Today is going to get deep, as we’re going to look at a basic introduction to the Doctrine of Justification. Let’s start with a pretty simple, yet important statement: our justification before God is completely separate from any good works we’ve done in our life. We can’t earn our way into heaven (John 14:6), and therefore for us to be justified in the eyes of God we must receive the payment Jesus made through his crucifixion. We do this by our faith in His completed work.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time for us to dive just a little deeper into two different types of justification that apply to this verse:
1. Forensic Justification
2. Synthetic Justification
1. Forensic Justification: This means that our justification is legal. God sees us as just in His court because His son, Jesus lived a perfect life and we are made right through our faith in Him alone. And it’s important to note that we’re able to receive this justification through faith alone, as there is no way that we can earn our justification (no matter how hard we try sometimes). Even though we are legally justified through our faith in Jesus, that does not mean that we are not still sinners. We live simultaneously just and yet as sinners. It is through Jesus that this sinfulness is cleared in the eyes of God.
2. Synthetic Justification: This means that there are two elements that have been added together to form a synthesis. The synthesis is that we are justified only because of the work of Jesus Christ that is added to us through our belief in Him. If we were to stand before God without this faith in Jesus, we would be condemned (Gal. 2:16, 3:24; John 5:24, 14:6; Mark 7:21; Rom. 5:1, Phil. 3:9, Eph. 2:8-9).
Some teach a “faith and works” doctrine, or also called Analytic Justification, saying that God looks at two things: our faith in Jesus, and our works after we believed in Him to see if we appropriated the grace of Christ. Further, this doctrine teaches that if we aren’t good enough, we may have to spend time in purgatory to become better before being allowed into heaven (Sproul). To be blunt, that isn’t remotely what Scripture says (James 5:24, Acts 13:39, 2 Corinthians 5:19-21).
Our admittance to Heaven is solely based on the work that Christ adds to us through our faith in Him. It isn’t through anything that we can do or any change in character that we may have.
As we wrap up, please do not take this as a statement saying that Christians aren’t to have a noticeable change in...
