Tuesday: By His Grace
Keeping in mind what we have studied so far about the law and what the law cannot do, read Romans 3:24. What is Paul saying here? What does it mean that redemption is in Jesus?
Image © Phil McKay from GoodSalt.com
What is this idea of “justifying,” as found in the text? The Greek word dikaioo, translated “justify,” may mean “make righteous,” “declare righteous,” or “consider righteous.” The word is built on the same root as dikaiosune, “righteousness,” and the word dikaioma, “righteous requirement.” Hence, there is a close connection between “justification” and “righteousness,” a connection that doesn’t always come through in various translations. We are justified when we are “declared righteous” by God.
Before this justification a person is unrighteous and thus unacceptable to God; after justification he or she is regarded as righteous and thus acceptable to Him.
And this happens only through God’s grace. Grace means favor. When a sinner turns to God for salvation, it is an act of grace to consider or declare that person to be righteous. It is unmerited favor, and the believer is justified without any merit of his or her own, without any claim to present to God in his or her own behalf except his or her utter helplessness. The person is justified through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, the redemption that Jesus offers as the sinner’s substitute and surety.
Justification is presented in Romans as a punctiliar act; that is, it happens at a point in time. One moment the sinner is outside, unrighteous, and unaccepted; the next moment, following justification, the person is inside, accepted, and righteous.
The person who is in Christ looks upon justification as a past act, one that took place when he or she surrendered himself or herself fully to Christ. “Being justified” (Rom. 5:1) is, literally, “having been justified.”
Of course, if the justified sinner should fall away and then return to Christ, justification would occur again. Also, if reconversion is considered a daily experience, there is a sense in which justification might be considered a repeating experience.
| With the good news of salvation being so good, what holds people back from accepting it? In your own life, what kinds of things cause you to hold back from all that the Lord promises and offers you? |
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Are we portraying a correct/accruate (and biblically-supported) view of the nature and character of God when we portray that we are somehow "unacceptable" to God when we are unrighteous and then somehow "acceptable" to Him only after we become righteous?
Or is there a better descriptor than acceptable/unacceptable?
Perhaps the acceptable/unacceptable is more about my decision than it is about God's decision! Have I accepted Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life back to God who is waiting with open arms for his children to come home?
But God commanded or made available His love to everyone, in that, while we were yet sinners, He Jesus dided for humankind. It is God's desire is to save everyone, yet man has a choice. The unacceptable comes, "while we were yet sinners," Christ died for us. The acceptable comes only when we recognize that we are sinners and accept his unmerited favor, then and only then are we counted acceptable. God will never force our will.
Phil van der Klift; Sadly, the quarterly doesn’t stop there: “Before this justification a person is unrighteous and thus unacceptable to God; after justification he or she is regarded as righteous (whether it’s true or not) and thus acceptable to Him.”
This would be contrary to both Romans 5:8 “.... in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” as well as Luke 15:20 “And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
What did God do after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden? Didn’t God come looking for them, calling out for them? God still wanted to spend time with them. Where does the thought that because we are born with a fallen nature through no fault of our own that we are “unacceptable” to God? Is a sick patient “unacceptable” to a physician? (Will the Physician not see him?) Or is the disease or illness unacceptable to a physician?
What is unacceptable to God is not you nor I, it’s the the condition that is unacceptable with God. Because we are out of harmony with the way God designed us, how He built us to operate. He wants with longing desire to fix that.
Stephen, Revelation 20:15 says "And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire." Therefore Jesus' death of paying the price for sin has no valuable effect on those who are disobedient to God. Not everyone will receive ethereal life; those are the ones that are not acceptable to God.
The lesson misses something very critical, verse 24 starts out "Being Justified" in the lesson it says that's a miss-translation. "“Being justified” (Rom. 5:1) is, literally, “having been justified.”
Why would the lesson say that even though the greek doesn't? Why would the author of the lesson say it should be translated "having been justified" What would be the impact of that shift? Would it not make Justification a thing of the past.
Here is the challenge for that in Adventism. It would be make justification forgiveness alone. In other words justification is what God does for that load in the past. But it would have nothing to do with the falling short in the present. Which leaves many people under the misunderstanding that I need to be perfect because there is no justification for my falling short. What it does it leaves us hopeless, without assurance, it's something un-manageable.
The being justified is a present-participle, in the greek it means the time of the participle is the time of the main verb, it's called relative time. A past participle isn't in your past, it's past in relation to the main verb, for example if the main verb is in your future, a past participle could be in the future, it's just before the rest of your future.
Being justified is not a point in time, it's on an ongoing, continuous. The main verb is have sinned, and continually fall short. The present participle means justification is not only forgiving your sins of the past, it's providing righteousness for your good deeds of the present.
Justification is a thing of the past - because Jesus died on the cross in the past. Scripture tells us Jesus died on the cross bearing the sins of the whole world in his body; by one man Adam everyone will die and by one man Jesus everyone was reconciled.
Saying Jesus only dies for you when you accept him is a Catholic teaching (Jesus is nailed to the cross every day). Saying Jesus only died for those he knew would believe in him is Calvinistic teaching (limited atonement).
Both of these teachings are wrong because Jesus died for everyone. However understanding Jesus died for everyone shouldn't lead one to believe everyone will be saved because besides justification there is sanctification one must know and accept.
While justification removes the sentence of death on everyone that Adam brought upon the world we can still die of our own guilt when we reject what Jesus did for us at the cross, when we refuse to be born again, enter into the process of being changed into the image of Jesus or pretend we will be saved even through we have no intention of being changed.
Justification was a free gift given at the cross; sanctification is a continuous, ongoing gift Jesus wants to give us each day.
Is justification not also a continuing ongoing gift?
If it were not, wouldn't we all be in deep trouble?
Justification is being imputed continuously, but it was only given once......for all. Jesus only died on the cross one time.
What Jesus did at the cross once was to demonstrate what God has always continually been and always continually is; a God that will always forgive and restore a repentant sinner.
My 1828 Noah Webster dictionary says that justification means showing to be just or conformable to law, rectitude, or propriety.
It also means remission of sin and absolution from guilt and punishment;or an act of free Grace by which God pardons the sinner and accepts him as righteous on the account of the atonement of Christ.
To me this would indicate forgiveness of a sinner with the gift of restoration to perfect law keeping. This would have to be an ongoing process as far as the law keeping is concerned.
I wonder if looking at justification as simply forgiveness is why we tend to stumble over the law and fall into sin continually instead of living in the continual victory we could have over sin if we would accept God's continual work of justification.
Hi Stephen
Appreciated the Greek language explanation.
Can you comment as to whether the Greek conveys whether we are simply accounted justified or whether we are actually justified - or whether it is both?
Phil,
Paul references Genesis 15:6, now when you see the order of events, it's hard to interpret anything else like accounted justified would be like having $100 in the bank. You can't simply declare that you have $100 in the bank. Any other implication would mean that God was lying. God declared or accounted Abraham righteous *because he was righteous*
Thanks Stephen - just as I suspected. Wow - a God who doesn't bear false witness but who instead understands and actually deals with reality by working in harmony with (and not violating) that reality! Praise God for who He is and all that He is about.
And God bless your continued efforts to make the Greek (and therefore the original writers Holy Spirit-inspired intent) accessible to us...
What holds people back from accepting the good news? Salvation means to be like Jesus. Some don't want to be like Jesus. That is how the Great Controversy started, Satan telling the angels that his view of how society & individuals should live was better than that of the Creator.
Until we trust that the Creator of human beings knows what is best for them we will not want to live in His Kingdom.
Phil, I share your concern about this comment. I do not think the author was intending that interpretation. For clarification I would add, both the sinner and the repentant believer are loved by God and have equal value but only the repentant believer stands justified by His Law because he (the repentant) has excepted Christ as his substitute. There is no getting around the fact that God's law is the law of love put in the language of man in the Ten Commandments demands perfect obedience. The obedience provided to us by grace in the person of Christ. The acceptable/unacceptable description should be viewed as part of our legal relationship to God.
Hi Jim
I appreciate your comments.
I wonder where Christianity got the idea that our relationship to God is primarily/predominately a legal one?
Jim,
Paul said God justified the ungodly, while they were dead in their sins, and were the enemies of God. Not when some of us became acceptable, but when we were ungodly.
The Oct 24th lesson says "Justification is presented in Romans as a punctiliar act; that is, it happens at a point in time. One moment the sinner is outside, unrighteous, and unaccepted; the next moment, following justification, the person is inside, accepted, and righteous. Before this justification a person is unrighteous and thus unacceptable to God; after justification he or she is regarded as righteous and thus acceptable to Him."
The "free gift" of righteousness must exist before I ask for it, it must exist even if I don't ask for it. If the gift of righteousness is not created/granted until I ask for it, then part of it is the result of me asking for it and it is no longer a free gift but something I earn/deserve for having believed/asked.
The Oct 24th lesson says "Justification is presented in Romans as a punctiliar act; that is, it happens at a point in time. One moment the sinner is outside, unrighteous, and unaccepted; the next moment, following justification, the person is inside, accepted, and righteous. Before this justification a person is unrighteous and thus unacceptable to God; after justification he or she is regarded as righteous and thus acceptable to Him."
The lesson makes it sound like Jesus doesn't do anything before we ask him to accept us because we are unacceptable.
The lesson states that justification is a punctiliar act happening at a point in time; that it happens through the redemption by Jesus (on the cross).
Question:
Is justification part of the sanctification process, i.e. as a person grows in Christ, he/she at a point in time accepts Christ by faith and is justified? Or is a person immediately justified by the merits of the crucifixion of Christ on the cross?
Hi, Robert. I think that sanctification is probably the complete process of being justified with God throughout our lives. It means to make Holy. Justification brings us into a Holy relationship with God now. It does not take take away our future choice. To continue this process throughout life would produce a Holy or sanctified life.
Justification is the process to make a person justified to receive eternal life. This process varies throughout the ages and now, it is by exercising faith in Jesus (which has a number of activities, such as, if you have faith in Jesus, show me your faith by your works, as James clarified).
Ezekiel 3:20-21 "Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand." This shows that the process - justification, where the righteous man was justified, can be interrupted, and make a person not be justified to inherit eternal life.
You can never do enough works to be justified before God so justification is not a process that makes a person justified to receive eternal life. Justification is a pardon you don't deserve, a free gift Jesus gave you at the cross. The process where you change once you accept the pardon is called sanctification.