erebus-cross Being justified before God and being forgiven by God are not identical. To be justified in a courtroom is not the same as being forgiven. Being forgiven implies that I am guilty and my crime is not counted. Being justified implies that I have been tried and found innocent. My claim is just. I am vindicated. The judge says, “Not guilty.” Justifying is a legal act.  It is a verdict. The verdict of  justification does not make a person just. It declares a person just. It is based on someone actually being just. We can see this most clearly when the Bible tells us that, in response to Jesus’ teaching, the people “justified” God (Luke 7:29). This does not mean they made God just (since he already was). It means they declared God to be just.  The ordinary way to be justified in a human court is to keep the law. In that case the jury and the judge simply declare what is true of you: You kept the law. They justify you. But in the courtroom of God, we have not kept the law. Therefore, justification, on ordinary terms, is hopeless.

Reflecting on the definition of justification, the means of justification and the declaration of justification provides me with hope.  I hope not in a “wish” or in “possibility” but in what has been effectively accomplished for me and on my behalf through Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension.    By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus,  I have been justified.  This is one of the clearest doctrines expressed throughout the New Testament.  In the Book of Romans, Paul outlines justification in detail and in simple and clear terms.  As John Piper mentions above, we typically equate law keeping with justification.  So does God.  That is why Jesus kept the law perfectly.  The one who was to justify, needed to be just.  He did so in divine terms by the fact he was  God, BUT he went further and proved to be just in human terms by perfectly keeping God’s law. 

Questions?   Do you feel you can justify yourself before God with keeping his law?   Have you ever tried to keep God’s law perfectly?  Have you failed in one, or more?  If you honestly admit you didn’t keep God’s law perfectly, you now understand why Jesus came to fulfill the law and to justify sinners.    You failed; Jesus succeeded.

Quote from “The 50 Reasons Jesus Came to Die”.

Reflections by me.

Picture – The cross at Mount Erebus, Antarctica, commemorating the 1979 Air New Zealand Crash near Mount Erebus.

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