Cited in sermons
Ned Stonehouse
2 sermons · All people cited
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.
The Response to Persecution
Matthew 10:24–33 confronts disciples with the certainty of persecution and the threefold answer Christ gives to the fear that persecution produces. Jesus establishes first that suffering at the hands of men is inevitable — if they called the Master Beelzebul, they will do the same to his servants — and then forbids fear on three grounds: the gospel's truth will be fully proclaimed, persecutors can only kill the body while God alone holds power over soul and body, and God's sovereign providence extends even to sparrows and the hairs of one's head. The passage closes with a solemn double verdict: those who confess Christ before men will be confessed by Christ before the Father, while those who deny him will be denied — a call to bold, faithful witness grounded in the fear of God rather than the fear of man.