Justification

by Philip Graham Ryken, D.A. Carson, Timothy Keller Narrated by Ben Hunter

Overview

A concise introduction to the doctrine of justification. What does it mean to be justified? Humanity is in a desperate state; our sins separate us from the holy God. To be justified through Christ means we are covered in his righteousness and God no longer looks on us as guilty sinners. In this joyous action there is a depth of meaning and theology, and in this new booklet from the Gospel Coalition Philip Ryken directs us to the Bible's rich teaching on the subject. He begins with our need for justification as found in the opening chapters of Romans and moves on from there, covering the source of justification, the basis for justification, and the place of imputation in justification. This booklet makes for an accessible introduction to this central doctrine. Justification offers a thoughtful explanation for point 8 of the Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement. The coalition is an evangelical renewal movement dedicated to a Scripture-based reformation of ministry practices.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171720674
Publisher:	EChristian, Inc.
Publication date:	08/31/2011
Series:	The Gospel Coalition Audio Booklets
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Picture the scene: An accused criminal stands before an impartial judge to receive his just sentence. The legal proceedings begin with a court official reciting the laws of the kingdom. As he listens, the criminal starts to realize that he is doomed to be condemned, for it turns out that he has violated every single law in the book. Whatever the charge, he is certain to be found guilty. When the judge finally turns to the defendant and asks how he pleads, the man is speechless. He stands before the judge in mute terror, unable to utter anything in his defense.

The Need for Justification: Universal and Desperate

This is the desperate legal predicament described in the opening chapters of Romans. Humanity stands in the dock. The religious and the irreligious, Jews and Gentiles, believers and atheists — everyone must appear before God's throne for judgment. The standard for justice is God's perfect law. By that standard, everyone deserves to be condemned, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23); "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Rom. 3:10; cf. Ps. 14:3).

When the law is read, therefore, every commandment is an accusation. There is nothing we can say in our defense: "Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin" (Rom. 3:19–20).

The problem of humanity is sin, plain and simple. We are guilty sinners who deserve nothing except God's wrath. Nor is there anything we can do to save ourselves. God's righteous requirements cannot save us; they can only condemn us because we cannot keep them. Therefore, when we stand before God for judgment, there is not the slightest chance that we can be accepted on the basis of anything that we have done. This is not a trial in which we are innocent until proven guilty; instead, it is a trial in which we have already been proven guilty and must remain guilty until we are declared righteous.

It is only when we recognize how desperate our situation is from the legal standpoint that we can begin to understand the biblical doctrine of justification. A powerful example of a sinner's desperation comes from the life of Donald Smarto. While studying for the priesthood, Smarto performed the role of the cardinal in a religious play. To help him look the part, his monastery had arranged for him to borrow ornate robes from his diocese. "I was excited by this," Smarto writes in his autobiography, "and when they arrived, I went to my room, locked the door and carefully removed the scarlet cassock and sash and cape from the suit bag."

As Smarto put on these clothes before each night's performance, they became a growing obsession:

Though the play began at eight o'clock, I found myself putting the robes on earlier and earlier. It took about half an hour to fasten all the buttons, but by the last days of the performance, I was dressing by two o'clock in the afternoon, five hours before the beginning of the play. I would strut back and forth in front of a full-length mirror, and as I did, a feeling would come over me. I stood for the longest time looking at my reflection, and I liked what I saw. ... I had a sense that I was holy. I simply didn't think I was a sinner; I felt confident that my works pleased God.

Smarto's false confidence was shattered when he saw what the person under the robes was really like. It happened at the movies:

A bishop came on the stage in the movie. Dressed in a beautiful vestment studded with sparkling gems, he walked out slowly from behind a curtain. As he walked, however, a large gust of wind ripped open his vestment, revealing a rotted skeleton underneath.

In an instant, my mind said, That's me. ... I immediately blocked out the thought. ... "That's not me!" I said. ... I wanted to push the film images out of my mind, but it didn't work. ... I kept trying to make myself feel better. "Make this feeling go away," I said to God. "I am not a hypocrite. I am not an actor. I'm a good person!" I kept thinking of all the good things I did. ... Yet, these thoughts didn't bring consolation.

It is only when we see the stark and ugly reality of our sin that we are truly ready to turn to God for help — specifically, for the forgiveness and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. As James Buchanan wrote in his famous book on justification, "The best preparation for the study of this doctrine is neither great intellectual ability, nor much scholastic learning, but a conscience impressed with a sense of our actual condition as sinners in the sight of God."

The Centrality of Justification: "Hinge," "Founcation," "Chief Article"

Having described our predicament in all its miserable detail, the apostle Paul announces that a legal remedy has been made available: "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known" (Rom. 3:21). The words "but now" mark a major transition in Paul's argument. More than that, they introduce the great turning point in the history of salvation. Up to this point we stand condemned. God's perfect law tells us that we cannot be declared righteous at the bar of God's justice. But now a righteousness from God has been revealed. God has provided the way for us to be declared righteous. Or to put it in the biblical way, he has provided a way for us to be justified.

There is more to salvation than justification by faith. Yet without exaggerating its importance, it must be said that this doctrine holds a place near the center of the gospel. Justification is one of the central themes of Scripture, especially the New Testament, where various forms of the word "justify" (dikaioo) appear more than two hundred times. The prevalence of this vocabulary serves as an index to the importance of justification in biblical theology.

The centrality of justification has been recognized by many theologians in the history of the Christian church. John Calvin called it "the main hinge on which salvation turns." The English Reformer Thomas Cranmer described it as "the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion." Perhaps most famously of all, Martin Luther called justification "the chief article of Christian doctrine," so that "when justification has fallen, everything has fallen." Whether we think of justification as the hinge, the foundation, or the standing-and-falling article of salvation, there is no hope of salvation without it. This is the doctrine, said Luther on another occasion, that "begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour."

The Meaning of Justification: To Declare Righteous

Justification is central to the Christian gospel because it answers the fundamental question, "How can a sinful human being be righteous before a holy God?" The answer lies in the biblical teaching about justification, which The Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement defines as follows:

We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God.

The vocabulary of justification comes from the law court, where "to justify" is a declarative verb. In its noun form "justification" is a legal word that refers to a person's judicial standing. The biblical terms surrounding justification find their origin in legal relationships. The Greek verb dikaioo, which means "to justify," is essentially a forensic term that "denotes basically a sentence of acquittal." To justify is to render a favorable verdict, to declare a person to be in the right, to announce forgiveness in legal terms. Justification is vindication. It is a decision of the court stating that someone has a right relationship to God and his law. It is the pronouncement that — as far as the law is concerned — the defendant is not guilty but innocent.

One good way to define justification is to contrast it with its opposite: condemnation. To condemn is to declare a person unrighteous. It is the judicial verdict that — as far as the law is concerned — he is guilty. This act of condemnation is not what makes a criminal guilty, of course. His own actions make him guilty, and he becomes guilty the very moment he violates the law. When he is finally condemned, therefore, the court simply pronounces him to be what he already is: a guilty sinner.

Justification is the opposite of condemnation. To justify is to pronounce a verdict of innocence. In justification a person is not made righteous, but declared righteous. Justification is not a process, therefore, but an act. It is not the impartation of righteousness through faith plus works and the sacraments, as some theologians have tried to claim, but the imputation of righteousness by faith alone.

The true meaning of justification — which is "legally to declare righteous," not "actually to make righteous" — can be demonstrated from Scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy 25:1 the Bible teaches that "when men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty." Obviously, a judge does not make a person guilty; he simply declares him to be guilty, thereby condemning him to his sentence. By analogy, the word "acquit" (which is really the Hebrew verb hatsdiq, "to justify") means "to declare righteous."

Or consider Proverbs 17:15: "Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — the Lorddetests them both." Here again, the word "acquit," or "justify" (hatsdiq), obviously refers to a legal declaration. By lamenting the justification of the guilty, God is not trying to stop anyone from transforming the guilty into fine, upstanding citizens. If justifying the guilty means to make them righteous, surely God would be in favor of it! His objection rather is to declaring the guilty to be innocent, which would be false and pernicious.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find justification used in much the same way. As in the Old Testament, to justify is the opposite of to condemn. This is clear, for example, from the contrast Paul draws between the sin of Adam and the gift of Christ: "The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification" (Rom. 5:16). To justify, then, means to declare that a defendant is innocent of a charge. In the context of salvation, it is God's declaration that a person is acceptable in his sight and now stands rightly before him.

Note that justification means something more than acquittal. To acquit is to declare a person "not guilty." But in justification God does not simply clear a sinner of all charges; he declares a sinner to be positively righteous. Justification is God's legal declaration that, on the basis of the perfect life and the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, received by faith, a sinner is as righteous as his own beloved Son.

Some theologians object that this places too much emphasis on judicial categories. They object to the idea that the cross was a legal transaction in which an innocent victim was made to pay the penalty for the crimes of others. Yet the Bible teaches forensic (i.e., judicial) justification — and with good reason. While there are many ways to describe God's saving grace, the legal category of justification is fundamental to the gospel. Since God is a judge as well as a father, our relationship to him must be a right relationship. To eliminate the legal basis for this rightness (i.e., justification) is to make it impossible for a sinner to know God in a saving way. Even worse, it is to believe in a God of unjust love who forgives people without having any right to do so.

The Source of Justification: God's Free Grace

If righteousness is necessary for justification, where does it come from? As we have seen, our problem is that we have no righteousness of our own. So what is the source of justifying righteousness?

The source of our justification is God's free grace. The apostle Paul says it very simply: we "are justified freely by his grace" (Rom. 3:24). The Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement gives a more expansive answer:

Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

To say that we are justified by grace is to say that justification is far more than we deserve. It is an act of God's unmerited favor. As Thomas Cranmer wrote in his Homily on Salvation, "No man can, by his own deeds, be justified and made righteous before God: but every man, of necessity, is constrained to seek for another righteousness or justification, to be received at God's own hands." The message of the gospel is that God offers this righteousness to sinners as a gift: "It is God who justifies" (Rom. 8:33).

This brings us to a disputed point in New Testament interpretation. The gift of God's justifying righteousness is mentioned twice in Romans 3, both in verse 21 ("But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify") and in verse 22 ("This righteousness from God"). Technically speaking, however, these verses do not speak of a "righteousness from God," as the New International Version has it, but of the "righteousness of God."

There is more than one way to interpret this phrase. Perhaps the word "of" in the phrase "righteousness of God" is what grammarians call a "possessive genitive." An example is the phrase "the people of God," where the people in question belong to God, and God is the one to whom they belong. So perhaps the "righteousness of God" is simply the righteousness God possesses, which belongs to him and which he displays in salvation. We encounter this idea in Psalm 98:2, among other places: "The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations."

There is another possibility, however. The words "of God" may explain where the righteousness comes from — what grammarians call a "genitive of origin." An example is the phrase "music of Beethoven," where the music in question finds its origin in Beethoven. If the "righteousness of God" is a genitive of origin, then God is the origin of the righteousness. Obviously, this is the interpretation that the New International Version favors when it speaks of "a righteousness from God." On this reading, God is the source of the righteousness that he bestows to sinners.

Which interpretation is correct? Does the righteousness belong to God, or does it come from God as a gift? Certainly both statements are true. Righteousness belongs to God as one of his essential attributes. Indeed, the dramatic conclusion of Paul's argument in Romans 3 is that even when he justifies sinners, of all people, God still preserves his righteousness! In justification, God "[demonstrates] his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26).

Yet the righteousness of God is also "that righteousness which His righteousness requires Him to require," and which he graciously offers as a gift to everyone who believes. There is righteousness for us from God, therefore — righteousness that God not only owns and demonstrates, but also bestows. The issue at stake in justification is not simply whether God is righteous, but whether we can be found righteous. Paul seems to cast doubt on this in verse 20, where he reaches the alarming conclusion that "no one will be declared righteous in his sight."

Now in verse 21 he announces the good news that we can be declared righteous before God, not because of our own righteousness, but because of righteousness that comes from God. This interpretation is confirmed by verse 22, which makes it clear that the righteousness of God comes "to all who believe." It is further confirmed by Romans 5:17, which speaks of those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness.

Righteousness is not merely an attribute that God displays, therefore, but also a gift that he dispenses. To use a memorable phrase from John Stott, justification is God's "righteous way of 'righteoussing' the unrighteous."

If we are declared righteous on the basis of a gift, then the source of our justification must be the grace of God. For that is what grace is: God's free gift for utterly undeserving sinners. This is the gift-righteousness Paul has in mind when he testifies to the Philippians that he wants to "be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith" (Phil. 3:9; cf. Heb. 11:7).

(Continues…)

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