Bekah and I read together each night. We’ve gone through some excellent books in the past couple of months: Powlison’s What Is Sanctification? and Emlet’s Saints, Sufferers, Sinners. Right now we are midway through Ferguson’s Christian Life, which offers a summary of what some would call the “ordo salutis” or the “application of redemption.” Last night something jumped out at me.

In Ferguson’s chapter on justification, he stresses the power of justification, the finality with which God legally constitutes a sinner righteous. Ferguson there takes aim at those who speak of either progressive justification or double-justification, as if there is an initial justification that must then be validated by good works in order to achieve final justification. Those views distort the biblical teaching, which rather ties God’s justification of the ungodly to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not to the second-coming and session of judgment at the end of all things.

Jesus’s perfect life, death, and resurrection were sufficient to justify completely—to secure the forgiveness of his people’s sins and the new status of righteousness. And if the justification is complete, there is no longer a legal demand to be satisfied in this life or the next.

For this point, Ferguson quoted the hymn “From Whence This Fear and Unbelief?” by Augustus Toplady. The third stanza is what stood out to me:

If Thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my room endured
The whole of wrath divine:
Payment God cannot twice demand,
First at my wounded Surety’s hand,
And then again at mine.

May that meditation enrich and strengthen you today, as you rest in the riches of redemption wrought by the Righteous One, Jesus Christ.