our own spiritual birthlines unfold.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Marketing Ministries. Each in his grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches this series: Do You Know Your Spiritual Birth Line?

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I need to say a couple of things up front before we continue to plow through some of this stuff. First of all, what you're hearing is not new. The doctrines of grace are not new doctrines. Now, your understanding of these doctrines and working out this order of salvation, if you will, might very well be new to some of you. And so some of the terms I know are new. Some of the distinctions that have been made are new. I would like to take a moment just to review where we are and then to move ahead a little bit further. The book of Ephesians, which you don't need to turn to, outlines for us, in probably the most wonderful way, the most majestic way, the work of the Father, the work of the Son, and the work of the Holy Spirit in this whole plan of salvation. It is the Father who has ordained us by predestinating and choosing us in love. You can read about that in Ephesians 1, verses 4 through 6. God chooses not on the basis of foreseen faith. That's very important. Let that sink in a little bit. Roll that one around a little bit. God does not make his choice of you based on inherent faith or good deeds or the fact that you're a good kind of a person or any work that you could possibly do. The eternal choice of God and his predestinating us in love was on the basis of grace and grace alone for reasons known only to him. He chose you if you're a Christian. Then the work of the Son. When the Father predestines, someone has to pay the price. And the only one who could pay that price is Jesus Christ. The very image of God in human form is Jesus Christ. We'll talk about that a little bit later. And so the plan of salvation is accomplished by God the Son, who atones for our sins. Ephesians 1, 7 through 12. Then individually, the Holy Spirit applies the choice of the Father and the atonement of the Son to individual lives. And so the Holy Spirit calls and unites us to Christ because that's the only way we can be saved. Now, what is the first step in the process or the order of salvation? Well, actually, the first step is the eternal selection process that goes on before time even begins. God ordains some to eternal life, and others for reasons known only to him he passes over. But God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world for a purpose specifically known to him, for reasons known only to him. But now that process has to be acted out in time. We need to have what is eternal brought into a temporal sort of frame of reference. Why? Because we're finite creatures. God has to bring the message of eternity into the dimension of time. That's where you live. And thus the term ordo salutus or the order of salvation has been a term theologians have used for centuries. What is the order by which we are brought to saving knowledge of Christ? And then what happens after we are converted, and what happens after we die? And so what we've tried to do is illustrate on this little circle that we have given to you this order of salvation, and it begins with regeneration. It begins with God implanting within a depraved, human, dead heart, a sinful heart born in depravity, born in sin. That heart, that nature needs to be changed in order that it might be able to respond. Otherwise, without that miracle of God's grace called regeneration, we could never come to understand what it means to be converted. Now, the problem that some of you have had, and I know you're really struggling with this, is that is the term regeneration that is used interchangeably with the term that we say we use born again. To be born again and to be regenerated are one and the same thing. But many of you have thought differently. For years you have been taught that being converted is the same as being born again, and they're not. Being regenerated or being born again is when that new life is implanted inside of your spirit by the Spirit of God. And here's the key: you are totally passive in that process. Just as in your physical conception you were passive, in your spiritual conception you are also passive. It is the work of God, a miracle of God implanting within the human nature, a spiritual nature that unites us to Jesus Christ. Then and only then can we ever hope that we will see what conversion and sanctification and glorification is all about. To all who have been regenerated, the guarantee of salvation exists. Only those who are regenerated will be converted. Only those who are converted will be saved. So you see, this is the beginning of the salvation process where God implants within me the faculty of faith, the ability to believe. Without that supernatural miracle, I would never believe. Then a process of circumstances from the point of regeneration on begins to call me. He'll use experiences in my life. He'll use religious experience. He may even use an altar call. He may use a prayer time. He may use an encouragement from another brother. He may use a death in the family. He could use a loss of a job. He could use a thousand different things to effectually call us to himself. During that effectual calling, which is the next part of the circle, during that time frame, God is doing three things. One, he is renewing my mind, allowing me and causing me to think a different way. Secondly, he is beginning to convict me of specific sin in my life. He is beginning to show me that I am living a wrong sort of way, that I need to live a different sort of way, that I need to repent of those sins. And thirdly, he is enabling me to believe the gospel of Christ and to receive the gift of eternal life. Now, that effectual calling is something that some of you have had a little difficulty with. You have said, Well, the effectual calling sounds to me like you're not really converted during that time frame. And the answer to that question is, no, you're not. During the effectual calling, you are being prepared for conversion. Now, just to remind you that this is not new, I have taken out of the shorter catechism of our particular faith questions 29 through 35. And I want to read question 31. It says, What is effectual calling? Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, one, convincing us of our sin and misery, two, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and three, renewing our wills, he does persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel. You see, it's not new. To be effectually called, three things happen. I'm convicted, I'm renewed, and I'm enabled. You see, it's the preparation process that brings me to point number three, which is my conversion. That is when I repent of my sins, number one, and believe the gospel as it is offered in Jesus Christ. Now, here's a very important key. I could not do that. I would not have the ability to do that if it were not for the grace of God. You see, it's the grace of God that way back somewhere in my past was imparted to me when He regenerated me, when He gave me a new nature. If God had never given me that new nature, being converted, having faith and repenting of my sins and receiving Christ as my Savior and Lord would be absolutely impossible. It would be like saying to somebody in a coffin, get up and walk. A dead body is a dead body. Somebody that's dead is dead. They cannot respond. The nature of death prevails and they cannot respond. What has to happen? God needs to call them out of the tomb. He needs to call them out, he needs to impart new life, he needs to take his spirit and fill that dead spirit with a new nature, thus enabling them to believe. Say, why are you going through all this? Because I want you to see the wonderful, wonderful grace of God, because I want it to become so entrenched in your spirit that when we come to this other part called sanctification, which talks about how we're supposed to live, and ultimately our glorification, which speaks of what's going to happen after we die, you will see that from beginning to end, it's the grace, the grace, the grace of God, not anything that you've done, not anything that you've earned or deserved, but marvelous, wonderful grace of a living God. That's what saves you. Say, what happens when I understand that? It changes your life, it revolutionizes how you think, it helps you to interface with other people, it shows you how to be a good witness, how to be a good midwife, how to see other people in the process, even your own children or an unsaved relative, they might very well be in that effectual calling stage, working toward understanding the means by which God converts. Well, conversion involves faith and repentance. Now we move to the next circle. The next circle really is simultaneous with conversion. In fact, the next two circles are simultaneous with conversion. Now I've kind of put them on the pie there, but really conversion and the next two circles all happen at the same time. Conversion is what we do, you see. We turn in faith and we respond, and you make a conscious choice that is your choice. Now it is the Spirit of God who has enabled you to do that, but you are the ones who are converted. You must be converted. Remember, we talked about the use of the word conversion in scripture? 140 times it's used of man's responsibility, and six times it's used of the role of the Holy Spirit. Obviously, God is trying to place on us the responsibility and urgency that we have to be converted. We must repent. We must repent of our sins and believe the gospel. But now something wonderful happens at the moment you're converted. Someone asked me recently, are you saying, Pastor, that there is no precise moment when we're converted? Listen to me. Absolutely not. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that you may very well come to a point in your life where you are converted that you cannot remember. It does not have to be dramatic. It does not have to be, as in my case, Easter 1968. I came to know Christ. I can point to the place in the step, I can show you where it happened, where I was converted. But it doesn't have to be that way. And you need not feel like some sort of a second-rate Christian if you cannot point to that time. But let me say this emphatically: you must, at some point, the baby inside the womb has to come out. There has to be a conversion somewhere in your experience, you need to be converted. The question is whether or not you can pin it down to a day or a time. That's why the two most important ingredients in the doctrine of conversion are faith and repentance. That's what you look for. The evidence or the fruit of conversion is that you have repented and you have believed. When you're looking at people who have neither repented nor believed, but say they're converted, they're lying. Nothing's really happened. Looking for the evidence of faith in my life, looking for the fruit of faith in my life. But now something happens simultaneously with conversion, and you can fill in the next two circles. The first one you can call justification. Don't be afraid of that term. It's a beautiful term. A wonderful doctrine that really forms the heartbeat of the Reformation. And the next term is the term adoption. Both of these are legal terms, and it talks about our legal standing in Christ. Let me define for you justification. At the moment you're converted, you are justified. Here's what it means: it is an act of God's free grace. Where, now listen, he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight. Not because of any inherent righteousness in us, but now here's the key: by the imputing of the righteousness of Christ, which is received by faith alone. Now that is not a new definition. That's an old definition. It's as old as the Puritan fathers. Listen, an act of God's free grace where he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight. Not because of any inherent righteousness in me, but by imputing the righteousness of Christ, which is received by me by faith alone. All of that happens at conversion. Now, here's the question: how can a sinful man be just with a holy God? See what I'm saying? A sinful man. How can he be just with a holy God? The answer, of course, is that we cannot be. It's absolutely impossible. And this is the reason the gospel of justification is to such an extent a meaningless sound in the world and in the church of the 20th century. You want to know why? Because we don't understand sin. We don't understand the holiness of God. And so when we talk about justification, it just goes right over our heads because we do not understand. It's meaningless to us because the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man is not comprehended by the majority of people in our churches. We're not convinced that God is holy. We're not convinced that in His majesty and holiness he will not even look at sin, let alone overlook it. God is a holy God, and we are a sinful people, and those sins must be accounted for. How many of them? All of them. Every sin you've ever committed from the time you were born until the time you die has to be accounted for, and the holiness of God has to be appeased, and the justice of God has to be appeased. Somebody's got to pay for those sins because God is a holy God. You don't believe that? You haven't caught a good look at the cross yet. Because you see, what you see on the cross is a prime example of God's absolute hatred for sin. God hates sin. Christ takes upon himself my sin, and you know what else he takes on himself? My hell. He goes to hell in my place. He opens the very pit of hell, and all of the punishment and justice that a holy God will execute on those who will be cast into that eternal hell is placed on Jesus Christ on the cross, and so he goes to hell in my place. That ought to tell you something about what God thinks of sin. But so long as we continue to view sin as some sort of maladjustment or psychological quirk or some internal weakness and fail to see sin for what it is, we will never, never, never understand the doctrine of justification. We need to be revolutionized by the realism of the wrath of God and the gravity of my violation of the law of God and the reality of his divine condemnation of all lost men. That's where revivals are born. That's where revivals come from. Do you know where revivals begin? When God's people begin to sense the condemnation of their sins that Jesus Christ took on himself on that cross. Your sins. Think about your sins. Let your sins roll around in your mind. Think about what you've done. And then think about a holy God who will not even look on sin. That same holy God who judged a third of the angels. That same holy God who destroyed the earth in Noah's day. That same holy God who destroyed the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. That same holy God who would not look upon sin even when it was ingested into his only begotten son on the cross, but instead turned his back on his only son in his absolute hatred for sin. That God will judge your sins, every single one of them. You will account for one way or the other. He who spared not the angels, he who spared not the days of Noah and the days of Sodom and Gomorrah and his only begotten son, he will not spare you. The gravity of sin. You need to catch a vision of that. I worked through, and I'm diverging now, but I worked through this birth line with a Christian woman in this church. She wrote it out and gave me her testimony. And one of the things that she said in the process of God effectually calling her, now here was a woman who admittedly said, I was, for all intents and purposes, an atheist. I didn't believe in God and I didn't care about God. And then she heard somebody talking about the end of the world. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden it seemed, the Spirit of God began to speak to her. She stopped and thought to herself for a moment, well, what if the end of the world does come? And more specifically, well, the end of the world doesn't have to come for me to die. I might very well die. And she asked somebody else who carried a Bible to work every day. And that's who we tend to go to. We look to those people that carry their Bibles to work every day. Does the Bible have anything to say about eternal life? What a great cry! To ask. And the woman said to her, Yes, the Bible has everything to say about eternal life. At that moment, she absolutely lost everything, all physical control of her body. She started breathing differently, she started walking differently. She couldn't even walk straight. You want to talk about a sense of conviction. Now that doesn't have to happen to you, but a sense of conviction, she went home and literally got on her face and stayed there, confessing all of her sins and naming them one by one. Was that something inherent in her? She was an atheist, you see. But God brought that sense of conviction and the holiness of God and the sinfulness of her own life. He brought it all to bear on her at that point. We need that kind of a vision of our lostness. We need that kind of a vision of what our sins have done and continue to do. But so long as we continue to water it down, so long as we continue to brush it off and say, Well, everybody makes mistakes. Try standing before God someday and saying that. You die and stand before God and say, Well, now everybody makes mistakes, Lord. And he will point his finger into your face and say to you, You've made the ultimate mistake of pointing your finger at everybody else instead of pointing your finger into yourself. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The glory of God is holiness. Our sin separates us from that holy God. Now, here, listen to me. Let me tell you what justification does not mean. It does not mean that God makes you righteous. No more than it means that if you went to court for some sort of traffic offense and you are acquitted of that traffic offense, that that judge would have the authority to acquit you of every other crime you've ever committed. Justification does not mean that God makes you righteous. What it does mean is that God declares you as innocent of all other wrongs that you have done. In other words, he holds you up to the standard of law. And he says, although you are guilty of committing grave injustices against every single one of these commandments, I am not now saying you are righteous against the backdrop of law. What I am saying to you is, I am declaring you innocent, I'm the judge. That's what we mean when we talk about God imputing the righteousness of Christ. He doesn't make you righteous, but he imputes the righteousness of Christ into you. And so now the standard by which he measures you is not your own righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ, who is absolutely perfect and holy. Think about that. And one day he will be made perfect in glorification. But to justify the wicked is not to make him upright, but to declare him to be righteous when he is not righteous. God declares you innocent even though you're guilty. God declares you righteous even though you're unrighteous. You see, back in regeneration when God imparted that new life to you, that's regeneration is an act of God in us. Justification is a judgment of God toward us. It's a legal judgment, a legal transaction. God the Father measures me up against the law, and what does he find? Sin, sin, sin, sin, guilt, guilt, guilt. And would he be justified in casting me into hell? Absolutely. But instead, in grace, he makes a legal transaction. He says, Well, I will satisfy my justice by imputing to you free grace, imputing to you not righteousness but the righteousness of Christ. I will impute that to you, and against the backdrop of his righteousness, I will judge you. So when I stand before God and he says, Why should I let you into my heaven? What do I say? Because I'm righteous. I can't say that, can I? But what I say to him is, Judge me through the righteousness of your son. Judge me through the standard of your son who indwells me. You've imputed righteousness to me. Judge me through him. And what does he see in Christ? Absolute perfection and holiness. You see, it is not God's vindication of righteous men, but God's act of legally declaring a guilty, perverted sinner innocent under the law. No man can do this. No human being has the power to do this. Only the lawgiver, only the judge can do this. Romans chapter 3, please. Turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 3. I've laid the doctrine out for you. Let's take a look at the scripture. Romans chapter 3. And we're going to take a quick tour through the book of Romans here, so be ready to go. I want you to catch the vision of this doctrine. Let it sink in. Romans 3 and verse 24. And we are justified freely, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by your own human effort, by your own self-worth, by feeling good about yourself, by being positive thinkers, by ignoring your sins. You were justified freely by God's grace because you were a member of GRPC. You know how many people believe this stuff? Do you know how many people miss this verse? The righteousness of Christ is imputed to you by faith in Christ alone. There is a legal transaction that takes place at your conversion where God transfers your sins from your head to Christ's head. And he pays the price. Same chapter, verse 28. For we maintain that a man is justified by what? Faith, apart from observing the law. We are not justified by our works, we are not justified by obeying the law, we are justified by faith. Verse 24 told us that redemption came through Jesus Christ. Chapter 4 and verse 2. Just to get specific now, he says, if in fact Abraham was justified by works, he would have had something to boast about. But not before God. Paul takes the Jewish people back to their hero of faith. The hero of Jewish religion is Abraham. If ever there was a model for the Jews to follow, it was Abraham. And what does Paul say about Abraham? If he, Abraham, had been justified by works, he would have had something to boast about. But not before God. Because Abraham was, guess what? Just like you and just like me, Abraham was what? A sinner. In fact, when God called him and said, Abraham head north, Abraham was what? A heathen, a pagan, a pantheist. This is a man who didn't understand the things of God. So out of grace, God calls Abraham. Chapter 5, verse 1. Therefore, since we have been justified, follow this carefully now. Therefore, since we have been justified, what's that next word? Through. Wait a minute. I thought it said on account of. Does it say on account of? We have been justified on account of our faith. In other words, God justifies us because we believe. Is that what that says? No. Our justification is not on account of our faith. Our justification is through the means of faith, but it is not because of faith. If it were, then we would be saved by works. This is where the Arminian has a real problem, a real serious problem. And the reformed faith can stand boldly and say, God did not predestine based on foreseen faith. Because if he did that, then we're not saved by grace, we're saved by works, because faith is a work. No, it says there in 5 1, we have been justified through faith. That's the means, that's the vehicle, that's what happens at conversion. We believe. But where did that faith come from? Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says it's a gift of God. And where did that gift start? All the way back at regeneration. When God gave you a new nature, and all the way through your effectual calling, he was convincing you of sin, enabling you to believe, renewing your mind, developing the gift of faith so that at the point of conversion you believe because God has given you the faith to believe. That's marvelous. Chapter 5, verse 9. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath? You see, that's what we're missing in the 20th century church. We don't want to talk about the H word, we don't want to talk about the S word. We don't want to talk about the W word. Hell and sin and wrath. We want to talk about the lovey wushy-gushy God of sentimentalism, the milktoast God, the flimsy God, the God that we've created with our own hands. The God who would not send anybody to hell because he's a loving God, but he'll send his son to a cross. I don't understand that. Do you? Chapter 8, verse 30. My favorite verse in all of Paul's writings. And those he predestined. When did your predestinating happen? When did God predestine? Before you were even what? Born, before the world was even what? Created. Before all eternity, in the eternity past, God predestined. But now that predestinating act has to move into time, doesn't it? That's what the next word is. Those whom he predestined, he also called. That's your effectual calling. That's what happens as the result of regeneration. That is what leads up to your conversion. Those he called, he also, what's the next word? Justified. You see, that's the legal standing that you have at the moment of conversion. And those he justified, he also what? Glorified. When's that going to happen? In this life? Don't look forward to it. It's not going to happen in this life. Take a look at the person next to you. They're anything but glorified. Their bodies aren't glorified, their spirits aren't glorified, their tongues aren't glorified. Nothing about them is glorified except what? Their spirit is already glorified. That's a past tense verb. In the heart and mind and purposes of God, his eternity past, electing purposes, is one and the same act as eternity future, our glorification. And everything in between, the order of salvation, is a part of the process by which God gets to predestinating us and glorifying us. It's all an accomplished fact. It's already done. That's why later he's able to say, What can separate me from the love of God in Christ? And makes that little list there of nothing shall be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ. Why? It's all a part of the plan. All a part of the plan. Chapter 10, verse 10. For it is with your heart that you believe. That's faith. When you believe. And what happens when you believe? You're justified. And with your mouth, you confess. And literally the translation is unto salvation. I believe that's referencing the sanctification process, which we'll get into later. Not today. But the point I make there, with your heart you believe. And when you believe, you're justified. A legal declaration is made. Galatians 2.16. Beautiful verse. Galatians 2.16. Know that a man is not justified by observing the law. Galatians 2.16. Know that a man is not justified by observing the law. Aren't you glad? Stop and think about it. If God were to hold you to the standards of the Ten Commandments, that would be the only way you could go to heaven. All of us would be lost. We're not justified by observing the law, but by what? Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is the means by which we're justified. So we too have put on our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. Can you get any clearer than that? When are you going to wake up and see this? You works-oriented people who think that you're going to earn your way to heaven. When are you going to wake up and read the mail? It's so clear in Scripture, you can't be good enough to go to heaven. You'll never earn your way into God's presence because God is all holy God and you're a sinful man. You need faith in Christ. Galatians 3, verse 11. Look at it. You tell me what it means. Don't need to be a preacher to understand this. Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law because the righteous will live by faith. A faith that He gives. Same chapter, verse 24. What's the purpose of the law then? Are we supposed to ignore this and say, well, we don't have to keep the Ten Commandments? What's the purpose of the law? The law was given or put in charge to lead us to Christ. That we might be justified by faith. You know why God gave us that moral law? To show us that we can't keep it. That's why it's given. To point us to our need of Jesus Christ. God's provision for our sins. This is why we must never waver in our understanding of who Jesus is. If he is simply a great man, or even a perfect man, as some of the cults would say, then we must believe that it is absolutely possible for a man to be perfect and to keep the law of God perfectly, therefore, we can save ourselves. If he was just a perfect man, then it's possible for us to be perfect men. And therefore, it is possible for us to save ourselves. But nothing, nothing could be further from the truth of Scripture. A man is not justified by works, but by faith in Christ. Father, we are tired of humdrum Christianity. We are tired of just going through the routine. We want our children saved. We want their children saved. We want revival, Lord. We know that as Christians who preach and teach this word, we're in a minority. And yet, with a minority, Lord, you have brought great revivals in the history of the world. So we're asking you to do that. We're asking you to start it right here. Begin something here today, Lord, that will become contagious to the community around us. Have your way, Lord, in our lives. We've come to confess to you our love, our love. We desire to know you and the power of your resurrection.

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Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of His Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore.