"Meaning & Method of Justification"

Robert D. Brinsmead, "Sanctification – Its Mainspring," Present Truth, Feb., 1975, Vol. 4., No. 1, p. 47.

We have seen that God justifies by grace, on the grounds of Christ's work, and applies the blessing to the sinner who receives it in faith. The grace that justifies is outside of man. The righteousness which justifies is outside of man. And the faith that accepts the blessing is affixed to that which is outside of the believer. We must press this radical truth further and consider that God's act of justifying the believing sinner is also outside the believer. This may be seen in two different ways.

1. The Meaning of Justification. Justification is a legal word having reference to trial and judgment. It does not mean to make a person subjectively righteous any more than condemnation means to make a person subjectively wicked. Justification is simply a verdict of the court declaring, or pronouncing, a person to be righteous. In the case of God's verdict, He declares the believing sinner to be righteous because the sinner's Representative is righteous. Or to put it another way, when the sinner claims the righteousness of Christ as his own and presents it before God, the Judge acknowledges that the debt has been paid, and the sinner is set right before the law.

Justification, therefore, is not an act of God within the sinner, but it is an act of God outside the sinner. It is God's verdict upon him. It is a forensic, declaratory act. It is not based on the holiness of the one who believes, but on the holiness of Him in whom the one believes. This point is crucial. In this matter of our acceptance with God, we are not to be anxious about what God thinks of us, but about what God thinks of Christ, our Substitute. If we confuse justification with the internal sanctification process, faith totters, and we find it impossible to stand before God with a pacified conscience. Justification pertains to what God does for us, not what He does in us.

2. The Method of Justification. In Romans, chapter 4, the apostle not only declares that God justifies the ungodly (v. 5), but that God does this by imputing righteousness to the one who believes (vv. 3, 5-7). In chapter 5 Paul shows that the righteousness which God imputes is "the righteousness of One" (vv. 18, 19). Now the word impute does not mean to infuse. It simply means to attribute to the sinner that which he does not possess in himself. For instance, when Eli thought (imputed) that Hannah was drunk, that did not make Hannah drunk (1 Sam. 1:13). Imputation does not change the object, but it changes the way the object is regarded. The supreme illustration of this is Calvary. Our sins were imputed to Christ (2 Cor. 5:19-21). This did not subjectively make Him a sinner. But it did change the way God regarded Him. It had a decisive bearing on the way justice treated Him.

God's act of justification depends on perfect righteousness, of course. Yet it does not depend on this righteousness being in us, but on it being interceded for us in God's presence. God reckons it to us simply because Christ performed it for us and we accept it in faith.