IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
IV. Justification.1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
1. Definition of Justification.By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.
By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner's new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.
Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner's nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner's union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.
The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.
The word“declarative”does not imply a“spoken”word on God's part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it:“Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee?Answer.I believe it.Qu.Dost thou thank him for his passion and death?Ans.I do thank him.Qu.Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death?Ans.I believe it.”And then Anselm addresses the dying man:“Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say,‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou:‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’If he say that he is wroth with thee, say:‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’And when thou hast completed this, say again:‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’”See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.
2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification.A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.[pg 853]Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:
Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.
Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”;3:24-30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”;Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”;Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”;[pg 850]Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”;cf.Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”;Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”;28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”;Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”
Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.”God's great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom.1 Cor. 3:21-23—“all things are yours,”because“ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.”This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God's attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner's faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth inGal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”
With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission:“Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.
“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiarspirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold ofdeeds; divine righteousness deals withcharacter. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God's charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.”If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man's own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.
B. Scripture use of the special words translated“justify”and“justification”in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.
(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not“they that turn many to righteousness,”but“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11;cf.James 5:19, 20.
O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.
O. T. texts:Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”;Deut. 25:1—“they[the judges]shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”;Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”;Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”;Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”;50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”;53:11—“by the knowledge of[pg 851]himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities”;Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever”(“they that justify many,”i. e., cause many to be justified);cf.James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”
The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister's absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God's attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.
McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ's terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.”We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.
In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =“he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.”In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι =“I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God's acquittal as respects this particular charge.”The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works.“He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.
N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”
N. T. texts:Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”;10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?”16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”;18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”;cf.13(lit.)“God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”;Rom. 4:6-8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”;cf.Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”
Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?”2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God[God's justified persons]in him”;Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”;1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”(on this last text, see Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco).
James 2:21, 23, 24—“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works[pg 852]a man is justified, and not only by faith.”James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification.“They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye”(Wm. M. Taylor). Neander onJames 2:14-26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him whohasfaith, but only to him who falselyprofessesto have. When he says that‘by works a man is justified,’he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.”Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply,“he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.
Christ is the great Physician. The physician says:“If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.”The patient replies:“I do trust you fully.”But the physician continues:“If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.”The patient objects:“But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?”The physician answers:“You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing”(S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 152-155—“Paul insists on apple-tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas-tree righteousness.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.”Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”
(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).
Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.
Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.”Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification”= Christ's death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.
(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God's favor (Rom. 5:16, 18;cf.1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).
Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”
Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”;cf.1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.”The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever-working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used inLuke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”;Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”;Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”
(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως.“The primary signification of the word, in Paul's writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God's act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,”that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.
Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”
Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”;1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”;Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The‘righteousness of God’is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.”See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68-70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”
Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.
Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”
Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”;2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”;Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”;Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”;Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Meyer onRom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”
On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436-496; Lange, Com., onRomans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226-249.VersusMoehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it islikewisethe transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68-143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310-372.
It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and notvice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea oflaw; also the idea ofviolatedlaw; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness,the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”
Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth,‘sin,’‘the law,’‘the curse of the law,’‘death,’are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all-inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”
It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms“justify”and“justification”are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever[pg 854]they have reference to the sinner's relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner's nature and making him subjectively righteous.
In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the“inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say:“fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that“justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ's sake.”The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ's Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.
Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says:“Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man's sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said:‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill-desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.”This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man's condition.
E. H. Johnson:“If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.”We must grant that the wordsinwardandoutwardare misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God's act of renewing is the cause and God's act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ.Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.”Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God's turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.