JUSTIFICATION

Appearing before God ‘just as if I’d never sinned’ is the old play on the word ‘Justified’. The word is a legal term and it gives assurance to the Christian that his standing with God is legally based. Almost all the important transactions in life are legally based and give us assurance and protection from those who may want to, or who could, act outside the law: Birth, Civil Rights, Marriage, Buying a House and even Death all have legal implications. So it is with our relationship with God, a legal transaction has taken place.

God is just and justice must be done and be seen to be done. If we committed a crime, the law of our land demands that the crime be answered for; our justice system is there to ensure that it is carried out. So with our crimes of  sin against a holy God, we have broken God’s law. This cannot be disregarded or just forgotten about as if it is of minor significance.  So how can the problems of us all being sinners be justly dealt with?

Although we have committed sin, Christ has taken our place in the dock, answered for the wrong that we have done, and paid the penalty that the law justly demanded for our sin. We are guilty but One has stepped forward in grace to take our punishment. When Christ died on the cross He was there for us. The hymn puts it so well. ‘In my place condemned He stood, Sealed my pardon with his Blood’ Peter writes of Christ that He personally bare our sins in His own body on the tree’ (1 Pet 2:24).

Paul in Rom Chap 8, having written at some length on the theme of Justification in the previous chapters, asks and answers three rhetorical questions to give confidence and peace to the believers  to whom he is writing. He uses terms often used in a legal setting like at courtroom:

Who shall lay anything to the Charge of God’s elect? (Rom 8:33). No charge can now be brought against the believer. It is God that Justifies. No higher judge, no one with more knowledge of our sin and our failure, no one a more righteous judge. If God doesn’t condemn us, who can?

Who is He that condemns? Shall Christ that has died, yea rather that is risen again (Rom 8:34). The answer is of course “No!”. It is said that Christ  was raised for our justification’ (Rom 4:25).

There will be always be those who seek to accuse us. We remember Job, how his life before God was questioned. There will be those who question our justification by looking at our sins and our lives. The wonderful thing is that our justification doesn’t depend on us but on Christ and what He has done. Our confidence and assurance would be easily shaken if we looked at ourselves. ‘Not I but Christ’ says the hymn, how true.

What of the Motive, the reason for our justification? it is nothing less than Love. Perhaps love is not often seen in a court room, but  Paul asks. Who shall separate from the Love of Christ?  (Rom 8:35). Christ saw our need and was willing to die for us upon the cross ‘The just for the unjust’ (1 Pet 3:18); this is truly humbling. Perhaps one of the problems of our society today is that crime is considered of little consequence, justice is not always done, and people justify themselves.  So it is easy to re-commit wrong. The Christian knows the price that sin demanded, that our Saviour had to go to the cross with all that it meant, to bare its consequences. It brings a responsibility that we should not, even in this modern age, think lightly of sin. That our behaviour, our lives should  show forth that we have been Justified. 

Nothing less than the love of God, the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, and His present position before God, is the basis for our Justification, the judicial act of God, by which He pardons all the sins of those who believe in Christ and treats them as righteous in the eyes of the law.