How to be right with God (Justification)

I am not very good at sharing my faith.  I often miss the opportunity to tell people what I believe.  I keep quiet for fear of offending people, which is not good.  But one day I was talking to a friend, and the topic of death came up.  So, I asked him, ‘what do you think happens when we die?’  He replied that he kind of likes the idea of reincarnation.

‘Really?’, I exclaimed.  ‘I don’t!  You see I fail my own standards of goodness, yet alone the standards of a holy God.  If the quality of my next life is determined on the basis of my goodness in this life, then I am coming back as a frog rather than a prince.’

What is your standard of goodness?  How good do you think you need to be to be good enough for God?  One politician said that if he found himself standing before God at the end of his life he would say, ‘Here I am.  I did my best.  Let me in.’  But is your best good enough?  Does anyone really do their best?  Can anyone actually say, ‘I never have done or thought anything I knew was wrong’?

What if God’s standard is perfection?  What if God had commanded us to love the him with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves?  What if God refuses to be indifferent about our sin?  What if he cannot turn a blind eye towards our personal wickedness?  The Apostle Paul declares, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).  Solomon claimed, ‘there is no one who does not sin’ (1 Kings 8:46).  The Proverbs ask, ‘who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?’ (Proverbs 20:9).  We all have a big problem on our hands.

Thankfully Jesus is the solution to that problem.  Justification by grace through faith is an essential Christian doctrine that answers one of the most basic religious questions: ‘How can men and women be made right with God?’  The answer is that men and women can’t make themselves right with God, but God can make them right with himself.  

Is Justification Just? 

Justification is a courtroom verdict or legal declaration, but it means more than simply being declared not guilty.  It actually means that we are declared totally right before God.  But how can God treat guilty people as if they are not guilty?  Isn’t it corrupt to justify the wicked (Proverbs 17:15)?   The answer to these questions is that a ‘Great Exchange’ takes place.  God transfers (or imputes) my guilt onto Christ on the cross and transfers (or imputes) Christ’s life of love and obedience to me.  As one of my favourite verses puts it: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Corinthians 5:21).  

God does not turn a blind-eye to human wickedness.  He does not lower his demand for perfect obedience.  Instead his Son lives an incomparable life and receives an unimaginable punishment so that we can be right with him.  God is both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).  Through justification God can be perfectly holy and treat our sin with the revulsion that it deserves, yet lovingly draw people to himself without ever compromising that holiness.

Justification is a gift

The apostle Paul is very clear that justification is a gift (Romans 4:4).  That is why we talk about justification by grace.  The New Testament uses the term grace to refer to God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour.  Justification is God’s work not ours.  If justification was the result of anything that we do, then it wouldn’t truly be free.  It would be something that we—at least in part—earn or deserve.  That is why we must be clear that religious rituals like baptism or confirmation don’t justify us.  In the same way, we must never think that God accepts people on the basis of their being good or nice.

Remember my friend who said that he liked the idea of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is based on the idea of karma.  Karma is the opposite of grace.  Karma is getting what we deserve.  Grace involves Jesus taking what our sin deserves and us receiving the blessings his obedience deserves.  U2 wrote a song called ‘Grace’ in which the said, ‘Grace … takes the blame … covers the shame, removes the stain … It’s the name for a girl.  It’s also a though that changed the world.  She travels outside of karma.’

Justification is received through faith

If we are not justified through how we live or by a religious ritual like baptism, then how do we receive this gift?  The answer is that we are justified by grace through faith (Romans 5:1).  Faith is the means through which we receive grace.  But what is faith?  Faith simply means that we come to God admitting that we are morally bankrupt and stretching out a beggar’s hand for the gift of righteousness that Jesus has earned for us.  As one old hymn puts it: ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.’  Indeed, even this faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8), for it is God who wakes us up to our desperate need of mercy and shows the way that to Jesus.

Becoming a Christian should result in people being both humble and confident.  Those who have been justified have nothing to boast about (Ephesians 2:9).  ‘You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary’ (Jonathan Edwards).  Yet we are confident because if it is God who has justified us then who can condemn us (Romans 8:33-34)?  It would be unjust of God to punish Jesus for your sins and then punish you.  It would be unfair of God to give you Christ’s righteousness and yet treat you as a moral failure.  The person who has received the gift of justification cannot be condemned.  God does not want those he has justified to live lives that are characterised by a sense of regret, guilt or shame.

Conclusion: but what about obedience?

You might be reading this thinking, ‘if being made right with God has nothing to do with any good works or religious rituals on my part, then surely it doesn’t matter how I live?’  That’s a really good question.  That question actually shows that you are beginning to grasp how radical the Christian gospel is.  I want to finish by briefly explaining the relationship between justification and obedience to God.

Obedience to God is not the root of justification.  Obedience to God contributes nothing to your being accepted by God.  But, obedience to God is the fruit of justification.  In other words, experiencing God’s acceptance inevitable changes how we live.  When we experience this love it turns our world upside-down.  ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19).  We realise that Jesus commands are for his glory and our good. We are free to love him and so we desire to obey him (John 14:15).  When we fall, we seek his strength to get up and keep going.  When we fail him, we are grieved that we have let him down but thankful that he goes on forgiving us.  We live with the security that nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:39).

Justification by grace through faith has been called the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls.  It is the most remarkable and beautiful of truths.  ‘Justification is away beyond anything that a human court of justice ever realises.  It is putting the sinner in the condition before God as if he had never sinned at all.  It is giving him a standing in the merit of Jesus Christ of absolute innocency before God’ (A. C. Dixon).