Justification by faith is at the heart of the New Testament. Other doctrines depend on it. Because it is so important, it is a fully developed doctrine. Rather than present it as incidental to some other teaching, two books, Romans and Galatians, were devoted to explaining justification by faith. Yet it is given but lip service by many Bible teachers today.
Early on the New Testament writers began to understand that no amount of effort on man's part could save him. The Mosaic Law had been around for centuries, yet the Jewish people had made little progress in their attempts to fulfill it.1 Some had certainly tried, but human weakness had prevented them from accomplishing all that the law demanded.2 What the New Testament writers saw was that under a system of law, the thing that is required is total perfection.3 Since God is perfect, those who dwell eternally with him must also be perfect. Their righteousness must be absolute.
To be "justified" means to be declared righteous by a judge. God has a courtroom and under a legal system the only people who will be declared righteous in his sight must meet the requirements of his laws. That was the prevailing belief before Jesus came into the world. It is also the most widespread view in every society on earth today. The idea of salvation or condemnation through laws that promise reward and punishment permeates the thinking of nearly everyone on this planet. There is also an accompanying universal myth, that if you only try hard enough, you can make it.
The New Testament broke with that idea completely because it has never worked, not in the entire history of mankind. No one has ever been justified in God's courtroom by following some code of right behavior.4 All that is ever achieved that way is relative righteousness, where one person looks better than another. That is a poor substitute for what God's law actually demands.
Since legal systems neither put a stop to all bad behavior nor produce behavior God can be pleased with, we are informed by writers like Paul that there is only one way to be declared righteous in God's courtroom and that is by personal faith in Jesus Christ.5
To grasp this new principle, this new "law", we must have a firm hold on what it means to be "in Christ".6 That expression is an important new legal term. What it means is to be connected with him in the mind of the divine Judge of the universe. The Judge's ruling that the defendant is legally united to Christ is what ultimately counts.7
While there are a great many laws that make demands on a person's behavior, there is but one requirement to be connected to Christ. Jesus was the first one to make that absolutely clear. Everywhere he went, he taught that faith is what people need. It is faith that "saves" and that faith must be placed in him.8
Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Paul saw that more clearly than others of his time. He understood God's plan to bind the human race to Jesus Christ entirely through faith in him.9 Paul's ministry was spent making this clear. Often that meant he had to defend his message against men who could not understand it, and who were determined to bring people, and churches Paul had started, back under the influence of those who taught salvation by the Mosaic Law. Since there were many more of them than there were people like Paul, it is easy to understand that his life was one of constant conflict.
The Pharisees were the most influential sect of the Jews in Paul's day. Up to the time of his conversion, he was one of them. More than that, he was one of their most powerful leaders. It was after his conversion to Christianity that he received the revelations that led to his extreme emphasis on faith for salvation. Over the years, the conflict between Paul and the Pharisees became more and more intense.
They followed Paul as he traveled throughout the Roman Empire starting churches. As soon as he would leave for a new town, they would move in behind him and try to undo his work. Their goal was to gradually shift people back to their thinking. They aimed to mix their teachings with what Paul had taught. Even though Paul eventually turned his ministry almost exclusively to gentiles, the Pharisees still did not stop their relentless chase. At this point they were going far beyond what the Mosaic law prescribed for they were treating gentiles as Jews.
Circumcision was their weapon of choice. Although gentiles were not covered under the Jewish law of circumcision, the false teachers demanded that the gentiles in Paul's churches be circumcised. Due to the symbolic nature of circumcision, the implication was that gentiles can only be saved if they keep the entire law of Moses.10 This was recognized for what it is, a subversion, for the implication was, "Faith in Christ is not enough".11 Though salvation is possible only because God is justifying men by grace, those Jews were implying that God was not saving men by grace, or that his grace is not sufficient. In other words, if anything we do or say implies in any way that salvation can be had by our own efforts, we are making a loud statement to the world that Christ died for nothing.12 That shows we lack faith in God's provision for our justification in his court of law.
Paul refused to allow the mixed teaching of salvation by grace plus salvation by law. He countered with the argument that faith and human effort are not the least bit compatible. The one is man's attempt to please God and buy salvation13, but the other requires total dependence on God to save man in spite of his puny, failed efforts to arrive at the state of perfection that the law demands. To believe in salvation by faith excludes any idea that salvation might be by the works required by law. From the opposite standpoint, to believe that man's efforts are what count in God's courtroom excludes the idea that God could have a plan for man's salvation that does not require him to first meet all the demands of the law. Paul pointed out that the two ideas -- grace and the works prescribed by some law -- are extreme opposites.14
Since God's true plan for saving men does not include their efforts to do what is good, Paul wrote that God's salvation is entirely by his grace. It is God's gift to man.15 Grace is what God does for us that we cannot do for ourselves. If we had a million years on earth to try, we still could not reach God's perfection. We all have come short of his glory.16
Above it was stated that salvation in God's courtroom is possible only because the Judge declares a man to be righteous. Another way of saying this is that God imputes or accounts righteousness to a person who believes in Jesus Christ.17 God does this even though that person has not achieved the state of perfection the law requires. God imputes righteousness to that man or woman because of the faith he/she has placed in his Son, Jesus Christ, which includes that person's faith in the shed blood of Christ.18 One must trust that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to cover all his sins and that God will save him without his help.
The reader needs to get a firm hold on those words "impute" and "declare". The Judge makes his decision and pronounces his verdict. By way of contrast, we must exclude an assumption that is popular in some circles today, the idea that people are justified because God makes them righteous. That just is not true. God does not justify anyone on the basis of their own righteousness.
People who make that mistake are confusing justification with sanctification, improvement in a Christian's behavior. That is a huge mistake for justification is entirely separate from sanctification. God alone makes the choice to declare a person righteous, to justify him. Justification is not a Christian experience.
However, sanctification is an experience. It is an improvement in behavior made possible by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of people who are already justified in God's sight. A careful reading of Romans shows that Paul does not deal with the idea of Christian sanctification until he has completely covered the doctrine of justification. He never confuses the two issues. The two teachings are found in entirely different sections in Romans.
Where does the break between the two sections occur? Paul starts his transition from one doctrine to another at the beginning of chapter five. The section on justification is now completed with this statement: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ", Rom. 5:1. That is not just a statement of doctrine; it is a statement about the reality of that very moment. Even before writing this letter, Paul had come to the settled conclusion that since his readers had believed, their justification before God was already accomplished in the court of heaven. Otherwise, Paul would not have made this statement. His readers could not have had peace with God at that moment if they were not yet declared righteous before God; Peace with God can come only after the eternal Judge declares us to be right in his sight. As long as he sees men and women at variance with his objectives, they can have no peace with him. Everything up to this verse is about justification and we will not confuse what God does for us at the moment of faith with what we later may accomplish through the Spirit.
Imputed righteousness is sometimes illustrated by comparing righteousness to money. A man may have a bank account, but it may not have anything in it. What if someone were to come along and put money into that account? Well, then the man could pay his debts. In the same way, imputed righteousness is what God freely gives us.
So if God puts righteousness to a man's account, where does that righteousness come from. Here is what I think: It is Christ's righteousness that is imputed to us at the moment we believe in him. Our union with him makes it possible for God to see Christ taking our place in that courtroom.
This is confirmed when we get to Paul's teaching on forgiveness of sin. Forgiveness is through the substitutionary death of Christ on the Cross. Simply put, Jesus died in our place and God has accepted his sacrifice as the atonement for all who will have him as Savior.
It can now be seen that Christ has done everything necessary both for man's salvation from the penalty of the law and to provide positive righteousness in the eyes of God. Both our forgiveness and our righteousness came from the same source, God himself. Our only part in the matter is to believe -- to accept what God in his grace has provided in Christ.
After Paul declared that his readers had been justified by faith, he moved on. For those who had been justified, baptism had followed. In Rom. 6, this is presented as the outward sign of having been united to Christ. Briefly, baptism is a declaration that one has been legally joined to Christ in his death, his burial, and his resurrection.
Notice that we again use the word "legal" to describe the actual union with Christ's death. It was at the moment we believed that the Judge rendered his decision in the case. At that moment of faith God considered us to have died with Christ to sin. Later on, in baptism, we remember that fact and picture what it would have been like if we had really died on that Cross with Christ.
Paul relates this truth as though we had taken part in Christ's death and resurrection. For those who died with Christ, the debt to the law has been paid. It demands our death, and that is what it got.
There is much more to it in Paul's mind. Since we died under the hand of the law, we are no longer part of this world. We are now living in a new age, the Messianic age, where Christ reigns eternally and sin has no part at all.
That picture is given to show the attitude Christians must maintain if they are to serve God effectively. Paul used baptism this way to kick off his teaching on sanctification, which we can now define as the opportunity of the believer to live for God while his body remains on this earth. The problem of eternal justification was settled at the moment of faith, but a new problem came up after that, how to gradually become more like Christ even though the world is trying to pull us back into its clutches. In the concluding section of this book, where most of the practical application is found, Paul told his readers not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed through the renewing of their minds. They could do this only if they considered themselves to have died with Christ to the things of this world and to have risen with him to a new kind of life. The symbolism here is deeply motivating. In another place Paul states that we are not citizens of this earth, but of heaven. If the reader can grasp that and hang on to it, day by day he will experience renewal.
My intent here has been to present some of Paul's arguments in the same way he did, keeping them as distinct as possible. Those today who confuse sanctification with justification are not following Paul. Rather, they are doing great harm to their hearers and readers. Later on in Romans Paul will show that it is sanctification that depends on the work of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. However, Paul does not say that about justification. Being righteous in God's courtroom depends on only one thing, a person's connection to Christ by faith. Being joined to him, God puts righteousness to that man's account.
