Order of Salvation - 6. Justification

That hopefully is a helpful guide just to jog your memory of anything that we've covered before. But just very briefly, last week we talked about conversion. So we talked a lot about what God does to sort of, by his grace, bring about a response. Well, we respond in conversion by turning around, by repenting of sin and placing our faith in Jesus Christ. Well, today we are going to begin talking about the benefits that we receive when we are in Christ, when we are united in Him by faith. And first of all, that is justification. And of course, there are many, many passages in the New Testament that speak of this great blessing of justification. Passages like Romans 5.1 says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Or later in Romans chapter 8, it says, and those whom God predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. We could just enumerate lots of passages that speak about this. But I want to start with a question for you, which is, what is justification? Is there anyone that wants to venture a definition or Try to articulate what you think justification is. Nick? Okay. Okay. Amelia? Yeah, okay, good. Jay? Being declared righteous, great. You guys are all hitting the nail on the head here. Yes, I defined it just to be concise as when God declares us righteous before him. There's a lot more we can flesh out and I've included four sort of clarifications on your notes that I'm gonna briefly discuss that kind of help flesh this out a bit. First is that justification is a legal declaration. So justification is not about being made righteous, but declared righteous. It's not about an inward change, but a change in our outward standing. So for example, if you were taken to court for robbery, you would either be justified or condemned, either declared innocent or guilty. The judge does not change anything about whether or not you committed the crime. And the judge does not change anything about how inwardly good or bad your heart is. But he issues a ruling that gives you one of two standings, either innocent and free to go, or else guilty as a convicted felon and liable to some punishment. So in the same sort of way, justification before God is when God declares us to have a new standing before Him. And so even though we are sinners, and we continue to have sinful hearts, in justification God declares us to be righteous in His sight, and thereby qualified for eternal life in His kingdom. So it's a legal declaration. Now, How do we know that that's what justification means? What if someone says, well, how do you know that, or prove that to me? What might you do to try to clarify that justification really is a legal declaration? See what the Word says. OK, yeah, so we could point to Scripture. And any thoughts about where we could point to? Romans 4. You said Romans 4? That's mine. OK, good. Three and four, yeah, so Paul talks a lot about justification and as we kind of unpack his argument, I think it's going to clarify a lot about what it means. Great. I think one really important thing is going to be to actually look at the Greek word. that gets translated justification, because what does that word really mean? In fact, historically, in part, there's confusion over this because of the Latin vulgate, which a lot of theologians use for a long time, that translates it in Latin, justificare, so you get justus, which means just, and ficare, which means to make. And so you have this more ambiguous to make just, which can be sort of construed as making better. And in the Roman Catholic Church, they define justification much more broadly as this sort of umbrella that encompasses sanctification and regeneration and other things. Um, but I actually think when you look at scripture for the Greek, which the word is, uh, which is to, to declare righteous, that's really what that means. You see that sense. So for example, in Deuteronomy 25, one, uh, it's talking about judges and God says that the judges in Israel shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. And if you look in the Septuagint, that's what that LXX is. It's very weird, but that just means the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So Old Testament's in Hebrew. Septuagint would have been a translation that was fairly contemporary to the time of the New Testament, just written a little bit before that. That translates, judges shall justify the righteous as dikai'o. It's that same verb. And so the idea here is that this word that gets used as justification and all of that, well, it's used in this kind of context. legal context it's the act of a judge and it's clearly speaking about a declaration by the judge right it's not saying that judges shouldn't reform the ways of wicked people that would be a good thing but this is saying no no a judge should not declare somebody to be righteous Who's not? You know, judges should declare righteous people who actually are. And on the other hand, judges should condemn the wicked. So people who have done wickedly should be condemned. So the opposite of to justify would be condemn. And again, condemn does not mean, you know, to sort of cause someone to become bad. It means to declare them guilty. Declare them to be bad. So it's legal, it's declarative. We see this again in Isaiah 5.23. It's the same situation. It speaks of those who justify the wicked for a bribe. So again, it's this bad sense of justifying someone who shouldn't be justified. And then we come to the New Testament. There's a number of passages we look at, but Romans 8, verses 33 and 34, Paul asks, who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Right, so it's a charge that would be brought. No, no, God is the one who justifies. He's the one who declares this person to be righteous, to be sort of not guilty of the charges. Who is to condemn? So again, condemnation is the opposite of justification. And all of this points us to the fact that the whole scandal of the gospel is that as Romans 4, 5 declares, God justifies the ungodly. Not that God merely reforms the ungodly, but he justifies them. That people like us who are sinners, God actually declares us to be righteous before him. Romans 4, 5 says, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. So God justifies ungodly sinners who have no works or righteousness of their own, but he justifies us through faith in Christ. So it's a legal declaration. Now, how does this work? And okay, so how is this just for God to do this? Well, the next thing we need to understand about justification is that it is by imputation. So this word imputation just means to account or credit. So it's the idea that our sin is imputed or counted to Christ and His righteousness is imputed or counted to us. So Jesus on the cross does not actually, you know, become sinful. It's not that he actually sinned in some way, but he's treated as if he was sinful because our sin is credited or counted or imputed to him and his righteousness to us. We see that in Romans 4, 5, where Paul talks about, and the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. It's not that our faith actually makes us righteous, but it's counted as righteousness because, as we'll talk about, our faith unites us with Christ. And through union with Christ, His righteousness is ours, and our sin is counted to Him. Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, it says that God made Him, that is Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So there's this great exchange. And again, the only way to make sense of that verse is through this logic of imputation, right? Because it's not that Jesus actually became sinful. It's that Jesus bore our sin. Our sin was counted to him. God made him sin in that sense. So in the same way, we might be made righteous in that sense, that we, his righteousness is counted to us. And then that brings us thirdly to the fact that justification is both negative and positive. Okay, so negatively in justification, our sin is taken away. Our sin is imputed to Christ and thereby forgiven. But then justification has a positive aspect as well, which is that Christ's own righteousness is imputed to us. So if there were just the negative side, if all justification was forgiveness, well that would basically just get us back to having a clean slate before God, like Adam in the garden. that wouldn't positively merit us or earn us eternal life before God. So justification is more than just forgiveness. It's more than just a clean slate. It's actually the very righteousness of Christ being credited to our account so that we become worthy and deserving of eternal life, not because of what we have done, but because of the perfectly righteous life of Christ lived for us as the new Adam, as our covenant head and representative. And then finally, in view of all that, it brings us to this fourth point that justification is instantaneous and perfect. So justification is not something that's a process that happens over time. It occurs the moment that we believe, as we said earlier in Romans 5.1, therefore you have been, having been justified by faith, right, past tense. The moment we believe, we are instantaneously justified before God. Our status before God changes from guilty sinners to righteous saints. And it's once and for all, and it's perfect. I mean, if we are justified based on the very righteousness of Christ, what could be added to that? I mean, how could we ever improve it? We can't. We are as righteous before God now in Christ as we will be in glorified bodies in heaven. Because justification is this instantaneous, perfect act of God through Christ. So that's what justification is. I want to pause here and open up for any questions about just what it is, anything I've covered so far. So the crediting of Christ's righteousness to our account. Is that, so it's kind of our sin is credited him, which would get us sort of back to sort of zero. But his righteousness to us is the positive. Yeah, good question. All right, well, my next question for you is, okay, so how then is justification received? By faith? And I would want to add to that by faith alone. Right, so this is where the distinction is, you know, the solas of the Reformation. And everybody can agree, well, it's by faith, but the key is it's by faith alone. So, for example, Romans 4, 5, as we already saw, this stresses that it's to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Also in Galatians 2 verses 15 and 16, Paul can write, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. So it is not by works, not by works of the law, but by faith. Faith alone. Faith is what unites us or connects us to Christ. And this is why the second point I have on there is it's through union with Christ. And the key is seeing that when we place our faith in Christ, we are united to him in such a way that his righteousness becomes our righteousness. And our sin is paid for by him. Your faith is just what connects us to Him. And then in Christ, we have all the fullness of the blessings that God gives us in Him. As Ephesians 1 verse 3 says, we're blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. There's like this great umbrella of blessings, and chief among them is this great blessing of justification. This also means that we're not justified by the quality of our faith, but by the object of our faith. Maybe one way to think about it is faith justifies us in the sense that an extension cord powers a light. Right? The extension cord is not the sort of source of the power. It just connects the light to the power source. Well, in the same way, our faith is just that link between us and Christ. And through faith that unites us with him, we receive all the benefits and blessings of salvation, and he has taken our sin. So, we're not saved by the quality of our faith. but the object. Any questions about that and how we receive justification? Nick? Yeah, I would just, the only thing I would, I guess, kind of like add to that is that even though we're not saved by the quality but rather the object, that faith does possess a quality. Right? That it's a substance of things or for the evidence of things not seen. And so in a sense, and I guess in one sense you could say that we are, in some ways, obviously we're ultimately saved by God, but we are saved to some degree by the quality of our faith, whether that faith is genuine faith or whether it's dead faith. But yeah. I was just thinking that, and then I don't think we've gotten to this last question yet, have we? Not yet. So unless there's any other questions, let's turn there. So how then should understanding justification affect our lives as Christians? It should take the burden off of us knowing that the work was already done for us. Yeah. Great. Other thoughts? makes us eternally thankful. You know, a lot of times we underestimate thankfulness, but according to Romans 1, a lack of thankfulness is actually the mark of a sinner that's becoming reprobate, right? I mean, is that they would not glorify him as God or give him thanks. So, I mean, it literally is the difference between darkness and light, to give a God that kind of thanksgiving. What are the thoughts? Emily? Just a question. So you mentioned Catholicism in this. Is this one of the key points that they differ from this one? Yes. Yeah. Are you asking about within justification or just? No, just justification. Yes. This would definitely be a key dividing line. Yeah. In what sense? Well, so they would disagree with justification by faith alone. That would be sort of key to it. And then sort of like, rather than by imputation, they're going to say it's through infusion. And so the whole process of how the cross works and how salvation works, they're going to say, well, it's sort of we receive grace through the sacraments. And justification is this whole process that At the end of the day, they're gonna say God will only justify those who are inwardly sort of righteous in and of themselves. So they would sort of say the Protestant view creates a legal fiction. And so that's, it's a bit complicated to kind of unpack all the differences, but hopefully that's helpful as a starting point. David? I'll say give us peace. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think, I've heard that a couple ways, and yeah, this idea of peace and especially assurance, I think is a huge thing. I know in a counter-reformation, a Catholic theologian, I think Cardinal Bellarmine, he said, you know, the great sort of heresy of Protestants is the doctrine of assurance. The idea that we can be sure that we're saved, I think from his perspective, well, that's just, you know, why be holy if you know you're going to heaven? You know, that was viewed as a very negative thing, and yet that was championed by the reformers, that we can actually know we have eternal life. Because it's not based on how righteous I've become or how I measure up, it's based on Christ and His righteousness. I love this quote from John Bunyan's autobiography. He says, but one day as I was passing into the field, with some dashes on my conscience, fearing yet that all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul. Your righteousness is in heaven. I thought I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand. There was my righteousness. Wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me that I lacked his righteousness, for that was ever before him. Moreover, I saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse. For my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now did my chains fall off, my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons. My temptations also fled away. From that time, those dreadful scriptures of God quit troubling me. Now I went home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. So what a beautiful way to put that, that there's this peace, this comfort, and this eternal joy to realize that we are saved not by what we have done, but what Christ has done for us in this free, present reality of justification. I think, going back to gratitude, I think justification, it really clarifies the grace of the gospel. You know, there's all these ways we can sort of, like we sort of think, yes, I'm saved by grace, but we kind of keep working works back into it. And justification is just so clear. No, no, no. You are not declared righteous before God based on your performance, based on how you've tried to make up for your sin, how repentant you are. It's not even, you know, how quality your faith is. I mean, it's based on Christ, what He has done for us in His perfect life. and how he has paid the price through his death. We stand righteous before God. One other thought I had, just as we think about the application of justification, really the opposite of the fear of people like Cardinal Bellarmine. They're thinking, well, if we have assurance, that's going to sort of take away our incentive to pursue righteousness. I think the logic of scripture is the other way. It says, if you are sort of trying to earn your salvation, you will wind up paralyzed, ultimately in sin. But when you understand the assurance that justification gives, it sets us free. and that freedom actually becomes freedom to stop living in sin and to begin to walk in love. I love the way that the apostle Paul puts it near the end of Galatians. So he's been making this whole argument about justification and how it's not by works of the law, but through faith in Christ alone. And then in chapter five, verse 12, Paul tells them, and us, for you were called to freedom. only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. And if you just think about that, like if you think that you were justified by, you know, keeping the law, it's like you get up in the morning and what are you worried about? Okay, am I performing enough acts of righteousness for God to accept me? And you become actually very inward focused, like, am I being righteous enough? Like the Pharisees. But Paul's saying if you understand justification, you realize, like, I am already forgiven. I am already accepted. I am already just. So what am I supposed to do with my life? Well, I have this wonderful freedom so that through love, can serve others. I can take my eyes off myself, I can stop worrying about my standing before God, and I can actually begin to concentrate on loving others and serving them. And then we wind up actually fulfilling the law much more than we would without it. I kind of think of this illustration heard a pastor use one time where he said it was some like physics class or something there's only like five people in the class and they all love physics but they're sort of intimidated like oh no this professor's gonna be really tough and you know they're kind of worried about the grade but they just want to learn physics and at the beginning of the class the professor's like you all have an A now let's study the material. And it's like the burden and the pressure of getting the grade is gone. And there's this freedom to actually just focus on learning and studying the material. Well, we have that same thing. It's like we are just before God and now we get to serve Him. And our gratitude and our joy should motivate eager service for others. Any final questions? I think it was a focus. I heard it one time, like it was a man going back, and he kept going back, and everything he was doing, he was like, God, forgive me of this, am I okay with you? And the guy's saying, yes, yes. And then he's back and forth back here, and he's saying, and God finally says, yes, I told you, I am good with you now, it's Christ. Now, go and love those, like that. How does this relate to when Paul talks about running the race and maybe that language about falling out of it? I think one key ingredient, and it does go back to this, we are justified by faith, and there is a question, okay, do I actually trust in Christ at all? Not is my faith this perfect quality, but is it real? And so scripture is clear that if our life is demonstrating just no trust in Christ, well, we don't have this great confidence, well, I'm once saved, always saved, I pray to prayer, I walk the aisle, that kind of thing. So it should drive us back to say, I am only saved through Christ, and I need to cling to him. But at the same time, we can have this wonderful assurance that, yes, I do trust in Christ, and therefore, my sin is forgiven, and his righteousness is mine. So. Hope that's helpful. I think we're out of time, but we can talk more after. So let me go ahead and pray for us. Lord, we do thank you so much for this wonderful blessing of justification. We pray that you would help us to grow in our understanding of it, and that because of it, we would have joy, we would have assurance, and we would walk in the freedom that Christ has saved us for, and that through love, we would serve one another. It's in his name we pray. Amen.