Welcome to another video in our series about justification. In the first video, we saw that God has justified those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That means He has declared them to be righteous. We have been forgiven. All our sins are forgiven, and we have been declared righteous in the eyes of God. That is how we now stand before Him.
And this has results. In the last video, we already saw that justification has a tremendous result when it comes to our sinful past: we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This peace is through the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who died on Calvary’s cross for our sins.
Today, we would like to consider another result. Romans 5 continues: “By whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand.”
That is a tremendous blessing that we possess. We have to do with God, and we have to do with Him in His grace. We stand before this God, and we have access to Him in His grace. To understand this properly, however, we first need to understand what our position was before.
I would like to turn briefly to another verse in Romans 5, verse 19. There we read: “For as indeed by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted righteous.”
There are a few things we need to explain here. Basically, we can divide this verse into two parts. In the first part, the apostle Paul goes back to Adam and Eve and their disobedience. The result is that we have been constituted sinners.
The word constituted means to place someone into a particular position. The Greek word can also mean to appoint, establish, set, or place someone in a position. And that is the case with us as descendants of Adam and Eve: we are sinners before God. That is how we stood before Him. Every human being, as born into this world, is a sinner before God.
But when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that changes altogether. Now we move to the second half of the verse. The apostle Paul turns away from Adam and speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One spoken of in the expression “the obedience of the One.” It was the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ that led Him to the cross, where He suffered and died.
Because of that, many will be constituted righteous. They will be placed in a new position before God. It is about a new standing, a new position.
There is one thing we need to understand very clearly. Sometimes you hear Christians say, “I am a saved sinner,” or, “I am a sinner saved by grace.” I know what they mean, but before God we are no longer sinners. That is no longer our standing before God as children of God. We stand before God as those who have been constituted righteous. God Himself has given us the position, the standing, of righteous ones before Him. That is the meaning of justification. This is how we now stand before Him. That is the change that has taken place.
But when we were sinners, how did we stand before God? This is something we need to understand because, if we now have access by faith to God in His grace and stand in His favour, then in order to value and appreciate this properly, we need to understand how God looked upon us and what our standing before Him was when we were still sinners.
Two Bible verses help us understand this. The first is from John 3. At the end of the chapter, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself says: “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life.” And then it says—not that the wrath of God comes upon him, but that “the wrath of God abides on him.” It abides on him.
Some people think that only when we finally reject Jesus does the wrath of God come upon us. No. The wrath of God is upon us as we are born into this world because we are sinners. We are born sinners, and therefore the wrath of God abides upon us.
That can change. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the wrath of God is removed and God’s favour comes upon you. But we are born sinners, and as such the wrath of God abides upon us—that is, upon those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
Then there is another verse. Ephesians 2 says that we were “by nature children of wrath.” Our sin can only provoke God’s wrath against us.
Now, as those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that there on Calvary’s cross, during the three hours of darkness, God’s wrath came upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He bore it. He drank this cup.
Remember what the Lord Jesus Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed concerning this cup and then said, “If this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” And so, on the cross, during the three hours of darkness, He drank this cup, which symbolizes the wrath of God.
Because He did this, and because we believe in Him, we have been justified. And because we are justified, we can now say: “By whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand.”
That is the new standing we now have before God—not as sinners anymore, but as those who are justified, as those who have been constituted righteous.
I would now like to look in a little more detail at this phrase, at this blessing that we are considering.
First: “By whom.” This points us once again to the Lord Jesus Christ. Even with the other blessing—that we have peace with God—it says that it is through our Lord Jesus Christ. Every blessing we possess is by Him and through Him, the One who suffered and died on Calvary’s cross.
Then: “We.” In the context of the letter, this refers to the believers in Rome, and the apostle Paul also includes himself. But we can extend this group to all those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
They can now say, “I am justified, and since I am justified, I have access to God in His grace.”
Then: “By faith.” Faith is the principle on which we have been justified, and it is also the principle on which we possess and enjoy this blessing.
Then: “We have.” It is the same thing we saw concerning the peace we now have with God. We have peace. It does not say that we will have peace, or that perhaps one day we might have it. No, we have it. In the same way, we have this access into His favour, to God in His grace. It is something we possess and can enjoy right now. And that is a wonderful thing.
Then we read: “We have also access into this favour.” I have already used this expression. It means that we have access—there is nothing hindering us anymore.
Sin separates us from God. The prophet Isaiah says that it is our sin that separates us from God. Our sin takes away every liberty and every access to God.
But now this sin has been taken away. It has been dealt with by the Lord Jesus Christ. We are forgiven. We are justified. Therefore, access to God is free, and we can come with liberty.
And there we see God. There we meet God. But what kind of God do we meet there?
It is the One before whom we stand as those who have been constituted righteous, as those who have been justified by this very God. That is our standing, our position before Him.
He no longer sees us as sinners. And therefore, the way this God thinks about us and meets us is only in grace.
Dear brother, dear sister, think about this: we have access to God, and we can know that this God will meet us in grace, in undeserved love. He will never, ever think of you or me in any other way than in grace and love.
Even if we sin, that does not change the fundamental way in which we stand before God. I am not saying that sin is not a problem. It is a problem. It causes a disturbance and takes away our enjoyment of that relationship. But there is forgiveness even there, and there is restoration even there.
It never changes our fundamental standing before God. This is something we need to understand. There is a difference between our position, our standing, and our practical walk. We cannot equate the two. But this is how we stand before God, and this is how He thinks about you and me.
Then we have the final expression: “In which we stand.” We could say that we continue standing there. This is how we stand before God, and this is how we will remain standing before Him.
Before we come to the end of this video, I would like to turn to another Bible verse in the letter to the Ephesians. It goes in the same direction and once again makes clear how God sees us, how He thinks about us, and, above all, what kind of God we have to do with as those who are children of God, who are born again, and who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins.
This is the kind of God we have to do with.
Before I speak about these verses, let me explain something. When we speak about justification, we are in the letter to the Romans. Romans, however, has a different approach from Ephesians.
Romans sees man as responsible before God, active in his sin and in his enmity toward God. If you read the first three chapters of Romans, you will see that there is no one who is good, that there is no difference, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Then we see that, as sinners, we have a twofold problem.
The first problem is that we have sinned, and therefore we need forgiveness.
But there is a second problem. The problem is not only that we have sinned—that is, the actions we have committed—but that we are sinners. That is a problem we often forget. We are sinners—or, I should say, we were sinners, speaking of those who believe in the Lord Jesus.
But consider this: when somebody sins against me—for example, if somebody steals something from me—I can forgive that person for what he did. I can say, “I forgive you for stealing something from me.” But what I cannot forgive is the fact that he is a thief.
And that is our second problem. God forgave us for what we did, for our actions. But the root of the problem—what we were—He could not simply forgive.
He needed to bring that to an end. He needed to judge it thoroughly. And in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, that happened. God dealt with our position as sinners on the cross. That second problem also found its answer in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is the approach Romans takes.
When we come to Ephesians, however, the whole approach is different. First of all, Ephesians does not see us as active in our sins. It sees us as dead in our trespasses and sins. You can read this in Ephesians 2.
And as those who are dead, we need life. God has given us His life, His nature. We are partakers of the divine nature. God is light; God is love; and He has given us His life. This is the eternal life we have been speaking about.
But above all, the approach in Ephesians is not primarily that God answers our need or solves the problems we have. Rather, the measure of the way God deals with us is God Himself.
If you turn to Ephesians 1, you can look into the heart of God. God gives and God blesses—not merely because there is something we need. As sinners, what we actually needed was forgiveness. But in Ephesians we see that God had a purpose in His heart that goes far beyond that.
We see what kind of God we have to do with: a God who delights to give, a God who delights to bless, a God who wanted to make us something and bring us so close to Himself—yes, even to make us children of God. That is what we see here.
So, if you begin to understand Ephesians 1, you are looking into the heart of God. You see what God delighted in and what He purposed in His heart to give to you and me who now believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
God wanted us to be with Him. And that is what we see in this verse: that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love.
That describes what we are now as children of God. It describes the life we have received in the new birth: holy, blameless, and in love. And as such, we stand before Him.
It is the same life that the Lord Jesus Christ has—the life He displayed while He was here upon earth and which He had in Himself from eternity. That life has been given to us in the new birth, and that is how we stand before Him.
Again, when it comes to our practical walk every day, we may not always act according to our position, according to our standing before God. But that does not change our position or our standing before God.
This is how we stand before Him: holy, blameless, and in love.
A little later it says that “He has made us accepted in the Beloved.” The Beloved is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Son of His love.
Verse 7 also tells us that we needed redemption through His blood. That points us to the Lord Jesus Christ dying on Calvary’s cross, where He gave His life so that God would have a righteous foundation on which He could bless us: “the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.”
My dear brother, my dear sister who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, my sincere prayer is that through this video message you may understand—and that we all may understand more clearly—how we stand before God.
What was our former condition? We were constituted sinners through disobedience, through sin. That was the position into which sin had brought us. That was how we stood before God: sinners before Him, and as such the wrath of God was upon us.
But now, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Beloved, our position and standing before God have changed altogether. We are now constituted righteous, and as we have seen in Ephesians, we are holy, blameless, and in love.
That is how we stand before God, and we have been made accepted in the Beloved. That is how God looks at you and me. That is how He thinks about you.
We have access by faith into this favour in which we stand. We have to do with God in His grace, and we can know that God will never, ever think of you and me in any other way than in grace, in undeserved love.
What a magnificent result of justification.
Thank you for watching this video. Until the next video, God bless. Goodbye.