The doctrines of Salvation are found in the book of Romans. The reason why you hear all this talk these days about “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” and faith and belief and repentance and all this and that is because the preachers have ceased to teach the doctrines of Salvation. Modern preaching is non-doctrinal because doctrine becomes controversial and upsets carnal Christians. Doctrinal truths have to do with the absolute authority of the Bible. When the Christian has abandoned the Bible as the absolute authority, he gets very nervous when you begin to talk about doctrinal matters.
The last time some of you folks heard a sermon on Justification was more than five years ago. Do you know why? Because the man who is counting on his goodness or his experience or his feelings or his works to save him knows nothing about justification.
One of the modern errors today is to identify justification with pardon, but justification is more than pardon. To justify means “to declare righteous.” God’s problem in redeeming man was how to justify the sinner without condoning sin or justifying his sins. God, being who He is, could never compromise in judgment and treat sin lightly. GOD IS HOLY. The law and justice demand the death penalty for every sin. As Ezekiel 18:4 says, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.“ The mercy of God yearns to rescue the offender in the interest of love. In a human court the judge is supposed to “justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked” (Deut. 25:1).
If the Lord condemned the wicked, we would all go to Hell as sure as we are sitting here. In Exodus 23:7, God said, “I will not justify the wicked.” God pronounced judgment on human judges that pervert this kind of judgment and said, “Woe unto them...which justify the wicked for reward” (Isa. 5:22–23). Jesus Himself condemned the Pharisees, who were justifying themselves before men (Luke 16:15).
The question that faced the Trinity was: What man could keep the Law perfectly, for “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23)? God’s solution was to send to this earth a perfect Man, who lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, and gained righteousness. That righteousness be offered as a gift to a believing sinner. Justification is “being accounted righteous” before God. The sinner puts on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and God sees him as perfect, IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF JESUS CHRIST. Henceforth, God sees the sinner justified in the Saviour, hidden in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Justification, therefore, is a judicial act of God whereby those who put faith in Christ are declared righteous in His eyes and free from guilt and punishment. Now, if you want to find this doctrine stated exactly in the New Testament, read very carefully Romans 4:3–5, which you have not heard preached on a half-dozen broadcasts in twenty-five years. This is the Biblical doctrine of imputation: justification by a judicial declaration. This is the doctrine that no person dares teach who is counting on water baptism or a “charismatic experience” to save him.
You will never hear one matter brought up. And here it is: “Abraham believed God, and it [his belief] was counted unto him for righteousness...to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:3–5). That is, if you are working to get to Heaven, YOUR faith is UNRIGHTEOUSNESS. “To him that worketh not...his faith is counted for righteousness.”
The unsaved professing Christian who is trying to get to Heaven by being a good little boy or girl will always go to the epistle written to the twelve tribes of Israel (James 1:1) to prove that man is justified by works.
The practice of the apostates in going to James has been so habitual that now they have printed a Bible on the market that says that James was not written to “the twelve tribes.” This new “bible” has gone so far as to say that James was written to saved Hebrews or saved Jews or spiritual Jews. This was done to cover up the horrible and glaring fact that James was written to the twelve tribes. The people who are going to Hell on good works are quoting James to justify their own selfrighteousness.
The fact of the matter is, in the great book on the doctrinal status of the Christian, you were told that “to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” The righteousness that God justifies the sinner with and counts to the sinner is God’s own righteousness, which He worked for and He earned as a man, living a perfect life and dying a perfect death. Or as the writer of Hebrews says, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).
The people who try to justify themselves by James chapter 2 are ignorant of God’s righteousness, and go “about to establish their own righteousness.” As Paul says, they “have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:3–4).
The forgiveness of sin and the removal of guilt and punishment is found in this matter of justification. For a holy, perfect God to overlook sin or forgive it is not a small matter. The truth is that God actually delights in forgiving and cleansing iniquity, but He has to have a basis on which to do it. In the Old Testament the basis was the shed blood of bulls and goats, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” of sins (Heb. 9:22).
Although God could forgive and remit sin in the Old Testament (which, of course, He certainly could, Exod. 34:7), He couldn’t clear the guilty sinner until Christ came and died on Calvary’s cross. In Micah 7:18 we read, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.”
In justification, all the believer’s sins are forgiven, and the guilt and punishment is removed. You may have to pay the rest of your life, in the flesh, for what you sowed, but eternal punishment is out of the question. The slate is wiped clean, and you are declared to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is why the feeling-experimental-working people, who exalt their experiences above the word of God, are always trying to perfect themselves and be like Christ in the hope that in some way this will help save them. If you were “like Christ,” you would go to Hell anyway. HE WAS SINLESS, AND YOU ARE NOT. He was a member of the Godhead, and you are not.
The most “Christ-like” character in history is Satan, the Antichrist. Jesus Christ is called a “lion”; that is what the Devil is called (Rev. 5:5; 1 Pet. 5:8). Jesus Christ is like a serpent on a pole; that’s a reference to Satan (John 3:14; Rev. 12:9). Jesus Christ is the Angel of the Lord; the Devil is the angel of light (Gal. 4:14; Acts 27:23; 2 Cor. 11:14).
“Christ-likeness” will get you nowhere. What you have to do is receive God’s righteousness, and GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS IS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF.
Here we find the vast difference between the modern feeling-experimental-spiritual Christian, who is always talking about “letting Christ into his life” to “share his life with somebody else,” and the blood-bought, justified child of God in whom the Lord Jesus Christ lives. There is a difference. One man has “let Christ into his life” to fix up his life so he can be a good little boy and work his way to Heaven. The other man is a man in whom Jesus Christ lives. He is crucified with Christ, and he lives; nevertheless he doesn’t live, but Christ lives in him (Gal. 2:20).
In Acts 13:38–39, Paul said, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”
No baptism—“all that believe.” No mention about confession or repentance—“all that believe.” Now, this seems like heresy to the self-righteous do-gooder who is working his way to Hell, talking about “letting Christ come into his life.” The reason is very simple. The term “justification” is never found anywhere in the Bible in connection with baptism or in connection with “letting Christ come into your life.” The term “justification” is a legal act whereby God declares the sinner to be righteous on the basis of that sinner trusting the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is why it is never connected with water baptism in either Testament. You can find the words “born again” connected with water but never with water baptism (John 3). You can find the term “saved” connected with water baptism but never in the sense of absolute salvation through eternal life; only in the sense of a figure of the man’s salvation (1 Pet. 3:21).
What is justification? It is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. “To impute” is to account or charge somebody with something (or charge something to their account). In imputation the sinner is charged with Christ’s righteousness, and Jesus Christ is charged with his sins.
Get hold of THAT one, solid, New Testament, Biblical truth that the believing sinner who trusts Jesus Christ is given God’s righteousness, and his record is swapped with Jesus Christ. Christ becomes the sin bearer, his sin substitute, bearing his sins: the just bearing the sins of the unjust; and your record of guilt, shame, and punishment in Hell is attributed to God’s Son and put on His record. That is imputation. That means that He became “sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
If you ever get THAT, you will never doubt your salvation. If you ever get THAT, you will know when some rascal is quoting Acts, Hebrews, and Matthew to try to talk you out of your salvation. Further, Jesus Christ’s spotless, perfect, sinless life is attributed to you, and you are given credit for His life although you did not live it.
Now, THAT is what is involved in the two greatest doctrinal statements on New Testament salvation. They are found nowhere in the book of Acts. Justification is found in Acts 13:39. Imputation is found in the book of Romans, and that is why every unsaved preacher in America spends his time in the book of Acts instead of Romans. Romans deals with absolute, completed redemption, where the sinner is justified and given Christ’s righteousness.
The forgiven sinner is not like a discharged prisoner who has served his term and is discharged from further punishment. In Christ Jesus, the sinner is forgiven, released, and given the full rights of citizenship, “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (Rom. 3:22). That is, the perfect, holy righteousness of the sinless Saviour is imputed to the sinner. Have you got THAT? That is New Testament, theological Bible doctrine.
The Bible says in the last days the apostate Christians will not “endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim. 4), and they will not stand to be told what I just told you, which is “New Testament,” Biblical doctrine on salvation. And I did not take if from a progressive book where the doctrines are changing and being revealed as they are in the earlier part of the book of Acts. I gave that to you from the completed statements in the New Testament, by a saved Christian whom the Gentile Christians were told to follow: the apostle to the Gentiles, the apostle Paul, who replaced Simon Peter before Acts chapter 12.
If you are saved, you are justified, and if you are not justified, you are not saved. The sinner calls out, “How can I receive the gift of righteousness?” The answer is “By believing.” Paul said in Galatians 2:16, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” “To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). The best of men need to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Wicked sinners can also be justified the same way.
The justification is done by God. He is the Author of justification. Justification is a judicial act performed by God the Father Almighty, by his grace. Or as Paul says, ‘’Being justified freely by grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).
What are the results of justification? First of all, peace. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). We have peace of conscience through the mercy of God. We have peace of heart through the love of God. We have peace of mind through the truth of God. We have peace of soul through the presence of God. We have a peace the world cannot take the peace of which Jesus Christ said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:27). We have access to the presence of God for worship, praise, and petition. “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace” (Rom. 5:2).
Source: Theological Studies Vol. II - Justification by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman
How to go to Heaven? Find out in the short video below
GOD's Simple Plan of Salvation
If you were to die today for any reason, are you 100% sure you will go to heaven?
This video explains the SIMPLE TRUTH according to the Scriptures. The only way to go to heaven is by:
(1) Admitting that you are a sinner
(2) Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior and Lord
(3) Repenting (meaning you are willing to turn away from your sins) of your sins then confessing your sins to God
Jesus Christ willingly sacrificed Himself and shed His precious blood on the cross as a substitute for you, so that you don't have to burn in hell for all eternity because of your sins, and have eternal life in heaven instead.
Watch the video to learn what Scripture says of God's great plan of salvation for you and how to receive His free gift. This is wonderful news. We pray you surrender to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and to know 100% for sure you will go to heaven when you die!
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