Our Comfort in Christ’s Work of Justification: Part 2

If we may use the analogy of a courtroom scene in conveying the comfort of our justification before God as stated in the previous article of this series (June 2012), we may also find consolation in several of the words and phrases used by our Lord, written down by the holy authors.
The Holy Spirit used words common to the world’s social legal systems throughout the ages: sentence, condemnation, and guilt; charge, imputation and accusation; verdict, decree, and ruling; lawful, righteous, and blameless; innocence, acquittal, and free; advocate, mediator, and priest; record, evidence and testimony; just, holy, and saintly, etc. God used language that was familiar to many cultures concerning the concepts of people on trial before divine truth and justice and the sentence of “guilty” is pronounced because all have sinned.
However, in His mercy, God did not let that sentence of “guilty” be the last word. God responded by declaring mankind’s guiltlessness and Christ’s guilt! Jesus has won complete atonement for all sin, meaning that His sacrificial death paid in full God’s justice. Jesus Himself says this in John 17:4 and 19:30. He paid the wages of sin by His dying and being forsaken by God. He was regarded as the sinning party (see 2 Corinthians 5:21).
Then God justified Jesus by raising Him from the dead. The Sin-bearer was declared innocent and free from the guilt that He bore on the cross. The sunshine of God’s grace casts a glow over all the world wherever the Gospel is proclaimed. How do we know? Had Jesus remained in the grave, sin would have won! The holy writer says, “Christ was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).
Because of Christ’s resurrection, we can see that we were justified by God before we were even born, as the Bible assures us: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not charging to them their sins” (2 Corinthians 5:19). God’s justification and reconciliation of the world took place before all faith. Because at Calvary, long before you and I came along, divine love forever settled the issue for all of us. Through Christ, the world was declared forgiven.
Why, then, do not all sinners in the world go to heaven? The answer is that not everyone believes what Jesus accomplished on the cross. For Jesus stated, “Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40). So what is the place of faith?
Faith saves, not by its own virtue or work, but by the virtue of its object—Christ as Savior. Faith, created in us by the Holy Spirit, receives what God has done in Christ. Faith is the receiver; it is meant to be passive. The Holy Spirit works faith through His Gospel to accept as fact the teaching that God has already declared all people just because of Christ’s sacrifice. Faith does not cause God to justify us; it only accepts what is already accomplished by Christ. Saving faith is the trust that comes from hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17; 1:17). When faith trusts God’s promise of forgiveness, it receives the benefits of the reality of Christ’s saving work. Faith that trusts this reality and accepts it as true indeed becomes active in love and good works as fruits of faith. Works are not the cause of one’s justification in Christ.
Faith is confidence in what Jesus has done and God has promised. God cannot lie! The pardon God proclaims makes us certain of salvation from death and hell. As our bodies live on the same nutritional foods year after year, so the soul lives on the same good news—the suffering and death of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. In order that the devil does not sow doubt in God’s Word so that we lose our trust in Jesus, we need to continually hear the message of this Gospel over and over for spiritual nutrition. This is how God set things up.
In the courtroom on Judgment Day, God will acquit all those who believe on Jesus and give them eternal life. God has promised to do this.
James Olsen is an ELS pastor emeritus living in Ontario, Wisconsin.