Miles McKee Ministries
PO Box 541, Kingston Springs, TN 37082
Justification Part 4 (Miles McKee)
RIGHTEOUSNESS IN CHRIST ALONE
RIGHTEOUSNESS IN CHRIST ALONE
It is important however, that we are clear on one point. We don’t have a saving righteousness of our own. Our righteousness is in Christ. It is Christ alone who is our righteousness. Our righteousness should not be confused with a quality in us. Our righteousness, rather, is a Person - a Resurrected Person who resides in Heaven. One of the great titles of Christ is, “The Beloved”. He is the beloved of the Father. The Father declared from Heaven - “this is my beloved son” (Matt 3:17) and Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:6 we are “accepted in the beloved”. Christ is the Beloved and it is in Him alone the believer finds his acceptance with the Father.
A LOT OF NOISE BUT NO LIGHT
I can not over emphasize that the righteousness which makes us accepted in heaven is not a quality in us. Some years ago I talked to a very decent man who was a pastor from a very large church. His church boasted themselves to be on the cutting edge of what God was “speaking now”. They insisted that others should become like themselves and get into the ‘flow of God.’ At their church they had developed a large Bible college where they trained missionaries, pastors and Christian workers. Their big emphasis was personal prophecy and the ‘restoration of the church’ and their considerable influence was on an International scale. I was telling him about the wonders of God’s justification and he interrupted me by saying “McKee, everybody understands justification and now it is time to move on to the “deep things” of God. So I said “OK then, explain justification by faith to me” “Oh that’s easy” he said “God looks from heaven and sees whether or not you have faith in the gospel. If He sees the faith He justifies you.” I pointed out to him that he was seriously mistaken and non-biblical in his concept of justification since he was pointing to faith as a quality within the believer as the ground of acceptance with God ...........but alas there was no meeting of the minds. He told me I was quite mad and that he’d never heard of such nonsense as I was espousing. The concept of an objective justification which takes place outside of the believer was too hard for him to grasp. Although he wouldn’t have put it like this, faith, to him, actually held some kind of redemptive value.
A WELL WORN ERROR
His position, however, is a common one among those who are mistaken in this area of Justification. The truth is we can not look to some quality in us to acquit us in Heaven’s Courtroom. The qualities that acquit us, however, are found outside of us in the person of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Bonar once more hit’s the bull’s eye when he writes,
“Neither as an act of our own, nor as a fruit of the Spirit, can our faith be our Saviour. It is said to save us, simply because it is a giving ourselves up to Christ to be saved by him. It excludes not only works, but its own self, in the matter of salvation. It is what we believe, not our act of believing, that saves us. On this point an old writer thus speaks:-"Faith, as we have often heard, rests upon Christ alone. It in effect excludes itself as a work, in the matter of justification. It is not a thing upon which a sinner rests: it is his resting on the Surety. Therefore, that man who would bring in his faith, as part of his justifying righteousness before God; thereby proves that he has no faith in Jesus Christ. He comes as with a lie in his right hand; for such is the absurdity, that he trusts in the act of his faith, and not in its object, i.e., he believes in his faith, not in Jesus Christ. Having taken Christ, as he pretends he would have that very act whereby he received him, sustained at the Divine tribunal, as his righteousness. Thus Christ is bid to stand at a distance, and the sinner's own act is by himself bid to come near, in the case of justification. This is nothing else but works under another name.
Horatius Bonar
Genuine faith will look towards Heaven and see our righteousness is in a Person - the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith will take a hold of God’s verdict about Jesus Christ and so we will see that the Father’s verdict about the Son is the same verdict we as undeserving sinners will receive. Do you think Christ’s righteousness is adequate to get you into heaven? IS IT ADEQUATE TO MAKE YOU ACCEPTED BEFORE GOD AT THIS MOMENT? Is there anything you would like to add to it?- I think not!
NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS
If nothing more is required let me ask then will any less do? We must have a perfect righteousness--- no more and no less. The only one who can give us that is “The beloved of God - the Lord Jesus Christ” No matter how hard we try we can not improve on what Jesus Christ has done. We can offer our bodies to be burnt at the stake, we can go on pilgrimages up steep mountains on our hands and knees but none of this comes near to the perfection of Christ’s righteousness. We are only accepted in Heaven because God made the great transfer. “He made him (Christ) to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Our righteousness is in another-- the Lord Christ in His resurrected glory in Heaven.
Do you sometimes wish you could feel that? Well the good news is you don’t have to. It is a contract which has taken place outside of you. It is an external righteousness. True it may affect your feelings when you believe it but your justification is not based on how you feel about what God has done. It is based upon what God has actually done on your behalf and not upon what you feel about what He has done.
Do you sometimes wish you could feel that? Well the good news is you don’t have to. It is a contract which has taken place outside of you. It is an external righteousness. True it may affect your feelings when you believe it but your justification is not based on how you feel about what God has done. It is based upon what God has actually done on your behalf and not upon what you feel about what He has done.
GOD THE ACCOUNTANT
Let’s put this in the realm of accounting. God the judge took our sins and placed them on Christ and then took Christ’s righteousness and placed it in our account. What a wonderful piece of cosmic accounting. Our debt, caused by a life of lawbreaking and sin against God, is canceled and wiped out and a full line of heavenly credit is put in its place. PAID IN FULL has been “writ large” across our record of sin. We needed more than the subtraction of our sins, we needed the addition of Christ’s righteousness and that’s exactly what Justification provided.
CHRIST, OUR ONLY BASIS OF ASSURANCE
Christ Jesus risen from the dead is our only righteousness and our only basis of assurance. Do you have a good assurance of Heaven? What is it based upon? If you are leaning on your service for God and your personal goodness you are leaning on a rubber crutch!
At the end of his life when old Dr. McLaren of Manchester, England, lay dying someone said to him “Dr. McLaren it must be a matter of great comfort to you to have a great record of Christian service behind you. For many years you have preached the gospel and served God faithfully” The great man replied “Can I tell you what I am doing. I am taking all my good works and taking all my bad works and I am throwing them over board and I am sailing into the presence of God on the truth of God’s free grace.” What a way to go!!
At the end of his life when old Dr. McLaren of Manchester, England, lay dying someone said to him “Dr. McLaren it must be a matter of great comfort to you to have a great record of Christian service behind you. For many years you have preached the gospel and served God faithfully” The great man replied “Can I tell you what I am doing. I am taking all my good works and taking all my bad works and I am throwing them over board and I am sailing into the presence of God on the truth of God’s free grace.” What a way to go!!
BOLTS OF WRATH
The gospel is such good news for it tells of how the Judge of all the earth looked upon people who deserved the death penalty and how He spared them by putting all their offenses, crimes and sins upon his own Sinless Son. It declares how He sent His matchless Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to die for a wayward and lawless people. God the Judge refused to overlook His peoples’ sins but instead of punishing His people, sent bolts of holy wrath which fell on the person of His sinless Son as He hung upon the cross.
“Was it for crimes that I had done,
He groaned upon the tree.
Amazing pity grace unknown
And love beyond degree”.
He groaned upon the tree.
Amazing pity grace unknown
And love beyond degree”.
This was no easy going benevolence on the part of God. God does not save us by His good nature no rather He saves us by His Love working in conformity with His Justice.