FERGUSON: Well, it's a great privilege to be able to take part in this Ligonier conference.
My only regret, I'm sure, shared with the other speakers, is that we have to have our conference
in this way. But it certainly is a privilege to be able to celebrate as we really are doing together,
the events that took place now 500 years ago, when Martin Luther made his great stand at
the Diet of Worms and committed himself to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
His stance reminds us very much of the words of Isaiah chapter 7 verse 9. That if we
do not stand firm in faith, we will not stand at all. And that's the reason we're reminding
ourselves of these great slogans in which we describe the gospel of the Reformation.
And we've already thought together about two of them, about Scripture alone, sola Scriptura,
and about faith alone, sola fide. And we come now to a third sola. Actually it's a
solus, solus Christus, Christ alone. And in many ways, this is the very heartbeat of Reformation.
Reformation was a rediscovery, not only of the Scriptures and of justification,
but of the grace and mercy and saving power of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I want us to try and
think about that, not by focusing attention so much on a single text as on an extended passage,
and indeed not on the whole of one verse, but on a refrain that runs through Romans chapters five and
six and seven and eight. If you have a Bible open before you and glance down at these four chapters,
you'll notice that there is an expression that Paul keeps on using again and again and again.
In chapter 5 verse 1, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ in verse 21,
grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Chapter 6 verse 11, we have to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ
our Lord. Chapter 7 verses 24 and 25, who is going to deliver me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. "There is no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life" says Paul in Romans 8:2, "has set us free
from the law of sin and death in Christ Jesus," and right at the final statement of Romans chapter
8 and verse 39, "Nothing in all creation can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord." And do you notice how in this great central section
in Romans in 5 through 8, the Apostle Paul keeps our eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Reformers recognized that there was always the danger that the church would lose sight of Christ.
And that danger is still with us today. On occasion, if I look through a book catalog
published by a Christian publisher or go into a bookstore, I look for the books on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And what I've discovered over the years is those books today are very much in the minority.
Publishers publish what they believe Christians need, what Christians will buy.
And if that's the case, the fact that actually most of us own or buy relatively few books on
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ should alarm us about contemporary Christianity,
contemporary evangelicalism, as much as what was happening in the 16th century
alarmed Martin Luther. So what I want to do in these few minutes is to draw out from Romans 5, 6,
7, and 8, a number of strands, some threads that together make up the tapestry
of these very important chapters in the whole of the Bible, and certainly in the book of Romans.
The first thread is this, the emphasis that Paul makes on the centrality of the incarnation of the
Lord Jesus. He talks about this in Romans 8:3-4. "God did what the law couldn't do by sending his
Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and for sin in order to condemn sin in the flesh." Paul
has already said that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He's already
emphasized in chapter 5, that this is something that is true of all of us in Adam, through him
death came into the world because all sinned in Adam. And since this is the case that we fell
through one man, it must also be the case that only man can restore us, bring us back to God.
But the problem we have is none of us is able to do that. Indeed, we cannot pay the debt we owe
nor can we live the life that we are commanded to live. And we recognize some of the Old Testament
Scriptures that the shedding of blood is necessary for the forgiveness of our sins.
But all of that Old Testament teaching as Paul makes clear
was just a point or a picture, a shadow of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, and the
way in which He would come in order to live a perfect life and also to die an atoning death.
And the marvel of all this is that He did it, not just as a single individual man.
One man could only do that for himself, but because He came as the God man,
everything that He did was given an infinite value so that Christ's perfect life and atoning death
could substitute not just for one individual, but for all who would come to Him in faith.
Without the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, there would be no possibility of our salvation.
He came to take our flesh in order that He might bear our sin.
But then the Apostle Paul emphasizes that there is something else that we find in Jesus Christ.
Not only as we've been thinking the wonder of His incarnation, but in the second place,
the significance of His obedience. I wonder if you ever noticed that Romans 5:12-21 that
Paul emphasizes the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was obedient where Adam was disobedient
and that obedience has two elements to it.
The older theologians used to speak about Christ's passive obedience and His active obedience.
By passive obedience, they didn't mean that Jesus was passive in any way, passive comes from a Latin
verb that means "to suffer." They meant that in His suffering in death, His atoning death on
the cross. Our Lord Jesus Christ was obedient. "In my place, condemned He stood and sealed my
pardon with His blood." He bore the judgment of God against our sins. He bore our sins on the
cross in order to make atonement for us to bring us to God. But they also spoke about Christ's
active obedience. That is to say the obedience of His whole life. Not only did He substitute
for us in His death, but He substituted for us throughout the whole course of His life.
If you think about it, if Christ died to bear the penalty for our sins,
and that was all He did, that would simply bring us back to square one, to start all over again.
But the wonderful gospel is that Christ's whole life of obedience to His Father
is imputed to those who believe, not only the merits of His death,
but the perfection of His life. And this is why the gospel was such a glorious thing for Martin
Luther and for the other Reformers because they realized that what had happened in Jesus Christ
was that they had not only had their sins paid the debt for, but that they had been
given the perfect righteousness of the life of Jesus Christ. And that of course broke the mold of
medieval Catholicism and it's way of salvation. In medieval Catholicism, you were given righteousness
through baptism, you are meant to preserve it and mature it, and then if your faith was
suffused with perfect love for God and you were inwardly righteous, then you could be justified.
But who could ever think that that had happened in their hearts? And so every medieval Catholic was
uncertain of their assurance. But when you know you have been given the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, not only in His dying for you, but in His living for you, then that changes absolutely
everything. That brings us to a third element. And not only the wonder of the incarnation,
the significance of Christ's obedience of life and death, but thirdly the power of His resurrection.
Paul says He was not only delivered up for our trespasses, He was raised for our
justification. And he speaks about this again in chapter 5, and again in chapter 8 of Romans.
And you see the wonder of His resurrection is that it brings us, yes, it brings us assurance.
How did the Israelites know that their sins had been forgiven on the day of adjournment?
Only when the high priest emerged from the holiest place of all, did they know his sacrifice had been
accepted? And it's the same with the sacrifice of Christ. We know God has accepted it because
He has come out of the tomb. He has come in His resurrection power.
And because of that, we have fellowship with Him. And this transformed the Reformation Christians.
They had been used to thinking about the death of Christ and carrying around crucifixes with a
dying Christ on them. And all their attention was focused in the Eucharist on the death of Christ,
and on the elements. What the Reformers discovered was that Christ was not locked up in the elements
any more than He was locked up in the grave, but He was risen. And so for example, at the
Lord's Supper they could enjoy fellowship with Him, communion with Him, and so their gaze was
taken away from bread and wine and water and all the other supposed sacraments of the church to fix
their eyes on the risen Lord Jesus, and to walk with Him. No wonder when Luther discovered this,
he said he felt born again. He felt the gates of paradise had been thrown open.
So there is the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, there's the obedience of the Lord Jesus,
there's a resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And yet what Paul wants to emphasize
by the refrain that runs through Romans 5, 6 , 7, and 8, is that none of this is ours
until we are united to the Lord Jesus. And so fourthly, I want you to notice in these chapters,
how Paul emphasizes the necessity of our union with Jesus Christ. You know, Martin Luther in
his lectures on Romans spoke about how man is incurvatus in se, "turned in upon himself," and he
needs to be turned out from himself, out to Jesus Christ. And this is what we all need, isn't it?
I said there are very few books about Christ apparently today.
So many books that Christians read, tell us about ourselves and what the Reformation is
telling us what Paul is telling us in Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8 is we need to get out of ourselves,
out of our bondage and sin, out of our bondage and Satan, out of our guilt, and into Jesus Christ.
And when we are clothed with His righteousness,
trusting in Him, then we can be sure of our salvation. Indeed, we can be sure of this,
that if we were to stand before the judgment seat of God and were asked
on what basis could we stand there? We could say, "I stand here Father, as righteous as your Son,
Jesus Christ, because the only righteousness I have is not in myself, but in Him."
"Clothed," as the hymn says, "with His righteousness divine. No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him is mine! Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ
my own." My dear friends I hope you are united to Christ and looking
to Christ and finding that He is everything that you need. May God make that true for all of us.
Our heavenly Father, we thank you today for our Lord Jesus Christ.
And we pray that You would bring us to faith in Him and that you would increase our faith in Him
and make Him a glorious Savior to us. We ask it in His name. Amen.