Justification
Synonyms: Made accepted, deemed righteous, counted worthy
Greek References: dikaiosis 1347 (Strong) cf 1342-1349
Scripture: Rom 1:16-17, Rom 3:23-28, Rom 5:9,18, Titus 3:7, James 2:24, 1Jn 3:7
Related ideas: Sufficiency, uprightness, faith and obedience, sacrifice
Synopsis: Justification in God's sight requires sufficient righteousness, sacrifice, suffering, and commitment. Like Cornelius in the Bible, we cannot have this sufficiency, and we cannot be justified, without Jesus Christ.
AN INTRODUCTORY QUESTION
We start off this lesson by noticing something which many people, including some professing Christians, cannot explain. We can observe this problem in "good people" generally, but let's look at a particular example, a man named Cornelius. We read of him in Acts 10:22, where he is described as "a righteous man".
The people who knew Cornelius said he was a "just" or upright man. But they were not alone in that opinion. God thought so too. The Holy Spirit has already described Cornelius as "a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always" (Acts 10:2). When the angel appeared to Cornelius, the angel said, "Cornelius! Your prayers and alms have come up for a memorial before God!" (Acts 10:3-4).
This introduces a problem. If Cornelius was such a righteous man, if he was "just", why did the angel of God then tell him to "Send for Simon Peter who will tell you words whereby you and all your household will be saved" (Acts 11:13-14)? Can you explain that? Why did Cornelius need to be saved when he was such a good man in the sight of both God and men?
Part of the answer lies in the nature of God. "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all" (1Jn 1:5). The Bible refers to that as the "glory" of God. God's glory is absolute, perfect.
The Bible clearly states that even good people like Cornelius do not attain to the glorious light of the absolute righteousness of God. "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God..." (Rom 3:23) That included Cornelius. He was good, he was very very good, but he fell well short of perfection. So he needed to be "saved".
Now we need to ask what Cornelius needed to be "saved" from. You can easily see that he did not need to be saved from his goodness. What he needed to be saved from was his shortfall. He fell short of the glory of God, and the consequences of that were horrendous. Again the Bible is clear: "Death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Rom 5:12). That includes Cornelius. He was a good man in so many ways, yet he had sinned, and therefore died. (Of course that does not mean he was dead physically, but spiritually. In other words he had lost eternal life, and was facing eternal death. That's why I used the word horrendous.)
THE FOUR ISSUES OF SUFFICIENCY
Having dealt with that introductory question, we now come to study this problem of shortfall, which exists even in good people. This shortfall can be rectified, and we can be seen by God as sufficient without his having to lower his standard. That process of rectification is called "justification".
But how can this be done? And in what would this imputed sufficiency consist? Since we do fall short, how can our insufficiency be justly regarded as sufficiency? We are going to look at four connected issues: righteousness, sacrifice, suffering, and commitment. We will explain these issues of sufficiency as we go along.
You should be understanding by now that popular reasoning is badly astray on the matter of goodness. Even many Christians who ought to know better, think that God is not so hard and uncompromising that he witholds eternal life from good people just because they aren't absolutely perfect in righteousness. "Surely God will overlook a few little sins if a person is truly sorry for them and makes up for them with lots of goodness"?
But God's kindness never expressed itself by compromising with evil. Look at the whole of Romans 3:23-24 -- "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
CHRIST'S GOODNESS CREDITED TO US
Now there you have the whole story. How did God's kindness find a way to save Cornelius from eternal death, the consequence of his insufficiency? Was it by lowering the divine standard to Cornelius's level? Was it by tolerating the sins of Cornelius in view of his outstanding goodness? No, Cornelius needed the goodness of Christ to be credited to him. That's why, even as good as he was, Cornelius had to "be saved".
That's what "justification" means. You cannot be accepted in your own right, but you can be "made accepted" in God's beloved Son
Just as if I'd...
I am counted righteous through the cross of Christ, just as if I'd been righteous on my own account. My shortfall is removed, and I am made perfect by the blood of Jesus, just as if I'd been perfect already.
At this critical point, we have added a new concept to our discussion of sufficient righteousness. We have introduced the idea of sufficient sacrifice, so let's now go on to talk about that.
Here is what has happened: God's standard of perfect righteousness cannot be lowered for the sake of we who fall short. But God can accept a sacrifice instead, as a means of rectifying our shortfall.
Of course, the sacrifice has to be sufficient. It would not do if the sacrifice also falls short of God's standard! An insufficient sacrifice cannot justify insufficient righteousness.
We should observe, at this point, that this problem concerning sacrifice is by no means perceived by everybody. People today can be just as confused about sacrifices, as were those who thought their animal sacrifices could be sufficient, and failed to understand that those sacrifices were only tokens of a perfect sacrifice, and could not, by themselves, take away unrighteousness.
SOLUTION TO THE SACRIFICE SHORTFALL
So when we say the solution to our shortfall is sacrifice, all we have really done is shift the problem along a bit. Where can we find a perfect sacrifice? Any sacrifice we offer to God is going to fall short of his perfect standard just as surely as we do ourselves. So while it's a lovely thought that God would accept a sacrifice in our stead, and deem us righteous by virtue of that sacrifice, it turns out to be an empty idea because our shortfall cannot be transferred to a sacrifice that itself falls short. Where on earth do we find a sacrifice that is perfect and doesn't fall short?
God demanded perfect righteousness. We could not give him that, so he demanded a perfect sacrifice instead. But we could not provide that either. So what could be done?
God long ago anticipated that obstacle. God himself could provide a perfect sacrifice for us. He could see no reason why he should reject a sacrifice just because it was from himself, not from us. What mattered was that it be perfect. It's sufficiency did not consist in our providing it. So God could solve the problem, without compromising his standard, by providing the sacrifice himself for us.
But this, too, turned out to be a lovely idea that in reality only shifted the problem along a bit more. God could provide a sacrifice, but there was a catch. God did not have a lot of options. He did not have some sort of temple storehouse packed full of unused perfect sacrifices, one of which he could select for the people of planet earth. He is not some celestial god playing at legal conundrums. He is the one true God with one perfect standard.
GOD HAD BUT ONE OPTION
The reality was that God had only one thing that he could offer sufficient to satisfy his standard. As a matter of fact, "thing" is not the right word. It was a Person; the person most special to God of all --God's Son-- the one and only Son he had. Nothing less than the sacrifice of God's only Son would do.
Since the sacrifice of God's Son was quite out of the question, the matter was hopeless, wasn't it? No, not hopeless. The necessary sacrifice wasn't out of the question. Amazing grace! God was willing to offer his only Son whom he loved so dearly. The Son himself was willing to be the perfect sacrifice for us.
The question remained, however, as to how this could be accomplished. The ramifications of all this are becoming too great for me, and I imagine for you too. We have followed the story to a point where we cannot fully understand God's reasoning. Fortunately we don't have to. God understood, and he brought about what was necessary.
WHAT GOD ORDAINED
What, then, did the wise God ordain? What should be done to accomplish the sufficient sacrifice?
FORGIVENESS ON THE BASIS OF SUBSTITUTION
Paul explains justification this way: "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2Co 5:21).
Think of Cornelius again. Cornelius had some sin in his life, as all of us do. His goodness, though exceptionally good, wasn't sufficient for God. But Christ knew no sin, so his goodness was perfect, and that was indeed good enough for God. It was so satisfyingly good in fact, that God was willing to forgive Cornelius's sin (and anybody else's) on the basis of a substitution. If the good and perfect Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice, God would accept that sacrifice in exchange for the horrendous consequences of the sins which Cornelius (and anybody else) had committed.
This, then is what it means to be "justified". It means to have our shortfall made up for by the perfect sacrifice offered to God on our behalf by the Son of God --something most wonderful
This raises the question of "expiation" --of how we compensate for our sins to God's complete satisfaction. That leads us to observe another popular misconception. This involves the question of sufficient suffering.
Many folk, even professing Christians, have the idea that you can somehow expunge sin with suffering. By yielding yourself to pain or deprivation, you purchase for yourself some grace with which to pay off your debt of sin. Some even believe that you can store up unused grace for future privilege. On the other hand, if you die without balancing the books, you can pay for your pleasure of sin on earth by a season of pain under punishment in purgatory (a purging place, a temporary hell).
That kind of thinking pervades many world religions, but it is all wrong, because it overlooks two facts,
WHY WE CANNOT PURGE OUR SINS THROUGH PUNISHMENT
THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL
The solution God saw is beautifully summed up by Peter: "For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death..." (1Pe 3:17-18). You should meditate on that, even though you might exclaim with hymn writer, "I scarce can take it in".
This, then, is the meaning of being justified. God addressed the hopeless situation where every sinner would suffer over and over, for ever and ever, yet never get one wrong righted. Instead God ordained that one sinless person (his own beloved Son) suffer once on behalf of all, and make it possible for every wrong to be made right by forgiveness.
Have we not here reached into the very heart of the gospel and the very soul of the universe and the very meaning of life? Having done that, what is there left to say? Well, there is one more issue to discuss, without which our study would not be complete. This is the issue of sufficient commitment.
It is astounding that right at this point we find a a fourth great misconception. Having seen the wonder of God's grace and the means he provided for our justification, some people show a response that is extremely strange and puzzling.
CROOKED THINKING ABOUT JUSTIFICATION
All that, praise God, is quite true, but suddenly there is a non sequitur. Suddenly they "jump to confusions" and draw a conclusion that plucks out every petal from the lovely doctrine of justification.
GOD'S INTOLERANCE OF SIN
But in the Bible doctrine of justification, there is no hint that God tolerates sin. Quite the contrary. If God tolerated sin, justification would be unnecessary.
We must remember always that God was so intolerant of sin, that it took the absolute sacrifice, that of his only begotten Son, to provide for forgiveness of sins. It was God's intolerance of sin that made salvation and justification necessary, because God demanded punishment.
It befits us therefore to respond with commitment and dedication to justification by grace. If you consider what faith and repentance really mean, you will see that they involve total commitment to Christ and to the fight against evil beginning with ourselves.
"If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, their no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation..." (Heb 10:26-31).
In other words, if our commitment is insufficient, then our justification is cancelled.
In justification by grace, God has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. But he still requires us to do what he enables us to do.
That commitment is within our power. It remains our decision at all times. If we lay aside that commitment, God lays aside our justification. And why not? Is that not perfectly just?