One of the ancient questions of the ages has always been “How can a sinful person be right with a holy God? The good news is that when we trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior, when we grasp hold of him with the hand of faith, we are reconciled to God through Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Justification is God’s astonishing declaration that all who are in Christ are righteous, based on the forgiveness of their sin by Jesus’ blood and the imputation of Jesus righteousness to them by faith.

This is the good news the Apostle Paul declares to us: “For our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Cor 5:21

Jesus delivered us from God’s just wrath and reconciled us to God by living the life we should have lived and dying the death we should have died in our place and for our sin. The scandalous grace of God in the gospel is that he treated Jesus like a sinner so he could treat us like Jesus.

This is the good news that the Father now accepts us as righteous in his sight, not because of anything we do for him, and not even because of anything He has done in us, but only because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

Martin Luther once said the doctrine of justification is “the test of a standing or a falling church.” This means it is also the test of a standing or a falling Christian. Judged by New Testament standards you can only have a healthy Christian life when you grasp what it really means to be justified by faith.

The bible teaches that God is righteous (Deut 32:4, Is 45:19-21, Zeph 3:5). Like all of God’s attributes, his righteousness reflects who he is and what he does. God’s righteousness reflects the justness he possesses as God and all his just actions displayed toward others as a just God.[1]

God reveals his righteousness in his law. And because God is righteous, he requires his people, his image-bearers, to be righteous by obeying his will reflected in his law. God requires righteousness as part of his sovereign love for his people as their Covenant Lord. Before giving the Ten Commandments, as a preeminent display of his righteousness, God reveals his covenant love in the giving of his law:

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’  (Exod 19:5-6a)

God’s righteousness is revealed in Scripture, not only in his promised covenant blessing, but also in his promised covenant curse. God promises he will judge all people very strictly, according to his perfect justice, “He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation (Ex 34:7b).”

Because of the fall of humanity into sin, the bible reveals that all people are now guilty of being unrighteous and under God’s just condemnation. But the Old Testament also reveals a minority of people who are called “righteous.” Noah is described as “…a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God (Gen 6:9).” Job is also described as “…blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil (Job 1:1)”

What is surprising is that these “righteous” people do not fear God’s righteous judgment. Instead they often make the righteousness of God the basis of their prayers to God, asking him to judge wicked and unrighteous people:

“Oh let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
    and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
    O righteous God!
My shield is with God,
    who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
    and a God who feels indignation every day (Ps 7:9-11).”

What is even more surprising is that these “righteous” people sometimes even ask God to deliver them because of their righteousness. In the verse preceding this quote above, the Psalmist writes:

    “The Lord judges the peoples;
    judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
    and according to the integrity that is in me (Ps 7:8).”

This leads to the question, if the righteous God must judge all people strictly, based on his perfect standard of justice found in his law, how can anyone be right with God?

The Scriptures make clear that these “righteous” people in the Old Testament were not considered righteous by God because of their outward righteous acts. In fact, he provided in the Old Testament a system of sacrifices and offerings because he knew that none of them would gain his favor by means of outward righteous acts. But so great were the sins of the righteous that even the sacrifices and offerings were not sufficient to atone for them. The Psalmist writes, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering (Ps 51:16).” The writer of Hebrews declares, “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Heb 10:4).

So, if it is not through their good works, how does God consider unrighteous people in the Old Testament righteous? It is because our righteous God is Covenant Lord. The good news is that the Lord has mysteriously obligated himself to deal graciously with his unrighteous people because of his covenant:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers… (Deut 7:6-8a).

Bavinck expounds and applies this passage:

He (God) has chosen his people not for their size of number, nor for their righteousness or integrity, but because the Lord voluntarily loved them and because of the oath which he had sworn to their fathers (Deut. 7:7 ff. and 9:5-6) . . . The righteousness of God, consequently, to which a saintly Israel constantly appeals in its oppression is an appeal to that attribute according to which, by virtue of His covenant, the Lord is obligated to deliver His people from all their enemies. It is not so much an obligation that rests upon God because of his people, but it is an obligation which rests upon Him because of Himself.

The only reason the “righteous” people in the Old Testament do not fear God’s justice and even appeal to it, is because of God’s covenant with them. Even though they knew they were unrighteous and stood justly condemned before a righteous God, they heard the good news that this righteous God had sworn a covenant oath to forgive and consider righteous all who have true faith in him. Mysteriously, God bound himself to his own promise and was no longer free to punish them or he would be unjust. Bavinck writes:

He (God) is no longer free; He freely related Himself to His people, and so He owes it to Himself, to His own covenant and His own oath, to His own word and promise, to remain the God of His people despite all their unrighteousness. Hence we so frequently read that it is for the sake of God’s name, of His covenant, of His glory, of His honor, that He gives His people the benefits which He has promised them.

It is with this background that the Apostle Paul tells us, in Romans 4, that Abraham and David were justified by faith before the coming of Christ. But Paul and the New Testament writers proclaim the even better news that our Covenant Lord revealed more of his righteousness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

This is the good news that, through Jesus blood and righteousness, God now enters into a New Covenant with his people to give them the gift of righteousness he requires for his name’s sake. Paul tells us this “…was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).

Hear that balance: through Christ, God is both just and justifier. God justifies us because of his covenantal decision to justify anyone who trusts in Christ. But doing this does not make God unjust; rather, it vindicates his justice. Saving those in covenant with Christ is perfectly just; it shows us how just God really is. As a just God, he could not do anything else. It would violate his righteous character if he were to condemn those who trust Jesus. So God IS just, and he IS the justifier of those who trust Jesus.

So God justifies people, he justifies us, who are not just in ourselves. Indeed, though we are justified in Christ, we are still sinners in ourselves. We are just, righteous, because God sees us in Christ. But in ourselves we are still sinners. Luther caught the tension in this picture, when he said that we are “righteous and sinners at the same time” (simul Justus et peccator).

Footnote:

[1] These concepts are adapted from Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, pp. 438-468.