Justification

This week's questions

What is justification? Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

Question 33

This is the first of the gifts that last week's Question 32 promised to all who are called. The catechism calls it an ‘act’: a verdict, given once and whole. Next week it will call sanctification a ‘work’, because growing holy takes a lifetime. The library's introduction sets this answer beside 2 Corinthians 5:21 and the Council of Trent; this week walks through its proof texts, one phrase at a time.

Pardoned and accepted

"Of God's free grace": nothing in us starts it. The first proof text says that sinners "are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24), for God presented Christ "as an atoning sacrifice in His blood" (Romans 3:25). Grace is free to us because it cost God his Son.

"He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous": the answer holds the two together. Paul says David speaks of the blessedness of the one "to whom God credits righteousness apart from works" (Romans 4:6), and quotes him:

Blessed are they whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.

Romans 4:7-8

Pardon clears the debt; acceptance credits the account with Christ's righteousness. God does both, and counts the forgiven as righteous before him.

"Only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us": the ground is not in us at all. The next proof text shows where that righteousness comes from: "God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Larger Catechism names what is counted ours: "the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them" Larger Catechism, Q. 70, his life of obedience and his death for sin. As Paul puts it, "through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). To impute is to reckon to someone's account.

"Received by faith alone": faith adds nothing to the gift; it only takes it. Paul's hope is to be found in Christ:

not having my own righteousness from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.

Philippians 3:9

The Heidelberg Catechism, of the continental Reformed churches, guards the point: I am righteous by faith "Not that I am acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 61, but because Christ's righteousness alone is mine. Yet the faith that receives is never alone in the one it justifies; it "is no dead faith, but worketh by love" Westminster Confession 11.2. John Calvin, who called justification "the principal ground on which religion must be supported" Institutes 3.11.1, defined it so: "this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ" 3.11.2.

An answer for the accusing conscience

The Heidelberg Catechism turns all this into words for a troubled night:

although my conscience accuse me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and that I am still prone always to all evil, yet God, without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 60

John Bunyan gave the same comfort a picture. His pilgrim Christian ran to a cross, and there "his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back" The Pilgrim's Progress. He did nothing but come.

Other Christians describe justification differently. In Catholic teaching, God's justifying grace both forgives sins and inwardly renews and sanctifies the person, beginning in baptism, the sacrament of faith Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, ch. 7. Trent denied that anyone may be infallibly certain, by faith, of being in grace, and urged all to rest their firmest hope on God's help chs 9 and 13. The Orthodox churches of the East describe salvation chiefly as communion with God and sharing his life, and give the courtroom language of justification a smaller place. Lutherans, who follow Martin Luther, stand with the Reformed: we are justified by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith Augsburg Confession, art. 4. In 1999, at Augsburg, the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration. It sets out a common understanding, that God's acceptance is never earned but given by grace alone, as we trust in what Christ did to save us, and judges that the mutual condemnations of the sixteenth century do not fall on the teaching it describes, though differences remain; in 2017 the World Communion of Reformed Churches associated itself with it Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The Reformed confessions keep their witness: God receives us for Christ's righteousness alone, never for our renewal.

These views are set out at length in Grace alone, faith alone, Faith and justification and What is justification?; Luther's discovery is told in Luther: the theology of the cross and justification.

To ponder this week

When your conscience accuses you this week, what will you answer? Do not argue that you are better than it says. Learn the Heidelberg Catechism's "yet God": grant that the charge is true, and point to Christ's righteousness, counted as yours. Pray the answer of Question 33 slowly once a day, and thank God for each of its phrases.

Practice