"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.—Rom. 5:1.
Justify, as used in the Bible, means not merely to
pronounce or consider just, but to make just. When the sinner meets the
necessary conditions laid down in God's covenant with man, God for Christ's sake
forgives the sinner and thus renders him justified. There is no power but the
divine that can justify the sinner, and no name given in heaven or among men
whereby we can be justified except the name of Christ. "It is God that
justifieth" (Rom. 8:33).
The conditions prerequisite to justification are stated
in their simplest terms. repentance and faith. Jesus said, " Repent
ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1: 15). On the day of Pentecost the
convicted multitude asked, "Men and brethren, what shall we do ?
" Peter, answering, said, " Repent, and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2: 38). When the Philippian jailer came
trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas, saying, "Sirs, what must I
do to be saved?" the prompt answer was, "Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16: 30-31). These
texts teach unmistakably that repentance and faith are the conditions of
justification. The power to justify is God's; the power to repent is men 's. The
blood of Christ is God's provision for man's salvation; the act of saving faith
is man's appropriation of that provision. When men repent and believe in the
atoning blood of Christ for the remission of sins, God for Christ's sake
forgives, and the soul is justified, or freed from all its guilt.
Since justification is the removal of the guilt incurred
by the transgression of divine law, it follows that for the soul to remain
justified the life must be kept free from willful transgression of divine law.
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the
transgression of the law" (1 John 3:4). "Therefore, to him that
knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (Jas. 4:17). Sin,
then, in its broadest sense, is any transgression of divine law, but sin is not
imputed unless the law be known to the transgressor. Jesus said to the
Pharisees, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We
see; therefore your sin remaineth" (John 9: 41). Sin may be committed
either by doing what the law forbids or by failing to do what the law enjoins.
From the very conditions on which the justified state is
obtained, from the nature of the process by which the justified state is
reached, and from the very meaning and experience of justification itself, we
see that the retention or preservation of justification demands a life of
obedience to divine law, a life free from sin.
Justification restores the soul to communion with God by
the removal of personal guilt. Yet, from the very nature of justification, it
can not restore the man to the divine image lost in the fall, for we are not
guilty of, or personally responsible for, the existence of native depravity. It
remains, as we shall learn, for some other process in the divine plan to remove
native depravity.
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