(from Cathy)

“Among all the realities of the invisible world, mediated to us by the disclosures and promises of God, and to which our faith responds, there is none that more strongly calls into action this faculty for grasping the unseen than the divine pronouncement through the Gospel, that, though sinners, we are righteous in the judgment of God. That is not only the invisible, it seems the impossible; it is the paradox of all paradoxes; it requires a unique energy of believing; it is the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things; it credits God with calling the things that are not as though they were; it penetrates more deeply into the deity of God than any other act of faith.”
—Geerhardus Vos

“The meritorious ground of justification is not faith; we are not justified on account of our faith, considered as a virtuous or holy act or state of mind.  Nor are our works of any kind the ground of justification.  Nothing done by us or wrought in us satisfies the demands of justice, or can be the ground or reason of the declaration that justice as far as it concerns us is satisfied.  The ground of justification is the righteousness of Christ, active and passive, including his perfect obedience to the law as a covenant, and his enduring the penalty of the law in our stead and on our behalf.” Charles Hodge

“When we trust that Christ’s work, rather than our own achievements, is the basis of our righteousness, then God mercifully grants us the riches of His love that only Jesus deserves.  God looks at us as though we were as holy as His own Son, and treats us as lovingly despite our many imperfections.  Most Christians cherish the beauty of the truth that God viewed us through the lens of Jesus’ goodness when we claimed Him as our Savior.  We trusted that Christ’s death paid the penalty for our sins, and that we were made right with God – justified – not by our own holiness but by trusting in the holiness He provided.  Just as objects look red when viewed through a red lens and green when viewed through a green lens, we believed that when God looked at us through Jesus He viewed us as His own child….What robs many believers of this joy, however, is a misunderstanding of how God continues to view us after we have received the grace that justifies us.  After initially trusting in Christ to make them right with God, many Christians embark on an endless pursuit of trying to satisfy God with good works that will keep Him loving them.  This belief, whether articulated or buried deep in a psyche developed by the way we were treated by parents, spouses, or others, makes the Christian life a perpetual race on a performance treadmill to keep winning God’s affection….While the Christian life can be characterized as a race, we persevere on the course God marks out for us not by straining to gain His affection but by the assurance that He never stops viewing us from the perspective of His grace…..Grace (is) not only the means by which God once justified us, it is also the means by which we are continually encouraged and enabled to serve Him with undiminished delight.”  Bryan Chapell

“Justification by faith and faith alone exemplifies the freeness and richness of the gospel of grace. If we were to be justified by works, in any degree or to any extent, then there would be no gospel at all. For what works of righteousness can a condemned, guilty and depraved sinner offer to God? That we are justified by faith advertises the grand article of the gospel of grace that we are not justified by works of the law. Faith stands as the antithesis to works; there can be no amalgam of these two. That we are justified by faith is what engenders hope in a convicted sinner’s heart. he knows he has nothing to offer, yea, it assures him that it is an abomination to God to presume to offer. We are justified by faith and therefore simply by entrustment of oursleves, in all our dismal hopelessness, to the Savior whose righteousness is undefiled and undefilable. Justification by faith alone lies at the heart of the gospel and is that article that makes the lame man leap as an hart and the tongue of the dumb sing.”  John Murray

“There is no salvation by balancing the records. There is only salvation by canceling records. The record of our bad deeds (including our defective good deeds), along with the just penalties that each deserves, must be blotted out – not balanced. This is what Christ suffered and died to accomplish.  The cancelation happened when the record of our deeds was ‘nailed to the cross’ (Col. 2:13). How was this damning record nailed to the cross? Parchment was not nailed to the cross. Christ was. So Christ became my damning record of bad (and good) deeds. He endured my damnation. He put my salvation on a totally different footing. He is my hope. And faith in him is my only way to God.”

And:

“The ordinary way to be justified in a human court is to keep the law.  In that case the jury and the judge simply declare what is true of you:  You kept the law. They justify you. But in the courtroom of God, we have not kept the law. Therefore, justification, on ordinary terms, is hopeless. The Bible even says, ‘He who justifies the wicked [is] an abomination to the LORD’. And yet, amazingly, because of Christ, it also says God ‘justifies the ungodly’ who trust in his grace.”

John Piper

(We had a request for a quote from Jerry Bridges.  Enjoy!)

“I came to see that Paul’s statement in Galatians 2:20, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me,” was made in the context of justification (see vv. 15-21). Yet Paul was speaking in the present tense: ‘The life I now live ….’ Because of the context, I realized Paul was not speaking about his sanctification but about his justification. For Paul, then, justification (being declared righteous by God on the basis of the righteousness of Christ) was not only a past-tense experience but also a present-day reality.

Paul lived every day by faith in the shed blood and righteousness of Christ. Every day he looked to Christ alone for his acceptance with the Father. He believed, like Peter (see 1 Pet. 2:4-5), that even our best deeds — our spiritual sacrifices — are acceptable to God
only through Jesus Christ. Perhaps no one apart from Jesus himself has ever been as committed a disciple both in life and ministry as the Apostle Paul. Yet he did not look to his own performance but to Christ’s “performance” as the sole basis of his acceptance with God.

So I learned that Christians need to hear the gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin- bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.” Jerry Bridges