The Doctrine of Salvation

Unbeliever Christian

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Salvation for the Christian is three fold in its meaning

1. Justification ( when I got saved)

2. Sanctification (now I am being saved)
3. Glorification (one day I will be fully saved)
Unbeliever Christian

Characteristics according to the Bible

1. Hostile toward God
2. Ungodly in all thoughts, words and deeds
3. An enemy of God
4. A heart of stone
5. Dead in sins and transgressions
Unbeliever Christian

Justification

This means an instantaneous act of God

in which He thinks of our sins as forgiven
and Christ’s righteousness as belonging
to us. In so doing He declares us to be
righteous in His sight.
What the Bible teaches us about justification

Justification is based on the blood of Jesus.

Justify means to declare as righteous not to make

righteous.

Justification has no grading by degrees.

Justification is once for all.

Justification is received by faith

 Unbeliever Believer

What is the order of salvation?(ordo salutis)

1. Election 6. Adoption
2. The gospel call 7. Sanctification
3. Regeneration 8. Perseverance
4. Conversion 9. Death
5. Justification 10. Glorification
Regeneration and Justification

Justification is external to me.

Regeneration is internal to me.

Justification refers to my status;

Regeneration to my state.

Justification is about how God looks on me;

Regeneration is about what he does in me.

Justification is about Christ dying for my sins

on the cross;
Regeneration is about Christ at work in me by
the Holy Spirit changing my heart.
 Faith is credited as Righteousness

Illustration:
 I have a check for $100.
 I drive to the bank and fill out a deposit ticket.
 I give it to the teller and I receive back a deposit receipt.
 I go home and open my banking account online.
 And sure enough there it is $100 has been credited to my
account.
So when we read in Genesis 15:6 - Abraham believed and God
credited it to his account as righteousness. It would be very easy
to form the category as follows:
Illustration:
Salvation costs 1 billion dollars and Abraham can only come up
with $100,000 which we will call faith.
And God sees that Abraham has $100,000 and therefore because
of His mercy and grace credits that to his account and makes up
all the rest and therefore now considers Abraham to be righteous.

Abraham is now accepted, forgiven and righteous before God

because I credit your faith as the righteousness that I demand.
Or is getting saved very, very different than that?

It is not God seeing a righteousness in us or something that we do

and Him somehow making up the difference.

But rather could it be "faith being reckoned as righteousness"

means there is an alien righteousness namely the righteousness of
God in Christ which is credit to our account THROUGH faith.

And the fact that He credits faith as righteousness DOES NOT

mean the faith is the righteousness.
Why is this so very important that we come to understand what
the imputation of righteous means to our salvation?
 Because it is so subject to misunderstanding today in the
church
 It forms the very basis of “HOW” we have been justified. And
we know that correct believing is foundational for correct
behaving.
 The apostle Paul invests all his writing in Chapter 4 in order to
do an exposition on what “faith is credited as righteousness”
means.
Does your legal standing before the Judge of the universe as
acquitted, accepted, approved, and not guilty before God, does
that legal standing rest on a righteousness in you or does it rest on
the righteousness of Christ?
You need to know HOW the doctrine of faith works.

That means it is very important to understand what imputation

means.

Imputation comes from the word IMPUTE.

Impute means to think of a belonging to someone, and therefore to

cause it to belong to that person. God thinks of Adam’s sin as
belonging to us and it therefore belongs to us, and in justification
he thinks of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us and so
relates to us on this basis.

There is a difference between imputation and impartation.

The impartation is when the Holy Spirit works in us to transform us
by His power into the likeness of Christ. And we start to see fruit of
the Spirit in our lives.
But this impartation has a foundation that it rests on, and it rests
on the foundation of imputation.

You must be reckoned as perfect before God before you can ever
make any progress at becoming good.

Remember a few week ago when I read from Ephesians 4:14

“As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and
there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by
the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;”

We need to become trees and not leaves. And the only thing that
keeps you from being blown around in this life is to get your
roots down deep into Biblical truth.
So, what does Paul mean when he writes faith is credited as
righteousness ?
In Romans 4:6 we see the words "God credits righteousness" apart
from works. And look at Romans 4:11 "that righteousness might be
credited to them."

We have now a new object of the verb. Paul doesn't say that God
credits faith as righteousness.

In verse 6 and 11 we have this thought coming out in Paul's writing.

He is talking about a righteousness that is imputed to you.
The very least that this implies is this:

When you read that "his faith is credited as righteousness" then you
should think, the righteousness of God in Christ is credited to you
through faith apart from works.
Romans 3:21 - "the righteousness of God" means that God always
cherishes that which is most infinitely valuable. Therefore the
righteousness of God is God's unwavering allegiance to His own
glory. It is always right for God to uphold His glory because the
infinite worth of the universe is bound up in the glory of God.

We have fallen short of His glory and therefore what we need

imputed to our account is the unwavering allegiance to the glory of
God.

Romans 3:21-22 shows that the righteousness of God is

THROUGH faith, it is not faith itself.

Faith is not the righteousness but it is the faith that joins us to the
righteousness which is Christ.
Analogy of Butner and his computer party
When Paul writes; God credits Abraham's faith as righteousness He
doesn't mean that the faith is the righteousness.

He means that Christ performed a righteousness that is outside of

Abraham and it is pure, perfect and undefiled.

And now God looks upon our faith as the unifying element and
says for the sake of faith I will count the righteousness of Christ to
your account in order that you might inherit all
the promises that are in Him.
 How does this truth apply to me this afternoon?

This teaches me that my standing before God is not dependent on

my obedience but rather my standing before God is dependent on
Christ's obedience for me.

This teaches me that our good works do not gain God's favor and
our bad works do not lose God's favor.

This teaches me that the gospel is not rooted in my behavior for God
but rather in Christ's behavior for me.

This teaches me that my standing with God is not based on anything

that I do but in fact is based on everything that Jesus has done for
me.
 Ephesians 2:8

For by grace you have been saved through faith;

and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

 Ephesians 2:8

For by grace you have been saved through faith;

and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

Why is justification faith so important from God’s perspective?

1. Exalt the glory of God

2. Give assurance that is eternal (accords with grace)
3. Puts down our Pride (excludes boasting)