Justified by Grace Through Faith

“Justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which he (1) thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and (2) declares us to be righteous in his sight.” - This entire lesson is adapted from Wayne Grudem, in Systematic Theology, 2nd Edition, Zondervan, 2020, Chapter 36.

Simply put to be justified is to be in right legal standing before God. (Grudem 884)

We are going to look at several passages and any time you see the word justified, justification or righteous, righteousness; they are all translating the same root word in Greek.

The verb Justify in the NT has a range of meaning but it commonly means “to declare righteous”. (Grudem 885)

So why do we need to be declared righteous? Because everyone who has lived and is living is a sinner:

Romans 3:10–12 ESV

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Everyone is a sinner, God cannot dwell with sinners, so we have an issue.

Surely there is something we can do to be right with God?

The Apostle Paul answers:

Romans 3:20 ESV

20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

There’s no law we can keep to be right with God, in fact, the law was given so that we might have a knowledge of sin.

Shane & Shane, christian artist sum it up nicely in their song “God Did”:

Maybe dos and don'ts Were made to show How much we do And don't ever make it

Paul doesn’t leave us here, he goes on:

Romans 3:21–24 ESV

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Sinners: Righteous and Forgiven

Okay, everyone’s a sinner and fallen short, but we can be righteous through faith by grace.

Why is everyone a sinner?

To answer that we have to go all the way back to the beginning when no one was a sinner.

Adam and Eve were part of God’s very good creation.

Genesis 1:27–28 ESV

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 2:8–9 ESV

8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:15–17 ESV

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Genesis 2:25 ESV

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

So Man and Woman are unashamed, living in the garden God has planted with eternal fellowship with God possible through the tree of life, but then Genesis 3 happens.

Genesis 3:8–11 ESV

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

You know the rest of the story: Adam blames the Lord and Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and now we are all sinners, fallen humanity.

You may think, “Wait! I wasn’t there why am I a sinner because of them?”

The Apostle Paul helps us understand:

Romans 5:12 ESV

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Yet, there is good news just a few verses away:

Romans 5:18–19 ESV

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

He we see that now in Christ our sins are forgiven, and this is good news.

In fact, Paul will say in Romans 8:1 that

Romans 8:1 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is only part of our problem though.

Because if only our sins are forgiven then we stand were Adam and Eve stood, without sin, for now.

We know ourselves too well to think that this would last long.

We need more than to be neutral: neither guilt nor righteous.

We must be righteous in God’s sight. In fact, we must be perfectly righteous in God’s sight.

But how can God forgive our sins and count us perfectly righteous, when we are sinners and we are unrighteous?

Paul helps us understand how this happens by explaining two parts of our justification:

Romans 8:3 ESV

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

Paul writes it another way in 2 Corinthians 5, by saying:

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

So Christ, sinless and perfect, takes our sin on Himself, takes our death:

Colossians 2:13–14 ESV

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Christ pays for all our sins: past, present, and future, but Paul tells us He goes one step further:

Romans 8:3–4 ESV

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Adam failed to uphold the righteous requirement of God, Jesus perfectly lived every aspect of the righteous requirements of God.

So now when God looks at us, He sees us as justified.

We know we still sin, we know we mess it up, but we, in Christ, fulfill the righteous requirements of the law.

So, because of Jesus we are declared righteous, we are justified.

This is where Paul encourages the Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

But there more to be said in the next verse:

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We were created to live in the presence of God, bringing glory to Him by our right actions, our good works.

God created a good creation, a very good creation.

So our good works reflect His goodness.

Listen to these words of Jesus:

Matthew 5:14–16 ESV

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

This point is the one James, the brother of Jesus, is making: if faith in Jesus something we can just know, and agree with, but not be changed by?

No, James says,

James 2:14 ESV

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

Can that kind of save him? No.

James goes on:

James 2:19 ESV

19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

It’s important to understand that the words faith and believe share the same root in Greek.

James is saying, “You believe but it hasn’t changed you, can that belief save you? Even demons believe true things, but they aren’t changed!”

So when James says this:

James 2:24 ESV

24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

and

James 2:26 ESV

26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

He using justification differently than Paul.

I told you the word justification in Greek has a range of meanings.

It means “to declare to be righteous” but it also means “to demonstrate or show to be righteous.”

James means to show that if you have saving faith, then your life will show it.

Conclusion

So to sum it all up:

We are all sinners just like Adam.

If we will believe, trust, have faith that Jesus took and paid for our sin,

and lived a perfect righteous life,

then God will count our sin paid for

and Jesus’s righteousness as our righteousness.

We will be justified by grace through faith.

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