14. Justification
CHAPTER XIV
Justification "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.- Romans 5:1.
Justify, as used in the Bible, means not merely to pronounce or consider just, but to make just. When the sinner meets the necessary conditions laid down in God’s covenant with man, God for Christ’s sake forgives the sinner and thus renders him justified. There is no power but the divine that can justify the sinner, and no name given in heaven or among men whereby we can be justified except the name of Christ. "It is God that justifieth" (Romans 8:33). The conditions prerequisite to justification are stated in their simplest terms. repentance and faith. Jesus said, " Repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15). On the day of Pentecost the convicted multitude asked, "Men and brethren, what shall we do ? " Peter, answering, said, " Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). When the Philippian jailer came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas, saying, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" the prompt answer was, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16:3031). These texts teach unmistakably that repentance and faith are the conditions of justification. The power to justify is God’s; the power to repent is men ’s. The blood of Christ is God’s provision for man’s salvation; the act of saving faith is man’s appropriation of that provision. When men repent and believe in the atoning blood of Christ for the remission of sins, God for Christ’s sake forgives, and the soul is justified, or freed from all its guilt.
Since justification is the removal of the guilt incurred by the transgression of divine law, it follows that for the soul to remain justified the life must be kept free from willful transgression of divine law. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law" (1 John 3:4). "Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). Sin, then, in its broadest sense, is any transgression of divine law, but sin is not imputed unless the law be known to the transgressor. Jesus said to the Pharisees, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth" (John 9:41). Sin may be committed either by doing what the law forbids or by failing to do what the law enjoins. From the very conditions on which the justified state is obtained, from the nature of the process by which the justified state is reached, and from the very meaning and experience of justification itself, we see that the retention or preservation of justification demands a life of obedience to divine law, a life free from sin.
Justification restores the soul to communion with God by the removal of personal guilt. Yet, from the very nature of justification, it can not restore the man to the divine image lost in the fall, for we are not guilty of, or personally responsible for, the existence of native depravity. It remains, as we shall learn, for some other process in the divine plan to remove native depravity.