Convinced Sinners Seeking Comfort and Acceptance

In the quotations that follow, John Owen speaks wisely to how we approach the doctrine of justification. He's talking about our posture before God in this matter. And in this section from his book on justification, he's inquiring into the cause or reason a person may be acquitted of sin and accepted with God. It spans a few pages, and I pull out and place here pieces of a common theme cropping up again and again in this section, which theme I think is almost entirely missing today in our posture in relation to this doctrine. And this is not a good thing, in case you're wondering.

Whether it be any thing in ourselves, as our faith and repentance, the renovation of our natures, inherent habits of grace, and actual works of righteousness which we have done, or may do? or whether it be the obedience, righteousness, satisfaction, and merit of the Son of God our mediator, and surety of the covenant, imputed unto us? One of these it must be—namely, something that is our own which, whatever may be the influence of the grace of God unto it, or causality of it, because wrought in and by us, is inherently our own in a proper sense; or something which, being not our own, not inherent in us, nor wrought by us, is yet imputed unto us, for the pardon of our sins and the acceptation of our persons as righteous, or the making of us righteous in the sight of God. Which of these it is the duty, wisdom, and safety of a convinced sinner to rely upon and trust unto, in his appearance before God, is the sum of our present inquiry. . . . 

. . . Neither are we in this matter much to regard the senses or arguings of men who were never thoroughly convinced of sin, nor have ever in their own person "fled for refuge unto the hope set before them."  

. . . It is alone the relief of those who are in themselves . . . guilty before, or obnoxious and liable to, the judgment of God, that we inquire after. . . . 

. . . But, beyond what tends directly unto the guidance of the minds and satisfaction of the souls of men, who seek after a stable and abiding foundation of acceptance with God, we are not easily to be drawn . . . 

. . . That which alone we aim (or ought so to do) to learn in it and by it, is how we may get and maintain peace with God, and so to live unto him as to be accepted with him in what we do. To satisfy the minds and consciences of men in these things is this doctrine to be taught.

As I said, this feel is almost entirely missing in the present wranglings about justification. And it's a sign, if Scripture is to be the judge (and it is), that we're culpably overlooking what our posture must be as we approach God in this matter. Are we convinced sinners seeking relief? Or are we detached scientists studying a specimen?

—The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (vol. 5; Works, Banner of Truth), 8-10.

A Sinner Pressed and Perplexed with a Sense of Guilt for Sin

What does the doctrine of justification primarily or fundamentally address? This question is important. If we answer that it addresses first and foremost the horizontal question of human relationships, the doctrine derails, the gospel aborts. But if we answer that it first and foremost addresses the vertical dimension of our existence, that is, our relationship with a holy and righteous God, the doctrine holds, the center stays. Then, and only then, certain horizontal entailments follow and function as they ought.

In volume 4 of his collected shorter writings, J. I. Packer says this:

The Augsburg Confession of 1531 states: "this whole doctrine [of justification] must be related to the conflict of an alarmed conscience, and without that conflict it cannot be grasped. So persons lacking this experience, and profane men, are bad judges of the matter." Calvin makes the same point in Institutio III.xii, a chapter on the theme that justification must be studied in the solemnising light of God's judgment seat (Honoring the People of God, 223). 

Packer then points out that "John Owen preserves this perspective when at the start of his classic treatise The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677) he writes":

The first inquiry . . . is after the proper relief of the conscience of a sinner pressed and perplexed with a sense of the guilt of sin. For justification is the way and means whereby such a person doth obtain acceptance before God, with a right and title unto a heavenly inheritance. And nothing is pleadable in this cause but what a man would speak unto his own conscience in that state, or unto the conscience of another, when he is anxious under that inquiry (The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, 7). 

So if in our formulation of the doctrine of justification we move too quickly to discussions of what justification has to say about man's relationship with fellow man, we step in the wrong direction. And this is what has happened with the so-called New Perspective on Paul (which is now old, by the way), valuable as some of its insights may be. It has a hard time addressing the distressed sinner (for that is not what it's for, they say, lambasting Luther for being so psychologically sensitive); its gospel lacks the potency and effect of the biblical gospel. Without adequately addressing the distressed conscience before a holy and just God, the doctrine falls flat and fails to liberate for love. And I believe it also makes a man-centered age even more man-centered. However, it works the other way too. It's no coincidence, to my mind, that a fundamentally horizontal understanding of justification has arisen in a period of history marked by profound man-centeredness. Sure, Luther had a context. But so do we.

God's Holiness: God's Infinite Love To Himself

Q: What is God's holiness?

A: God's holiness consists in "God's infinite love to himself. . . . As all creature holiness is to be resolved into love, as the Scripture teaches us, so doth the holiness of God himself consist in infinite love to himself. God's holiness is the infinite beauty and excellency of his nature. And God's holiness consists in his love to himself. . . ."

—Jonathan Edwards, "Discourse on the Trinity," Works, vol. 21, p. 123.