Have you ever watched one of those courtroom dramas on television? It’s exciting to see everything unfold—the tension, the verdict, the moment of justice. There’s something compelling about watching a person stand before the judge, waiting to hear whether they are innocent or guilty.
That earthly courtroom is a fitting picture of the heavenly reality we all face. One day, each of us will stand before the ultimate Judge, God Himself. What will be His verdict? Will it be guilty or not guilty? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Sounds pretty frightening, doesn’t it? It could be if you aren’t ready for the verdict.
But here’s the joyful truth. It doesn’t have to be scary. We can find assurance in a positive verdict.
How? Read on.
The Meaning of Justification
Perhaps you’re asking, “Justification? That sounds like a deep theological term. It sounds frightening, too!”
Don’t worry. It is theological. It’s deep in some respects. It’s also something that affects us as Christians every day. It’s a simple truth that changes our whole outlook. How? Let’s take a deeper look.
Justification is a forensic term. It belongs in the realm of the courtroom. It refers to a legal declaration that is “one and done” rather than a process. In any public court hearing, a judge declares a person either guilty or righteous. This is exactly how Scripture speaks of our justification.
Those who see justification as anything other than a declaration reject an important truth. The Bible doesn’t speak to gaining righteousness by any method other than God’s declaration. That destroys the imagery of what justification is: being declared righteous by the Judge.
Imagine standing in a courtroom, guilty beyond question, yet having the judge declare you innocent. That is the incredible truth of justification in Scripture. The Greek words for “righteousness” and “justification” share the same root. Justification means that God pronounces sinners innocent.
But this presents a serious problem. How can a just and holy God declare sinners righteous when they aren’t? If God demands justice, how can He just wave His hand and make our sins go away? No one should respect a judge who lets a pedophile or murderer go simply because he wanted to declare a guilty person innocent. That isn’t justice. It’s a travesty.
How does God resolve this problem? Let’s begin by first discovering why we need justification in the first place. Then we’ll look at God’s perfect plan to justify guilty people.
The Need for Justification
The Whole Human Race Has Sinned
We are not born morally neutral. Scripture teaches that we are sinners from birth because of our connection to Adam. He was our representative before God. When he fell, we fell with him.
Romans 5:12–14 states:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (NASB)
Not only are we born in sin because of Adam, but we also commit personal sins. We perpetuate the bad decision Adam made in the Garden of Eden.
Romans 3:23 confirms this:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (NASB)
This makes sin individual. We sin because we are sinners. We also are sinners because we sin. Both are realities that separate us from God. We are guilty not only by nature but also by our own choices.
We stand condemned. We must be justified if we have any hope of avoiding judgment.
God Is Perfect and His Law Is Perfect
But couldn’t we just work really hard to impress God? Maybe we could do something that would garner His attention and make Him like us. We might even get a favorable ruling because of that.
There are two problems with that. First, how much is enough? We could never know if we made it until we actually hear the ruling. We would have all our nails bitten off by the end.
The second problem is even greater. God’s standard is absolute perfection. We can’t “do good things” to garner God’s graces. We have to live a perfect life because His standard for salvation is perfection.
We see this in God’s commands regarding sacrifices in the Old Testament. Leviticus 22:21 states:
“When a man offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord to fulfill a special vow or for a freewill offering, of the herd or of the flock, it must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it.” (NASB 95)
God demanded perfection in sacrifices given to Him because He is perfect in every way. Here’s the inconvenient truth. He expects us to be that way as well.
Leviticus 11:44 says:
“For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy.” (NASB)
Jesus quoted this, interpreting it in an even more explicit way in Matthew 5:48:
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” NASB
There it is. Let’s just all be perfect. No faults. No mistakes. Absolute perfection. Easy peasy, right?
Unless you’re a hopeless narcissist, you can’t believe that.
All of us are sinners from the womb because of Adam’s sin. But even if we weren’t, we committed enough sins before we were two to make us imperfect people. We didn’t even know what we were doing when we were that young, but we knew how to sin!
All of this leads to one, obvious fact. We have failed to keep God’s law because we aren’t perfect.
But what about our good works? They must count for something, right? Think again. Even our best efforts fall short of God’s perfect standard.
As Isaiah 64:6 declares:
“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” (NASB)
I won’t tell you what “filthy rags” are. It’s actually gut-wrenchingly gross. Let’s just say that God sees our good works as if they were the most reviled garbage we can think of.
That should put it in perspective.
The point is that if we have already failed, we can’t go back and make up for it. The law is not retroactive. We can’t erase our past sins by living righteously now. Like a massive national debt, our sin debt is beyond our ability to repay.
And God’s justice demands punishment for sin. That means we are declared guilty before Him. So how does God declare us righteous if His own standards condemn us guilty? Let’s find out.
The Solution: Christ’s Work of Justification
Christ Died for Our Sins
Romans 5:6 says:
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” (NASB)
Did you hear that? We had no strength. That means we were unable to help ourselves. Sound familiar? It sounds like the hopeless situation we just talked about. It sounds like you and me standing before the God of the universe. It sounds like sinners declared guilty.
That’s the beauty of the rest of the verse. “Christ died for the ungodly.”
In other words, He died for unrighteous sinners. Christ’s death was not just an example as some propose. It was a substitution. Jesus substituted Himself.
For whom? For us, of course. He took our place. He bore our sins and absorbed the wrath that we deserved.
1 Peter 2:24 confirms:
“Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness.” (NASB)
Christ died in our place. He took the guilty verdict as His own. If not, we would surely stand condemned. Instead, Jesus stands condemned on our behalf.
In this way, Christ satisfies the justice needed to retain God’s own righteousness while declaring us innocent. God is righteous. We are declared righteous, all because of Christ’s work on the cross.
Christ Fully Satisfied God’s Justice
Just one more thought before we move on. When Christ died to give us righeousness, He didn’t start something that we had to finish. He completed the act. As Christ hung, expiring on the cross, He explained it best in John 19:30:
“It is finished!”
That’s not just the plan of salvation. That’s our salvation. Christ didn’t do a half-way job. He finished salvation so that we would have the whole thing. Justified to the furthest degree.
Paul reiterates this truth in Romans 3:24–25 where he declares:
“Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood.” (NASB)
Because of Christ, God’s justice is satisfied. We are not merely forgiven. We are declared righteous.
When God looks at us in the final judgment, He won’t see us. He will see His Precious Son, Jesus Christ, standing in our place. He will see the one who became sin on our behalf (2 Corinthians 5:21) as our righteousness. He will see Jesus’ righteousness and declare us innocent.
So What?
Justification is not just an abstract theological concept. It is the very foundation of our faith. We are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone to the glory of God alone.
The courtroom of heaven has rendered its verdict: for those who trust in Christ, the Judge has declared, “Righteous.” That means you and I can say with assurance we are justified if we trust in Christ.
If you’ve put your trust in Jesus, thank God for the glorious justification He showered on you. You and I were condemned. Jesus took that guilty verdict, put it on Himself and we are free. If that isn’t something to shout about, I don’t know what is!
However, if you haven’t put your trust in Christ as Lord and Savior, you stand condemned. You need an advocate to speak in your defense.
Jesus is that Advocate:
And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1, NASB)
Throw yourself at the mercy of the Judge, accept the representation of Jesus and be saved.
Praise God, we have hope. Praise God we have been declared righteous!
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