Justification

Today we continue our exposition of St. Paul’s heritage. Our heritage is not about the past, but is about our future. And our future is in God’s hands, and is therefore theological. The development of German or European Reformed theology is similar to yet different from that of Reformed theology coming out of England. We will continue this idea as we look at several classic theological issues over the next months.

What is justification? Basically, to justify is to declare that sinners are righteous. Justification is the declaration whereby God pronounces sinners to be righteous because of Christ’s faith and the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. The Protestant view of justification is limited to God’s declaration about the sinner, and does not include any change within the sinner. Protestants call it “justification by faith alone,” which does not in itself make anyone holy. Justification simply declares the believer to be not guilty before God and therefore not treated as a sinner. The faith of the believer does not precede God’s declaration or cause God’s declaration, but rather God’s declaration precedes the confession of faith of the believer. It is not that God responds to the faith of the believer, but that the believer responds to the declaration of God.

The issue is obedience and the question is how it happens. What is the root cause of our obedience? Catholicism says that it is meritorious action on our part. Protestantism inverts the equation: Salvation equals justification plus sanctification. Protestants start with salvation and end with sanctification. Where the Catholics say that salvation requires our sanctification, Protestants says that salvation requires God’s prior justification. The one system requires meritorious works to complete our salvation; the other requires only God’s justification, which then causes us to strive for sanctification in gratitude.

Clearly, a thousand years of theology cannot be boiled down in such simple terms. There are many nuances that need to be considered. But this is my take on the general gist of the differences.