What are the Benefits of Justification? (Justification Series 5 of 6)
When we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, God does something amazing. Paul writes, “For our sake he 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).”
This is the good news that, for all who truly believe in Christ, God now considers all their sin to be Christ’s and all Christ’s righteousness to be theirs. Theologians refer to this mysterious dual consideration of God as double-imputation. Imputation is a legal, forensic word that means to consider or credit something toward a status or account. If we say that someone is imputing motives to us, we mean they are considering us as if we had those motives whether we do or not.
The Scriptures teach that all who are in Christ through faith have received the saving grace of double imputation–our sinful record is imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteous record is imputed to us. Imputation is very different from impartation which means to put something into an account. In justification, God does not put anything into our nature but God declares something about our status, or standing, before him in the heavenly court as a just judge.
When Paul writes about God making Christ sin, he does not mean that God imparted our sin into Christ’s human nature. Jesus’s nature did not become sinful. But God considered and treated Jesus as if he was liable for our record as a sinner by pouring out on him the full wrath that we deserve.
Similarly, when Paul teaches that we become the righteousness of God in him, this does not mean that God imparts Jesus’ righteousness into our human nature. Our nature does not become righteous. But God considers and treats us as if we now have the record of Jesus’ perfect obedience.
This is not the first time the bible teaches about God mysteriously imputing guilt from one person to another. When Adam first sinned, that sin was rightly considered by God to be our sin. The Scriptures teach that we all have a deep, mysterious connection with Adam as our representative, whose just condemnation became our just condemnation (Rom 5:12-21).” So, when Adam sinned, God rightly considered his guilt to be ours.
The good news of justification is that God now considers our guilt, imputed to us though the first Adam, to be Christ’s as the Last Adam. And God considers the perfect righteousness of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, to be ours.
As Paul reflects on the riches of all the benefits of this justification, he writes, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5:1).” As a result of our justification, God declares that our war with him is over. Peace is now declared. We have peace with God which marks the end of God’s hostility toward us and our hostility toward God because of sin.
This new gracious status of peace with God is followed by every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph 1:3), including forgiveness, righteousness, adoption, and eternal life. Let’s look first at the blessing of forgiveness.
The Blessing of Forgiveness
When Paul describes God’s imputation of our sin on Christ he writes “…he made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin…(1 Cor 5:21a).” This presents us with a vivid image of the curse for our sin being taken away from us and put on the sinless Christ to satisfy God’s just wrath in our place. Hebrews 9:28 tells us that Christ was sacrificed to “take away the sins of many people” In Colossians 2:13 we read “He forgave us all our sins… In Isaiah 53:6 we read “…the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. In I Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”
Theologians often refer to this aspect of Christ’s saving work using two rather technical terms to describe forgiveness: expiation and propitiation. The prefix ex in expiation refers to something being removed or taken away. By contrast, the prefix pro in propitiation means “for” referring to something that happens to the object of the expiation. In biblical terms, expiation refers to the taking away of sin’s curse from us and propitiation refers to the placing of our sin’s curse onto Christ resulting in God’s just wrath against us being satisfied with the result of restoring our standing with him.
The good news of justification is that God declares us forgiven through the shed blood of Jesus Christ in our place. The curse for our sin has been taken away from us (expiation) and placed on Christ who paid the full penalty for our sin by willingly taking on himself the full fury of God’s wrath against us (propitiation). The Psalmist praises God for this benefit of God’s salvation:
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:10-12).
The Blessing of Righteousness
Although it may sound strange at first, we need more than forgiveness. We also need righteousness. Before the fall of humanity into sin, Adam was not guilty before God so he did not need forgiveness. But he still needed a perfect record of obedience and righteousness before a perfectly righteous God. Before the fall, Adam was innocent but he had not earned a record of righteousness. After Adam sinned, he not only needed forgiveness, he also still needed righteousness.
This is why we need more than forgiveness from our past sins. Being forgiven is wonderful but it only gives us a morally neutral status before God with a standing similar to Adam before the fall. We need to move from a standing of mere forgiveness and moral neutrality before God to a standing of having positive righteousness before God based on the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. The good news of justification is that God not only considers us forgiven by counting our sin to Christ’s account, he also considers us righteous by counting Christ’s righteousness to our account.
God not only pardons all who are in Christ, He also considers them as having perfectly kept his law. It’s not our righteousness but Christ’s righteousness he graciously gives to us. So Paul can say that God made Christ to be “our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1: 30).” And Paul says that his goal is to be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3: 9).
Martin Luther describes this amazing gift of Christ’s righteousness by which we are justified as extra nos, meaning “outside of us” or “apart from us.” He also called it an “alien righteousness” because it is foreign to us, alien to us, meaning it comes from outside the sphere of our own good works.
Another Latin phrase Luther used to describe the amazing grace of God’s gift of righteousness is simul justus et peccator. Simul is the word from which we get the English word simultaneously. It means ‘at the same time.’ Justus is the Latin word for just or righteous. Et is the Latin word for and. Peccator means sinner. Luther was using this formula to teach that in our justification we are one and the same time righteous or just, and sinners. R. C. Sproul expounds the meaning of this phrase:
Now if he would say that we are at the same time and in the same relationship just and sinners that would be a contradiction in terms. But that’s not what he was saying. He was saying from one perspective, in one sense, we are just. In another sense, from a different perspective, we are sinners; and how he defines that is simple. In and of ourselves, under the analysis of God’s scrutiny, we still have sin; we’re still sinners. But, by imputation and by faith in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is now transferred to our account, then we are considered just or righteous. This is the very heart of the gospel.
The Blessing of Adoption
The good news that God, as Judge, promises to forgive and declare righteous all who are in Christ–is wonderful. But the good news is also that God, as Father, promises to accept and love all who are in Christ as he accepts and loves his one and only Son
When the Apostle Paul explains the reason why Jesus came at a turning point in history to redeem us from under the curse of the law, he tells us it is so that we might receive adoption. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:4-5).”
Justification is linked to adoption in the bible as the legal platform necessary for God as a righteous Judge to be our loving heavenly Father. In Scripture, justification is a legal idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as Judge. But adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as Father.
We are more than pardoned criminals in the heavenly court before a just Judge. The good news is that the righteous judge is now our loving heavenly Father who adopts us as his own and gives us all the rights and privileges of his beloved children. Westminster Larger Catechism Q 74 describes the biblical blessings of adoption:
Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory.
The Apostle Paul depicts this personal, familial dimension of adoption by writing, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Rom 8:14-16). Packer refers to Paul’s doctrine of adoption as the highest blessing of the gospel--higher than justification.
Adoption is higher because of the richer relationship with God that it involves . . . justification does not of itself imply any intimate or deep relationship with God the judge. In idea, at any rate, you could have the reality of justification without any close fellowship with God resulting.[1]
Whether it is appropriate to refer to adoption as a “higher blessing” than justification or any other gospel blessing is debatable. Regardless, adoption is clearly a rich gospel blessing, graciously given by God to all who are in Christ. The poet and hymnwriter William Cowper summarizes the transforming power and beauty of Paul’s doctrine of adoption with a line from one of his Olney hymns.
To see the law by Christ fulfilled,
And hear His pard’ning voice,
Transforms a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.[2]
The Blessing of Eternal Life
When believers in Jesus Christ are justified and adopted as children of God, they receive the rights of adopted children. John writes, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13).” The Apostle Paul describes all who are adopted as children of God as being heirs of God and co-heirs of the Father’s inheritance with Christ. “…if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…(Rom 8:17a).”
As our loving heavenly Father’s justified and adopted children, he promises us the riches of his eternal inheritance as his sons and daughters. We are promised all the blessings of salvation in this life in preparation for our reception of the fullness of our inheritance in the life to come. The Apostle Peter describes the blessing of this inheritance:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Footnotes:
[1] J. I. Packer, Knowing God. P 187
[2] William Cowper, Olney Hymns III:384