Justification by Faith

Chaplain Horace Wellons, MDiv, CTCA/Southwestern Regional Medical Center

“Knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ…” Galations 2:16

This a topic many Christians think we have to work at achieving. The truth is that there is nothing we can do to gain justification.¹

“The term is a translation of the Greek dikaiosis, originally a technical legal term derived from the verb ‘to make [someone] righteous.’” Some teachings use the term “not guilty.” One way of looking at this is to picture yourself in a courtroom, facing a judge for running a red traffic light. You explain to the judge that you did indeed run though the red traffic light, but it was because your brakes failed to function as you commanded them to, causing your car not to stop when you wanted.

Therefore, you ran through the red traffic light, but it was because of a failure that you could not control at that time. Or what about a woman facing a trial for the murder of her husband? She pleads for her life with a loud voice saying, “It was self defense!” Her lawyer speaks on her behalf by telling the court that it was a matter of kill or be killed. The lawyer turns to the jury and makes a clear point that his client was attacked, because her husband was on drugs; basically, he was out of his mind. She feared for her life and defended herself with a baseball bat. In both examples, a motive has to be established. At that point, it’s the decision of the judge or jury whether or not that the parties in these examples will be declared innocent or guilty. Their fate is left in the hands of humans who may or may not be fair, honest, or God fearing. Their live are up for grabs. Nothing is for sure.

However, by the blood of Jesus, we have the guarantee that God will rule in favor of all who love Him and put their faith in Jesus Christ. No matter what was done, or for what reason, we are declared innocent though the blood of Christ. Jesus stands in the court of God as our advocate, presenting His blood to the Father, the most High God, sealing the covenant of eternal life and washing away all sin. God states His claim, that through the shed blood of Jesus, man has been justified (just as if he never sinned) and dismisses the case (charges of sin dropped forever). Jesus stands before God on our behalf. Just simply ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart and allow him to be Lord of your life, and your justification will be applied (given by God’s grace toward you).

One author puts it this way:
The term ‘justify’ comes from the law court; it means ‘to declare just,’ ‘to acquit,’ that is, to acquit rather than to find guilty. In Paul’s use, though, there's a greater subtlety. A person, definitely guilty in the past of sin or crime, can be ‘justified,’ that is, transformed into innocent, through the erasure, as it were, of the admitted trespass. ‘Justified,’ then, doesn't imply that a person was free of guilt, but rather that a guilty person has become freed of his guilt. In other words, ‘to justify’ doesn't mean to assert there had been no trespass, but rather to contend that guilt for admitted trespass has been wiped out.

As to ‘faith,’ Paul doesn’t mean what a person believes, but rather a person’s complete and unreserved reliance on God, to which God responds by justifying the person. God ‘acquits’ the person, not through that person’s having earned or merited God’s favor -- not at all -- rather, God provides a free gift, ‘grace,’ to the person who relies on Him completely. One cannot earn the wiping out of admitted trespasses; but God’s grace can wipe them out for a person ‘of faith.’

For a man to try to earn God’s grace or favor is futile; it cannot be earned. For a person to suppose that he can earn God’s favor means he is relying on himself, and, if so, he is thereby not relying on God.²

¹Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994 ed., s.v. “Justification.”

²Samuel Sandmel, Judaism and Christian Beginnings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 312-313.