Cited in sermons
N.T. Wright
15 sermons · All people cited
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification
Chapter 11 of the Second London Confession of Faith sets forth the biblical doctrine of justification with precision: sinners are accepted before God not by infused or inherent righteousness, nor by the imputation of faith as an act of obedience, but by the imputation of Christ's active obedience to the whole law and His passive obedience in death, received through faith alone as the instrument of justification. The confession navigates the doctrine through careful negative and positive statements, guarding both the sole ground of acceptance in Christ and the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification. Believers are called to rest their assurance entirely on Christ's active and passive obedience — cleansed in His blood and clothed in His righteousness — rather than on any covenantal faithfulness of their own.
The Conversion of Paul, Part 3
Philippians 3:9 presents two and only two kinds of righteousness before God: an inherent righteousness that inheres in the sinner and is condemned, and an imputed righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ and justifies. This sermon expounds Paul's own conversion as the decisive illustration that no religious resume — however impressive — can satisfy the law's demand for personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience. Justification by faith alone confers twin blessings: the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience; and far from licensing sin, a right understanding of that justification is the very foundation of biblical sanctification.
The Introduction to Philippians
Philippians 1:1–2 provides the occasion for a thorough introduction to the letter: its authorship, historical setting, the founding of the church at Philippi, and the theological freight carried by Paul's opening greeting. The sermon traces Paul's second missionary journey through Acts 16, showing how the Spirit's sovereign direction, the conversion of Lydia, and the imprisonment and conversion of the Philippian jailer together laid the foundation of the church. Church officers (bishops and deacons as distinct but biblically defined offices), the nature of sainthood, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone — with particular attention to the imputed righteousness of Christ — are expounded as the letter's governing themes. Hearers are called to rest their standing before God not in any righteousness of their own but in the righteousness of Christ received through faith alone.
The Glorious Exchange
Zechariah 3 presents a courtroom scene in which the high priest Joshua stands before the angel of the Lord clothed in filth while Satan waits to bring his accusation — and God silences the devil not by appealing to Israel's performance but by sovereignly removing the filthy garments and clothing Joshua in rich robes. This fourth night vision of Zechariah illustrates what Luther called the glorious exchange: the sinner's guilt imputed to Christ and Christ's righteousness imputed to the believer, received by faith alone. The sermon traces this double imputation through Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 1, 2 Corinthians 5, Galatians 2, and Philippians 3, and refutes the New Perspective on Paul's rejection of forensic imputation. The exhortation is plain: when the adversary accuses, the Christian's only answer is not performance but the gospel of sovereign grace in Christ the Branch.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 1
What does it mean to be justified before a holy God, and on what basis does that standing rest? This confession study works through paragraphs one and two of Chapter 11 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, examining the forensic nature of justification against both Roman Catholic infused righteousness and Baxterian neonomianism. The twin foundations of justification are established: the pardon of sins through Christ's passive obedience and the imputation of righteousness through his active obedience, both received by faith alone as a gift of God. The lecture closes by showing that justifying faith, though the sole instrument of justification, is never alone in the person justified but is always accompanied by sanctification.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 2
1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, paragraph 3 sets out three theological covenants — the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis), and the covenant of works — as the structural architecture of all Scripture. This sermon expounds each in turn, demonstrating from texts in Genesis, Isaiah, Hosea, Galatians, and Romans that the covenant of grace is founded on an eternal transaction between the Father and the Son, and that it is God's provision for sinners rendered incapable of acceptance with God since Adam's fall. The covenant of works is shown to be indispensable to a right understanding of justification: without it, the imputed righteousness of Christ collapses into either moralism or antinomianism, and the distinction between forgiveness and imputation is lost. Covenant theology is pressed not as academic machinery but as the very ground of the believer's comfort, assurance, and stability before God.
The Justice of God and the Gospel
Proverbs 17:15 declares that justifying the wicked and condemning the just are alike an abomination to God — yet the gospel does precisely both: God condemned the sinless Christ and justifies ungodly sinners. This sermon works through the theological architecture that vindicates God from any charge of self-contradiction in the gospel, tracing the doctrines of covenant representation and imputation from Genesis through the Prophets and into Paul's argument in Romans 3–5. The three acts of imputation — Adam's sin to all mankind, the elect's sin to Christ, and Christ's righteousness to the elect — are shown to be the biblical answer to the problem Proverbs 17:15 raises, grounding assurance in an alien righteousness received by faith alone.
The Call to Faithfulness in Perilous Times
Paul's warning to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:1–9 identifies the gravest threat facing the church as not external persecution but internal corruption — men with a form of godliness who deny its power. The passage is expounded under four headings: the recognition of danger in the last days, the description of godless men marked by secular humanism, materialistic idolatry, and hedonism, the exhortation to avoid such men entirely, and the encouragement that their folly will be exposed as surely as that of Jannes and Jambres before Moses. The sermon calls believers to know the foundational doctrines of Christianity, to conduct themselves worthy of the gospel, and to discriminate carefully about who is permitted to teach — while resting in the confidence that Christ will build his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The Glory of the Father and the Son
John 17:1–5 opens Christ's high priestly prayer with a petition that the Father glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father — a reciprocal glorification whose goal is the glory of God Most High. The sermon works through three grounds for this petition: the salvation of the elect given to the Son in the covenant of redemption, the accomplishment of Christ's active and passive obedience as the basis of justification, and the restoration of the Son's pre-incarnate glory. The full deity of Christ is defended against subordinationist readings by surveying New Testament texts where the title theos is applied directly to Jesus, and the sermon closes with the call to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the very essence of eternal life — through Scripture reading, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the means of grace.
The Crucifixion of Jesus, Part 3
Matthew 27:45–46 records the darkest three hours of history and the lone saying of Christ that Matthew preserves from the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' This sermon works through the cry of dereliction with careful attention to what the text does and does not teach, ruling out any ontological division within the Trinity, any dissolution of the hypostatic union, and any notion that all three persons suffered at Calvary. The forsakenness Christ voiced was real — a qualified withdrawal of the Father's consolatory smile and favour, not an abandonment of love — because Christ stood as the covenant surety of his people, bearing the punishment of loss that sinners deserve. The gospel comfort that follows is decisive: because Christ cried 'Why have you forsaken me?' those united to him by faith will never have to.
Of Justification (2LCF 11)
Justification — the forensic declaration by which God accounts and accepts sinners as righteous — is examined through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 11. The confession distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification: it is not an infused or imparted righteousness but an imputed one, grounded entirely in Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in His death. Faith, itself a gift of God and not a human contribution, is the sole instrument by which the justified receive and rest on Christ's righteousness. The sermon closes by tracing the ongoing practical realities of the justified life — including fatherly displeasure, confession, and the impossibility of falling from the state of justification — and by drawing on J.C. Ryle to clarify precisely how justification and sanctification are alike yet distinct.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 3
Justification is the article upon which the church stands or falls, and this exposition of 2LCF Chapter 11 works through the nature, basis, and instrument of justification as the confession presents them. The sermon distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification against the Roman Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness, the neo-Nomian teaching of Richard Baxter, and the New Perspective on Paul, arguing that the elect are accepted by God solely on the basis of Christ's imputed active and passive obedience received through faith alone. The active obedience of Christ — his 33 years of perfect law-keeping — is shown to be as necessary as his death, because forgiveness alone would leave the believer back in a probationary state without a positive righteousness that avails before God. Faith is the alone instrument of justification, not its condition or cause, and is itself a gift of God, so that every ground of human boasting is excluded.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 2
The forensic doctrine of justification — God's one-time legal declaration that the sinner is righteous on the sole ground of Christ's imputed righteousness — faces persistent assault in every era. This session surveys three modern deviations: Arminian evangelicalism (which collapses faith into a meritorious work or relocates righteousness within the believer), the New Perspective on Paul (which reframes Paul's argument as a corrective for ethnic exclusivity rather than a remedy for the condemnation of sin), and the Federal Vision (which renders righteousness relational, conflates Christ's faithfulness with the believer's, and anticipates a future eschatological justification grounded in covenantal obedience). Against all three, Scripture and the confession insist that justification is a completed legal verdict, not a process, and that its ground is exclusively the active and passive obedience of Christ credited to the elect.
A Filthy Priest and the Grace of God
Zechariah 3 sets before the reader a courtroom scene in which Joshua the high priest — clothed in garments the Hebrew describes with language reserved for human feces and vomit — stands before the Lord with Satan at his right hand, ready to accuse. The vision is an unsparing portrait of what every sinner looks like before a holy God, and the response is entirely God's: He silences the accuser, strips the filthy garments, and clothes Joshua in an alien righteousness he did nothing to earn. The sermon expounds this fourth night vision under three headings — the cleansing of Joshua, the charge given to Joshua, and the promise concerning the Branch — demonstrating that the imputation of Christ's righteousness is not a Reformation novelty but a reality enacted in visible, typological form five centuries before Calvary. The application drives toward assurance grounded not in the believer's obedience but in sovereign election and justifying grace, while calling the unconverted to believe on the Branch who came to do what God purposed for Him.
The God Who Justifies the Ungodly
Romans 4:5 declares that God justifies the ungodly — a statement that stands in apparent tension with Proverbs 17:15, which calls the one who justifies the wicked an abomination. This communion meditation resolves that tension by tracing the doctrine of imputation through three movements: Adam's sin imputed to his posterity, the sin of God's elect imputed to Christ, and Christ's righteousness imputed to believers. Far from promoting moral laxity, this forensic reality — that sinners are declared righteous on the sole ground of another's obedience and atoning death — is shown to be the very foundation of genuine sanctification and the most powerful incentive to holy living.