Justified By God

Justification is an act of God’s grace and mercy. It originates in the sovereign will of God to save and bless His people; those He has loved, foreknown, called and chosen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification is God making and declaring His people righteous. It results from God taking all the sins of all the elect and laying them upon, or imputing them to, the account of the Lord Jesus. Simultaneously, He imputes the righteousness of God in Christ to the account of His elect.

Grace is free 

Paul tells us it is God who justifies sinners. His language is clear, ‘whom he called, them he also justified’. Justification is a decree of God. It is His binding and unalterable purpose to act and accomplish His will of making His people righteous in Jesus Christ. This purpose does not depend upon the works or worthiness of those justified but is a free gift of grace. Paul says, we are ‘justified freely (i.e. unconditionally) by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’.

The order of salvation

In our verses today we can see the beauty and order of God’s purposes of grace. God loved His people before time and set them apart in the everlasting covenant of peace where they were represented by Christ. In the divine mind the Saviour was set up as sin-bearer being the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Because of Christ, God’s elect in Christ are simultaneously regarded as free from sin and accounted righteous in Him. 

God’s act

Justification is sometimes distinguished as active justification and passive justification. These terms can help to explain the distinction between the part of justification effected by God in eternity and that part applied by God in time. Active justification is God’s objective act in Himself declaring His people righteous in Christ their Surety and Substitute. It is an immanent, or divine act in the mind of God which renders His people righteous and holy in His sight.

Our experience

Passive justification, too, is a work of grace in which God applies the benefits of active justification to the experience of a believer through faith. When God’s people are converted under the gospel they receive a knowledge of sins forgiven and enjoy acceptance with God. The distinction between active and passive justification may help us realise that faith is not the cause of our justification but the vehicle and channel by which we experience its effects and benefits.

Grace through faith 

This also helps us understand why some people believe and some do not, why some have faith and some do not. God gives true faith, the faith of Christ, to those whom He has loved, foreknown, chosen and justified in the eternal council; those secured in the covenant of grace and peace. Paul tells the Thessalonians, ‘all men have not faith’ and we know why. Faith is the quickening gift by which God enables His beloved children to experience His goodness and mercy. It is in this sense an individual may be said to be justified by faith. 

Happy condition

Neither a believer’s faith, nor his obedience, make him righteous before God. Rather, faith discovers the gift of righteousness that comes freely from God. By faith David knew ‘the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works’ and its flip-side, ‘the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin’. This is the great accomplishment of Christ’s substitutionary atonement. ‘He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

Blessed implications

This gift of faith is very precious and leads a believer to rest in the Lord Jesus Christ for all their righteousness and holiness. In Luke’s gospel Zacharias relished the spiritual and practical consequences for believers who know pardon for sin and righteous in Christ. He prays, ‘That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life’.

All my salvation, all my desire

In our service tomorrow we shall consider briefly the nature of our justification by grace. We shall notice the holy state and righteous standing given to those who are joined to Christ in the covenant of grace. We shall examine the liberty, comfort and joy such truths bring to men and women of faith. We shall sing the song of the just who look to the Lord Jesus Christ for all their righteousness and say with David, ‘God … hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire’. 

Amen.