Justified By Faith

 

The doctrine of justification by faith is not only found in the New Testament but in the Old Testament. Genesis tells us that Abraham, in response to God’s promise, “believed the LORD, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Job sought to justify himself before God and in the end renounced his own righteousness (e.g., Job 32:2; 42:1–6). David was a man after God’s own heart, and yet he speaks of the blessing of justification apart from works: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Ps. 32:1); “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” (Ps. 143:2). 

Isaiah prophesies that the servant of the Lord will “make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). And Habakkuk teaches us that “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4), a truth which he also exemplified in his own life (Hab. 3:16–19). 

Finally, Jesus himself teaches this doctrine in his parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, a parable he told “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9).

Justification by faith as articulated by the apostle Paul.

The doctrine of justification by faith is seen most clearly in Paul’s letters, and especially in his letters to the Romans and Galatians. Paul sums up the point of his letter to the Romans in Romans 1:17: “For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed by faith to faith, as it is written, ‘The righteousness shall live by faith.’”

Justification by faith is at the center of Paul’s argument in this letter. Similarly, it is at the center of Paul’s argument in Galatians, which is summarized nicely in Galatians 2:16: “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

We are not justified by our works.

Justification by faith is the opposite of justification by our works of obedience to the law. As Paul says it in Romans, “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28). He also draws an enlightening contrast between the worker and the believer: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:4–5). 

Jesus also taught that the one who is justified before God is not the one who boasts in his or her own righteousness but the sinner who cries out to God for mercy (Luke. 18:14). Isaiah prophesies that our justification will come about through the suffering of the servant for our transgressions. And David teaches that “no one living is righteous before you.” This means that none of us will be justified by our righteous works or our obedience to the law. Rather, we are justified through faith in Christ.

Jesus our justifier.

Because we are united to Christ by the Spirit and faith, our sins have been imputed to his account, and his righteousness has been imputed to our account. Imputation is an attempt to capture the truth of biblical statements like 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

Here, Paul does not mean that God actually made Christ a sinner but that he imputed our sin to Christ’s account, just as, in the parallel statement, he has imputed his own righteousness to our account.

We cannot be justified before God by our own righteous obedience to the law but only by our faith in the satisfaction and merit of Christ on our behalf.