Justification And Sanctification

We can make a distinction between the body and the head of a man and he suffers no loss, but if there is a separation, the man will be dead. The head and the body must stay together for life to continue. Similarly, though we can make a distinction between justification and sanctification, we must never separate the two.

JUSTIFICATION
Justification is a legal court room term defined as the act of God when He declares a person just or righteous in His sight. This takes place the moment a sinner places their trust in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For the sinner who has faith in Jesus, God pronounces the sentence “I find you not guilty! I reckon (I count, I declare) you righteous in My sight, and you and I are forever at peace with each other. All of your sins were transferred to your sin bearing Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took the full brunt of My holy wrath for you, and what has been transferred to your account is the righteousness of My Son, who lived not only a sinless life, but a life fully pleasing to Me. This very real righteousness is yours now and forever.”

Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Christian is a justified person. God has declared him right in His sight because of Christ.

What is amazing to us (and what is at the heart of the gospel message) is that God does not wait until we are inherently righteous before He declares us righteous. He justifies “the ungodly.” Romans 4:5 says, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

How can God do this without compromising His holiness and justice? He does this because the very real righteousness of Christ has been given as a gift to the one who believes in Him. Christ’s righteousness is a real righteousness and “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30).

What about sanctification then? Justification happens in an instant – the moment a sinner places faith in the Savior. Sanctification is the process of becoming more and more holy and separated to God in daily life.

SANCTIFICATION
In the Old Testament, vessels used for the house of God (the Tabernacle or the Temple) were “sanctified” and set apart for that purpose, never to be used for more mundane purposes. In one sense, the Christian is already sanctified in that he is set apart to God (1 Cor. 6:11). Yet there is another dimension of sanctification for although set apart to God, there is still much work to do because in all actuality, no Christian on earth is entirely sanctified. The battle between the flesh and spirit is a life long battle. The flesh still wants its independence, and in contrast, the spirit wishes to live in absolute dependence upon God. Sanctification is an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian.

Having made the distinction between justification and sanctification, let me affirm straight away that these two cannot be separated. That is because the truly justified person will be involved in this process of sanctification. If someone claims to be justified, but there is no desire to be sanctified, the claim to justification is proven to be fraudulent. The justified man possesses the Holy Spirit and He sets about the task of sanctification the moment He comes in to the human heart. He desires holiness, and He stirs up that desire in the heart of the true Christian. The Christian still sins, but there is now a struggle against sin, whereas before there was no struggle at all. The fact that you wish to be free from sin is an indication that the Holy Spirit is at work in the heart. When a person is happy to stay in a lifestyle that knowingly displeases the Master, it raises huge red warning flags to indicate that we need to analyze any claim to true justification.

Martin Luther gave the following analogy: When we are justified, it is as though a doctor has just administered a sure and certain remedy for a fatal disease. Though the patient may still endure a temporary struggle with the residual effects of his illness, the outcome is no longer in doubt. The physician pronounces the patient cured even though a rehabilitation process must still be carried out.

So it is with our justification. In Christ, God pronounces us just by the imputation of the merits of His Son. Along with that declaration, God administers something to us; He gives us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins immediately to work within us to bring us to holy living.

It is both a reality and comfort to know this truth – once He begins the work, He will complete it. Scripture says, “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). So certain is Paul that this is the case, he writes of glorification in the past tense. Though glorification has not yet happen for the Christian in this world, its future certainty is assured. It’s as good as done. No one fall through the cracks.

Imagine being a sports fan and your team is in a big final. Due to a pressing commitment, you are not able to watch the game live and so you record it for later viewing.

You are finally ready to sit down to watch the recorded game and a friend calls and, before you can stop him, he congratulates you on your team’s big win. You really didn’t want to know the final score… you wanted to watch the game not knowing the final outcome. You wanted to watch with all of the emotions of a live experience. But you cannot do that anymore. The fact is that because you now know the final result – because you know that your team wins the game – you watch the entire encounter knowing that no matter how bleak things may look, even if your teams falls behind in the score, you know… in fact you know with utter certainty… your team will win! You watch the game with this comfort: victory is inevitable.

In a similar way, in the battle for sanctification there are often struggles along the way. There are even moments when we might even feel a measure of despair at our seeming lack of spiritual progress. Yet the big picture reality is this: God the Holy Spirit having started the work will complete the massive sanctification project bringing every true Christian all the way to future glorification. All the justified are glorified. He who began the good work in you will complete it, until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).

The Church Fathers on Justification

Four quotes:

Tertullian (c. 155-230): God will “impute righteousness to those who believe in him, and make the just live through him, and declare the Gentiles to be his children through faith.”

Basil of Caesarea (330-379): “The is perfect and pure boasting in God, when one is not proud on account of his own righteousness but knows that he is indeed unworthy of the true righteousness and is justified soley by faith in Christ.”

Marius Victorinus: “We know that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith and the faith of Jesus Christ… It is faith alone that gives justification and sanctification.”

John Chrysostom (c. 347-407): God’s grace “has allowed Him that did no wrong to be punished for those who had done wrong… Him that was righteousness itself, ‘He made sin,’ that is allowed Him to be condemned as a sinner, as one cursed to die, so that we might be, not just ‘righteous’ but ‘righteousness,’ indeed the righteousness of God.”

Justification Quote

Source: Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2d ed., rev. and updated (Thomas Nelson, 1998), 742-43.

Justification refers to God’s wholly objective, wholly forensic judgment concerning the sinner’s standing before the law, by which forensic judgment God declares that the sinner is righteous in his sight because of the imputation of his sin to Christ, on which ground he is pardoned, and the imputation of Christ’s perfect obedience to him, on which ground he is constituted righteous before God. In other words, “for the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5), God pardons him of all his sins (Acts 10:43; Rom. 4:6-7) and constitutes him righteous by imputing or reckoning the righteousness of Christ to him (Rom. 5:1, 19; 2 Cor. 5:21). And on the basis of his constituting the ungodly man righteous by his act of imputation, God simultaneously declares the ungodly man to be righteous in his sight. The now-justified ungodly man is then, to employ Luther’s expression, simul iustus et peccator (“simultaneously righteous and sinner”).

The doctrine of justification means then that in God’s sight the ungodly man, now “in Christ,” has perfectly kept the moral law of God, which also means in turn that “in Christ” he has perfectly loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and his neighbor as himself. 

It means that saving faith is directed to the doing and dying of Christ alone (solus Christus) and not to the good works or inner experience of the believer.  It means that the Christian’s righteousness before God is in heaven at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ and not on earth within the believer. It means that the ground of our justification is the vicarious work of Christ for us, not the gracious work of the Spirit in us. It means that the faith-righteousness of justification is not personal but vicarious, not infused but imputed, not experiential but judicial, not psychological but legal, not our own but a righteousness alien to us and outside of us (iustitia alienum et extra nos), not earned but graciously given (sola gratia) through faith in Christ that is itself a gift of grace. It means also in its declarative character that justification possesses an eschatological dimension, for it amounts to the divine verdict of the Eschaton being brought forward into the present time and rendered here and now concerning the believing sinner. By God’s act of justifying the sinner through faith in Christ, the sinner, as it were, has been brought, “before the time,” to the Final Assize and has already passed successfully through it, having been acquitted of any and all charges brought against him! Justification then, properly conceived, contributes in a decisive way to the Calvinistic doctrine of assurance and the eternal security of the believer.

‘According to My Righteousness’

Do the Psalms teach justification by works

Article by Christopher Ash, writer-in-residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge, and a former pastor and Director of the Cornhill Training Course in London. He has written three books on Psalms, including Bible Delight. He is also writing a three-volume commentary on the Psalms, exploring how we appropriate them as the church of Christ. Original source – https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/according-to-my-righteousness

We meet “the congregation of the righteous” and are promised that “the Lord knows the way of the righteous” right at the start of the Psalter (Psalm 1:5–6). But who are the righteous? We shall never make friends with the Psalms, let alone begin to enjoy and appropriate them in our devotions, until we know. They appear again and again, especially in book 1 (Psalms 1–41), often in contrast to “the wicked.”

So many promises are attached to these people. Not only does the covenant Lord know (watch over) their way and guide their steps (Psalm 1:6), but he blesses and protects them (Psalm 5:12), he is with them and terrifies their enemies (Psalm 14:5), he surrounds them with steadfast love (Psalm 32:10–11), he watches them with his eyes and listens for their cry with his ears (Psalm 34:1517), he upholds them (Psalm 37:17), and he gives them the new creation, which is the fulfillment of the Promised Land (Psalm 37:29), so that they will flourish in his presence for ever (Psalm 92:12–13). These people — and it is important to remember that, in the Old Testament, these were real flesh-and-blood people — are showered with blessing.

It matters deeply to know who they are, not least so that you and I can make sure we belong among them, inherit their promises, and sing their psalms.1

Who Are the Righteous?

Two large and closely related problems raise their heads. First, we struggle to know what to make of it when psalmists claim to be righteous, sometimes in quite strong terms. For example, the prayer “judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me” (Psalm 7:8) rather alarms us. If I were to pray that, what if the Lord did judge me according to my righteousness and found it severely wanting, as he surely must — must he not? Dare I pray this?

Second, we have to grapple with the apparent contradiction that the psalmists who claim to possess righteousness also admit that it is not possible to be righteous before God (e.g., Psalm 143:2). How can both be true at the same time? How can I possess righteousness if I have no righteousness?

There is a simple, superficially attractive, and yet deeply problematic “solution.” This is to conclude that claims to righteousness in the Psalms are actually professions of self-righteousness that anticipate the later self-righteousness of the Pharisees so roundly condemned by the Lord Jesus (e.g., Luke 18:9–14).2 This is unsatisfactory, first, because it supposes that some of the words of the psalmists are flawed expressions of merely human convictions. Many do hold this opinion, but we have no warrant to suppose that the Psalms contain a mixture of truth and error (unlike the speeches of Job’s three comforters, whose words God explicitly tells us are not entirely trustworthy, Job 42:7).

It is also unsatisfactory because it does not reflect the portrayal of the righteous in the Psalms themselves, to which we turn. While it would be possible to read back New Testament expositions of righteousness, especially in the apostle Paul, we shall focus on building up a picture from the Psalms themselves. I shall do this under seven heads, before considering how these people compare with those accounted righteous by grace under the new covenant.

These headlines are based on a fairly comprehensive study of the words righteous and righteousness in the Psalms. There are more than 120 verses in which one or more of these occur, in about 60 different psalms. A full study would consider each of these in context.

Who are these people? What do they look like, not in terms of their outward appearance, of course, but in their heart, their spirit? What gets them out of bed in the morning — what are their longings, their pleasures, their hopes, their fears?

As we consider them, it is worth remembering that a word study of righteous or righteousness3 will miss the parallel descriptions, in which these people are often referred to as “upright” or “upright of heart,” meaning straightforwardly moral in their lives (e.g., Psalm 11:732:1133:136:1037:3794:1597:11); as “blameless,” having integrity, the opposite of hypocrisy (e.g., Psalm 15:218:2537:183764:4101:26119:1); and on one occasion as “the living” (Psalm 69:28) since they live in the sight of God. These are all the same people, whose prayers and praises are expressed in the Psalms and whose contours are there delineated.

1. Their Delight

At the heart of the question lies the heart of the righteous. In what, or in whom, do they most deeply delight? Had they been incipient Pharisees, the answer would have been, for each, “I delight in myself. I thank God that I am who I am. I praise myself, and I want others to praise me.”

That the praise and delight of the righteous is focused intensely on the covenant Lord gives perhaps the clearest indication that they belong to this covenant Lord by grace. Repeatedly, we are told that their joy and exultation is found in the Lord (e.g., Psalm 33:164:1068:397:12). It is — to put it in colloquial terms — the covenant Lord who puts a spring in their step, who gets them out of bed in the morning, who energizes them and delights their hearts.

2. Their Desire

Closely tied to the delight of the righteous is the question of their desire, their hope, their longing, their aspiration. For what do they hope? The answer, which follows necessarily, logically, and experientially from their delight, is that they desire to see the face of the covenant Lord God. Nothing is more precious to them than to have the face (the personal, beneficent presence) of the Lord turned toward them, both in this life (in part) and in eternity (in full). This is a most precious promise (e.g., Psalm 11:7). Not to have it is the most painful experience on earth (e.g., Psalm 13:1–288:14). Him they seek (Psalm 24:627:8–9), and for him they thirst (e.g., Psalm 42:1–2143:6–7). Far from being satisfied in themselves and with themselves, their desire is passionately and intensely directed upward to the Lord.

3. Their Repentance

The third facet of the righteous is of a rather different kind: their penitence. Far from being self-confident, the truly righteous person knows deeply his own sinfulness and urgent need of repentance. We see this most clearly in Psalm 32, in which David celebrates, and tells the story of, his rediscovery of the blessing of confession of sin, repentance, and forgiveness. At the end of the psalm, he exhorts all who walk this way of repentance, “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous” (Psalm 32:11). This congregation of the righteous (cf. Psalm 1:5) consists of men and women who have learned, and continue to learn, the necessity and the blessing of confession and repentance. Here in anticipation we see the tax collector, rather than the Pharisee, of Jesus’s parable (Luke 18:9–14).

We see this spirit again at the start of Psalm 143, in which David leads those who have no natural righteousness (v. 2) in pleading for covenant mercy (v. 1), that God in his righteousness will answer him, and them, with steadfast love (v. 8).

4. Their Refuge

The fourth facet is perhaps the one that most clearly indicates the presence of faith or trust. It asks and answers the question, Whither or to whom do the righteous flee when under pressure or threat?

Again and again, we hear and see the righteous fleeing to the covenant Lord as their refuge, the only safe place in the face of the assaults of their enemies and ultimately in the face of the righteous judgment of God. To him they cry for help in troubles, and he delivers them (Psalm 34:15171921). They commit their way to him, trust in him, confident that he will bring into the open the righteousness (or vindication) that he will give them (Psalm 37:5–6). For him they wait and hope (e.g., Psalm 37:7), for “he is their stronghold in the time of trouble” (Psalm 37:39). They cast their burden upon him, trusting that “he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). Repeatedly, they take refuge in him (e.g., Psalm 64:10). One of the psalms where we see this most intensely is Psalm 71 (e.g., vv. 2, 3, 15, 16, 19, 24).

5. Their Assurance and Covenant Head

We come now to consider the occasions when the psalmists speak about their own righteousness (e.g., Psalm 4:17:818:20–24). What do they mean by this? This is arguably the most significant part of our study, and most needful of careful thought. Two observations need to be made before we can make progress.

First, it is abundantly clear in the Psalms that the source of all righteousness is the God who is righteous in himself (e.g., Psalm 11:7), whose law is righteous (e.g., Psalm 19:9), who does, or works, righteousness as the expression of his covenant faithfulness and love (e.g., Psalm 22:3136:648:10103:617), and who will judge the world in righteousness (Psalm 9:896:1398:9). No human being has righteousness by nature; this is the preserve of the covenant Lord.

Second, the king in David’s line holds a unique position in the Psalms. When studying the Psalms, it is striking how often there is an interplay between a singular leading character (most often the king) and a plurality or congregation of the righteous. Because the Lord saves the king, the king’s people experience blessing in him (e.g., Psalm 3:8).

David calls the Lord the “God of my righteousness” (Psalm 4:1), which appears to mean the God from whom my righteousness, and my hope of vindication, proceeds. In both Psalms 17 and 18, the king professes a righteousness on which his hope is built. In the drama of Psalm 18, he is rescued because of this righteousness (see vv. 20–24). For David himself, this poses a problem, for we find ourselves asking about Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11); how can the David who sinned (or would later sin) so grievously claim such righteousness? The answer, hinted at in the Psalms and blazing forth with the full light of day in the New Testament, is that his righteousness is given to him, ultimately because of the flawless righteousness of “great David’s greater Son” (cf. Romans 5:12–21). The Lord in his righteousness leads David, and all the little anticipatory “messiahs” in David’s line, “in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3), because there will be a true Messiah who will walk those paths without slipping or sliding into moral failure of any kind. Having said this, there is a real visible measure of actual lived righteousness of life evident in the life of any old-covenant believer who is truly justified by faith (see section 6 below).

The interplay between the righteousness of the covenant Lord and the righteousness of the king is clearly seen in Psalm 35:24–28. In verse 24, David the king pleads for God to vindicate him “according to your righteousness” (that is, in fulfillment of his covenant promises). In verse 27, there is reference to the assembly or congregation of the king’s people, “who delight in my [that is, the king’s] righteousness,” a righteousness given to the king and possessed by the king on behalf of his people. These people will be glad because their king is righteous and therefore they are blessed. And then in verse 28, the king’s tongue tells “of your [that is, God’s] righteousness.”

We see the movement from the righteousness of the king to the righteousness received by the people in Psalm 72. In verses 1–3, God is petitioned to give righteousness to his king. When this happens, the king’s people (ultimately all who are “in Christ”) will be called “righteous” and will “flourish” under the rule of their king (v. 7).

In the light of the New Testament, this focus on the righteousness possessed by the king may be understood to be fulfilled in the righteousness of Christ the King. When David (like Abraham or any Old Testament saint) spoke of his righteousness, he meant, first and foremost, a righteousness given to him by God. When old-covenant believers who were neither patriarchs nor Davidic kings echoed this language, their righteousness likewise was found ultimately in the king, their covenant head. This federal headship of the king is fulfilled when Christ lives a righteous life and dies a sin-bearing death as the representative head and substitute propitiatory sacrifice for his people.

6. Their Life

A pen portrait of the righteous in the Psalms would be woefully incomplete if it did not include a mention of their visible life. I have deliberately held over discussion of this until now, because their life is the fruit, and not the root, of their existence as believers in the covenant God. It would be a mistake to begin with a consideration of their lives of right living. Nevertheless, their lives are inseparable from their identity and closely tied to their blessing and assurance. The covenant Lord does not give to his king and people a righteousness of status simply that they may enjoy it while continuing to live evil lives, for he “is righteous” and “loves righteous deeds” (Psalm 11:7; cf. Psalm 33:5). It is very clear (e.g., in Psalms 15 and 24) that authentic righteousness of life is the necessary marker of the genuine Messiah and of his people. Jesus is the fulfillment of Psalms 15 and 24, as he is of all the descriptions of human righteousness in the Psalms.

Sometimes the righteousness claimed by a psalmist may focus particularly on innocence with respect to a particular accusation (e.g., Psalm 7:8). Under these circumstances, he not infrequently pleads with God for vindication. Often, however, this particular righteousness overflows into a broader whole-life righteousness that, albeit partial, is nevertheless real.

Those who are truly righteous, by virtue of their membership of the covenant people under the king, their covenant head, and who are genuinely righteous because they trust the covenant promises (fulfilled in Christ), will live upright, blameless, and righteous lives. Perhaps the clearest exposition of this in the Psalms is in Psalm 111 followed by Psalm 112. Psalm 111 celebrates the righteousness of the covenant Lord. Then Psalm 112 (with close echoes) declares a blessing on those who exhibit those same qualities in the generosity (cf. Psalm 37:21) and righteousness of their lives. These people act and speak (cf. Psalm 37:30) in ways that demonstrate the fruit of their hearts of faith. Paul will later call this “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:516:26), and the letter of James will expound it forcefully.

7. Their Enemies

The final facet is of a very different kind. The enemies of the righteous, by their polar contrast to the righteous, shine a paradoxical light on the identity of the righteous. Here is a brief pen portrait of who the righteous are not. Most often described as “the wicked” (but also, for example, as “evildoers”), I want to mention just two characteristics that are thematic of their portrait in the Psalms.

The first is their consistent, bitter, implacable hostility toward the righteous (e.g., Psalm 94:21). Here is the fruit of Cain’s unbelieving hatred of Abel, who was righteous by faith. We see this as a consistent theme in, for example, Psalm 37, and also in Psalms 9, 10, and 11.

The second facet of their portrait is that, in polar contrast to those who are righteous by faith, the wicked naturally trust in themselves and their own resources. We see this clearly in the portrait of Doeg, the Edomite, in Psalm 52:1–7. Especially in verse 7, he will not make God his refuge but trusts in his own riches and resources.

Nothing is more obnoxious to the hardened wicked, who trust in themselves, than the presence on earth of the Righteous One, who trusts his Father, and the people of the Righteous One, who share his faith.

Psalms and New-Covenant Righteousness

If we ask, “Are the righteous in the Psalms the same as those who are righteous by grace alone through faith alone under the new covenant?” the answer must be “yes and no.” Overwhelmingly, the answer is yes. We who are new-covenant believers, who belong to Christ, share with them their delight in God, their desire to see the face of God, their penitence, their fleeing to God for refuge from both troubles and judgment, their assurance of forgiveness because of their covenant head, the outworking of their faith in righteousness of life, and the presence in our world, as in theirs, of hostility to Christ and his people (cf. John 15:18–16:4).

But there is, I think, one significant difference between these righteous old-covenant believers and believers in Christ under the new covenant: under the new covenant, we enjoy a deeper assurance and the riches of a definitively cleansed conscience, and this is a blessing known only in anticipation and shadow under the old covenant (see Hebrews 8–10).4

So, when we come across the righteous in the Psalms, as we do in about 40 percent of the Psalms, we recognize in them people who trusted in the Christ to come. By believing and living in the obedience of faith in the covenant promises, they believed implicitly in the Christ who would fulfill those promises. They did not know as clearly as we do the fullness of that magnificent Christ nor the grandeur of those gospel promises. But that apart, we recognize in them people very like us today in Christ. This transforms the way we read the Psalms.

  1. Some other discussions of this question are to be found in Geoffrey Grogan, Prayer, Praise and Prophecy (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus, 2001), 122–26; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, trans. Keith Krim (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1986), 154–62; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly, vol. 5, Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 155–77. 
  2. C.S. Lewis wrongly refers to “the self-righteousness in many of the Psalms” (Reflections on the Psalms [London: Fount Paperbacks, 1977], 34). 
  3. The three most important Hebrew words are the noun “righteous (person)” (tsadiq), the adjective “righteousness” (tsedaqah), and the abstract noun “righteousness” (tsedeq). 
  4. See Christopher Ash, Discovering the Joy of a Clear Conscience (Philipsburg NJ: P&R, 2014), 128–48

Luther On Justification

Some quotes:

“Justification by faith alone is the article of the standing or falling Church.”

“Whoever departs from the article of justification does not know God and is an idolater . . . For when this article has been taken away, nothing remains but error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry, although it may seem to be the height of truth, worship of God, holiness, etc. . . If the article of justification is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost at the same time.”

“When the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen. Therefore it is necessary constantly to inculcate and impress it, as Moses says of his Law (Deut. 6:7); for it cannot be inculcated and urged enough or too much. Indeed, even though we learn it well and hold to it, yet there is no one who apprehends it perfectly or believes it with a full affection and heart. So very trickish is our flesh, fighting as it does against the obedience of the spirit.”

“This doctrine [justification by faith alone] is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. For no one who does not hold this article or, to use Paul’s expression, this ‘sound doctrine’ (Titus 2:1) is able to teach aright in the church or successfully to resist any adversary . . . this is the heel of the Seed that opposes the old serpent and crushes its head. That is why Satan, in turn, cannot but persecute it.” – Martin Luther

Back in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church believed (then as it does now) that justification is by grace, through faith and because of Christ. What Rome does not believe is that justification is by faith alone, or by grace alone, or by Christ alone. For Rome, justification is by grace plus merit, through faith plus works; by Christ plus the sinner’s contribution of inherent righteousness. In contrast, Martin Luther and the Reformers called the Church back to the one true Biblical Gospel: Salvation is by God’s grace alone, received through faith alone, because of Christ alone, based on the Scriptures alone, to the Glory of God alone.

Rome v. The Gospel

At the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church placed its eternal and irrevocable curse on the Gospel, announcing it as actually heretical. I am certain that in the hearts and minds of the delegates at the Council, this was never intended – not even for a moment – but that is in fact what happened.

The most relevant Canons are the following:

Canon 9. If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone…, let him be anathema.

Canon 11. If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins,… let him be anathema.

Canon 12. If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy (supra, chapter 9), which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.

Canon 24. If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema.

Canon 30. If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.

Canon 32. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ…does not truly merit an increase of grace and eternal life… let him be anathema.

As Dr. Michael Horton rightly noted, “It was, therefore, not the evangelicals who were condemned in 1564, but the evangel itself. The ‘good news,’ which alone is ‘the power of God unto salvation’ was judged by Rome to be so erroneous that anyone who embraced it was to be regarded as condemned.”

But the Council of Trent met a long time ago. Hasn’t Rome since modified its position? In another place Dr. Horton wrote, “Has Rome’s position changed? In fact it has not. The Vatican II documents as well as the new Catechism of the Catholic Church reinvoke the theological position of the Council of Trent, condemning the gospel of justification by an imputed righteousness.” But knowing full well that Rome’s full curse is on me for believing the following, I quote the Scripture and embrace the only true Gospel of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

“To the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). God justifies the “ungodly.” God does not wait until sinners are righteous in and of themselves before He declares them righteous. If He did, I for one would despair of ever getting there. The word “Gospel” means “good news” and the amazing “good news” of the Gospel is about how Jesus’ life, death and resurrection breaks all the power of despair and saves sinners by supplying to them a perfect unassailable righteousness AS A GIFT.

Question: Whose righteousness is supplied?

Answer: Christ’s own righteousness (1 Cor 1:30).

The connection between the sinner and the Savior is trust, not improvement of behavior. THAT COMES LATER (Eph 2:8-10).

This is our hope – while ungodly in and of ourselves, when we give up all hope of self attained salvation, trust in the Savior allows the Savior to save and He does so with resplendent and majestic power! Paul wrote, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). The basis of this despair shattering hope (the ungodly justified) is “Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4, literal translation). Through the mechanism of faith alone (which itself is God’s gift) God counts sinners (the ungodly) as righteous because of Christ.

“For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Justification by faith alone is really shorthand for justification by the Person and work of Christ alone. Jesus saves – not merely potentially or hypothetically – but He actually saves – all by Himself! All the sins of all the people who would ever believe in Him were transferred to Christ on the cross and He bore the penalty these sins deserved; and what is transferred to these sinners is a righteousness that has never known sin – the very righteousness of Christ. That is the kind of righteousness given to me – a righteousness that always obeyed every command of God fully and perfectly from the heart. The wonder of it all is that now, because of Christ, God not only merely tolerates me, but He has declared me as just, righteous, and fully pleasing to Him. “Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1). This peace is not a mere temporary ceasefire on God’s part. I am forever justified before God through faith in the perfect Savior. To quote Martin Luther’s Latin phrase, I am “simul iustus et peccator” – at the same time just and sinner. Christ’s own perfect righteousness is mine. It is not merely that God because of Christ now sees me as “just as if I’d never sinned”, but more than that.. much more than that… He now sees me as “just as if I’d always obeyed!” This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Justification & Adoption

That justification—by which we mean God’s forgiveness of the past together with his acceptance for the future—is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; his law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves because we have no peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers us anything else…

But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship—he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with the God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.

The Very Heart of the Reformation

This excerpt is taken from Are We Together? by R.C. Sproul and has its online source here.

At the very heart of the controversy in the sixteenth century was the question of the ground by which God declares anyone righteous in His sight. The psalmist asked, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3). In other words, if we have to stand before God and face His perfect justice and perfect judgment of our performance, none of us would be able to pass review. We all would fall, because as Paul reiterates, all of us have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). So, the pressing question of justification is how can an unjust person ever be justified in the presence of a righteous and holy God?

The Roman Catholic view is known as analytical justification. This means that God will declare a person just only when, under His perfect analysis, He finds that he is just, that righteousness is inherent in him. The person cannot have that righteousness without faith, without grace, and without the assistance of Christ. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, true righteousness must be present in the soul of a person before God will ever declare him just.

Whereas the Roman view is analytical, the Reformation view is that justification is synthetic. A synthetic statement is one in which something new is added in the predicate that is not contained in the subject. If I said to you, “The bachelor was a poor man,” I have told you something new in the second part of the sentence that was not already contained in the word bachelor. All bachelors are men by definition, but not all bachelors are poor men. There are many wealthy bachelors. Poverty and wealth are concepts that are not inherent in the idea of bachelorhood. So, when we say, “The bachelor was a poor man,” there is a synthesis, as it were.

When we say that the Reformation view of justification is synthetic, we mean that when God declares a person to be just in His sight, it is not because of what He finds in that person under His analysis. Rather, it is on the basis of something that is added to the person. That something that is added, of course, is the righteousness of Christ. This is why Luther said that the righteousness by which we are justified is extra nos, meaning “apart from us” or “outside of us.” He also called it an “alien righteousness,” not a righteousness that properly belongs to us, but a righteousness that is foreign to us, alien to us. It comes from outside the sphere of our own behavior. With both of these terms, Luther was speaking about the righteousness of Christ.

If any word was at the center of the firestorm of the Reformation controversy and remains central to the debate even in our day, it is imputation. Numerous meetings were held between Protestants and Roman Catholics to try to repair the schism that was taking place in the sixteenth century. Theologians from Rome met with the magisterial Reformers, trying to resolve the difficulties and preserve the unity of the church. There was a longing for such unity on both sides. But the one concept that was always a sticking point, the idea that was so precious to the Protestants and such a stumbling block for the Roman Catholics, was imputation. We cannot really understand what the Reformation was about without understanding the central importance of this concept. Continue reading