Justification is a legal term: a declaration of innocence, enabling the person who is ‘declared righteous’ to go free. The stunning message of the Gospel is that “God justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5), and that He does so not on the basis of anything deserving that we might have done, but “freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24) In other words, because of Jesus’ death, those sinners who put their trust in Him are declared ‘innocent’ instead of ‘guilty’ at God’s judgement seat.
A lot of us struggle with this idea, because it sounds like a legal fiction - as if God is simply pretending that our sins never actually happened, just because we believe in Jesus. It may however be easier to grasp what is going on if we remind ourselves of the nature of the crime for which we are being ‘put on trial’ in the first place. For although, when we think about ‘sin’, what naturally come to mind are things such as lying, theft, sexual immorality, murder and so on, these are really just the symptoms of something much more fundamental: the sin of rebellion against God. High treason, in other words. This is an unfamiliar concept to most of us (the last person to be prosecuted for it in the UK was William Joyce - “Lord Haw Haw” - in 1946), and we may be unaware how serious it is (in fact, the death penalty for treason was not abolished until 1998).
Treason is what all sinners stand condemned for, and what we need to be acquitted of. Our other sins (whether grave or trivial) are merely the evidence against us - this is what the Bible means when it says people will be judged “according to what they have done.” (Romans 2:6; Revelation 20:13) So if we are declared ‘righteous’, it will be with respect to the sin of rebellion. Our other sins are not thereby being ignored or ‘brushed under the carpet’; they are all included under the one umbrella.
How are we justified? “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood. - to be received by faith” (Romans 3:25) His death is the sin offering that blots out all our sins - leaving no evidence against us.
This makes it a little clearer (I hope) why in God’s eyes we deserve death, why Jesus’ death can substitute for our own, and why our personal attitude towards Him should make such a difference. For ‘believing in Jesus’ is not primarily an intellectual conviction that Jesus died for my sins (even though for many people this forms part of their conversion); it is a change of allegiance, a personal commitment to Him as both Saviour and Lord. When God “justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), He is making a declaration that He considers those who follow Jesus to be innocent of treason - in other words, we are no longer regarded as rebels but are ‘on His side’. And this is no legal fiction!
A lot of us struggle with this idea, because it sounds like a legal fiction - as if God is simply pretending that our sins never actually happened, just because we believe in Jesus. It may however be easier to grasp what is going on if we remind ourselves of the nature of the crime for which we are being ‘put on trial’ in the first place. For although, when we think about ‘sin’, what naturally come to mind are things such as lying, theft, sexual immorality, murder and so on, these are really just the symptoms of something much more fundamental: the sin of rebellion against God. High treason, in other words. This is an unfamiliar concept to most of us (the last person to be prosecuted for it in the UK was William Joyce - “Lord Haw Haw” - in 1946), and we may be unaware how serious it is (in fact, the death penalty for treason was not abolished until 1998).
Treason is what all sinners stand condemned for, and what we need to be acquitted of. Our other sins (whether grave or trivial) are merely the evidence against us - this is what the Bible means when it says people will be judged “according to what they have done.” (Romans 2:6; Revelation 20:13) So if we are declared ‘righteous’, it will be with respect to the sin of rebellion. Our other sins are not thereby being ignored or ‘brushed under the carpet’; they are all included under the one umbrella.
How are we justified? “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood. - to be received by faith” (Romans 3:25) His death is the sin offering that blots out all our sins - leaving no evidence against us.
This makes it a little clearer (I hope) why in God’s eyes we deserve death, why Jesus’ death can substitute for our own, and why our personal attitude towards Him should make such a difference. For ‘believing in Jesus’ is not primarily an intellectual conviction that Jesus died for my sins (even though for many people this forms part of their conversion); it is a change of allegiance, a personal commitment to Him as both Saviour and Lord. When God “justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), He is making a declaration that He considers those who follow Jesus to be innocent of treason - in other words, we are no longer regarded as rebels but are ‘on His side’. And this is no legal fiction!
