Text: Gal 2:15-21, 3:1-17, Rom 1:17, Heb 10:38, Hk 2:4.

Introduction

Justification is the act of God whereby He forgives the sins of believers and declares them righteous by imputing the obedience and righteousness of Christ to them through faith. (See Luke 18:9-14, 1Cor. 1:30, 2Cor 5:22)

The practical importance of this cannot be exaggerated.

The glory of the gospel is that God has declared Christians to be rightly related to him in spite of their sin. But our greatest temptation and mistake is to try to smuggle character into his work of grace. How easily we fall into the trap of assuming that we only remain justified so long as there are grounds in our character for that justification. But Paul’s teaching is that nothing we do ever contribute to our justification.

Prevailing teaching of Rome prior to Luther

1. The Bible should be hidden from ordinary people.
2. The doctrine of purgatory.
3. The doctrine of penance.
4. Faith is assent to the teaching of the church.
5. Faith plus works is the way of salvation.

Martin Luther’s Teaching

Martin Luther discovered a fault in this practice when he came across Roman 1:17. “…For therein is the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.” Wao! Isnt’t this wonderful! According to him:

• The righteousness of God here was not an active, harsh, punishing wrath demanding that a person keep God’s law perfectly in order to be saved, but rather something God gives to a person as a gift, freely, through Christ.
• Salvation was by grace through Christ received by faith alone. Justification is by faith alone.
• So, faith has three powers.
• The first is that it receives the treasures of grace that God freely offers in Christ.
• The second is that it gives God his proper glory by trusting Him as truthful, righteous, and good.
• The third is that it unites us to Christ as our bridegroom.

 

What Justification is not

• Justification is not a reward for anything good we have done.
• It is not something in which we cooperate with God. (It is not sanctification.)
• It is not infused righteousness which results in good works which become the basis of justification (the Mormon and Catholic concept of justification).
• It is not accomplished apart from the satisfaction of God’s justice, i.e., it is not unjust.
• It is not subject to degrees—one cannot be more or less justified; one can only be fully justified or fully unjustified.

 

What Justification Is

I will now define justification in four different ways:

Justification is an undeserved free gift of God’s mercy. Rom. 3:24; Titus 3:7.

• It is a gift of mercy that Christ bestowed on us when we least deserved it.
• Consider the Criminal who asked Jesus mercy on the cross and received instant pardon and mercy. Luke 23:39-43.
• The woman caught in an act of adultery in John 8:3-11
• The Publican who asked God for mercy in the temple Luke 18:10
• What about you? You knew who you were before Jesus saved you. That is justification.
• You don’t give anything in exchange. No money, no tithe, no offering, no fast, no prayer before he saves you. It was a gift. It was free gift of God. An act of His mercy.

Justification is entirely accomplished by God, once and for all

This justification, though individually located at the point of time at which a man believes (Rom. 4:3; 5:1), is a once-for-all divine act, the final judgment brought into the present. The justifying sentence, once passed, is irrevocable. “The Wrath” (Rom. 5:9) will not touch the justified. Those accepted now are secure forever. Christ will not call into question God’s justifying verdict, only declare, endorse and implement it.

In other words, if God the Father justified us at the point of belief, is it possible the Son would ever repudiate the Father’s legal declaration?

Justification is imputed righteousness on believer entirely apart from works

The righteousness of God Himself has been given to the believer. It has nothing to do with a person’s own righteousness (Rom. 4:5, 6, 17-25). It is not only that God overlooks our sin and guilt, but also that full and entire holiness is credited to our account.

 

What happens when our faith follows Christ’s faith?

1. It ratifies what Christ did for us. Ratify means to make officially valid. Until what Christ did is ratified it is of no value to us.
2. This means that all that Christ did for us is ours! He died for all, believed perfectly for all, fulfilled the law for all; but it is not ours until we too believe. But when we believe, all He did for us is ours. We are instantly granted:

(1) Forgiveness of sins. Romans 3:25; Ephesians 1:7. This is because we have been convicted for our sins, and made sorry. Thus, the feeling of being forgiven is wonderful indeed (1 John 1:9). This is the way it is in God’s sight. The ‘forgiveness’ however is what we feel by assurance of faith in God’s promise.

(2) Imputation of righteousness: We wear his righteousness like a garment. Gal 3:27.

(3) The righteousness of Christ is put to our credit

(a)  How do we know that?

He came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17)

He did everything for us as our substitute (Romans 5:10)

Thus everything he did is transferred to us as though we did it ourselves; e.g being baptized (Mathew 3:15), believing perfectly (Galatians 2;16) perfect sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30)

This implicitly proves the eternal security of the believer. For this is the way God sees us from the moment of faith as righteous as Jesus. This means that in the sight of God, I am no more righteous fifty years after my conversation than I was the day I was saved. Where is boasting then? It is excluded (Romans 3:27; Ephesians 2:8-9).

(4) Eternal life. Eternal life (John 3:16).

A. Eternal life in the New Testament is described in four ways:

(a) The very life of Jesus – the Eternal son (1 John 1:1).

(b) The quality of knowing God (John 17:3; 1 Timothy 6:12).

(c) Life beyond the grave (Mark 25 :46).

(d) Heaven as opposed to hell (Matthew 25:46).

B. The life eternal that issues from justification by faith is basically two things,      in this order:

(a) That we will go to heaven when we die.

(b) That we may come to know God intimately.

It is like our justification is not simply a matter of God’s overlooking our guilt; our need can be met only if righteousness, full and entire holiness of character, is credited to us. This is the amazing gift of grace. Christ’s law-keeping and perfect righteousness are made ours by faith in Him (1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9). It is not that our abysmal failure in life’s moral examination is overlooked; we pass with 100%, First Class Honours!

The Son of God though spotlessly pure took upon Himself the ignominy and shame of our sin and in return clothes us with His purity. Righteousness is imputed because the believer actually is united to Christ. In other words, because the believer is “in Christ,” the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. Justification is the subsequent legal recognition of that fact. We are declared (past tense) righteous. We now have perfect righteousness before God (not personally, but legally).

To “justify” in the Bible means to “declare righteous”: to declare, that is, of a man on trial, that he is not liable to any penalty, but is entitled to all the privileges due to those who have kept the law….

Paul’s synonyms for “justify” are “reckon (impute) righteousness,” “forgive (more correctly, remit) sins,” “not reckon sin” (see Rom. 4:5-8)—all phrases which express the idea, not of inner transformation, but of conferring a legal status and cancelling a legal liability.

Justification is a judgment passed on man, not a work wrought within man; God’s gift of a status and a relationship to himself, not of a new heart. Certainly, God does regenerate those whom he justifies, but the two things are not the same.

For Paul, union with Christ is not fantasy, but fact—the basic fact indeed in Christianity; and the doctrine of imputed righteousness is simply Paul’s exposition of the forensic aspect of it (see Romans 5:12 ff.)

Justification is accomplished in harmony with God’s justice. It displays His holiness; it does not deny it. The only way for the sinner’s justification to be truly just in God’s eyes is for two requirements to be absolutely satisfied.

The first is that every requirement of the law must be satisfied.

The second is that the infinitely holy character of God must be satisfied.

How could we conceivably meet this double demand? The answer is that it has been met already by the Lord Jesus Christ, acting in our name. The eternal Son of God was “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4) in order that he might yield double submission to the law in his people’s stead.

Both aspects of his submission are indicated in Paul’s words: “he… became obedient—unto death” (Philippians 2:8). His life of righteousness culminated in his dying the death of unrighteous according to the will of God: he bore the penal curse of the law in man’s place (Galatians 3:13) to make propitiation for man’s sins (Romans 3:25). And thus, “through one act of righteousness”—the life and death of the sinless Christ—”there resulted justification of life to all men” (Romans 5:18)

 

To be continued…