“Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God's sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God's act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.”
What are we affirming in this statement?
Following on from Christ’s work as our substitute for our redemption, we come to one of the great insights of the reformation (and arguably the distinguishing mark of Protestant faith).
Through Jesus’ righteous obedience to death on the cross, our debt before God is cancelled. So too, through His perfect righteousness, fulfilling every requirement of God’s holy law, we are counted as righteous before God. So we truly contribute nothing to our salvation. We are not righteous before God because of any good that we might do by his empowering, but only by his gracious gift of Christ’s righteousness counted as our own and received by faith.
We don’t earn the right for Christ’s atonement to be applied to us, we don’t earn the right to be identified with Christ in his death and life, we receive everything from God by faith as sheer gift, and in Christ we are counted righteous before God.
“Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight”
Here we contemplate our reception of God’s forgiveness and mercy, secured for us on the cross without compromise to his righteousness.
“he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
Our sins, past, present, and future, are all dealt with once and for all. We have been pardoned, we are pardoned in the present, and we will be pardoned at the final judgement. But more than a pardon, this is acceptance in God’s sight: we are made children of God, loved with an inseparable love, destined for glory! (cf. Romans 8:16-17, 30, 38-39). We are not just ‘let off,’ but welcomed into God’s holy presence.
How?
“only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them;”
Christ is righteous. He embodied a perfect sinless humanity. He was fully obedient to God’s law, faithfully enduring every kind of temptation that we face. It is true that this was in order to fulfil the requirement to be the spotless lamb who could die on our behalf, atoning for our sin with no sin of his own to atone for.
But in his perfect humanity, he is also the righteous head of a new humanity with whom we can be identified. Just as all are sinful and subject to death in Adam through his disobedience as humanity’s representative and head, so all who believe are forgiven and counted righteous in Christ through Christ’s righteousness as the new humanity’s representative and head.
The cross doesn’t simply send us off with a blank slate, a ‘second chance’ to try and attain to the glory of God of which we once fell short (Romans 3:23). The verdict from God is not merely “not guilty” but “righteous” because Christ’s righteousness is “credited” to us or counted as ours by God.
Is this reckoning of us as righteous on Christ’s account, regardless of our actual behaviour past, present or future, merely a legal fiction; does God play make-believe?
No. Our life that was tied to Adam, tied to the law that identified our guilt, tied to our sin, has been put to death with Christ on the cross. We have been raised with him to a new life which is bound to his perfect righteousness. (cf. Romans 5:1 – 7:6)
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Thus God can declare us righteous, rightly, not because we are in-and-of-ourselves, not because we are working hard to get better by the Spirit’s help, but because we are so identified with Christ that his righteousness really belongs to us! (cf. Romans 8:1-4)
“this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.”
No doubt our union with Christ works in us to make us more Christ-like, but this change effected in us is not the basis of our pardon or acceptance before God. Neither does it ‘take over’ after our initial justification as though our efforts maintain our right to be with God.
Our hope and peace before God, our assurance of salvation, is only by God’s grace and mercy declaring us justified in Christ. It is wholly dependent upon Christ’s righteousness, we add nothing.
Just as we don’t add to our justification after the fact, we also do nothing to earn it in the first place. Christ died for us “while we were still sinners” and justification comes to us in our dire need as those who have “sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. We are “justified freely by his grace” and “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
We receive this solely through faith, the opposite of trusting in our own good works, instead looking to Christ to trust in his.
Where is this challenged or a challenge when studying theology at university?
Faith and Works in Paul and James
One perennial challenge to grasping justification and the biblical distinction between faith and works is reconciling Paul and James. Paul is clear in Galatians that justification comes by faith, not through “works of the law” (cf. Galatians 3), yet James writes “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24, ESV). Luther felt this challenge, famously referring to James as “an epistle of straw.” Reconciling these two New Testament witnesses continues to be a challenge in contemporary theology and biblical studies.
This apparent contradiction can be untangled with attention to the divergent ways that Paul and James use the language of ‘justification,’ ‘works,’ and ‘faith’ to address different contexts. Paul writes in the context of the gospel going out to Gentiles, referring to God’s pardon and acceptance in justification. Paul writes of ‘faith’ as faith in Christ (and everything that entails) and ‘works’ as framed by the Jewish law. James writes in the context of Jewish believers in Jerusalem, contending for integrity in following Christ. ‘Faith’ here is the assumed monotheism of his Jewish context, and ‘works’ are the outworking of mercy and love which go above and beyond the law as the fruit of a true faith in Christ. Paul agrees with James about the fruit of faith and its inseparability from salvation, but is more careful to distinguish between faith and attempts to earn our salvation in his Gentile (pagan) context that carried with it much stronger notions of ritual appeasement of deities.
The issues are more complex than this brief outline, but far from a ‘problem’ for justification, James and Paul together help to clarify the nature of saving faith in Christ and the immeasurable grace and mercy of God.
The New Perspective on Paul
A more modern challenge to this doctrine is the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), an academic movement which questions traditional readings of Paul on justification, faith, and works of the law. It began with E. P. Sanders’ argument that 1st Century Judaism was fundamentally a religion of grace not legalism. The NPP is the attempt to explain Paul’s contrast between faith and works in justification in ways that don’t paint works in legalistic colours, but rather see works as Jewish identity markers.
There has been plenty of criticism and pushback against the NPP, both that the view of 1st century Judaism as a religion of grace is too simplistic, and that it is clear (regardless of Jewish backgrounds) that in places Paul has precisely some kind of legalism in his targets. The best of Evangelical scholarship recognises the great gains that have been made recently in understanding 1st century Judaism and Paul while retaining a robust understanding of our justification by grace alone through faith alone.
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Plenty more could be said on both of these challenges. See the ‘taking it further’ section below for some good places to start.
How does this help us do Evangelical Christian theology better?
Justification on account of Christ’s righteousness is our assurance of salvation. We don’t work to earn salvation, a name, or a status for ourselves. These are given as sheer gift in God’s declaration of us as ‘righteous’ in Christ. This is just as applicable in our studies as in any ‘religious’ work we can conceive of doing. And perhaps this hits closer to home in theology than in any other subject as we seek to grow in the knowledge of the things of God through our studies.
It is not our academic abilities, exegetical skills, or even a deepening understanding of the gospel that renders us pardoned and acceptable before God. It is the simple faith which trusts Jesus rather than ourselves by which we receive God’s judgement on us as ‘righteous’. Our motivation in theology should be out of joy and thankfulness for this free gift, a response to salvation, not a pursuit to earn it. This is equally freedom from anxious overwork and caution against laziness as neither emerge out of faith and thankfulness to God.
Additionally, the content of our theology will be in continuity with this glorious recognition of the freedom of God’s grace. Justification is central to Evangelical theology and our thinking will celebrate and build upon this foundation of God’s grace, Christ’s righteousness, and our faith.
