ALL OF GRACE 3

3. God Justifies the Ungodly

This message is for you. You will find the text in the Epistle to the Romans, in the fourth chapter and the fifth verse,

“But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.”

I call your attention to those words, “Him who justifies the ungodly.” To me, they seem to be very wonderful words.

Isn’t it surprising that there should be an expression like that in the Bible, “who justifies the ungodly”? I have heard that men that hate the doctrines of the Cross bring it as an accusation against God, that He saves wicked men and receives to Himself the vilest of the vile. See how this Scripture accepts the charge, and plainly states it! By the mouth of His servant Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, He takes to Himself the title of “Him who justifies the ungodly.” He makes those just that are unjust, forgives those who deserve to be punished, and favors those who deserve no favor. You thought that salvation was for the good, didn’t you? You thought that God’s grace was for the pure and holy, who are free from sin? It has fallen into your mind that, if you were excellent, then God would reward you; and you have thought that because you are not worthy, there could be no possible way for you to enjoy His favor. You must be somewhat surprised to read a text like this: “Him who justifies the ungodly.” I’m not surprised that you’re surprised; because as familiar as I am with the great grace of God, I never cease to marvel at it. It does sound surprising, doesn’t it, that it should be possible for a holy God to justify an unholy man? According to the natural legality of our hearts, we are always talking about our own goodness and our own worthiness, and we stubbornly hold to it that there must be something in us in order to have the attention of God. Now, God, who sees through all deceptions, knows that there is no goodness in us whatsoever. He says that “there is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). He knows that “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), and therefore, the Lord Jesus did not come into the world to look after goodness and righteousness with Him, and to bestow them upon persons who have none of them. He comes, not because we are righteous, but to make us so: He justifies the ungodly.

When a lawyer goes into court, if he is an honest man, he desires to plead the case of an innocent person and justify him before the court from the things laid falsely to his charge. It should be the lawyer’s purpose to justify the innocent person, and he should not attempt to protect the guilty party. The attorney has no right, nor is it in his power to truly justify the guilty. This is a miracle reserved for the Lord alone. God, the infinitely just Ruler, knows that there is not a righteous man upon earth that does good and doesn’t sin; and therefore, in the infinite sovereignty of His divine nature and in the splendor of His indescribable love, He take on the task, not so much of justifying the just as of justifying the ungodly. God has devised ways and means of making the ungodly man to stand justly accepted before Him. He has set up a system where He can treat the guilty with perfect justice, just as if he had been free from offense all his life; yes, can treat him as if he were completely free from sin. He justifies the ungodly.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. It is a very surprising thing-- a thing to be marveled at most of all by those who enjoy it. Even to this day, I know that it is the greatest wonder I have ever heard of, that God should ever justify me. I feel myself to be a lump of unworthiness, a mass of corruption, and a heap of sin, apart from His almighty love. I know with full certainty that I am justified by faith, which is in Christ Jesus, and treated as if I had been perfectly just, and made an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ; and yet by nature I must take my place among the most sinful. Although I am altogether undeserving, I am treated as if I had always been deserving. I am loved with as much love as if I had always been godly, whereas I was previously ungodly. Who can help being astonished at that? Gratitude for such favor is dressed in clothes of utter amazement.

Now, while this is very surprising, I want you to notice how available it makes the gospel to you and to me. If God justifies the ungodly, then, dear friend, He can justify you. Isn’t that the very kind of person that you are? If you are unconverted at this moment, it is a very proper description of you; you have lived without God, you have been the reverse of godly; in one word, you have been and are ungodly. Perhaps you have not even attended a place of worship on Sunday, but have lived with disregard toward God’s day, and house, and Word-- this proves that you have been ungodly. Sadder still, it may be that you have even tried to doubt God’s existence, and have gone to the extent of saying that you did doubt. You have lived on this fair earth, which is full of the signs of God’s presence, and all the while you have shut your eyes to the clear evidences of His power and Godhead. You have lived as if there were no God. Indeed, you would have been very pleased if you could have demonstrated to yourself with some certainty that there was no God whatsoever. Possibly you have lived a great many years in this way, so that you are now pretty well settled in your ways, and yet God is not in any of them. If you were labeled UNGODLY it would be just as fitting to describe you in that way as it would be for the sea to be labeled salt water. Wouldn’t it?

Possibly you are another kind of person; you have regularly attended to all the external forms of religion, and yet you have had no heart in them at all, nonetheless, you have been really ungodly. Though you meet with the people of God, you have never met with God for yourself; you have been in the choir, and yet you have not praised the Lord with your heart. You have lived without any love toward God in your heart, or given any regard to His commands in your life. Well, you are just the kind of man to whom this gospel is sent-- this gospel, which says that God justifies the ungodly. It is extremely amazing, but it is happily available for you. It just suits you. Doesn’t it? How I wish that you would receive it! If you are a sensible man, you will see the remarkable grace of God in providing for you and others like you, and you will say to yourself, “Justify the ungodly! Why, then, shouldn’t I be justified, and justified at once?”

Now, observe further, that it must be so-- that the salvation of God is for those who do not deserve it, and have no preparation for it. It is reasonable that the statement should be put in the Bible; for, dear friend, no others need justifying but those who have no justification of their own. If any of my readers are perfectly righteous, they want no justifying. You feel that you are doing your duty well, and almost putting heaven under an obligation to you. What do you want with a Savior, or with mercy? What do you want with justification? You will be tired of my book by this time, for it will have no interest to you.

If any of you are giving yourselves such proud airs, listen to me for a little while. You will be lost, just as sure as you are alive. You righteous men, whose righteousness is all because of your own working, you are either deceivers or deceived; for the Scripture cannot lie, and it says quite plainly, “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). In any case I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word of it. Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and I am not going to do what He did not do. If I called you, you would not come, and therefore, I will not call you, under that character. No, I ask you to look instead at that righteousness of yours until you can see what a delusion it is. It is not half as significant as a cobweb. Have nothing to do with it! Flee from it! Oh believe that the only persons that are in need of justification are those who are not self-righteous! They need to have something done for them to make them righteous before the judgment seat of God. Depend upon it; the Lord only does that which is needful. Infinite wisdom never attempts to do what is unnecessary. Jesus never undertakes that which is superfluous. To make him righteous who is already righteous is no work for God-- that is labor for a fool; but to make him just who is unjust-- that is work for infinite love and mercy. To justify the ungodly-- this is a miracle worthy of a God. And it is certainly so.

Now, look. If there is a physician anywhere in the world who has discovered precious and effective medicines, to whom is that physician sent? Is he sent to those who are perfectly healthy? I think not. Put him down in a community where there are no sick folks and he feels that he is not where he should be. There is nothing for him to do. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Mark 2:17). Isn’t it equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the soul that is sick? They cannot be for those who are in good health because they cannot be of any use to them. If you, dear friend, feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are utterly ruined because of your sin, you are the very person the plan of salvation is directed toward. I say that the Lord of love had just such a person as you in His eye when He arranged the system of grace. Suppose a man of generous spirit decided to forgive all those who were indebted to him; it is clear that this can only apply to those really in his debt. One person owes him a thousand dollars; another owes him fifty dollars; each one has only to have his bill discharged, and the liability is wiped out. But the most generous person cannot forgive the debts of those who do not owe him anything. It is out of the power of Omnipotence to forgive where there is no sin. Pardon, therefore, cannot be for you who have no sin. Pardon must be for the guilty. Forgiveness must be for the sinful. It is absurd to talk about forgiving those who do not need forgiveness-- pardoning those who have never offended.

Do you think that you must be lost because you are a sinner? This is the reason why you can be saved. Because you know that you are a sinner I would encourage you to believe that grace is ordained for those like you. One of our hymn writers even dared to say:

A sinner is a sacred thing;
The Holy Ghost hath made him so.

It is truly so, that Jesus seeks and saves that which is lost. He died and made a real atonement for real sinners. When men are not playing with words, or calling themselves “miserable sinners,” just out of common courtesy I feel overjoyed to meet with them. I would be glad to talk all night to bona fide sinners. The hotel of mercy never closes its doors upon such people, not on weekdays nor Sunday. Our Lord Jesus did not die for imaginary sins, but His heart’s blood was shed to wash out deep crimson stains, which nothing else can remove.

He that is the filthiest sinner-- he is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean. A gospel preacher on one occasion preached a sermon from, “And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10), and he delivered such a sermon that one of his hearers said to him, “One would have thought that you had been preaching to criminals. Your sermon should have been delivered in the county jail.”

“Oh, no,” said the good man, “if I were preaching in the county jail, I would not preach from that text. There, I would preach ‘This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’ (1 Timothy 1:15).’” Rightly so. The law is for the self-righteous, to humble their pride: the gospel is for the lost, to remove their despair.

If you are not lost, what do you want with a Savior? Should the shepherd go after those who never went astray? Why should the woman sweep her house for the bits of money that were never out of her purse? No, the medicine is for the diseased; the quickening is for the dead; the pardon is for the guilty; liberation is for those who are bound: the opening of eyes is for those who are blind. How can the Savior, and His death upon the Cross, and the gospel of pardon, be accounted for, unless it be upon the supposition that men are guilty and worthy of condemnation? The sinner is the gospel’s reason for existence. You, my friend, to whom this word now comes, if you are undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving, you are the sort of person for whom the gospel is ordained, and arranged, and proclaimed. God justifies the ungodly.

I would like to make this very plain. I hope that I have done so already; but still, as plain as it is; only the Lord that can make a man see it. At first it seems most amazing to an awakened man that salvation should really be for him as a lost and guilty one. He thinks that it must be for him as a penitent man, forgetting that his repentance is a part of his salvation. “Oh,” he says, “but I must be this and that,”-- all of which is true, for he shall be this and that as the result of salvation; but salvation comes to him before he has any of the results of salvation. It comes to him, in fact, while he deserves only this bare, base, beggarly, abominable description, “ungodly.” That is all he is when God’s gospel comes to justify him.

May I, therefore, urge upon any who have no good thing about them-- who fear that they have not even a good feeling, or anything whatsoever that can recommend them to God-- that they will firmly believe that our gracious God is able and willing to take them without anything to recommend them, and to forgive them spontaneously, not because they are good, but because He is good. Doesn’t He make His sun to shine on the evil as well as on the good? Doesn’t He give fruitful seasons, and send the rain and the sunshine in their time upon the most ungodly nations? Yes, indeed, even Sodom had its sun, and Gomorrah had its dew. Oh friend, the great grace of God surpasses my understanding and your understanding, and I would have you think worthily of it! As high as the heavens are above the earth; so are God’s thoughts high above our thoughts. He can abundantly pardon. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: forgiveness is for the guilty.

Do not attempt to touch yourself up and make yourself something other than what you really are; but come as you are to Him who justifies the ungodly. Some short time ago a great artist had painted a part of the corporation of the city in which he lived, and he wanted, for historic purposes, to include in his picture certain characters well known in the town. A street-sweeper, unkempt, ragged, filthy, was known to everybody, and there was a suitable place for him in the picture. The artist said to this ragged and rugged individual, “I will pay you well if you will come down to my studio and let me paint your portrait.” He came round in the morning, but he was soon sent immediately out the door and on his way because he had washed his face, and combed his hair, and put on a respectable suit of clothes. He was needed as a beggar, and was not invited in any other capacity. Even so, the gospel will receive you into its halls if you come as a sinner, not otherwise. Don’t wait for reformation, but come at once for salvation. God justifies the ungodly, and that takes you up where you are now: it meets you in your worst condition.

Come in your disorder. I mean, come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are, leprous, filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, you that are the very rubbish of creation; come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come, though despair is sitting on you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one. Why shouldn’t He? Come for this great mercy of God is meant for someone just like you. I put it in the language of the text, and I cannot put it more strongly: the Lord God Himself takes to Himself this gracious title, “Him who justifies the ungodly.” He makes those just who are by nature ungodly, and causes them to be treated as just. Isn’t that a wonderful word for you? Reader, do not delay until you have considered this matter well.

[Charles Haddon Spurgeon's classic, All of Grace, has been edited in Modern English by Jon Cardwell. A chapter or two will be posted each Friday.]