As we noted this morning, Martin Luther, who was a "religious man," in fact, a monk who followed the rituals and regulations of his order with painstaking strictness, was a man tormented by the reality of his own sins before a holy God, and was a man who could find no peace with God even though he tried very hard to do everything right and be "good enough" to win God’s approval and acceptance. Martin Luther’s struggle is the struggle of every human soul. Deep down inside, we all want and desperately need to know and be assured that we are accepted by God, and that God approves of us, in the sense that welcomes us and smiles with favor upon us and is, indeed, happy to be called our Father. We all need to know that, not only with our heads, but deep, deep down in our hearts. It’s the difference between living under the shadow and in the sunshine. Are we living under the shadow of God’s frowning face, or in the sunshine of His glorious grace, the sunshine of His love?

Well, Martin Luther, by the grace of God, re-discovered the treasure of the true gospel of Jesus Christ as he was studying the Letter to the Romans. And Luther said that when he finally understood that the righteousness of God was a righteousness that came to sinners — a righteousness that came to him personally — as a gift from God through Jesus Christ (rather than as something earned by his own efforts), Luther said that he felt himself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into Paradise.

You see, the joy of the Christian faith, the joy of the Protestant Reformation, the joy of true evangelicalism, the joy of the Biblical gospel, is knowing and believing in our hearts that God Himself has done for us what we could never do for ourselves, that God Himself has saved us from our sins and from ourselves by the work of Jesus Christ, His only Son, who came into the world to take our place under God’s judgment, who suffered in His own body on the cross for all of our sins, who was actually on the cross under God’s wrath instead of us — instead of me; He suffered the wrath of God on the cross instead of me, so that God’s justice against my sins is perfectly satisfied and His mercy is given to me and I am accepted as righteous in His sight. And all of this wonderful salvation is received simply as a gift through faith, when we receive and embrace Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. This is the doctrine of justification by faith. The Scripture says, "Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Peace with God: that is, God’s favor, God’s acceptance, God’s approval, God’s welcome, God’s embrace, God’s smiling face — the eternal and everlasting sunshine of God’s love. This is our salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

The Reformers, such as Calvin and Luther, insisted that it is necessary for us to know what we believe in order to have true faith, for true faith rests upon knowledge, not pious ignorance. As Theodore Beza, who followed Calvin in Geneva, wrote, "The Kingdom of God is not a kingdom of ignorance, but of faith and therefore knowledge; for none can believe what he does not know."

But mere intellectual knowledge of, or mental assent to, the doctrines of the faith does not constitute true, saving faith. True faith is not merely a matter of believing certain doctrines with the mind, but also truly trusting God with the heart. Calvin defined true faith as a "firm and certain knowledge of God’s (goodness) toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit." Calvin goes on to say that the word "faith" in the Bible is very often used to convey a sense of "confidence."

And so, you see, justification by faith in Christ alone is not a cold, abstract doctrine, but a warm-blooded, heart-throbbing doctrine; for faith in Christ is not a mere intellectual belief, but a heart-felt trust in Jesus Christ, a whole-souled confidence in His Word and His Work, and a personal, loving embrace of Christ Jesus Himself, a joyful "Yes!" in response to His wonderful call to life, a warm welcome of His presence, and an awe-filled adoration of Him in all His glorious grace. Martin Luther put it this way:

...(true faith) ... is to believe in God, as I do when I not only believe that what is said about Him is true, but put my trust in Him, surrender myself to Him and make bold to deal with Him, believing without doubt that He will be to Me and do to me just what is said of Him.

So, when the Bible says that we are "justified through faith," it is not referring to what the world calls a "blind faith" — a sort of last gasp, leap in the dark, fearful, wishful, anxious uncertainty. No, that is not faith at all, but the very contradiction of true Biblical faith. True Biblical faith is a matter of taking God at His Word, believing for yourself, with your heart and soul as well as your mind, that what God says in His Word is true, and that it is true not only in general, not only as an abstract, academic truth, but that God’s Word is faithful and true as it pertains to you personally, to your life on earth and to your eternal destiny. And this is exactly what John Calvin meant when he wrote that we must not regard the promises of God’s mercy as being true outside ourselves, but that we must make them ours "by inwardly embracing them. Hence at last is born that confidence which Paul elsewhere calls ‘peace.’"

And just as true faith is not a matter of mere intellectual belief, nor a blind leap in the dark, nor a matter of positive thinking or of believing in ourselves (heaven forbid!), neither is faith "a work" which merits God’s grace. We receive Christ in all His grace and mercy through faith, but that faith itself is not something in us which we can take credit for. No, only those who are helpless and hopeless in themselves can truly receive Christ through faith. You see, faith which receives Christ is simply the open mouth of a starving soul which feeds on the promises of the gospel. Faith which receives Christ is simply the open hand of a helpless, blind beggar who takes hold of what is freely offered. Faith which receives Christ is simply the acceptance of and trust in and reliance upon what God has already done to save us from our sins. Faith which receives Christ is simply faith which takes God at His Word; and when we take God at His Word, and believe what He says is true, then our hearts are set free to sing His praise, and our souls are set free to serve Him with gladness and joy. And that’s what the gospel is all about.

And so we see the connection here. It is through believing the promises, and personally embracing the promises of the gospel, that we receive our justification, our right-standing with God. Why does this justify us? Because this is God’s revealed way of justifying sinners. He has promised to forgive and to justify all those who accept Him at His Word and believe His promise that Jesus Christ is the Savior of sinners. To receive the gospel is really to receive Christ Himself. To receive Christ really is to receive His righteousness as a gift. And if we have the righteousness of Christ, as our own, received as a gift, then we are truly justified before God. And since we have been justified by receiving Jesus Christ through faith, then we have peace with God. Through faith in Christ, we stand before God with Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Brother. Or, as Calvin said,

Justified by faith is he who ... grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man. Justification is simply the acceptance with which God receives us into His favor as righteous men, through the grace of Jesus Christ. ... This is the wonderful plan of justification that, covered by the righteousness of Christ, (we) should not tremble at the judgment (we) deserve. ... ... Instructed in the grace of Christ, (we) rest in Him with firm and solid confidence, feeling assured that Christ is so completely our own that we possess in Him righteousness and life.

Martin Luther put it this way:

If you have true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith, that you should look upon His fatherly, friendly, heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.

Do you hear what Calvin and Luther are saying to us, as they set forth the truth of God’s Word, the truth of God’s glorious gospel of Jesus Christ? That through Jesus Christ, God freely gives to us the very life and righteousness of His own Beloved Son, and that through Jesus Christ, God accepts us with His favor, and His wrath and disapproval are completely turned away from us, and, through Jesus Christ, God looks upon us lovingly, and graciously, and happily, with a "fatherly, friendly, heart."

Well, dear friends, if we really believed this, we would indeed be the happiest people on earth, as well we should be. Justification by faith in Christ is a doctrine of joy! And if the joy of our justification through Christ overflowed out of our hearts into this sad world, then more and more people would believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, more and more people drawn into the fellowship of the Body of Christ because they would see in us a peace and a joy which the world cannot give, and that is precisely what this sad world is looking for but will never find apart from personal, saving knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ: because He, and He alone, is our righteousness, peace, and joy.

May God grant us the grace to believe the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to such a degree that eternal joy will overflow out of our souls, that all the world may know and believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal sunshine of God’s infinite love. And to God alone — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — be eternal praise and glory. Amen.