Crossward

Way back in the Dark Ages, I started to put some scriptural terminology around salvation.  The first important word I brought up was “justification” and I defined that.  Now I want to take a look at what the grounds for justification are.

The Grounds for Justification

Put simply, justification is based solely on faith in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross (Rom 3:22-25; Rom 4:5).

Does God simply declare a person innocent out of pure mercy, simply saying, “I choose to look the other way regarding your sin.”  Or does he justify on the grounds that the penalty we deserve has been satisfied in another way?  I believe it is the latter, and Jonathan Edwards puts it like this:

The justice of God, as the supreme Governor and Judge of the world, requires the punishment of sin. The supreme Judge must judge the world according to a rule of justice. God doth not show mercy as a judge, but as a sovereign; therefore his exercise of mercy as a sovereign, and his justice as a judge, must be made consistent one with another; and this is done by the sufferings of Christ, in which sin is punished fully, and justice answered.
(Jonathan Edwards, Pardon for the Greatest Sinners, emph. mine)

If God does not carry out the very penalties (or their equivalent) that he has prescribed in his own law for sin then God cannot rightly be called “just.” When Scripture says that God is just (Gr. dikaios), it means he is righteous and “in a narrower sense, rendering to each his due and that in a judicial sense, passing just judgment on others, whether expressed in words or shown by the manner of dealing with them.”

In fact, this is the whole argument in Rom 3:25-26.  For many years, God had “passed over” sins.  It seemed as though he was not being just, simply letting them go.  But it says that he passed them over so that he could show his righteousness at the “present time.”  And that present time is when he “put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his own blood” (Rom 3:25).  The charge could have been levied against God that he was not being just, upholding his law, by letting these sins go.  But he didn’t.  Christ is who propitiated his wrath, and satisfied his law.  For whom?  The ones who had faith (v25).

I think this is where we tend to get a bit wishy-washy.  We like to think that God is loving and kind and, “Hey, I know I’m a sinner but God understands my situation and he’ll just kind of let is slide.  My little sins don’t warrant eternal hell!”  There is an ignorant hope that God simply won’t do anything about sin.  Of course, we want justice for “big” sins — we want rapists, murderers, and thieving CEO’s behind bars.  But my lie?  Or my lustful thought?   Eh.  No big deal.

And that’s exactly where we start going down the wrong path.  We know and understand justice — but not perfect justice.  We need a biblical view of sin.  We don’t think our sins warrant judgment, but they do.  God is a holy and perfect judge and he must punish sin.  If you can understand that if an earthly judge just lets a convicted child molester go without even a slap on the wrist, then you understand that principle that God cannot let sin go unpunished.  All that’s left is an accurate perspective on the severity of your sin.  Even our most insignificant sins were serious enough to God that his innocent Son was nailed to a cross to pay for them.  He didn’t just die for Joe Fornicator.  He died for your anger, bitterness, and laziness, too.  Think about that.

This is the Atonement, the Great Exchange.  In the Old Testament, God did not just “forgive” or “pardon” without there being some kind of restitution.  Hence, the Levitical system of atonement was established to teach about this need.  It can all be summed up like this (from Lev 17:11): “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”  You can see the various offerings in Lev 3-5, but esp. in Lev 23, the Day of Atonement.  In a nutshell, the sacrificial system was a bloody reminder that God accepted a substitute — that something/someone could shed its blood in the place of another in order to satisfy God’s law and satisfy his wrath.  We see this picture in the account of Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac and seeing the ram, too.  We must understand that has always been the case.  We even see it implicitly when God clothed Adam and Eve with animal skin, and in the sacrifices offered by Abel and Noah.

Obviously, though, the system wasn’t good enough.  It was only good until the next sin.  That is, you could sin, make your sacrifice and not be under judgment again — but then you could sin again and be right back under his judgment.  Hence, Jesus Christ became our perfect sacrifice.  He died “once for all” (Heb 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).  His sacrifice propitiated God’s wrath completely.  Not only until the next sin, but completely.  To say that it did anything less is to completely misunderstand why he needed to come in the first place.

Thus, when Scripture says we are justified by faith in his propitiation of God’s wrath, it is permanent and eternal.  Heb 9:12: “he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

That should give us an understanding as to why Christ had to die: to propitiate God’s wrath, and to permanently atone for our sins.  Now, critical to this is understanding exactly what Christ accomplished on the cross and how it secures both justice and mercy.

First of all, understand that God does not owe us anything.  We are guilty sinners and it would be just of him to throw us all into hell.  Frankly, I’m amazed he didn’t just wipe out Adam and Eve and start over.  If God was not gracious and merciful, there would be no you and me.  So that justification is even possible is merciful act #1.

Later, we’ll look another way that the Atonement secures our justification.

In Christ,
Tom

If you’ve been following, you will recall that last time we looked at salvation from the angle “ability” — that is, what man is able to do in relationship to sin.  Before that, we saw in what ways God rescues us from sin.  Today, I’m going to start to put a little more meat — and some Scriptural terminology — around the ways God saves us from our sin.

First up, we’ll look at justification, which is the biblical term used to describe the freedom we have from the power of sin.  I’ll define it today, and then explain it in a bit more detail later.

Justification

Definition

The Greek word dikaioo means to “justify” or “declare righteous” or “declare in the right.” (definition)  Justification is a legal term.  The important thing to understand is that we have all violated God’s law and would stand guilty before him if he did not justify.  When God justifies us, he is not saying “you are perfect” or “you did not commit any crimes,” but rather, “I consider you righteous and will not carry out my judgment against you.”  His declaration protects us from experiencing the penalty of our sins.

More later…
Tom

In my last post, I started off defining what, exactly, God saves us from.  Specifically, he saves us from the penalty, power, and presence of sin.

Another way to look at sin is through the lens of “ability,” as described through the four “conditions” of mankind:

1. Pre-fall – man was able to sin.
2. Post-fall, unregenerate – UNable to NOT sin.  This is an unbeliever.
3. Post-fall, regenerate – able to NOT sin.  This is a believer.
4. Post-death, regenerate – UNable to sin.

As you can see, in the Garden of Eden, Adam & Eve were able to sin – they had the ability to do so, and sin they did.  However, once they sinned and the world fell, all men now experience what we call an “unregenerate” state.  This is the condition of “total inability” in Reformed theological terms.  He has no righteousness of his own, he has no desire for spiritual things, and he is unable to obey God.  In essence, because nothing he does proceeds from faith (cf Rom 14:23), everything he does is tainted with sin.  Rom 3:10-18 describes this condition.

However, once God regenerates someone through the Holy Spirit, he is able to resist sin (Rom 6).  This is not to say he never sins, but that he can and does have victory over it.  He is able to please God through faith (cf 1 Thes 2:4).

Finally, once we are glorified, we will no longer be able to sin because our sin nature will be gone (1 Cor 15:51-57).

More to follow!

Blessings
Tom

Salvation is very simple.  Salvation comes by confessing Jesus as Lord and believing he was raised from the dead (Rom 10:9-10).  But salvation is also very, very deep.  It has many facets, many nuances that, when understood, give us a very high view of God.  The more we understand about salvation, the more we understand what he has rescued us from, and the deeper our fellowship with God becomes.

So I’d like to take some time to talk about many of the facets of salvation, in the hopes that there might be some nuggets you can take away and be blessed by.

The most important question to answer first, obviously, is, “What does God save us from?”  In a nutshell, Jesus Christ came to save sinners from sin, and by so doing glorifying his Father and himself.  But the question then becomes: in what way(s) does he save us from sin?  Here are the ways he frees us:

1. From the penalty of sin.  The penalty for sin is physical and spiritual death (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23; Jam 1:15).  Although all eventually do die physically (Heb 9:27; with a few exceptions, like Elijah, 2Kng 2:11), the one who places his faith in Jesus Christ will be spared an eternity apart from God.  Those who do not know God will be judged according to all of their deeds and suffer an eternity in hell (Rev 20:11-15).

2. From the power of sin.  He who has faith in Christ is a new creation (2Cor 5:17).  He has a new nature, the indwelling Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16; John 3:5-8), by whom he is able to resist sin.  He is, in effect, a “slave” of righteousness (Rom 6:6-23).  Despite that, however, per the explicit teachings of 1John 1:8-10; Jam 3:2; Ecc 7:20; etc. and the implicit teachings of looking at the lives of the apostles, their churches, David, Noah, Abraham, etc., we know that even believers are capable of grave sins.

Considering that, when Scripture speaks of being a “slave to righteousness” or “walking in the light,” it is referring to a disposition towards holiness.  That is, since we have a new nature, our desires are different.  Rather than loving sin, we love what God loves: righteousness.  Yet when we do sin, the Christian is characterized by repentance.  This can only be understood in light of our previous nature — we were slaves to sin (John 8:34; Rom 6:17,20; 2 Pet 2:19) and spiritually dead (Eph 2:1-3).  Thus, whereas before we could do nothing but sin (Rom 8:7), now we are able to resist sin and please God (Eph 6:6; 1Thes 4:1; etc.).  This is why we are told to put on the armor of God (Eph 6:10-ff) — because we are engaged in spiritual warfare in this life.  Rom 13:14 says to “make no provisions for the flesh.”  And Rom 8:13,13:12; Gal 5:17 gives us more war-like descriptions of what life on this life is like for the believer.  Whereas before we had no hope, we now have victory.

3. From the presence of sin.  When we finally die and receive our new, incorruptible bodies, we will be free from our sin nature, finally living as God designed for us to do, in perfect submission to him (1 Cor 15:51-57).

To be continued!

Blessings
Tom