The Gift of Salvation - 5. Justification

The Gift of Salvation - 5. Justification

So far in the Gift of salvation we have looked at:

i) Predestination - God chose us in eternity past; ii) The Effectual Call - through the gospel God invited us to believe; iii) Regeneration - His giving us spiritual life to enable us to take the next step;  iv) Conversion - our response of repentance and faith in Christ; and today we will be looking at iv) justification - what God does in response to our faith in order deal with our sin. 

Justification has two elements to it:

i) Firstly, it is God declaring us ‘not guilty’ (and hence will never face condemnation);

ii) Secondly, it is God attributing (imputing) to us the perfect righteousness of Jesus!

So, a justified person, before God, has never sinned but has actually lived a perfect life!

Like a man who goes into his bank knowing that he has a debt that he can never pay but finds that his debt has been deleted! But it doesn’t stop there; his account is in limitless credit! So, justification has these two elements – we have something taken from us: our sin, and something given to us: Jesus perfect righteous life.

Martin Luther and justification as a gift

We owe a huge debt to Martin Luther for making a stand and helping the church to embrace justification by faith alone.

After a thunderstorm in 1505 struck the fear of God into him, the young 21-year-old Martin Luther became a monk.

After years of terrorising fear of God’s wrath He came to an understanding of justification by faith and not by doing good works.

Revelation of God’s grace came whilst teaching on the Psalms and studying Romans during 1513-1514,

"At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."

A couple of great quotes

‘It is essential to the heart of the gospel to insist that God declares us to be just or righteous not on the basis of our actual condition of righteousness or holiness, but rather on the basis of Christ's perfect righteousness, which he thinks of as belonging to us. This was the heart of the difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism at the Reformation. Protestantism since the time of Martin Luther has insisted that justification does not change us internally and it is not a declaration based in any way on any goodness that we have in ourselves’ (Wayne Grudem)

‘Regeneration is an act of God in us; justification is a judgment of God with respect to us. The distinction is like that of the distinction between the act of a surgeon and the act of a judge. The surgeon, when he removes an inward cancer, does something in us. That is not what a judge does-he gives a verdict regarding our judicial status. If we are innocent he declares accordingly.

The purity of the gospel is bound up with the recognition of this distinction. If justification is confused with regeneration or sanctification, then the door is opened for the perversion of the gospel at its centre. Justification is still the article of the standing or falling of the Church.’ (John Murray)

To memorise/meditate upon

Romans 3:28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Romans 8:30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

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