I’ve called this study "Justification by Grace Alone." Does that sound exactly right to you? If I had said "Salvation by Grace Alone," that would sound right. Or if I had titled this "Justification by Faith Alone," that would sound right because, after all, that was the great rallying cry of the Reformation. But "justification by grace alone"–is that exactly right?

The answer, of course, is that it’s right because it’s merely another way of saying what the other two phrases say. They are all saying that salvation is by the grace of God received by faith. As a matter of fact, if you put it all together, it would go something like this: justification is by the grace of God alone received by faith alone–which is salvation. That’s what salvation is all about.

What is justification? Justification is "a judicial act by God in which he declares that the sinner, through the work of Christ, now stands in a right relationship to God and to his law." It’s not accomplished by anything the sinner does. You and I can’t possibly do anything to bring ourselves into a right relationship with God. Everything we do is contaminated by sin, and it’s our doing that’s got us into trouble in the first place. But Jesus Christ has done something: he has accomplished what makes it possible for God to justify us.

In Romans 3, verses 22 through 24, we read, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace." This is the only place in this chapter where the word grace occurs, but it is important because this is the first time in the New Testament that the word grace is treated theologically. Unless we understand what that verse is saying, we really don’t understand our need for grace. Until we know that there is no difference–that all have sinned and that all have fallen short of the glory of God–we won’t understand why we need to be justified by the grace of God.

Let’s talk about the meaning of justification. John Calvin called it "the hinge upon which religion turns." We understand that it’s important, but just what is it? Often when we talk about theological words, we can be helped in understanding them by etymology–that is, by breaking the word down into its parts and trying to understand what the parts mean. Justification is formed of two Latin words. The first is justus and the second is facio, facere. The first word means "right," or "proper," or upright" or "righteous," and the second means "to make or do." We understand the first from the sphere of law. We have words like just or justify. And we understand the second from common words like manufacture or factory. A factory is where things are made. When you take those two meanings of the word–just or righteous and to make–and put them together, you get a meaning of the word that goes something like this: "to make righteous."

Now, as soon as we get that kind of meaning, we tend to think that it means to change us somehow so that we become righteous. In other words, we’re not righteous beforehand, but now we become righteous. It’s at that point that it’s misleading. It is true, as I said, that justification does mean "to make righteous," but in a different sense. We’re made righteous not because of anything that is done within us to change us, but because of something Jesus Christ did on our behalf.

Study Question

What is the definition of justification?

Prayer

Ask God to give you a clear under-standing of how you have been made righteous.