Sinclair Ferguson

It teaches me to look out away from myself to Christ who is my righteousness.

And then when I look out to Christ as my righteousness, not only in the sense that in Him I have forgiveness of sins, but also in Him I'm clothed in His righteousness.

That's what brings me assurance.

And when you think back to the pre-Reformation teaching of the church, which was at baptism, there's a righteousness infused into you.

You keep on losing it and simplifying it, but the sacraments kind of help you to recover it.

And if you cooperate with that sacramental grace, eventually there may be produced in you a righteousness

that is so righteous because your faith is suffused with a love for God that is perfect, that then you actually become justifiable.

So you are justified by grace, they would have said, they would have insisted it's by grace, on the basis of your cooperation with sacramental grace producing within you

A righteousness that's created, yes, by grace, that makes you justifiable, which is the reason why, by and large, in the medieval church, assurance was both denied and discouraged.

And why the Reformation was such an explosion, because people realized, but if our justification is in Jesus Christ, then we can be assured of our salvation.

We can be assured that we have a righteousness that is as righteous as His righteousness, because it is His righteousness.

And it's perfect, it's irreversible.

And it's ours through faith.

We make no contribution to it.

We receive him and we receive that righteousness.

And that was why there was such a bursting forth of assurance.

And I find, I think many Christians, it's just at that point that things begin to go wrong in their Christian lives and they turn back in upon themselves and they lose both the joy and assurance of Christian life.

because they're actually looking at the level of their sanctification for their assurance of justification.

And in a sense, they've turned the gospel on its head, clearly without realizing it.

Because if you said, what is the gospel?