Justification: How God considers us right with him.
The part of our salvation that kinda falls on us.
- JUSTIFY
'dʒəs.tə.faɪ verb. Show or prove to be correct. - 2. Make morally right [with God].
- [Justification
dʒəs.tə.fə'keɪ.ʃən noun.]
In our culture we tend to use the word “justify” to mean we have a good excuse for what we did. Say I took someone behind the church building and beat the daylights out of them. Ordinarily, and rightly, that’d get me tossed into jail for battery. When I stand before the judge I’d better have a really solid reason for my actions.
“He started it; I just finished it” might work for most people, ’cause it sounds badass. But it’s not legally gonna work. Outside of movies, the law doesn’t give free passes to badasses. Juries might, but there are a whole lot of those guys in prison. Nope; justification means I need a legal reason for why I shouldn’t be jailed or institutionalized for my behavior. Like I reasonably feared for my life otherwise. Only then might my act be justified, and I’d be declared not guilty, and free to go. Society might still have a problem with me though.
Now when it comes to sin, I am so guilty. I have no good excuse. Neither do you. Neither does anyone. Yeah, we all have accidental, unintentional, or omissive sins in our past. But we have even more sins which we totally meant to do. We weren’t out of our right minds; we weren’t backed into
But in Christianity, we’re not doing the justifying. God is.
And it’s a really simple explanation:
So if everyone’s forgiven, why are some people saved, and some people aren’t, even though
Well it’s not,
The apostles distilled this idea to one word:
So God’s made faith a condition of our relationship with him. No faith, no relationship. No relationship, no
Sola fide.
There’s this story in Genesis where the L
Avram’s response, and the L
Genesis 15.6 KWL - Avram believed in the L
ORD , and to the LORD this was considered rightness.
In the New Testament, the apostles kept quoting this verse. To them it’s humanity’s entire basis of being right with God. It wasn’t because we earn or merit it. We totally don’t. Not even close.
But God doesn’t base our relationship on sinlessness or perfection. You might get that idea ’cause of how anti-sin God gets. Plenty of people make that mistake, and imagine they’re so dirty,
The apostles kept quoting Genesis 15.6 because Avram—or as we tend to call him, Abraham—believed the L
Romans 4.1-8 KWL - 1 So what’ll we say we found in our biological forefather Abraham?
- 2 If Abraham was right with God due to works, he has something to emphasize.
- (Just not in front of God.)
- 3 What’s the scripture say? Abraham believed God,
- “and to God this was considered rightness.”
Ge 15.6 - 4 To the employee, wages aren’t considered a favor. They’re owed.
- 5 To the non-employee who believes in the one who turns the godless into the righteous:
- Their belief is considered rightness.
- 6 Just like David says—the awesomeness of people
- whom God considers right with him despite our works:
- 7 “How awesome: Their lawlessness was forgiven. Their sins were covered.
- 8 How awesome: A man whose sin the Lord never considers.”
Ps 32.1-2
And the reverse is just as true: If we won’t trust God, a healthy relationship with him is impossible.
It’s not. The only basis of our relationship—the only way God justifies his interaction with us, and considers us worth his time and salvation—is our faith. If we don’t trust God, we don’t have God.
This is what the Protestant reformers meant by their slogan
Yeah, there are those Christians who mix up their solas and think sola fide has to do with salvation—that we’re saved by faith. It’s ’cause they mangle the meaning of “For by grace are ye saved through faith,”
It boils down to this: We gotta have faith in God if we’re gonna have a saving relationship with him. Our works suck, so obviously they can’t maintain this relationship. But our faith in God means when we screw up as usual, we can still turn to him and get forgiven. We still trust him to save us. And he will.
God’s sole condition for our election.
God reveals himself to people, and expects a faith-filled response from us. If he gets it, great!—he’ll proceed to save us. If he doesn’t, try try again. But the one condition, the whole basis, of our saving relationship with God, must be our faith. We gotta respond.
Calvinists have a big, big problem with this idea. See, their interpretation of
So Calvinists insist upon
True, it’s kinda stupid to imagine we saved ourselves by believing in God. It’s like a man claiming he saved himself because when the paramedics found him dying of a heart attack, he believed they could save them, so he didn’t push ’em away. Taking credit for his own rescue makes him sound like an arrogant jerk. He might believe his own story, and certain fools might even believe him too. But nobody else with half a brain does.
Regardless of the self-delusions of certain narcissists, Calvinists are still a little antsy about the idea of justification by faith. It makes it sound like there is a condition mixed up in our election and salvation: If we don’t respond in faith, we can bollix the whole deal. And if that’s so, it knocks down five of Calvinism’s six points.
- ELECTION. Can’t be unconditional: Faith’s a condition.
- SOVEREIGNTY. Can’t be absolute: In this case God doesn’t get his way.
- GRACE. Can’t be irresistible: People can choose to not have faith.
- ATONEMENT. Can’t be limited like they imagine: If God wants to apply atonement to more people than wanna accept it, he clearly isn’t doing the limiting.
- PERSEVERANCE. Can’t be absolute: If people choose to have faith, what happens if they
drop faith and leave?
So how do Calvinists deal with the idea? Simple: Redefine faith. Now it’s no longer our trusting response to God; now it’s an ability God grants us which enables us to even act like that in the first place. Faith, they insist, is God’s gift.
Yeah, they’re interpreting
When faith’s described as a gift, it’s in the context of
Common faith is most often used outside a religious context. Like when you trust the supermarket isn’t selling you tainted food, or that your household appliances aren’t gonna give you a shock or catch fire, or that your house pets won’t eat you in your sleep. We assume it’s a special ability when we use it to trust that God exists, Christianity is true, and Jesus is Lord and coming back. It’s only special because of who we put our trust into: Faith in God is way more reliable than our faith in the supermarket, our appliances, and Mr. Whiskers. But all this stuff, religious and secular, is still faith.
Whereas
Now fruit. Faith’s
This out-of-context defense of unconditional election has the unfortunate side effect of really mangling what faith means. It’s why so many Christians think faith is the magical power to believe in goofy rubbish: “I believe this stuff because I ‘have faith.’ You don’t believe because you don’t ‘have faith.’” There’s so much wrong with that statement: Belief and faith are synonyms. And we believe because we know “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”
Back to Abraham. The L
And God’s response to Avram’s response was justification: Avram was his guy. Forever after he’d identify himself as “Abraham’s God.”
Yeah, sometimes faith is hard. Sometimes trusting God is a struggle. As struggles go, it’s way easier than sinlessness. God wants us to work on a high standard of morals and obedience, but he knows better than to base our relationship on that. Instead he bases it on whether we can trust him. Even speck-sized faith will do.
But hang around God long enough, and our faith will hardly remain speck-sized.
