Justification: Instinct with Life

Machen, 1925:

I am not at all ashamed to speak, even in this day and generation, of 'the doctrine of justification by faith.' It should not be supposed, however, that that doctrine is an abstruse or intricate thing. On the contrary it is a very simple thing, and it is instinct with life.

It is an answer to the greatest personal question ever asked by a human soul--the question: 'How shall I be right with God; how do I stand in God's sight; what what favor does he look upon me?'

There are those, it must be admitted, who never raise that question; there are those who are concerned with the question of their standing before men, but never with the question of their standing before God; there are those who are interested in what 'people say,' but not in the question what God says. Such men, however, are not those who move the world; they are apt to go with the current; they are apt to do as others do; they are not the heroes who change the destinies of the race.

The beginning of true nobility comes when a man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men, and becomes interested in the judgment of God.

--J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith?, 163