What is justification?

Question 07014.

Justification is the moment a guilty sinner is declared righteous by God, and I want to be precise about that word declared, because everything hangs on it. God does not pretend that we are better than we are, and he does not wait until we have improved enough to deserve the verdict. He announces a legal standing on the basis of what somebody else has done.

That is why justification is the doctrine that either settles a Christian or leaves them permanently uneasy. If you think you are declared righteous partly on account of your own performance, you will never be able to rest, because you will always know what your performance is actually like.

A Courtroom Word, Not a Hospital One

The Greek verb is dikaioo, and it belongs to the law court rather than the surgery. It means to declare a verdict, not to administer a cure. When a judge acquits a defendant, nothing has changed inside the defendant. What has changed is his standing before the law, and that change is total and immediate.

This distinguishes justification from sanctification, and confusing the two has caused enormous pastoral damage. Justification changes your status in an instant. Sanctification changes your character over a lifetime. One is a verdict, the other is a process, and neither can do the other’s job.

So when Scripture says that a believer is declared righteous, it is not saying that the believer has become morally flawless. It is saying that the case against them has been closed and the file marked accordingly.

On What Basis Is a Sinner Declared Righteous?

Not on the basis of anything in the sinner. Romans 3:24 says that believers are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Grace and gift are stacked together in one clause, as though Paul suspected we would try to sneak something of our own into the transaction.

The basis is the cross. God’s just anger against sin was borne by Jesus in the place of sinners, so that God can be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, which is exactly how Romans 3:26 puts it. That verse is the hinge of the whole argument. God does not lower the standard or overlook the offence. He satisfies the standard himself.

And 2 Corinthians 5:21 completes the exchange: God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Our record went to him; his standing comes to us.

Abraham and the Accountant’s Word

Genesis 15:6 says that Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Paul builds four chapters of Romans on that sentence. The word translated counted is logizomai in the Greek of the Septuagint and of Paul, and it is an accounting term. It means to credit to an account.

Notice that Abraham was declared righteous long before he was circumcised, and centuries before the law was given at Sinai. Paul makes both points deliberately in Romans 4, because if Abraham could be declared righteous without either, then neither can be a requirement for anyone else.

Notice too what Abraham had done at that point in the story. Not a great deal, and some of it embarrassing. What he had was faith, and faith is what was credited.

Justification and Faith

Faith is not the ground of justification but the instrument of it. That distinction is worth holding on to. We are not declared righteous because faith is a fine quality that God rewards. We are declared righteous because Jesus is a sufficient Saviour, and faith is simply the empty hand that receives him.

This is why weak faith saves as truly as strong faith. The strength of the hand does not add to the value of the gift being received. What matters is that the hand is open and that it takes hold of the right thing.

I have set this out further in whether faith is the gift in Ephesians 2:8-9.

A Word About Imputed Righteousness

You will often hear justification explained with the language of imputation, and behind it lies a genuine biblical idea. The believer’s sin was charged to Jesus, and his righteousness is credited to the believer. Paul’s accounting language in Romans 4 supports that, and so does the great exchange of 2 Corinthians 5:21. I have no quarrel with the substance of it.

Where I am more cautious is with the scholastic machinery that sometimes gets built on top, particularly the technical distinction between the active and passive obedience of Jesus as separate deposits in the believer’s account. That formulation may well be defensible, but it goes further than the text says in so many words, and I prefer to stay close to biblical vocabulary where biblical vocabulary exists.

What I will say without hesitation is this. The believer is not simply forgiven, as though the account had been zeroed and left empty. The believer is declared righteous, which means the account is now positively in credit on someone else’s deposit. Forgiveness removes the debt. Justification supplies the standing. Both are needed, and Scripture gives us both.

If you want to follow that particular thread further, see what imputation is, where I set out the case at greater length.

Standing and Fellowship Are Not the Same

Here is a distinction that has rescued more troubled believers than almost any other I teach. Your standing before God is fixed by justification and does not move. Your fellowship with God fluctuates, and unconfessed sin disrupts it.

A child who has disobeyed is still a child. The relationship is not in question; the enjoyment of it is. 1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and that is family housekeeping rather than a rejoining of the family.

Once you separate these two, a great many verses fall into place, and a great deal of unnecessary fear falls away. I have sat with believers who assumed that every cold spell in prayer meant their salvation had lapsed, and who were astonished to learn that Scripture treats standing and fellowship as two different things entirely. The Father does not disown a child for sulking, though he will not pretend the sulk is not there.

Can the Verdict Be Reversed?

No, and the reason is that the verdict was never based on you in the first place. If God declared you righteous on the strength of your performance, then your performance could undo it. Since he declared you righteous on the strength of the cross, only something happening to the cross could undo it.

That is why Romans 8:1 can say that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and why the chapter ends with a list of everything in creation that cannot separate us from God’s love. Paul is not exaggerating for effect. He is drawing the necessary conclusion from justification.

For the wider doctrine see what eternal security is.

What About James?

James says that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, which sounds like a flat contradiction until you notice that he is using the word in its other ordinary sense, meaning vindicated or shown to be right. Paul describes the verdict in heaven; James describes the evidence on earth.

Both are true and both are needed. The believer is declared righteous by God through faith, and that verdict shows itself in a changed life over time. Faith alone justifies, and the faith that justifies is never alone.

I work through the passage in detail in how James 2 relates to salvation by faith alone.

Living as Someone Declared Righteous

The practical effect of this doctrine is enormous. It means you can stop performing for God. It means that failure, though it grieves him, does not threaten your acceptance. It means you can look honestly at your own sin without the terror that honesty usually brings, because the verdict is already in and it was reached with full knowledge of the evidence.

It also means you can stop comparing. If everyone in the room is there on the same terms, the seating arrangements do not matter much. Justification is the great leveller, and it makes churches kinder places when people actually believe it.

And it means gratitude rather than obligation becomes the engine of obedience. That is the whole logic of Romans, where eleven chapters of what God has done come before a single word about what we should do.

So, now what?

So let this settle. If you have trusted Jesus, you have been declared righteous by the only Judge whose opinion finally matters, on the basis of a work that is finished, with a verdict that is permanent. That is not wishful thinking. It is a legal fact recorded in heaven.

What would change in your week if you actually believed that when you woke up tomorrow?

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1 (ESV)