Justification

My friends, true faith, true faith always results in obedience. Although they're separate. True faith results in obedience. We have to understand, Paul wrote this in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, that we are justified only by grace through faith. It's not of works. We're not justified. We are not saved by our works. That is emphatically established. It's the core of the gospel. You cannot save yourself. Only Jesus saves. We have to understand that.

If you know Jesus this morning, I want to tell you something. You stand before the Lord righteous, justified as if you had never sinned because God the Father sees Jesus in you, not all the stuff you've done. That should be an amazing truth to give us strength every single day. You stand justified today because of the power of God to salvation through Jesus Christ. But if you do not know him, you are not justified and you stand in your sin guilty before a holy God.

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. So you've got to keep the law perfectly. That's the only way you can be justified. They couldn't do that. Verse 14. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. So these Greeks who didn't grow up knowing the Mosaic law, they had some understanding.

You want to stand before God and you want to be justified and say to God, 'Listen, I'm good enough?'" He goes back to the law and he says, "Listen, the only way, the only way you're ever going to be able to stand before God Almighty and say, 'Hey, I am good enough,' is if you execute the law perfectly from the moment you were born to the moment you die and your spirit is before the Lord." That's what gets you justified.

Because the reality is, no one is justified by the law. No one is justified by lineage. And Paul will break this down and continue with this argument in verse 9. He says, No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, notice how many times he says all in this passage. All, both Jews and Greek, are under sin. Paul is pointing out that there's no advantage here. He's writing to the church in Rome and he's saying, whether you are a pagan and you just came to hear about the Lord or whether you've grown up in the Jewish tradition, there is no advantage for you.

thing the law does is reveal our need. We can think of a little child that doesn't think they need to go to sleep, but soon enough they get tired. And so the parent shows them their room, shows them their bed, and says, you need to sleep. And that is what the Lord does with the laws. He doesn't give us the law so that we are justified by it or that we try to become justified. We try to meet the perfect standard. We try to meet the perfect standard. We try to meet the perfect standard, but he gives us the law so that we can understand that someone has to fix it. Someone has to provide for our need. Someone has to bring us to the Lord. We are no exception to this, and God knows it. The righteous judge of all humanity knows we stand guilty before him, and instead of casting us away, says, I love you, and I have a plan for you. The righteous judge of the universe, instead of condemning us by

I'm righteous. He was unrighteous. Where Paul thought, you know what? I'm justified. He realized he is not justified. Where Paul thought he was enough, he realized he was not enough. Paul came to the realization that he needs Christ in that moment. So Paul is not coming from a place of self-righteousness or judgment, but he's coming from a place of humility. He calls himself the foremost of all sinners, the chief of all sinners.

He's saying, by words of the law. By words of the law, nobody will be justified. Nobody will be righteous or right with God because the law wasn't given for us to be able to keep it. God knew we wouldn't be able to. He gave it to us to know that we can't keep his perfect standard. None of us. And that's where we're all guilty. That's why Jesus came and died on the cross. That's why he suffered and was beaten and his beard was blocked.

And to wrap up this section on the depravity of man, he gives the charge that all of us have to deal with. He says, because of our fallenness and our sin nature, by works of the law, no man will be justified. By what we, we won't be justified by what we do, how good we can be, trying to fulfill God's commandment, it doesn't matter how long you've gone to church for, or how many times you've read through the Bible, or how often you've studied the Bible, by our works and by what we can do, we will not be justified before God.

We will not be declared righteous in his sight, if we only trust in our work. The only way we are gonna be justified before the Lord, is if we surrender completely to Jesus, and say, I'm a sinner in need of a savior, and Lord, I need you. That is the only way we are gonna be justified.

He says, now we know that whatever we do, we are going to be able to do it. We are going to be able to do it. We are going to be able to do it. We are going to be able to do it. We are going to be able to the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. Like, listen, we're quoting these scriptures. Listen, I've shined a mirror on it. Listen, I'm using the scripture to teach you this so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, what the Jews were trying to do was to follow the law. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. But we, our legalism today, we just have different laws. But this truth is still the same truth. You and I will not be justified before God by going to church, by being baptized,

We're hopeless, but God. We're hopeless, but now. He says, now the righteousness has been manifested. God's righteousness has been made known. That's what the word manifest means. It's been made known. And the word righteousness means this, to be made right with God. This is the answer to Job's question. How can we possibly be right with God? Because God is not done with us yet. He had a plan, right? And that plan is Jesus Christ. It says, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, in verse 22.

Looking at these three terms because understanding these three terms is, I would say, super important for us to understand what Paul is ultimately teaching or preaching or communicating in this passage. And the first term I want to talk through is this idea of being justified. Or he uses the word in verse 20 of, being justified. The definition is really God's gracious act of declaring a person righteous, free from guilt and condemnation.

Justified was used as a legal term. There is no more debt. You are free. You are viewed as you have just if you have never sinned. That's what happens when you become righteous. And we'll look through this idea of righteousness or righteous in a few minutes. I read, this is really well articulated. Simply put, to justify is to declare righteous. Justification is an act of God where he pronounces a sinner to be righteous because of that sinner's faith in Christ.

According to one theologian, the root idea in justification is the declaration of God, the righteous judge, that the man who believes in Christ, sinful though he may be, he is righteous. He is righteous. righteous is viewed as being righteous because in Christ he has come into a righteous relationship with God. It is at that moment of becoming righteous that you are declared at salvation of being justified. The weight, the cost of sin is no more on you.

viewed as justified. Justification has to do with God's justification or God's declaration for us as a sinner, the change you are a sinner no more. So we, some of us will view this justification as a process. Well, it's you're, you're becoming justified. No, no, no. You're missing the point of this idea. Justification is in a moment, that moment of salvation,

becoming a child of God happens. And at that moment, post justification, sanctification begins. That is the process or the purifying of us as believers. What does that look like? Simply means I am justified. I'm saved and I become transformed in that process of becoming to look more like Christ in my daily walk, in the way I talk, in the way I communicate, in my thoughts, in my interactions. Those begin to change what I found important before those priorities begin to change.

I may compare myself with someone else, and hopefully not, right, that I'm better than them because of whatever reason. But when it comes to reaching God, we're both falling short of his glory. And then verse 24, looking at it again, and are justified by his grace as a gift to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. I mean, that word gift jumps out to me, and justified and redemption. You know, Romans 5.15 says, but the free gift is not like the trespass, which again, whenever I see the phrase free gift in scripture, I'm reminded how slow I am, that God has to be redundant.

See, I believe the Bible teaches we will not be glorified until we reach the pearly gates of heaven. And God looks at us and says, well done, that good and faithful servant. And at that moment, you receive your glorified body, a perfect body, if you will. See, we are justified, declared righteous at the moment of salvation. Jesus Christ finished the work, required for our justification on the cross. Since we now have been justified by his blood, Romans five says, how much more should we save by the wrath through him? He was then raised to life for our justification. Romans four, and I'm stepping on scripture that I'm going to preach in a couple of weeks, but it's important that we see this, this idea or this word or understanding of becoming justified. So that's the first term. The second one is a bigger term is propitiation.

Just that reminder for us that we can't earn it. We can't work for it. We can't do it on our own. We just need to receive it from him. The word justification, I would encourage you when you see the word justification, there are some words in scripture that, I don't know, can be a little intimidating for us. And we see them, and we just, when we break them down, it helps a little bit. The justification, I've heard it said, just as if I never sinned.

That's justification. Just as if I never sinned. It's to declare one righteous. They can be justified, which could be translated here, the made righteous in God's sight. As I was reading a couple of commentaries, it caught my attention. It's like, I talk about being justified by faith.

Jesus dies. Jesus is buried and Jesus rises from the dead. And it's through what? Jesus has done that we can be saved from the consequences of our sin. The Bible says in verse 24, and are justified. So all have sinned. And the only way to be justified, the only way to be made right in front of God before God is by his grace. Now, what is grace? Grace is getting something you do not deserve. Mercy is not getting something you do deserve. Times when my kids would misbehave.

But all who are apart from Christ are rejected by God and they're subject to God's wrath at some point. And that's what we talked about in chapter 1, starting in verse 18. We talked about the wrath of God. Paul says through faith in Jesus, we are justified. The word justified, growing up, it was how it was, what it meant was just if I'd never sinned, right? Paul writes it this way, and are justified by grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because of his divine forbearance, he passed over former sin.

Justified, it's a legal term like that you would hear in court. A person must be found innocent to be declared righteous by or justified by the judge or just by the judge. They have to be found innocent to do that. If they're found innocent, they go free. But if they're found guilty or unjust, they face punishment. Since we are guilty, we can't be justified on our own. We have to find another way. We're justified, Paul says, and actually he was inspired by God to write this. He says it's by God's grace as a gift that we're justified. Grace gives God's righteousness to those who put their faith in Jesus. That's what God's grace is. Grace means to get something we don't deserve. It means unmerited favor. And Paul says those who are justified will be redeemed or redeemed. That's the idea of delivering, especially by means of paying the price, paying a ransom for a prisoner. Justified does n

See, the law has no justification in it in the Old Testament. You're not, nobody was justified of their sin in the Old Testament because the law revealed what sin was. It was a list of things that God gave to people to say, hey, this is what you cannot do if you're going to have a relationship with a holy God. Now he gave a way to have a relationship through the sacrifices of the Old Testament because the Bible also says that without the shedding of blood, there's this word again, there is no propitiation of sin. We'll get to the word in a little while. Okay, so you'll understand what that means here in a little bit. The law makes us accountable. The law tells us what sin is and the law shuts our mouths because we have nothing to say about any righteousness that we think we may have. Remember that rich guy that says, man, I obey all the Ten Commandments.

like we're holy. And that's called, that's only because Jesus' righteousness, his perfect life is imputed on us. It's like putting on a coat of righteousness, right? I have a story that might help you understand, and this is true. And I think it was, I can't remember the state, but there was a judge and he had a case and there was a deaf couple who had gotten married and they had lost some of their benefits. And once they were married, they realized they didn't have enough money to pay the rent on their new place. They were $250 short because they lost these benefits. They were guilty. The judge had no other choice but to say you're guilty and you must pay. But here's the incredible thing. The judge went to his office and got the $250 and paid it for this couple. They were justified. They were guilty, yet they were justified. And that's what Jesus does for us. He's, he is paying the pric

news. That's what gospel means. That we're not only talking about what God offers, what it cost him to offer it. I want you to grasp that. Oftentimes in our culture, we think of a free gift and we think it's really cheap. Paul's going to lay this foundation down that the gift that God is offering is not a cheap gift. And so we're looking at the gospel and we're looking at the what God is offering, but we also have to take into consideration what it cost him to offer that gift to you and to me. And we see this as we progress into Romans chapter 3 verse 24. And he says that those who receive this free gift, they are justified by his grace as a gift. There's the gift. They're justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in the very Messiah, the Christ that was foretold.

What Paul is saying in this passage is so important is, yeah, you may think you don't need help. You may think that you can do this on your own. You may think that you can accomplish this idea of justification, but don't even try. Don't even pretend. Let's not even start off on the right. I mean, let's start on the right foot of making sure we have to build this base premise as idea. You can't do it. You must ask. Ask for help. And it's important as we read through, and I almost used that illustration before I read the Romans three, but I thought it was important that we build a baseline of those topics of the idea of justification, propitiation, and righteousness, because those three don't happen without Jesus. Okay? Those three don't happen with my own works. Those three don't happen if I give money. Those three don't happen if I do this or that and that and that. Those three are absol

And then verse 20, verse 24, he says and we are just so he says for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We stop there. Thank you. Great job on the back there. And we are what? Justified. How awesome is that? We stop. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glorious standard. What's the next line? And are justified by his grace as a gift. Praise God. It's not just about our sin. It's really about God's grace now. He's established how much we stink. It's time to talk about how awesome God is and what he's made us. See, we're justified. Verse 25, it goes on and it says it says whom God put as a gift through Jesus Christ.

to understand the free gift of God that it is for everybody, but he doesn't want to ignore the cost that is associated with that because they go hand in hand. So the word justified very simply means to be declared righteous in God's courtroom, right? Let's put it in the court and the legal sense. Paul uses this verbiage often, courtroom terminology. This is why he creates an argument against something and then will turn around and say, listen, this is not what we want.

what I'm talking about. I'm actually talking about this. And so sometimes this is basically, if you watch television, this is the law and order of Paul's day and age. They didn't have television episodes. They read what Paul's letter had to do. There was very, very much this scene of creating a courtroom scene and understanding and using legal term to distinguish a person's case on why what they were saying was so valid. So Paul uses this word often in Romans, this word justified. That means to be declared righteous in God's courtroom. That very word is also translated in Acts 13 in this way. I just want to read it for you. Beginning in verse 37. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. We're obviously talking about the person of Jesus here. Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, forgiveness of sins, is proclaimed to you, to us. And by him, everyone

But justified, you are that right now. You know what it is? It is a change in legal status. You are no longer guilty. You are now forgiven. That, when you come to Christ, your legal standing before God goes from guilty, condemned, death to life, freedom, and forgiveness in an instant when you come to Jesus Christ. That is a beautiful gift and a beautiful picture of the word justification. It is 100% his grace and 0% of our works through redemption this idea of redemption here through the redemption that's in Jesus Christ the word is apolytrosis in Greek it's meant to be liberated by paying a price. It was the picture of somebody coming and paying a price to set free a slave from a life of indentured servitude. That's the picture of redemption. It ain't just no wink. He paid the price because he loves you. Our debt has been paid by Christ alone. It's only in and through Jesus that we're s

you could not be freed by the law of Moses. He goes on and he says, beware, therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come about. Look, you scoffers, be astounded, and perish. The warning which we've covered over the last few weeks. For I am doing a work, this is the gift, I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe even if someone were to tell you of it. Paul in Acts, this is actually Paul in Acts that's preaching the same message he's preaching here in Romans. This notion of this free gift. You see, to be justified means to be put right with, to be vindicated, to be declared righteous.

When he speaks of salvation, salvation, when we receive salvation, we receive justification. Let me read you a definition. Justification is an act. It's not a process. There are no degrees of justification. Each believer has the same right standing before God. Justification is something God does, not man. He declares us righteous. It's a legal manner. God puts the righteousness of Christ on our record in the place of our own sinfulness.

Listen to these words. Just let these words wash over you. Each word is so important. Verse 24, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And so important to be justified means to be completely forgiven completely. It's been said, if you want to know what the word justified means, just break it apart. And it means to, it means just as if I'd never sinned. That's a justified is just as if I'd never sinned.

depending what he says or does, one is justified by God when he or she relies upon Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins. And so there's so much emphasis on the justified by faith. Let me go through a number of verses real quick, and they'll be up on the screen for you. But 2 Corinthians 5, 7, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Galatians 2, 16, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified, by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because the works of the law are known to be justified. Go to Ephesians 2, 8 again. For by grace you have been saved through faith, Philippians 3, 9, and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God which depends on faith.

And I've got now a song going through my head that sings that. And I really love it, but just as if I'd never sinned. Do you understand what we're talking about? We are not just talking about some things being forgiven to be justified means everything you've ever done, thought, you know, worried about every sinful thing. You've ever done ever everything you've done today, everything you will ever do completely forgiven at the cross. You say, well, that's not fair. You're starting to get it. You're starting to get it. Well, I don't deserve that. You're really starting to get it. You see, that's what it means to be justified. You are thoroughly forgiven. It's as though you never sinned in the first place. You see, some of us think we're going to be shown like the side door to get into heaven, right? Like someone's going to be like, listen, you got to hurry up, get in here, get in here. Now

snuck in through the back door. You know what I mean? And you're just be like, I don't know how I'm here, but if someone asks me, I don't know what he, I don't even know what I'm going to say. Listen, you're like, I've got a rap sheet. I am guilty. Like you got to understand that is gone. It's gone. Romans is pushing you. Think of what this means to be justified. It means in God's eyes, you are perfect. It's perfection. You're innocent. You're clean. And I know you don't feel clean, but that is what we are talking about. And so then we ask how, how does this happen? How is a person justified like this? How does a person become completely clean like this of all wrongdoing ever?

And just that reminder again, it's about having faith in him. Martin Luther, when he was translating Scripture, he adds a word here. He goes, it's justified by faith alone. And I think that word's implied. It's the whole concept. This is, it's alone. It's by faith alone is the only way. And then he closes off the section by upholding the law. Stott wrote, Justified believers who live according to the Spirit fulfill the righteous requirements of the law.