“If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?” Haven't you heard this classic put-down of someone who has been acting arrogantly?
I think of it as we move from Romans 3 to Romans 5, because I know that a person might read what I have written about justification by grace and ask: “If justification is as great as you say it is, why aren't Christians rich?” The answer, of course, is that Christians are rich, spiritually speaking. It is what the fifth chapter of Romans is about. Romans 5 tells us that our standing in grace has swelled our spiritual assets by giving us: 1.) peace with God; 2.) union with Christ; 3.) a transformed response to suffering; and 4.) a confident hope of our ultimate glorification.
Faith involves assent to the Bible's teaching. It is easy to understand why this is a necessary second part of true faith, for we can see at once that it is possible to understand something and yet not believe it personally. When I was a student at Harvard University studying English literature, I had a number of professors who understood the central doctrines of Christianity better than a majority of ministers. Doctrines such as the nature of God, the deity of Christ, the blood atonement, sin, repentance, and faith pervade English literature, and the professors who were teaching in the department had mastered the doctrines in order to understand the literature. But they didn't believe them. They regarded them as an historical curiosity, on the same level as the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, alchemy, the medieval theory of bodily humors, or any other such thing.
Not only did Barnhouse use yesterday’s illustration about the hymnbook, which represented our sin, and showed how our sin was transferred to Jesus Christ in his death on the cross for us, but he expanded it too. For just as the transfer of the hymnbook showed the transfer of our sins to Jesus, where they have been punished, so also is it possible to show the transfer of the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us by a movement in the opposite direction, since a double transfer is involved. The second side of the transfer is presented in Romans 3 in the verse immediately before our text. It says, “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (v.22). In the following chapter it is explained in the case of David who, we are told, “says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works” (Rom. 4:6), and in the case of Abraham who “is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them” (Rom. 4:11).
Yesterday’s devotional concluded with an explanation of what justification is. We can understand this by imagining that someone is brought before a judge owing a lot of money. He is about to suffer an adverse judgment in which his property will be forfeit. (In ancient times the individual could have been sold into slavery for debt.) But now a benefactor enters the judge's courtroom and asks, “How much does my friend owe?”
Without an understanding of our need, we cannot really appreciate God’s grace in salvation. Let me illustrate this by a story. In one of his writings about grace, Charles Haddon Spurgeon tells about a preacher from the north of England who went to call on a poor woman. He knew that she needed financial help. So with money from the church in his hand, he made his way through the poor section of the city where she lived, found her building, and climbed the four or five flights of stairs to her tiny attic apartment. He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. Eventually he went away. The next week he saw the woman in church and told her that he knew of her need and had been by to help her, but she was not at home.
