Justified by Christ

On the day of judgment, we will stand before the living God. Today, R.C. Sproul presents the stark difference between relying on our own righteousness and standing solely on the righteousness of Christ.

Human beings who live on this planet, who were created by God, are ultimately responsible to their Creator for how they live. Every one of us will answer before God in terms of our lives. Jesus preached that concept again and again and again. The secret things will be made manifest. What you did in a corner will be brought into light. God sees everything that you do, and He’s going to deal with it. We are going to be judged.

How many times have you heard people stand up and arrogantly declare they’re answerable to no one? That’s a myth. We are answerable—and we will answer—to our Creator. And when you stand on that judgment day, you stand on the basis of one of two things. You let your works speak for you, and you ask for God’s just distribution of reward and/or punishment according to your works, and you will get it. If you stand on your works, on your righteousness, on what you have achieved, on your good life, you will get precisely—with absolute justice, with no unfairness, with no distortion, but according to perfect equity—you will get precisely what your works and what your “righteousness” deserves.

And if you stand on the righteousness of Christ, pleading the cover of His righteousness, pleading His merit and His merit alone, then you will be given everything that His righteousness deserves. And those are the two only two options: you stand on your own or you stand in Christ.

The greatest tragedy, in my opinion, of the twentieth-century church is that it has failed to communicate justification by faith to its people. There are still multitudes of people running around this world who are saying this: “I live a good life. I don’t kill anybody. I don’t steal. I don’t commit adultery. My life’s good enough.” Okay—you rest your case on your own goodness, rather than on the righteousness of Christ, you will get exactly what that goodness deserves.