Acts 8:4-8 The Miracle of Justification By Faith
Good morning! Thank you all for your prayers this week. As you may know we lost my Uncle Marc on Wednesday. He was more like my brother than my uncle. He had great confidence in Jesus and so we can have confidence that he has entered into his rest and awaits the return of Christ where we will be reunited and so be with the Lord forever in His eternal kingdom.
In talking with my mom this week she said that she’s starting feel like Job. In truth that’s a very accurate statement and I can’t say I wasn’t tempted wallow in Job this week and share that sorrow with you this morning. Instead, my heart is choosing to say, along with Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.”
Uncle Marc was a faithful listener of our sermons here at CrossRoads and I’m sure that he would be disappointed if we diverted from the book of Acts just to talk about him. So turn with me to Acts chapter eight, page 916 in the pew Bibles.
Last week we talked about how the believers were scattered due to the great persecution of the church that began with the stoning of Stephen. Our text for this morning begins an account of one of those believers, one of the Seven, named Philip.
4 Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. 5 Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. 6 And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. 7 For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was much joy in that city.
Let’s pray.
So what do we know about Samaria?
Samaria was the name of a city but it was also the name of a region and a people. We all remember the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Samarians themselves were a unique people. They were a mixture of Jew and Gentile. Their nation originated when the Assyrians captured the ten northern tribes of Israel in 732 BC, deported many of the people, and then imported others who intermarried with the Jews. The Samaritans had their own temple and priesthood and openly opposed fraternization with the Jews.
Jesus had an encounter in this region with an adulterous woman at the well as recorded in John 4.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Later in that interaction Jesus described what was beginning with the scattering of the disciples due to the great persecution.
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
So fast forward from there back to Philip in this same region.
The church was being persecuted, ravaged, and everybody ran and hid, right?
Nope. They went about preaching the Word.
In verse four, the word, “preaching,” is the word we know as, “evangelize,” which means to communicate good news, THE Good News. Good News is what the word, “gospel,” means.
Romans 10:13-15 says,
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
That’s what Philip was doing, that’s what we are called to do.
Philip preached the Good News to these half-Jewish people who were waiting for Messiah that He had actually come and that the Messiah they were waiting for is Jesus.
6 And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. 7 For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was much joy in that city.
I’m not going to guess what you’re thinking here, or if you’re following me at all, but I can’t help but imagine the objection that one might have to the charge to preach the gospel and the success that Philip had due to, not just his words, but with the accompanying miracles.
Everybody paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him, he was certainly scratching where they itched as far as waiting for Messiah, but they also saw the signs that he did.
Miracles weren’t only performed by the Apostles anymore but we’re seeing them done by all kinds of different people now in Acts. And I can’t help but wonder if people wouldn’t pay more attention to what we said if we were able to show some miracles to them…
Well, we can. Through faith in Jesus and His atoning death on the cross we have a miracle that we can put on display, and it’s the miracle called, “justification by faith.”
What is justification? To be justified simply means to be put into a right relationship with someone. In our case, it means that what was disturbing and destroying our relationship with God our Father, our sin, has been paid for and its penalty removed from us and put onto Jesus.
I’d like to read a passage from RC Sproul’s book, “The Gospel of God: an Exposition of the Book of Romans,” that explains our miracle of justification by faith better than I ever could.
“Our justification is by faith in Jesus Christ. Why? for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Paul turns again to the theme that he has been expounding throughout this epistle, that all men are guilty before the judgment seat of God. We may think that we are more righteous than other people but compared to the ultimate standard of God, we fall short, abysmally short, miserably short.
Paul continues: and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). Here he uses the word ‘freely’ to modify justify. Justification is something that God bestows as a gift. That which is a gift can never be imposed by obligation; nor can it be earned or deserved. He emphasizes this by saying further that we are justified freely ‘by his grace’. That is the real heart of the issue: merit or grace.
What is redemption? In New Testament times the noun ‘redemption’ or the verb ‘to redeem’ meant primarily to pay a ransom, to purchase back something that was being held in captivity or in bondage. Its original meaning was to buy back out of slavery, out of indebtedness or out of captivity. This is precisely how the New Testament describes the work of Jesus on our behalf. Jesus is our Redeemer. He is the One who paid a ransom for our souls.
We have to be careful here, for there are all kinds of theories about what Jesus did. One that has been very famous in the history of the church is that Jesus paid a ransom to the devil, in order to buy us back from Satan’s possession. But that’s an utterly unbiblical concept. The ransom or the purchase price is not paid to Satan. It is paid to God, for it is to God that we are in debt.
The question is, Who will pay the price that God’s law requires from us? The meaning of justification by faith alone is that we are justified freely by the unmerited favor of God, through a redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Some people object to that because they say it sounds like a drama going on within the Godhead itself: God the Father has set out to destroy us, but God the Son satisfies his wrath in such a way as to bring us redemption. But that, of course, would come perilously close to blaspheming the righteousness of God.
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood (Romans 3:25). It is God the Father who sends the Son into the world. It is God the Father who by his grace freely justifies us through the merit of Jesus Christ. It is God who sets forth his only-begotten Son to be a propitiation (a sacrifice that satisfies God’s wrath against sin). So there is agreement within the Godhead. God himself initiates and sets into motion this grand plan of redemption, whereby he reveals a way to satisfy the demands of his own righteousness. In doing this God does not compromise himself, nor does he take lightly the transgressions against his holiness. God deals with his own justice by requiring the price of sin at the hands of his only-begotten Son.
God’s intent in sending Jesus into the world was to placate his wrath. His sacrifice was made to fulfill all of the demands that God had imposed as sanctions upon the committing of sins. God never pronounces guilty people innocent. The atonement does pay the penalty for the one who is judged guilty. The sinner is not cleared or exonerated, the sinner is declared guilty. It is not at the point of judgment that he is redeemed, but at the point of sentence.
Not only does Christ offer the sacrifice to reconcile the sinner to God by paying the ransom that is required, but a double transfer takes place. Not only is the sinner’s guilt transferred to Christ, but in God’s sight, his merit is given to the sinner. After the transfer takes place, God looks at the sinner and declares him to be justified. Not because he has been cleared of his sin, but because he has been redeemed from his sin.
When [Martin] Luther defined the doctrine of justification in the sixteenth century, he used a Latin phrase simul justus et peccator, which means ‘At the same time, just and sinner’. This gets to the heart of justification by faith alone. Though in and of myself I am a sinner, once I have received the benefit of Christ’s propitiation, I am just in the sight of God. Just, by virtue of Christ’s righteousness; sinner, by virtue of my own performance.”
This is the miracle that accompanies our preaching of the Good News, we are simul justus et peccator, simultaneously justified and sinners.
Justified by virtue of Christ’s righteousness; sinner by virtue of our own performance. And this same miracle is available to all who would call on the Name of the Lord Jesus.
Amen.
