1.
Those whom God effectually calleth, He also freely justifieth:
(Rom. 8:30+, Rom. 3:24+) not by infusing righteousness into them, but by
pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as
righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for
Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of
believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their
righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ
unto them, (Rom. 4:5+–8+, 2 Cor. 5:19+,21+, Rom. 3:22+,24+–25,27–28+, Tit. 3:5+,7+, Eph. 1:7+, Jer. 23:6+, 1 Cor. 1:30+–31+, Rom. 5:17+–19+) they
receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which
faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. (Acts 10:44+,
Gal. 2:16+, Phil. 3:9+, Acts 13:38+–39+, Eph. 2:7+–8)
2.
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His
righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: (John 1:12+,
Rom. 3:28+, Rom. 5:1+) yet is it not alone in the person justified, but
is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith,
but worketh by love. (James 2:17+,22+,26+, Gal. 5:6+)
3.
Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt
of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and
full satisfaction to His Father’s justice in their behalf. (Rom. 5:8+–10+,19+, 1 Tim. 2:5+–6+, Heb. 10:10+,14+, Dan. 9:24+,26+, Isa. 53:4+–6,10–12+) Yet, in as much as He was given by the Father for them;
(Rom. 8:32+) and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead;
(2 Cor. 5:21+, Matt. 3:17+, Eph. 5:2+) and both, freely, not for any thing
in them; their justification is only of free grace; (Rom. 3:24+, Eph. 1:7+) that both the exact justice, and rich grace of God might be
glorified in the justification of sinners. (Rom. 3:26+, Eph. 2:7+)
4.
God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect,
(Gal. 3:8+, 1 Pet. 1:2+,19+–20+, Rom. 8:30+) and Christ did, in the fulness
of time, die for their sins, and rise for their justification: (Gal. 4:4+, 1 Tim. 2:6+, Rom. 4:25+) nevertheless, they are not justified, until
the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them.
(Col. 1:21+–22+, Gal. 2:16+, Tit. 3:4+–7)
5. God doth
continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; (Matt. 6:12+,
1 John 1:7+,9+, 1 John 2:1+–2+) and, although they can never fall from the
state of justification, (Luke 22:32+, John 10:28+, Heb. 10:14+) yet they
may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have
the light of His countenance restored unto them, until they humble
themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and
repentance. (Ps. 89:31+–33+, Ps. 51:7+–12+, Ps. 32:5+, Matt. 26:75+, 1 Cor. 11:30+,32+, Luke 1:20+)
6. The justification of
believers under the old testament was, in all these respects, one and
the same with the justification of believers under the new testament.
(Gal. 3:9+,13+–14+, Rom. 4:22+–24+, Heb. 13:8+)
The doctrine
of justification is the heart and core of the gospel, the “good news”
that God by grace alone justifies sinners through faith alone in Christ
alone apart from the works of the law. This centrality of justification
by faith alone is evident by the fact that when Paul begins to
elucidate the “gospel of God,” declaring that “in the gospel a
righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith,
from first to last” (Rom. 1:17+; see also Gal. 3:8+), he does so in terms
of justification by faith.43 Consequently, great care must be taken in
teaching this doctrine lest one wind up declaring “another gospel,”
which actually is not a gospel at all. To illustrate, one occasionally
hears justification popularly defined as God “looking at me just as if
I’d never sinned.” This is an example of a (very) partial truth
becoming virtually an untruth, since nothing is said in such a
definition concerning the ground of justification or the
instrumentality through which justification is obtained. Much more
accurately, the Shorter Catechism defines justification as “an act of
God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us
as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ,
imputed to us, and received by faith alone” (Question 33).
Thus
defined over against Rome’s tragically defective representation,44
justification per se says nothing about the subjective transformation
that necessarily begins to occur within the inner life of the Christian
through the progressive infusion of grace that commences with the new
birth (which subjective transformation Scripture views as progressive
sanctification). Rather, justification refers to God’s wholly
objective, wholly forensic judgment concerning the sinner’s standing
before the law, by which forensic judgment God declares that the sinner
is righteous in his sight because of the imputation of his sin to
Christ, on which ground he is pardoned, and the imputation of Christ’s
perfect obedience to him, on which ground he is constituted righteous
before God. In other words, “for the one who does not work, but
believes in him45 who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5+),46 God pardons
him of all his sins (Acts 10:43+; Rom. 4:6+–7+)47 and constitutes him
righteous by imputing or reckoning the righteousness of Christ to him
(Rom. 5:1+, 19+; 2 Cor. 5:21+).48 And on the basis of his constituting the
ungodly man righteous by his act of imputation, God simultaneously
declares the ungodly man to be righteous in his sight. The
now-justified ungodly man is then, to employ Luther’s expression, simul
iustus et peccator (“simultaneously righteous and sinner”).
The
doctrine of justification means then that in God’s sight the ungodly
man, now “in Christ,” has perfectly kept the moral law of God, which
also means in turn that “in Christ” he has perfectly loved God with all
his heart, soul, mind, and strength and his neighbor as himself. It
means that saving faith is directed to the doing and dying of Christ
alone (solus Christus) and not to the good works or inner experience of
the believer. It means that the Christian’s righteousness before God is
in heaven at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ and not on earth
within the believer. It means that the ground of our justification is
the vicarious work of Christ for us, not the gracious work of the
Spirit in us. It means that the faith-righteousness of justification is
not personal but vicarious, not infused but imputed, not experiential
but judicial, not psychological but legal, not our own but a
righteousness alien to us and outside of us (iustitia alienum et extra
nos), not earned but graciously given (sola gratia) through faith in
Christ that is itself a gift of grace. It means also in its declarative
character that justification possesses an eschatological dimension, for
it amounts to the divine verdict of the Eschaton being brought forward
into the present time and rendered here and now concerning the
believing sinner. By God’s act of justifying the sinner through faith
in Christ, the sinner, as it were, has been brought, “before the time,”
to the Final Assize and has already passed successfully through it,
having been acquitted of any and all charges brought against him!
Justification then, properly conceived, contributes in a decisive way
to the Calvinistic doctrine of assurance and the eternal security of
the believer. Let us now look in greater detail at some of the specific