Among other things, I spent the summer with the doctrine of justification and was blessed. Even though I worked with this doctrine all summer, I forget it everyday. Lee said Sunday that he feels as if he is preaching on justification over and over in our study of Galatians. While he is saying that, I am sitting on the edge of my seat saying, “Tell me that one more time, now once more, again please.” As simple as this truth is, I forget it as soon as I lift my eyes from the Scripture.
Luther called justification by faith alone the article upon which the church stands or falls (Sproul, Faith Alone, 18). Two basic points are asserted in the phrase justification by faith alone. One is that justification is a reality, which cannot be denied. The second is that true justification is by faith alone, period.
The Reformers identified 2 marks of a true church—the preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments (Sproul, Getting the Gospel Right, 19; see also Dever’s Nine Marks, 9; and Clowney, The Church, 101). Church discipline is subsumed in the administration of the sacraments.
Because Protestants were excommunicated from the Catholic Church, they were forced to answer the question, “What is a true church?” Of the marks identified the preaching of the gospel is most important. It is the mark upon which all other marks depend.
The gospel calls the church into being and sustains the life of the church. Luther was right. The church stands on the gospel. Without the gospel, the church falls. Justification by faith alone is the gospel. If justification is not by faith alone, there is no good news. In fact, there is nothing but bad news.
Today I fear that so little understanding and proclamation of the gospel is present in churches that the preaching of justification by faith alone sounds strange. One problem is that the gospel is viewed as the front end of the Christian life. After you pray the prayer, walk the isle, and are baptized, you must move on to other, deeper, more interesting, and practical things for Christian growth. “How to” sermons and studies are all the rave, and they have become the measure of true spirituality and godliness.
Like the Galatians, we tend to move on from grace to law. The gospel is front end of the Christian life, but it is also the middle and the end. I have found that Christian growth depends on the right application of the gospel to every area of life. The Holy Spirit aids us in viewing all things through the lens of the gospel.
Another problem is that we tend to blend justification and sanctification. This was the very issue that gave rise to the Reformation. The Catholic church taught that the righteousness of Christ is infused into the believer through the sacraments, first by baptism and then by penance, and inheres in him, making him inherently just. Only when the believer is inherently just through the grace of the infused righteousness of Christ will God declare the believer just (Getting, 65).
In the Catholic view God declares the just, just. Justification by faith has been construed to mean that God sanctifies the sinner and then declares him just.
Oddly enough, many so-called evangelicals have left the reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone for something more similar to the Catholic view. Some tend to view walking the isle and praying the prayer as making a person morally holy.
The Bible says clearly and unmistakably that Christ not only died for the ungodly (Rom. 5:8), but also He justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5). He does not justify the morally upright; he justifies the morally unright. Luther phrased it like this: at the same time just and sinner (simul iustus et peccator) (Getting, 64).
What of sanctification and its place in the believer’s life? The reformers were clear when they said, Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. (Getting, 168). Justification and sanctification are connected in that one flows out of the other. Sanctification flows out of justification. Though they are connected, they must never be confused and must always be distinguished from each other (Getting, 161). Justification is the objective work of Christ for us. Sanctification is the subjective work of Christ in us. The changes that take place in a believer are not the ground of justification.
As ungodly as we are God justifies us on the basis of the righteousness of Christ. From that standing in grace (Rom 5: 1-2), we fight for holiness. Without such a standing, we could not fight. The fruit of justification is the indwelling of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit ministered to us through the Word, the ordinances, prayer, faith, repentance, the church, etc. These work together for our holiness and usefulness in the advance of the Kingdom God.
They need to know that we are not a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites or snake oil salesmen.
Gimmickry may be useful to draw a crowd, but it will not save sinners. Unmistakably, from the church, the world needs to hear that justification is by faith in Christ alone.
The world knows nothing of the imputation of Adam’s sin and is in denial concerning the seriousness of its situation. Original sin is something that is rarely believed and taught by the church, even though the degeneracy of every culture is obvious. Yet, Paul clearly and inter-culturally establishes the universal sinful of man by tying us all to Adam’s sin (Rom 5:12-21) (Piper, 32-33). God’s wrath is revealed in the moral disintegration of every society (Rom. 1:18) (Stott, 209).
The problem unleashed by Adam that plagues every man in every culture is the very problem that Jesus came to solve (Piper, 33). Nobody can or has dealt with sin, but Christ. We are compelled by justification by faith alone to announce to the world that there is a problem, namely the imputation of Adam’s sin and God’s wrath against it, and there is a cure, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
Justification is a legal term. It takes us to the law court and is the opposite of condemnation (Rom 5:18; 8:34). In the courtroom, the judge either pronounces the accused guilty or not guilty. When a judge announces his verdict, the accused does not become inherently guilty or not guilty. So, in the case of justification, God declares the sinner righteous.
The sole ground of justification is the imputation of the righteousness of God to sinners. We can be more or less holy, but we will never be more or less justified. The good news is that Christ justifies the ungodly, and that is what we will be as long as sin remains in us. The good news is that we do not have to wait until we are inherently righteous to have a righteous standing before God (Getting, 159).
If you think that you will trust Christ when you are more godly, you will die in you sin.
Justification is not an act of God that makes us righteous. It is an act of God that declares us righteous. When Rom. 3:22 says, God’s righteousness is through faith for all who believe, it means that His righteousness is counted as ours. God’s act of justification is not in us, but for us. The imputation of the righteousness of God or God counting us righteous is not a moral change, but a change in our standing.
Such assertions are amazing, if not shocking. They are another way of saying what the text says, God justifies the ungodly. Does this assertion not open God for accusation? Is God unjust? No one can deny it is unjust to justify the guilty.
Paul wrote Romans 3:21-26 not so much to give a lesson on justification, but argue for God’s righteousness or rightness in justifying sinners. He argues not only is God just in saving sinners, but justifying the ungodly reveals His righteousness (v21).
We must realize that justification is not a synonym for amnesty. This text says that it is a synonym for the righteous of God (v 21) (Stott, 190).
God’s solution to the problem of sin and condemnation in Romans 1:18-3:20 was not the law, but for God to offer Himself in the person of His Son to die for sin and give us His righteousness if we trust Him. This is called justification by faith: God reckoning or counting His righteousness as our righteousness if we trust in His son.
This is what Paul started to say in 1:16-17—the theme of Romans 1-8.
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed for faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
Notice v 17: In it, in what? In the Gospel! The righteousness of God is revealed.
What Paul began in 1:17, he picks up again in 3:21 to explain and apply the righteousness that comes by faith.
Because the law is the revelation of the righteous character of God, only Christ could keep it. The purpose of the law was never to show the goodness of man, but rather to show man that he has sinned and despised God’s glory. Scripture is replete with references and experience testifies that no human has ever been justified by the law. Self-justification is not a possibility (v20).
The implication is that if humans were to ever be righteous in God’s sight it would have to be apart from the law. God has revealed His righteousness apart from the law.
This revelation of God’s righteousness apart from the law is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe—Jew or Gentile. Another way of saying this is the righteousness God is revealed in the Gospel.
God righteous revealed apart from the law is not contrary to the law, but was the point of the law and the prophets. This is illustrated in the law itself. Moses represents the law. Abraham is the man of faith. By faith Abraham kept the law. Moses, the lawgiver, was not allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his unbelief. This is the message of the Pentateuch.
Paul illustrates how the OT witnessed to justification by faith with two OT illustrations
In Romans 4:3, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 referring to Abraham. In Rom. 4:6, He quotes David from Psalm 32:1. So both Abraham and David (Genesis and Psalms) witness to the righteousness that comes by faith, even though they did not know exactly how it would come about. In Romans 1:17, Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4. So Genesis, Psalms, and Habakkuk testify to the truth of the imputed righteousness of God.
Paul is simply saying that whether in the OT or the NT, whether Jew or Gentile, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Redneck, or VIP, there is only one way to be saved. God must count you righteous or impute His righteousness to you through faith in Christ alone.
The righteous of God is imputed to us through our union with Christ by faith.
The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe (v22).
V24-25 are justified in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation…
We often emphasize the death of Christ on our behalf and give little emphasis to the sinless life. He is the total package. His sinless, law fulfilling life is as essential to the satisfaction of God’s justice and our justification as was his sacrificial death.
It is remarkable that we can read v23 and v24 in the same sentence. All have sinned and are lacking the Glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. When verses 23-26 are looked at through the lens of imputation, you can see what God was doing. He was imputing our sin to Christ and His righteousness to us through faith in Christ. So that God is both just and Justifier.
God publicly displayed Christ in a life that perfectly fulfilled His law, thus revealing His righteousness. He display him publicly in contradictory death in that he died cursed. The sinless God-man was cursed. Not only could God be considered unjust for justifying sinners, He could be accused for condemning the sinless.
Implied in His propitiatory life and death is the imputation of our sin to Him. He had no sin of his own. How then could He become cursed? God imputed our sin to Him. God counted Him guilty of our sin (2 Cor 5:21). Thus God condemned the Just One and justified the unjust.
In the same, way that God counted Him, the Sinless One, guilty of our sin, God counts His righteousness to us, the sinful ones.
We must see how far reaching this truth is. The old divines used to speak of the passive and active obedience of Christ. His passive obedience was His sacrificial death on the cross. His active obedience was His sinless life. Both are necessary for our salvation.
In the law, the one who obeys the law is blessed. Not only does salvation come to us in the end of life, but all of God’s blessings come to us in life because of Christ’s active obedience. We live in the blessing of God because of the merits of Christ. Paul hints at that in Rom. 5:1, Having been justified we have peace with God. He went on to say that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God (5:2).
The law promised blessing to those who kept it and cursing to those who broke it (Deut 28:1-2, 15). Ray gave us a blessing Sunday from Num. 6:24-26. Surely, Paul had this benediction in mind when he penned Rom 5:1-5. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. To the Jew the highest state of blessedness is the beatific vision, the closer to God the higher the degree of blessing. Blessedness is linked to nearness to God (Getting, 144-45).
The opposite of blessing is the curse. It is to miss everything that Num 6 talks about. Christ bore the curse of the law for his people that we might know the promised blessing of God (Gal 3:13-14) (Getting, 144).
We are fine with this as long as things go well with us. But as soon as things go wrong, we bemoan, What have I done to deserve this? The answer to that question is we deserve hell.
We need our understanding of blessing and cursing reformed by the Word of God. The disciples counted it all a joy to suffer for His name sake. In the Philippians text we read a few Sunday’s ago Paul stresses this point. He counted all of the things that could have been considered righteous in his life as nothing in light of the imputation of God’s righteousness through faith which brought to him the blessings of suffering and the glorious prospects of resurrection (Phil. 3:9-11).
If you’re not in hell, you have nothing to complain about and everything to rejoice about. If you are in Christ, all is yours. God will make heaven and earth new to bless you.
Here afresh Rom 8:1, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are in Him. Because of what he did for us, He is for us and we are in Him. The gavel of eschatological judgment has fallen on the cross, and through faith in Christ, we are not guilty.
We are justified by faith (Rom 3:24, 5:1). When Paul says in Rom 4:5, faith is counted as righteousness, it is clear from the context that he means righteousness is counted as faith (4:11).
Paul makes clear faith is the antithesis of works. It is not meritorious. The value of faith lies in its object. Faith is the eye that looks to Christ, the hand that lays hold of him, the mouth that drinks the water of life. The more clearly we see the absolute adequacy of the sin-bearing death of Christ, the more unreasonable it appears that we could add anything to our redemption (Stott, 187). Faith becomes the only sufficient response to the gospel.
The reformers called faith the instrumental cause of justification. For them faith not the sacraments was the instrumental cause of justification. Faith is the instrument through which we are linked to Christ and receive the grace of justification. (Aristotle’s Categories of Causality: Material cause—stone, formal cause—plan, final cause—purpose, efficient cause—sculptor, instrumental cause—chisel). (Faith Alone, 74-75).
If faith is the instrument that unites us to Christ, what is the nature of saving faith? The reformers had a threefold definition of saving faith. First is knowledge, the content of faith, the information that is to be received, understood, and believed. Saving faith is more than imparting information, but it is not less (Faith Alone, 77-78).
Second is intellectual assent, intellectual acceptance or assent to the content of the gospel as truth. The gospel has a content that is to received, understood, and believed. We either believe that Jesus died for sin according to the Scripture, was buried, and raised again the 3rd day or we don’t believe it (Getting, 168).
Third is trust, personal reliance on or trust in Christ and His gospel. Personal trust adds a depth dimension to intellectual assent. It is a combination of thinking and desiring, understanding and loving, wanting and affection. In addition to understanding and believing the content of the gospel, faith is heartfelt affection for Christ. Saving faith is not only knowing and giving assent to the tenets of the gospel, but an awakening to the sweetness and loveliness of Jesus, an awakening wrought in the heart, minds, and souls of sinners by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit (Faith Alone, 85).
These distinctions in faith are taught in Scripture. James said, You believe there is one God, you do well. Even the demons believe, and tremble (Jas. 2:19). Demons were among the first to recognize the true identity of Jesus. A demon possessed man ran to Jesus and worshipped Him and cried out, What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? (Mark 5:6-10). In the temptations, Satan knew who Christ was and tried to cast doubt on words Jesus had just heard from heaven at His baptism, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Lk. 3:22). Satan and his demons have 2 necessary conditions of saving faith—knowledge and assent—but they lack any affection for Christ. They hate Christ. Their faith is not sufficient for justification.
Knowing the content of the gospel, believing the content of the gospel, and having affection for Christ constitute faith, the sufficient condition for justification.
1. This standing in grace gives us the only position from which we can fight for holiness.
Progress in sanctification should be gauged not by checking a list, but by love for Christ, joy in Christ, and peace in Christ.
2. Justification by faith magnifies the glory of Christ.
Rom 3:27, Boasting is excluded.