Romans 4:5:
“But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
The following things may be noted in this verse:
1. That justification respects a man as ungodly. This is evident by these words, —that justifieth the ungodly; which cannot imply less, than that God, in the act of justification, has no regard to any thing in the person justified, as godliness, or any goodness in him; but that immediately before this act, God beholds him only as an ungodly creature; so that godliness in the person to be justified is not so antecedent to his justification as to be the ground of it. When it is said that God justifies the ungodly, it is absurd to suppose that our godliness, taken as some goodness in us, is the ground of our justification; as, when it is said that Christ gave sight to the blind, to suppose that sight was prior to, and the ground of, that act of mercy in Christ; or as, if it should be said that such an one by his bounty has made a poor man rich, to suppose that it was the wealth of this poor man that was the ground of this bounty towards him, and was the price by which it was procured.
~Jonathan Edwards~
The Works of Jonathan Edwards 2 Volume Set (Peabody, MA; Hendrikson Publishers, Inc; 2007) p. 622.
The Old Guys 
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