Justification in Christ

Twin Cities Grace Fellowship

Union in Christ · Lesson 6 of 10

Justification in Christ

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

— Romans 5:18

INTRODUCTION

OPENING — RECAP

Identity, theologically, is who a person is understood to be in relation to God — grounded in being made in His image, and for the believer, in union with Christ.

In Lesson 2, Abomination in Adam, we saw the first of three features of who we are in Adam:

Dead to God

Alive to sin

Named an enemy by the very father behind that name

In Lesson 3, Condemnation in Adam, we saw the second:

Under sin's jurisdiction

Wages already earned

Guilty before a Judge whose verdict was already in

In Lesson 4, Alienation in Adam, we saw the third and final feature:

Under a power

Led by a spirit not our own

Darkness itself — not merely near darkness, but darkness personified

Three sermons, three names, one verdict.

In Lesson 5, The Operation of God, we saw that God did not leave that verdict standing:

The Spirit diagnosed what we were wholly in Adam

Performed the operation that separated us wholly from him

Secured us wholly in Christ

That lesson closed by naming, in a single paragraph, what this new identity actually answers — justification as the answer to condemnation:

Under sin, answered by grace

Wages of sin, answered by forgiveness

Guilty before God, answered by acceptance and access

Today we open that one paragraph into its own sermon.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If you never settle what justification actually is, you'll drift toward one of two errors:

Treating your standing before God as something still being earned, checked, and re-earned by how last week went

Treating grace as a technicality that excuses you from ever reckoning with what it cost

Justification rightly understood cuts off both. It is not a feeling to maintain or a loophole to exploit — it is a verdict, spoken once, standing forever.

Paul presses this same point from a different angle in Galatians 4:9: “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?”

Understanding that you are known of God — not merely that you know Him — is what produces assurance: a settled confidence that doesn't rise and fall with how last week went.

It also produces appreciation: you cannot rightly thank God for a verdict you don't yet know is real.

And it replaces your own guesswork about your standing with God's own verdict on it — you are no longer left to estimate how you appear in His eyes. You are told.

This is exactly what justification is, taken on its own legal terms: a courtroom word, spoken by God as Judge. It is the legal surety of your position before Him — not a feeling, not an impression, but a declared legal fact, secured entirely on the basis of Christ. To be justified is to be known of God.

Everything else we're about to explore — grace, forgiveness, acceptance, access — is simply that one verdict worked out into every place condemnation used to reach.

THESIS AND ROADMAP

My purpose is to establish that justification in Christ is not merely the absence of condemnation, but a declared righteousness — one that places you under grace, forgives your debt in full, and grants you access you were never fit to have.

We'll walk through this in four parts:

I. Justification

II. Under Grace

III. Forgiveness of Sins

IV. Accepted and Access

I. Justification

ANCHOR

Romans 5:18

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

STATE

In Lesson 3, this verse named your condemnation. In the same breath, it named the answer — not vaguely, but as a free gift: justification of life.

Justification isn't the absence of a verdict. It is a verdict — a judicial declaration of righteousness, as final and as fully rendered as the condemnation it reverses.

DEVELOP

A. Webster's 1828 — “Justification”

Remission of sin and absolution from guilt and punishment

An act of free grace by which God pardons the sinner and accepts him as righteous, on account of the atonement of Christ

B. Contextual definition

Paul sets two judicial acts side by side in Romans 5:18, deliberately parallel in grammar because they are parallel in kind — “judgment... to condemnation” and “the free gift... unto justification of life”

Both are verdicts, rendered once, not accumulated

One found you guilty on Adam's record

The other declares you righteous on Christ's

C. Scripture doesn't leave this verdict to one verse

Romans 5:1 — “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”

1 Corinthians 6:11 — “Ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” — the same naming Lesson 1 already used to show God identifies believers by position, not performance

1 Corinthians 1:30 — “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” — the very verse Lesson 5 anchored its promise of justification to

Christ doesn't merely secure your righteousness. He is made, Himself, to be your righteousness

D. This verdict doesn't rest on a technicality — it rests on a justice that was actually satisfied, not waived

Isaiah 53:11 — “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied” — named in the Servant's own suffering

Ezekiel 16:63 — “When I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord GOD” — the same disposition from God's own side, toward a people who had done nothing to deserve it

Romans 3:25 — “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” — naming what actually accomplishes it

Propitiation means God's wrath against sin wasn't overlooked. It was met — paid in full, and therefore satisfied

E. This is why the verdict is willing, not grudging

A judge who waives a debt because he has no other choice hands down a reluctant verdict

A Judge whose justice has actually been met hands down a verdict with pleasure — not in spite of justice, but because of it

That pleasure is the same “good pleasure” we'll delve into again in Accepted and Access

Embracing justification is never mere relief at an escaped sentence — it's the discovery that God's love and God's justice were never in tension at all

LAND: Righteousness is not acquired by degrees. It is declared — whole, complete, in a single moment — and from that moment, it was never anything less than yours.

TRANSITION

Justification is the verdict declared over you. What that verdict places you under is a new reign and a new jurisdiction entirely. Scripture has a name for it: under grace.

II. Under Grace

ANCHOR

Romans 6:14

“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

STATE

To be “under grace” isn't merely to have grace available to you — it's to be under its dominion, its reign, as a subject of a new and better rule. Same word Lesson 3 used of sin. New Ruler entirely.

DEVELOP

A. Recap

In Lesson 3, Condemnation in Adam, “under sin” named a dominion — not sin merely present in your life, but sin reigning as master, with you as its subject

Romans 5:21 names the same territory in reverse: “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”

Paul draws the same line again in strictly legal terms in our anchor verse — not under the law, but under grace

Under sin and under law both describe a reign you have been removed from, not merely a record that's been cleared

B. Being justified isn't a hope held at arm's length

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1)

The present reality of the promise held in the gospel, not its eventual fulfillment

C. That verdict has no favorites

“Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference” (Romans 3:22)

The same “no difference” that once leveled every man under condemnation — “for all have sinned” in the very next clause — now levels every believer under grace

Sin's jurisdiction had no exceptions. Neither does grace's

D. And it costs the receiver nothing

“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24) — freely, without cause, for nothing owed

Titus 3:5 names what it is not: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost”

Webster's 1828 — “Grace”: the free unmerited love and favor of God, the spring and source of all the benefits men receive from him, and, more specifically, the application of Christ's righteousness to the sinner (citing Romans 5:20)

This is what it means to stand under grace rather than merely to have been forgiven: His righteousness isn't just applied to your record — it's imputed as yours

1 Corinthians 1:30 — “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” In Christ, He is made, Himself, to be your righteousness

2 Corinthians 5:21 — “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” The exchange runs both directions — your sin reckoned to Him, His righteousness reckoned to you

E. Dominion

Grace itself reigns — “grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life” (Romans 5:21)

You are no longer sin's conscripted subject, but grace's willing one

Lesson 3 said it of sin: a subject, not merely a carrier

The same is true here, inverted: a subject of grace, not merely a recipient of it — a servant, not a bystander

F. A different relationship

Where sin's reign could only accuse, grace's reign loves

“Much more” is Paul's own refrain through this chapter (Romans 5:9, 15, 17, 20)

1 Timothy 4:10 — God is “the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” — an especial love, reserved for those now under grace

And its verdict needs no footnote: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1)

LAND: Sin's dominion asked only whether you were born inside its borders. Grace draws new borders — by new birth, declared by justification — and there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.

TRANSITION

Under grace is a reign. But a reign that forgave nothing would be no reign of grace at all. Sin's wages were a debt fully earned — grace's first act is to answer that debt directly: forgiveness of sins.

III. Forgiveness of Sins

ANCHOR

Ephesians 1:7

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.”

STATE

Forgiveness of sins isn't a record quietly set aside, as though the debt never mattered. It's a debt actually paid — in blood — and only then forgiven.

DEVELOP

A. Recap

In Lesson 3, Wages of Sin, we saw that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) — a wage already earned, a receipt already written, a debt that must be served out in full, not merely forgiven in word

If that debt still stood, grace's reign would be a legal fiction. Our anchor answers it directly: redemption — not a wiped slate pretending no debt was owed, but a debt actually settled

Webster's 1828 — “Redemption”: the purchase of God's favor by the death and sufferings of Christ; the ransom or deliverance of sinners from the bondage of sin and the penalties of God's violated law by the atonement of Christ — citing this very verse, Ephesians 1:7, as its proof text

Webster's 1828 — “Forgiveness”: the pardon of an offender, by which he is considered and treated as not guilty... the remission of a debt

B. Christ's own commission names it

“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18) — the same darkness-to-light language Lesson 4 traced in Alienation, now named as exactly what forgiveness delivers out of

Peter's sermon at Antioch ties it directly to justification itself: “through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:38–39)

C. Colossians says it almost word for word

“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14)

That's the very verse that anchored Lesson 5's Operation of God

D. And the ledger itself is reversed, not merely closed

“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Romans 4:7–8)

Where Lesson 3 said you were treasuring up wrath (Romans 2:5), adding daily to a bill — here the Lord will not impute sin at all

E. None of it is cost-free to God, even where it's free to you

“Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3)

He “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4)

He “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14)

Forgiveness received becomes forgiveness practiced — “forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32); “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13)

F. New Covenant

God's own oath behind it all: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34)

Confirmed in Hebrews: “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:17–18)

Not a debt forgotten by accident, but one God has sworn never to raise again

LAND: A wage, once earned, stands until it's paid — not waived, not forgotten, paid. And having paid it, God swore an oath stranger than the payment itself: He will not remember it. The debt was not torn up. It was answered in full — and then forgotten on purpose.

TRANSITION

Under grace. Forgiven in full. What remains is not merely a cleared record, but a welcome — into a presence you were never fit to enter.

IV. Accepted and Access

ANCHOR

Ephesians 1:6

“To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

Ephesians 2:18

“For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.”

STATE

Acceptance and access name the same courtroom Lesson 3 left you standing in — only now the verdict runs the other way. Not merely acquitted, but welcomed. Not merely un-silenced, but given an audience.

DEVELOP

A. Recap

In Lesson 3, Guilty Before God, you stood in a legal standing before a Judge — every mouth stopped, no plea left, the case already closed against you

Accepted and access describe the same God, the same courtroom, the opposite verdict

B. Accepted

Webster's 1828 — “Accepted”: kindly received; regarded; agreed to

“In the Beloved” is not a second, lesser acceptance running alongside Christ's own — it is His

The Father's verdict over the Son — “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5) — is the very verdict now spoken over everyone found in Him

You are not accepted on your own account. You are accepted on His

C. Access

Webster's 1828 — “Access”: approach; near approach; admittance... liberty to draw near, specifically noting that the word implies previous obstacles — and citing Romans 5:2 itself as its example

“Access” is not a casual word. It is introduction into the presence-chamber of a monarch — the kind of royalty where a person of lower status required an intermediary just to gain audience

D. Jews — the Temple

Under the old covenant, that intermediary was literal, and the obstacle was real: a veil, a Holy of Holies, a high priest who alone could enter, and only once a year, and never without blood (Hebrews 9:3–8)

Hebrews 10:19–22 announces exactly what has changed: “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil... let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith”

The veil was the obstacle Webster's own definition assumes. It is the very obstacle removed

E. Paul names this access three more times, each stronger than the last

“Access by faith into this grace wherein we stand” (Romans 5:2)

“Through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18)

“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him” (Ephesians 3:12)

F. A friendly relation

This is more than legal clearance — it's a jurisdiction of His own amiable courts

“How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!... a day in thy courts is better than a thousand” (Psalm 84:1, 10)

“Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts” (Psalm 65:4)

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise” (Psalm 100:4; see also Psalm 92:13; 96:10; 135:2–3)

Lesson 3 named “under sin” a jurisdiction — a territory where one ruling holds over everyone inside it, by birth, without regard to individual record. These are a jurisdiction too. But amiable, not condemning — a realm you are welcomed into, not shut up under

(That friendship isn't the last word this series has on it, either — we'll see just how far it goes when we reach glorification later on.)

LAND: Every man doubts his own welcome until he hears God's verdict on it. Then every doubt — including his own — finally stops. Accepted. Not on probation. Not pending better behavior. Accepted, in the Beloved — not approaching a welcome, but already known.

TRANSITION

Justification. Under grace. Forgiven in full. Accepted, and granted access. One verdict, entirely reversed.

CONCLUSION

SPINE

To the one still in Adam: Everything we've looked at — justification, grace's reign, forgiveness, acceptance and access — traces back to one verdict, already spoken, offered to you free because it was paid in full, not because the debt was ever small.

To the one already in Christ: This verdict — spoken, final, already in force — is yours, and familiarity with the doctrine must never be allowed to shrink the size of what you were actually given.

CONVICTION

To the one still in Adam: You have likely been treating acceptance with God as something to qualify for, when the verdict is already spoken — the only question left is whether you'll receive it on His terms, or keep trying to earn what was never for sale.

To the one already in Christ: If what we've explored produced only relief that the case is closed, let it go further still, into the same trembling gratitude Lesson 3 asked of you in reverse — you were not almost condemned, and you are not almost accepted. Let your own thinking about yourself finally catch up to how God already knows you.

APPLICATION

To the one still in Adam: There is only one way into this verdict — not by improving your case, but by believing on the One who already settled it. Jesus Christ bore your condemnation, paid your wages, and was raised the third day so that His justification could become yours. If you have never believed in what Christ has done for you, do it today — and be saved.

To the one already in Christ: Let this truth do ongoing work — not as information you already knew, but as worship. This week, take the specific debts named across what we've covered — sin's dominion, sin's wage, sin's guilt — and thank God by name for each one, now answered.

CLOSING PRAYER

Father, thank You that You have not left the verdict against us standing — that where sin once reigned, grace now reigns through righteousness; where a debt was earned in full, it has been paid in full and remembered no more; where we stood guilty with no plea to offer, we now stand accepted in the Beloved, with access by one Spirit unto the Father.

If there is anyone here still under the old verdict, we pray this would be the hour they believe on Jesus Christ and be saved.

And for those of us already in Christ, never let this grow familiar to us — let it produce worship worthy of what it cost, and confidence worthy of what it secured.

In Christ's name, Amen.