Justification By Faith, Free Online Course 1, Lesson 3
Justification By Faith, Free Online Course 1, Lesson 3
The Doctrine Of Justification By Faith
The Scripture makes it clear that all men are sinners. In Romans 3: 23 we read "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God". In Psalm 51:5 we read, "Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me".
Thus every person is a transgressor in front of God, and every man, woman, and child is more or less conscious of it. They know they have trespassed, and just as every guilty person feels a need to justify himself, every sinner also yearns for relief. However, they also know that as trespassers they cannot be ‘justified’ because justification actually belongs to a person who is innocent. The only relief that a sinner and a violator can hope is "pardon" and not justification. The greater the offense, the more difficult would be a pardon. Further, the more grave the offense, the higher needs to be the position or rank of the office or judge before he can grant pardon. Everybody knows these things because these observations are part of all social life from the most primitive to the most advanced societies.
While trespassers and criminals are punished in all societies, a more lenient attitude is usually show to the repentant person. Many a times the period of imprisonment of the repentant person is reduced, or converted into a fine, after paying which he is set free. In rare cases even pardon is granted by the highest authority in response to appeals for mercy coupled with grounds for compassion, such as compassion towards his parents who need his care and support. All man-made religions take advantage of these practices and have built into themselves rituals for pleasing God (the highest authority) through alms, penance, and special rituals. The idea is to get a "remission" from the highest authority in the universe. Many of them even talk about forgiveness and cleansing of sins in lieu of harder work. There is, however, no question of ‘justification’ for the guilty either in human law or in man-made religions because man known that only a sinless and basically innocent person can be rightly "justified" by the judge.
The same was the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church: that man can get a remission and forgiveness, in lieu for penances, alms, and intercessory prayers of saints. The faithful were exhorted to lead a devout life, doing all what was expected of them to see if they might be able to secure a remission from punishment. There was no talk of justification (in the Biblical sense) because no judge of integrity can ever declare a trespasser as innocent. The maximum he could do was to offer pardon, making the recipient a "pardoned sinner" not righteous or innocent. However, this is not what God has in store for those who accept the Lord Jesus as their Savior. He both pardons as well as justifies, and that is part of the great Biblical doctrine of Justification by faith. It is amazing, but it does happen. God wants it that way and He has a way for doing the impossible. It can roughly be stated the following way.
The First Step, Salvation By Grace: As mentioned before, what a trespasser longs for is forgiveness and relief from punishment. This is exactly what God does first.
In Romans 6: 23 the Scripture says, "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus". In John 3:16 we read, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have Everlasting life". While man struggles, God has already paid the cost and opened the way to all.
Man is alienated from God as long as he is a sinner condemned unto death. However, once he comes to God and obtained forgiveness and salvation, God can now work in him because he no longer a sinner condemned to death but a is a child of God with a special destiny. This is exactly what we see in the next stage.
The Second Step, Union With Christ: Once a person trusts in Christ and accepts Him as personal Savior, God forgives him and unites him with the Body of Christ. The fact that the Universal Church and its members are the Body of Christ is mentioned in Ephesians and Colossians. In Ephesians 2: 16 we read, "And that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross". In Colossians 1:24 we read, "…For His body’s sake, which is the church". And in Ephesians 12:22 and 23 we read, "… head over all things to the Church, which is His body…".
Taking a regenerate believer and uniting him with the body of Christ is a special activity of the Holy. In I Corinthians 12: 13 the Spirit of God says, "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body". Here baptism refers to identifying or uniting two entities — the believer and Christ.
There was no need for God to lay the penalty of our sins on Christ. That He chose to do so is His grace. Similarly, there is no need for God to unite the repentant sinner with the body of Christ. However, He does so in His grace because this union opens a way for God to do many things for the new believers. This union makes it possible for God to grant many things to the believers that He had granted to Christ because now the believer is in union with Christ. Thus, many things which Christ has can now be imputed to those who are in union with Christ.
The New Testament repeatedly uses the expression "in Him" and "in Christ". This is a reference to things which are given, or attributed, or imputed to believers "in union with Christ". We must remember that not all what Christ has can be given or imputed to others. But certain things like His Holiness can be attributed or reckoned to others at least positionally. This is exactly what happens in justification. Something is legally reckoned in the account of the believer.
The Third Stage, Justification: Once a new believer is united with the body of Christ, God grants many things to the believer which He grants to Christ — because we are part of His body. Sonship of believers is a good example of this. God also imputes many things to believers which Christ has, and the best example here is justification.
It can be understood in the following way: Once a believer is united to the body of Christ, God views that person as part of the body of Christ. As a consequence, the righteousness which is Christ’s so that God views that person as righteous (in Christ).
Here it should be understood clearly that Christ’s righteousness in NOT transmitted or infused to a believer. On the contrary it is only attributed, imputed or legally reckoned to the believer. This is not a physical transmission to a believer, but only a legal accounting. This our "position" in Christ.
Thus this person who was a sinner till yesterday, stands as righteous in Christ today. God no longer sees him as a sinner but as a righteous person or a "saint" in the language of New Testament. This act of declaring and viewing a sinner as a person who is "not guilty", who is righteous, who is a saint, because he is imputed or covered with the righteousness of Christ is called justification. A sinner and trespasser cannot be justified. But when the penalty has been paid, and when he is covered with the cloth of Christ’s righteousness, he who was a sinner now stands justified as a saint.
The Process Of Justification: In the previous pages, we presented a split up picture God’s work in several stages for the sake of clarity and understanding. In reality, these and several other things take place in the life of a believer simultaneously at the moment he believers in Christ. God the Father does all these things in His grace so that He can give us a new nature, a new identity, and a new destiny. However, it is always helpful from the human perspective to view these divine actions in a more expanded from for our understanding. That is what we have done in the previous pages. God forgives our sins, unites us, and we stand justified, all in one go and simultaneously.
The big question now is, does man play any role in his justification. Or can he do anything to expedite or assure his justification. All man-made religions and also the Christian cults assert that man can (and ought to) work for his justification, and thus hasten the process. To establish this man-made theory, all of them in one form or other teach that man has a "spark of the divine" in him that can be nurtured to grow and make him holy or justified. Of all the world religions, Hinduism teaches this in the most potent from, because they claim that man is god and all what he needs is to shed his illusion that he is a mere mortal, and embrace the truth that he is god. According to them, the moment man realizes that he is the very god of the Universe, he is liberated [free from all guilt and sin]. The Roman Catholics teach to the effect that this "spark" is transmitted to the child at the moment of his baptism. There is a whole range of teaching between these two, and ultimately all of them amount to "work for your justification" concept. However, this is not what the Bible teaches.
Justification is a gift of God, an unmerited favour from Him, and He does not demand or accept anything in lieu of it. In Romans 3: 24 the Holy Spirit reminds that, "Being justified FREELY by grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus". This is a reminder that redemption came first and that justification is granted freely and non-meritoriously along with that. The scripture repeatedly reminds that human work is not the basis of justification. "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Romans 4:5). Only personal faith, a totally non-meritorious response from man, can bring divine justification to him. This is "justification by faith" or Sola Fide, as repeatedly proclaimed (in Latin) by the Reformers. This is declared in many places in the Scripture including Roman 3:28 where we read, "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law". In Gelatins 2:16 we read, "knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even as we believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified".
Justification By Faith, Free Online Course 1, Lesson 3
The Doctrine Of Justification By Faith
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