There is a deep-seated hatred for God and His law in the heart of every lost man. It is for this reason that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ” In the religious man this enmity is often well hidden, but under the right circumstances it will lash out viciously.
– Charles Leiter
It is possible for a Christian to act at times like a lost man, especially when he is still a “babe in Christ,” but this is a far cry from saying that a true Christian can live his entire life like a lost man.
– Charles Leiter
Justification takes place in Heaven, in the courtroom of God. Regeneration, on the other hand, takes place on earth, in the heart of man. Justification is a declaration by a judge; regeneration is an act of creation by an omnipotent Creator.
– Charles Leiter
A man is either 100% righteous, or he is condemned. If a murderer is charged with seven counts of murder and only convicted of one, he’s still a condemned man! Reader, if you have even one sin that you have to pay for yourself, you will be in Hell forever.
– Charles Leiter
What is faith? Faith is not some force or power that we wield that reaches out and accomplishes things. Neither does anyone “turn his faith loose,” though some false teachers exhort us to do so. Faith is just the opposite of such misconceptions. Justifying faith is not “doing” something; rather, it is giving up on doing anything and simply falling on the mercy of God. . . . we are not saved by faith in general; we’re saved by faith in Christ. Some people trust in a past “decision,” but a “decision” will not pay for our sins! Some trust in baptism, a past emotional experience, or even their supposed “faith.”
– Charles Leiter
“To justify” means “to declare righteous”; it does not mean “to make righteous.” . . . Christian, when God justifies you, He does not “let you of the hook” with your sins still hanging in midair. He does not pretend that your sins have been paid for. Rather, He sees that your sins really have been paid for by Christ, and He makes a declaration based on that fact. . . . Beloved Christian, you may have some terrible memories in your sinful past, but you can be certain of this: those sins are not still hanging in midair. They’ve come down . . . on the Lord Jesus Christ! And He actually paid for them! He bore your sins in His own body on the cross.
– Charles Leiter
No matter how great your sins may be, they are nothing compared to the infinite worth of Christ’s blood!
– Charles Leiter
How can a man be “in the right” before God? This is the dilemma that has tormented men down through history. It caused Martin Luther to crawl on his knees up the steps of the so-called Scala Sancta in Rome, and induced monks to wear hair shirts embedded with fishhooks in an attempt to pay for their sins. To this day, it causes natives of the South Sea Islands to sacrifice chickens and sprinkle their blood to the gods. In more “civilized” countries, many settle for “going to church” or some other form of “good deeds” to placate their guilty consciences. And everywhere men try to “justify” themselves by rationalizing or excusing their evil actions. How can a man be right with God? There is only one answer: A man can be right with God only through the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ on his behalf.
– Charles Leiter
I recently completed the book Justification and Regeneration by Charles Leiter (with a forward by Paul Washer). This was a great book that explained in the simplest of terms the difference between justification and regeneration in the life of a believer.
It’s a quick and easy read and I highly recommend this book, especially to those who struggle to understand the difference between justification and regeneration.
You can purchase the book from Monergism. Thanks to Tom Rayborn from Christ Church Alton for sending me this book.
How can God ever “justify the ungodly” without becoming an abomination to Himself? “He who says to the wicked, ‘You are righteous,’ peoples will curse him, nations will abhor him [Proverbs 24:24]. How can God say to sinners like us, “You are righteous,” without violating His own character? How can God ever save us from Himself and His own righteousness and justice? . . . Repentant sinners know that they deserve to be punished, and that it would not be right for them not to be. They know that God cannot just “sweep their sins under the rug” and forget about them. Hence, the cry of their hearts is, “How can a just God ever smile upon me? How can this burden of guilt be removed? How can God pronounce a blessing upon me? How can a man like me be in the right before God!” There is only one answer to this dilemma. Someone has to pay for the sinner’s sins. Justice must be satisfied. Either it will be satisfied by the sinner’s own suffering forever in Hell, or it must be satisfied by someone else on the sinner’s behalf.
– Charles Leiter
One of the most fearful things about sin is its power to harden the one who practices it. The deeper a man goes in sin, the less sin bothers him. . . . Every sinner finds himself now committing sins that he once despised, and the sins that he now despises, he will someday find himself committing. It should shock us to remember that Adolph Hitler was once a little boy playing with toys just like other little boys. Man knows the beginning of sin, but no man has ever known the end of sin.
– Charles Leiter
The emotions are disturbed and perverted. Some hearts smolder with constant anger and hatred; others are tormented day and night by senseless fears. Multitudes laugh at things that ought to make them weep, while others burst into tears for no apparent reason. Such are the deep and all-pervasive disturbances to the human personality caused, either directly or indirectly, by sin.
– Charles Leiter
Every non-Christian is—in his person—more repulsive to a holy God than he can ever begin to imagine.
– Charles Leiter
The first baby ever born grew up to murder his own brother. And human history ever since has been one long stream of constant warfare, lust, hate, torture, rape, perversion, abuse, and brutality. It is a blessed thing that we do not know in detail the sins that were committed just last night in our own town or city. Such knowledge would be too defiling to bear.
– Charles Leiter
Race and nationality likewise offer no immunity from sin; the most cultured of nations are just as capable of genocide as the most barbaric. The gas chambers of the “civilized” are merely sophisticated forms of the machetes wielded by the “uncivilized.”
– Charles Leiter
You and I may not have met each other, but of one thing we can be certain even before our introduction—both of us are sinners. Every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, no matter how old or how young, is a sinner. Even small children, when allowed to go to their own way, are capable of the most exquisite cruelties to animals and to one another.
– Charles Leiter
God’s wrath is not a temporary loss of self-control or a selfish fit of emotion. It is His holy, white-hot hatred of sin, the reaction and revulsion of His holy nature against all that is evil. God’s wrath is tied in directly with His justice. It has to do with His righteous determination to punish every sin, to balance the scales of justice, and to make every wrong right. That is why the wrath of God “abides on” every unbeliever. The more men persist in sin, the more they are “storing up wrath for themselves in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” God’s wrath will eventually be “poured out”; He is a righteous judge and will not allow sin to go unpunished forever.
– Charles Leiter
Christ Alone Wyoming 