Justification

The God who justifies

How can a sinner stand before a holy God? Scripture answers with a courtroom word. To justify, dikaioō (δικαιόω), is above all what a judge does when he rules that someone is in the right: Israel's judges were to rule "so that the innocent may be acquitted and the guilty condemned" (Deuteronomy 25:1). Yet Paul calls God the one "who justifies the ungodly" (Romans 4:5). How can a just God do that? The answer is the cross.

and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Romans 3:24

God did not overlook sin. He presented Christ as an atoning sacrifice "so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, "so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our sin is counted to him, and his righteousness to us: this is imputation.

We receive it by faith. "Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Faith is not a payment but an empty hand. The justified have peace with God (Romans 5:1); against every accusation, as Matthew Henry says, "if God justifies, that answers all" Matthew Henry.

James writes that "a man is justified by his deeds and not by faith alone" (James 2:24). Many readers in every tradition hold that Paul opposes earning God's acceptance by works, and James a faith that bears no fruit.

The church's confession

Martin Luther wrestled with ‘the righteousness of God’ in Romans 1:17 until he saw it as the gift by which a merciful God justifies us through faith, and later found that Augustine had read it similarly Luther's 1545 preface. The Augsburg Confession (1530) taught that we are "freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith" Augsburg Confession, art. 4, and the Reformed and Anglican confessions agreed. The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it in one sentence:

Justification is 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.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 33

John Wesley glossed ‘justified’ in Romans 3:24 as "Pardoned and accepted" Wesley, and held that holiness does not come first: "If a man could possibly be made holy before he was justified, it would entirely set his justification aside" Wesley.

Where the traditions differ

For the Catholic Church, the Council of Trent (1547) described justification as "not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man". God's love is poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5); this grace is first given in baptism, and faith is the beginning, foundation and root of justification. Nothing before justification, faith or works, merits it, but the justified, cooperating with grace, grow in righteousness. The council condemned ‘faith alone’ taken to mean that nothing else need cooperate, and justification by the imputation of Christ's righteousness alone Council of Trent, Decree on Justification. The Reformation churches also taught inward renewal, but as sanctification, which always accompanies justification and is never its ground. The Orthodox churches, not party to this Western debate, speak of salvation above all as union with God.

In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, in their Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, confessed together that by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts. They declared that the sixteenth-century condemnations do not apply to the teaching each side set out there Joint Declaration. They did not withdraw those condemnations or settle every question: whether the justified are at once righteous and sinners, merit, and the church and sacraments are still explained differently. Some churches and theologians, among them the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, did not accept it.

Evangelicals, Lutheran, Reformed and Wesleyan, share this Reformation teaching. They differ over whether the justified can fall from that state. The Westminster Confession holds that they "can never fall from the state of justification" Westminster Confession 11.5; Lutherans and Wesleyans teach that faith can be lost by turning away, and that those who repent are restored Augsburg Confession, art. 12 (see the perseverance of the saints). See also the lesson Faith and justification and What is justification?