The Trial

THE CASE OF GOD THE FATHER AGAINST ______________________________ (fill in your own name)

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: SATAN (THE ACCUSER OF THE BRETHREN)

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

JUDGE PRESIDING: GOD THE RIGHTEOUS JUDGE

IN ATTENDANCE: The angelic hosts (righteous and fallen)

“ it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” – Heb. 9:27

You now stand in the dock, faced with the charge of great and terrible acts of high treason against the Most High God.

Gabriel the Arch-Angel addresses the court and says, “All rise! The Righteous Judge is coming into His chamber!”

The Judge declares His court to now be in session and asks for all to be seated.

Without any delay, Satan stands up and addresses the court. He states that the record will show that you have broken all 10 of the Ten Commandments, on multiple occasions. He will prove your guilt on all counts for He has the indisputable video evidence as well as reliable witnesses to attest to the facts in this case.

After the case is made against you and there is a hush in the court. The prosecuting attorney has shown that you have indeed committed acts of high treason against God. It seems inevitable that you will be found guilty.

Satan then addresses the Judge and says, “A good God must be a good Judge. The facts are clear. You must find this one guilty. Your own record in Proverbs 17:15 states, ‘He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.’ For you to acquit this one would mean that You are not righteous Yourself. You must find this one guilty as charged. I rest my case.”
The Judge then calls upon your defense attorney to address the court.

The Lord Jesus Christ: Righteous Father, the case made by the prosecution is indeed true. I will not dispute the charges made. However, I will submit to this court two pieces of evidence in the defense of my client:

Exhibit A: THE PASSIVE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST – Let the record show that on Calvary’s cross, the sins of this one was transferred to me and I bore the full punishment demanded by Your high and holy Justice. I was wounded for his transgressions, brusied for his iniquities, the chastisement that brought him peace was upon Me and by My stripes, he was healed.

Exhibit B: THE ACTIVE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST – Let the record show that I, the second Person of the adorable Trinity, became a man, was born of a virgin, and lived a righteous life on earth always pleasing You, righteous Father. I lived the life You demanded in Your high and holy law.

Just as this one’s sins was transferred to Me on the cross and I suffered the penalty due to him (in his place), so also My righteous life was transferred to his account.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” – 2 Cor 5:21

Righteous Father, if You will check the record, You will see that this man’s sins have been paid in full and in fact the only record concerning this man now is that He lived my life – for My life was imputed to His account, legally and at Your good pleasure. For it was decreed this should happen in our Eternal Counsel meeting of the Divine Trinity, before the foundation of the world.

GOD THE JUDGE: “Having checked the eternal records and the validity of exhibits A and B, the case made by the defense is both true and satisfactory in this court for the purpose of dismissing all charges made against this man.

Would the accused please stand:

In that My son has borne your punishment in full and has imputed His righteous life to your account, I declare you NOT GUILTY.. but more than that, Righteous, in the splendid righteousness of My Son. I can do this because My wrath, due to you, was borne by My Son.. He has paid for your sins in full.

You are JUSTIFIED in my sight. Forever I am at peace with you. Your sins I will remember no more. By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, you are justified.”

Justified – not merely just as if I’d never sinned, but just as if I’d always obeyed.

Rom. 5:1 – Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

If salvation depends on the believer’s deeds, our salvation is only as secure as our faithfulness.

Justification is a legal word (from the court room) and for the believer in Christ is a past tense event – through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ ALONE!

This peace with God is not some temporary cease fire (in hostilities) but is the eternal, immutable and irrevocable standing of the believer with his God.

Time of Trial May Prove Our Faith True or Conterfeit

Psalm 84:5-7

So what we find in this psalm is an account of how David dealt with himself in that situation. Here is this man of God, hemmed in, as it were, in the wilderness, with all the trials and perplexities, and he tells us (we should thank God for this!) how he faced it all-what he did and how he reacted. He thereby teaches us, as he has taught God’s people throughout the centuries, how we also should deal with ourselves when we find ourselves in a similar state and position.
Now, this is true of many individuals at the present time, people facing troubles and trials, grievous problems, with everything apparently against them. And it is equally true of the Christian church as a whole. These are evil, difficult days for the Christian church. In this country we are but a little remnant in a kind of wilderness of paganism with enemies set against and all around us. But here in this psalm is a lesson as to how we should conduct ourselves at such a time and in such a situation. The method of the psalm is typical. Indeed, the chief characteristic of all the psalms-that is the wonderful thing about them-is that almost all of them are saying exactly the same thing, but they vary according to the circumstances. In other words, the presentation varies, but the method is very much the same.
Let us approach it like this. A time of trouble or of difficulty is always a testing time. And what it does is to test where we really are and what we really have. So I want to approach this psalm from that particular angle because such times, above everything else, test our profession of the Christian faith. If you really want to know whether you are a Christian or not, the simplest, most direct way, always, is to discover what you are like when things go against you. A time of affluence and prosperity, when the sun is shining and everything is going well, never tests our profession. But the moment things go wrong and you are in a state of perplexity, then you will know exactly the value of what you claim to believe.
It is, alas, possible for us to have an intellectual belief in these things. The Bible contains an incomparable system of truth. Merely looked at from the standpoint of philosophy, there is nothing superior to it. It is an old book and a very wise one. It is a book that knows people; it knows life; it has an understanding; there is no profounder wisdom. And so there are many who have come to it and taken it up in that way, simply from the standpoint of its teaching and its wisdom, as something purely intellectual.
Unfortunately, it is possible for us to accept even the Christian way of salvation with our minds only-in a purely theoretical, detached manner. In a sense it is reasonable to do so-the system is such a complete one. Some people have been brought up in the church and in the atmosphere of these things; they have received instruction and have taken it in and accepted it. Indeed, there are many who say that they cannot recall a time when they did not believe it. Well, that is all right, but the real thing we need to discover is whether their belief is only in the mind. Is it only something theoretical? And so, let me emphasize it again, the most direct way always to discover the real value of what you claim as your profession of the Christian faith is to know how you react and how you behave in a time of trouble.
Furthermore,
—Martin Lloyd Jones

When all things seem against me,
To drive me to despair,
I know one gate is open,
One ear will hear my prayer.
–Oswald Allen