God justifies the ungodly. He will not justify a good or a righteous man.
Justification by faith alone teaches that the believing sinner is justified by faith alone without any works, especially any works done by grace. In the act of justification God
declares the believing sinner righteous. This means that God declares that sinner—an ungodly man in that judgment—to have perfectly fulfilled God’s law, as perfectly in God's sight as if the sinner had never sinned and had fulfilled all righteousness himself. Thus that sinner is worthy of eternal life and every blessing of salvation. Belonging to this work and summarizing it is the act of God to forgive the sinner his sins
for Christ’s sake.
In the justification of the believing sinner, the sinner’s righteousness is the perfect
atoning death,
righteousness, and
holy works of Jesus Christ.
That righteousness and
that righteousness alone is the
ground of all that God promises to and gives the sinner for his salvation. This righteousness obtains heaven, grace, access to God, fellowship with the Father, every blessing of salvation, and the enjoyment of those blessings in his conscience and experience. God loves the righteous. God blesses the righteous.
In justification God
imputes to the sinner—or reckons to his account—that perfect righteousness of Christ by faith only. By in the phrase
justification by faith alone means that
faith is the only instrument to receive this saving righteousness of Christ. By faith alone God imputes to the sinner the righteousness of Christ. Thus the righteousness of Christ becomes the sinner’s; righteousness is reckoned to his account. Excluded are all works. God graciously justifies the sinner. The sinner’s good works do not add to his righteousness. His evil works do not detract from that righteousness. That righteousness is perfect, and no part of the sinner’s life thereafter can alter or change that reality. Were he to die at the moment of his justification, he would enter heaven.
Being justified by faith alone, the sinner is saved. Being justified, he is declared worthy of eternal life, of every blessing of salvation, and of the experience of those blessings. What scripture and the creeds mean when they teach that the justified sinner is declared worthy of eternal life must be understood correctly.
Worthy of eternal life refers not only to eternity and the final judgment, but also to the sinner’s enjoyment of salvation and the covenant of God now.
Because the righteousness of Christ obtains all of salvation, and because the sinner receives righteousness by faith only there is nothing for the believer’s works to obtain.
In this connection it is important to remember the apostle Paul’s chiding question to the foolish and bewitched Galatians who had apostatized from the truth of justification by faith alone and turned to works again: “
This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3:2).
To have the Spirit is to
- have Christ, God, the covenant, to dwell in Christ and to have him dwelling in us, to possess eternal life, and to have also all the fruits of the Spirit such as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
- enjoy fellowship with Christ and the living God, so that all the living water of Christ flows from him into the believer and flows out of the believer as a fountain of living water to the neighbor.
- have God working in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
- experience God as one’s God in the believer’s conscience and in his heart and in his whole life. The Spirit is salvation and the experience of salvation to the believer. There is no spiritual gift lacking to a human being who has the Spirit of Christ in him.
- have all the promises of God in principle. The Galatians did not have the Spirit “
by the works of the law.”
By “
works of the law,” Paul did not mean merely works of keeping the Old Testament law of Moses, but he meant any and all works, the same kind of works that he excluded from justification when he wrote, “
For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (2:16). Rather, the Galatians received the Spirit by the hearing of faith. As soon as they heard the gospel and believed, the Spirit was poured out on them. They received the Spirit by faith alone and not by works. Having the Spirit by faith, they had all of salvation and all of the experience of salvation by faith and not by the works of the law.
If faith is for righteousness—perfect righteousness, the righteousness of God himself worked out in the cross of Jesus Christ—there is absolutely nothing for works to obtain, and works cannot be instruments or means to obtain any part of salvation, no matter how little.
@
Robert Pate appears to think that Jesus was justified by God, therefore, any who believe upon him are similarly declared justified.
Error! Justification requires one to be a sinner.
God does not justify the righteous...unless one is a Romanist and believes in their nonsense of
initial and final justification.
The
obedience of Our Lord in Romans 5:19 applies to his
active (his voluntary subjection to the law)
and passive (his suffering the penalty for sin unto death) obedience. The active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ are what
propitiates (expiates, appeases) the wrath of God towards sin. For those that call upon the name of the Lord, the wrath of God no longer abides upon them, for God's wrath for their sin has been wholly appeased by His Son.
AMR
