Justification

VIEW:14 DATA:01-04-2020

(See IMPUTE.) "The just shall live by faith" (Hab_2:4) is thrice quoted by Paul:
(1) Rom_1:17, where the emphasis is on "just," the gospel plan of saving men sets forth "the righteousness (justice) of God" as excluding the righteousness of man, Gentile and Jew alike (Rom_1:17 ff; Romans 2; Rom_3:25).
(2) Gal_3:11, etc., where the emphasis is on "faith" as distinguished front works, either distinct from or combined with faith, in the act of justification, this is by faith alone.
(3) Heb_10:38-39, where the emphasis is on "live"; as in the first instance in the matter of justification, so throughout, spiritual life is continued only by faith as opposed to "drawing back."
Again, the gratuitousness of God's gift of justification is brought out by comparing Rom_3:24, "being justified freely (doorean) by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," with Joh_15:25, "they hated ME without a cause" (doorean). As gratuitous as was man's hatred, so gratuitous is God's love justifying believers through Christ. Man had every cause to love, yet he hated, God; God had every cause given by man to hate, yet He loves, man. The Hebrew tsadaquw, Greek dikaioo, expresses, not to infuse righteousness into but to impute it to, man; to change his relation to God legally or forensically, not in the first instance to change his character. "Justification" is no more an infusion of righteousness than "condemnation," its opposite, is an infusion of wickedness, as is proved by Deu_25:1, "the judges shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked," Pro_17:15; Isa_5:23; Psa_143:2, which shows that by inherent righteousness no man could be justified.
In 40 Old Testament passages the Hebrew is used in the forensic sense, Isa_53:11, "by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many" is no exception, for the mode of His justifying them follows, "He shall bear their iniquities." So in Dan_12:3 ministers "justify" or "turn to righteousness" their converts instrumentally, i.e. bring them to God who justifies them. In Dan_8:14, margin, "the sanctuary shall be justified" means "shall be vindicated from profanation," shall stand in a relation of right before God which it had not done before its cleansing. Similarly the Greek verb means not to make righteous or pure, but to count righteous before God. Opposed to katakrinoo, "to condemn", Rom_8:33-34; "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?" Also Rom_5:16; Luk_18:14. Mat_11:19 means like Dan_8:14, "wisdom is vindicated from the condemnation" east on her by "this generation."
Also Mat_12:37; Luk_7:29, the publicans "justified God"; i.e. vindicated His righteousness, showed they counted Him righteous in His "counsel" by accepting the gospel; opposed to the Pharisees who "rejected" it, to their own condemnation (Rom_2:13). Before man's bar, ordinarily, the righteousness on account of which he is justified or counted righteous is his own; before God's bar, the righteousness on account of which he is justified is Christ's, which is God's (2Pe_1:1). Therefore pardon accompanies justification before God's bar, but pardon would be scorned by one innocent and therefore justified before man's bar. Again, acquittal before man is not always accompanied with justification; but the sinner pardoned before God is always justified also. In 1Jn_3:7, "he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous"; not his doing righteousness makes him righteous, but shows that he is so, i.e. justified by the righteousness of God in Christ (Rom_10:3-10).
A man "deceives" himself if he think himself "righteous," and yet does not righteousness, for "doing righteousness" is the sure fruit and proof of "being righteous," i.e. of having the only principle of true righteousness and the only mean of justification, faith. Paul's epistle to Romans proves Jew and Gentile guilty of breaking God's universal law, therefore incapable of being justified by their own righteousness, i.e. obedience to the law. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight; but now (under the gospel) the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference, for all have sinned," etc. (Rom_3:20-23). Still plainer is Rom_4:3-8 "to hint that worketh not but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith (i.e. not as a merit, but Christ's merit apprehended by faith: Eph_2:5; Eph_2:8-10) is counted for righteousness.
David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works (as man has no righteousness of his own the 'righteousness imputed' to him can only be the righteousness of God in Christ) ... blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." The justified man is not only acquitted as innocent but regarded as having perfectly obeyed the law in the person of Christ. There is to him both the non-imputation of sin and the imputation of righteousness. "Being justified by God's grace he is made heir according to the hope of eternal life" (Tit_3:7; Rom_5:18-19). Christ is "of God made unto us righteousness," so that to believers He is "the Lord our righteousness" (1Co_1:30; Jer_23:6). Faith is the instrument or receptive mean of justification (Rom_3:28; Gal_2:16; Gal_3:8).
We are justified judicially by God (Rom_8:33), meritoriously by Christ (Isa_53:11; Rom_5:19), instrumentally or mediately by faith (Rom_5:1), evidentially by works. This is the sense of James (Jas_2:14-26), otherwise James could no more be reconciled with himself than with Paul, for he quotes the same instance and the same scripture, "Abraham believed God and it (his faith) was counted to him for righteousness," as Paul does. (See JAMES; FAITH.) Luther called the doctrine of justification by faith only "the article (test) of a standing or falling church." Justin Martyr in the second century (Ep. ad Diog.) writes: "what else could cover our sins but His righteousness? in whom could we transgressors be justified but only in the Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable contrivance! that the transgressions of many should be hidden in one righteous Person and the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors." (2Co_5:21).
The Church of England Homily says: "faith doth not shut out repentance, hope, love, and the fear of God in every man justified, but it shutteth them out from the office of justifying." So: "faith, receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification, yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces." (Westminster Confession xi. 1-2). Rome makes justification the infusion of righteousness by God's Spirit and the rewarding of the good works done under His influence, at the day of judgment. This confounds justification with sanctification whereas Romans 5 and Romans 6 carefully distinguish them, and makes it a continuous process not completed until the judgment, whereas Scripture makes it completed on believing (Rom_5:1-9; Rom_8:1; Joh_5:24).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

in common language, signifies a vindication from any charge which affects the moral character; but in theology it is used for the acceptance of one, by God, who is, and confesses himself to be, guilty. To justify a sinner, says Mr. Bunting, in an able sermon on this important subject, is to account and consider him relatively righteous; and to deal with him as such, notwithstanding his past actual unrighteousness, by clearing, absolving, discharging, and releasing him from various penal evils, and especially from the wrath of God, and the liability to eternal death, which, by that past unrighteousness, he had deserved; and by accepting him as if just, and admitting him to the state, the privileges, and the rewards of righteousness. Hence it appears that justification, and the remission or forgiveness of sin, are substantially the same thing. These expressions relate to one and the same act of God, to one and the same privilege of his believing people. Accordingly, St. Paul clearly uses justification and forgiveness as synonymous terms, when he says, “Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses,” Act_13:38-39. Also in the following passage: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin,” Rom_4:5-8. Here, the justification of the ungodly, the counting or imputation of righteousness, the forgiveness of iniquity, and the covering and non- imputation of sin, are phrases which have all, perhaps, their various shades of meaning, but which express the very same blessing under different views. But (1.) the justification of a sinner does not in the least degree alter or diminish the evil nature and desert of sin. For we know “it is God,” the holy God, “that justifieth.” And he can never regard sin, on any consideration, or under any circumstances, with less than perfect and infinite hatred. Sin, therefore, is not changed in its nature, so as to be made less “exceedingly sinful,” or less worthy of wrath, by the pardon of the sinner. The penalty is remitted, and the obligation to suffer that penalty is dissolved; but it is still naturally due, though graciously remitted. Hence appear the propriety and duty of continuing to confess and lament even pardoned sin with a lowly and contrite heart. Though released from its penal consequences by an act of divine clemency, we should still remember that the dust of self abasement is our proper place before God, and should temper our exultation in his mercy by an humbling recollection of our natural liability to his wrath. “I will establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God,” Eze_16:62-63.
(2.) The account which has been given of justification, if correct, sufficiently points out the error of many of the Roman Catholic divines, and of some mystic theologians, who seem to suppose that to be justified is to be, not reckoned righteous, but actually made righteous, by the infusion of a sanctifying influence, producing a positive and inherent conformity to the moral image of God. This notion confounds the two distinct though kindred blessings of justification and regeneration. The former, in its Scriptural sense, is an act of God, not in or upon man, but for him, and in his favour; an act which, abstractedly considered, to use the words of Dr. Barrow, “respects man only as its object, and translates him into another relative state. The inherent principle of righteousness is a consequent of this act of God; connected with it, but not formally of it.”
(3.) The justification extends to all past sins; that is, to all guilt contracted previously to that time at which the act of justification takes place. In respect of this, it is, while it remains in force, a most full, perfect, and entire absolution from wrath. “All manner of sin” is then forgiven. The pardon which is granted is a “justification,” not merely from some things, from many things, from most things, but “from all things,” Act_13:39. God does not justify us, or pardon our innumerable offences, by degrees, but at once. As by the law of works he is cursed, who “continueth not in all things” which that law enjoined, so he who is truly absolved by the Gospel is cleared from all and every thing which before stood against him; and “there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Well may that Gospel which reveals and offers such a benefit be termed a “great salvation!”
(4.) Another remark, which it may not be unnecessary to make, is, that justification, however effectual to our release from past guilt, does not terminate our state of probation. It is not irreversible, any more than eternal. As he who is now justified was once condemned, so he may in future come again into condemnation, by relapsing into sin and unbelief, although at present “accepted in the Beloved.” Thus Adam, before transgression, was in a state of favour: but as he had not then fulfilled, to the end of his probation, the righteousness of that law under which he was placed, his ultimate and final acceptance was not absolutely certain. His privilege, as one accepted of God, might be forfeited, and was actually forfeited, by his subsequent sin. Now, our own justification or pardon only places us, as to this point, in similar circumstances. Though ever so clearly and fully forgiven, we are yet on our trial for eternity, and should “look to ourselves, that we lose not the things which we have gained.” That justification may for our sin be reversed, appears from our Lord's parable of the two debtors, in which one who had obtained the blessing of forgiveness is represented as incurring the forfeiture of it by the indulgence of an unforgiving spirit toward his fellow servant, Mat_18:23-35. Let us therefore “watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation.”
2. The immediate results of justification are (1.) The restoration of amity and intercourse between the pardoned sinner and the pardoning God. For, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God,” and, consequently, unforbidden access to him. The matter and ground of God's controversy with us being then removed by his act of gracious absolution, we become the objects of his friendship. “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness; and he was” immediately “called the friend of God,” Jam_2:23; and so are all those who are similarly justified. This reconciliation, however, does not extend to their instant and absolute deliverance from all those evils which transgression has entailed on man. They are still liable, for a season, to affliction and pain, to temporal suffering and mortality. These are portions of the original curse from which their justification does not as yet release them. But it entitles them to such supports under all remaining trouble, and to such promises of a sanctifying influence with it, as will, if embraced, “turn the curse into a blessing.” Whom the Lord loveth, he may still chasten, and in very faithfulness afflict them. But these are acts of salutary discipline, rather than of vindictive displeasure. His friendship, not his righteous hostility is the principle from which they all proceed; and the salvation, not the destruction, of the sufferer is the end to which they are all directed.
(2.) Another immediate result of justification is the adoption of the persons justified into the family of God, and their consequent right to eternal life of body and soul. God condescends to become not only their Friend, but their Father; they are the objects not merely of his amicable regard, but of his paternal tenderness. And, admitted to the relation of children, they become entitled to the children's inheritance; for, “if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together,” Rom_8:17.
(3.) With these results of justification is inseparably connected another, of the utmost value and importance; namely, the habitual indwelling of the Holy Spirit. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” Gal_3:13-14. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,” Gal_4:6. With the remission of sins, St. Peter also connects, as an immediate result, as a distinct but yet a simultaneous blessing, “the gift of the Holy Ghost,”
Act_2:38. And in the fifth verse of this chapter, the Holy Ghost is said to be given to those who are justified by faith. Of this indwelling the immediate effects are, (i.) Tranquillity of conscience. For he testifies and manifests to those in whom he dwells their free justification and gracious adoption. The spirit which such persons have received is “not the spirit of bondage to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God,”
Rom_8:15-16.
(ii.) Power over sin; a prevailing desire and ability to walk before God in holy obedience. No sooner is the Holy Spirit enthroned in the heart, than he begins to make all things new. In his genuine work, purity is always connected with consolation. Those to whom he witnesses their freedom from condemnation he also enables to “walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” Rom_8:1.
(iii.) A joyous hope of heaven. Their title results from the fact of their adoption; their power to rejoice in hope, from the Spirit's testimony of that fact. “We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith,”
and “abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost,” Gal_5:5; Rom_15:13.
3. To have a complete view of the method by which justification and all its consequent blessings are attained, we must consider the originating, the meritorious, and the instrumental cause of justification.
(1.) The originating cause is the grace, the free, undeserved, and spontaneous love of God toward fallen man. He remembered and pitied us in our low estate; for his mercy endureth for ever. “After that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. The grace of God bringeth salvation,” Tit_2:11; Tit_3:4-5. We are justified freely by his grace;” Rom_3:24. But God is wise, and holy, and just, as well as merciful and gracious. And his wisdom determined, that, in order to reconcile the designs of his mercy toward sinners with the claims of his purity and justice, those designs should be accomplished only through the intervention of a divine Redeemer. We are justified “through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Rom_1:5.
(2.) Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole meritorious cause of our justification. All he did and all he suffered in his mediatorial character may be said to have contributed to this great purpose. For what he did, in obedience to the precepts of the law, and what he suffered, in satisfaction of its penalty, taken together, constitute that mediatorial righteousness, for the sake of which the Father is ever well pleased in him. Now, in this mediatorial righteousness all who are justified have a saving interest. It is not meant that it is personally, imputed to them in its formal nature or distinct acts; for against any such imputation there lie insuperable objections both from reason and from Scripture. But the collective merit and moral effects of all which the Mediator did and suffered are so reckoned to our account when we are justified, that, for the sake of Christ and in consideration of his obedience unto death, we are released from guilt, and accepted of God.
From this statement of the meritorious cause of justification, it appears that while our pardon is, in its origin, an act of the highest grace, it is also, in its mode, an act most perfectly consistent with God's essential righteousness, and demonstrative of his inviolable justice. It proceeds not on the principle of abolishing the law or its penalty; for that would have implied that the law was unduly rigorous, either in its precepts or in its sanctions. But it rests on the ground that the law has been magnified and vindicated, and that its penalty, or sufferings, which where fully equivalent to that penalty in a moral view, when the dignity of the sufferer is considered, have been sustained by our voluntary Substitute. Thus “grace reigns through righteousness,” not at the expense of righteousness. “Now, the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,”
Rom_3:21-26.
(3.) As to the instrumental cause of justification, the merit of the blood of Jesus does not operate necessarily so as to produce our pardon as an immediate and unavoidable effect, but through the instrumentality of faith. The faith by which we are justified is present faith, faith actually existing and exercised. We are not justified by to-morrow's faith foreseen; for that would lead to the Antinomian notion of justification from eternity, a notion which to mention is to confute. We are not justified by yesterday's faith recorded or remembered; for that would imply the opinion that justification is irreversible. The justification offered in the Scriptures is a justification upon believing, in which we are never savingly interested until we believe, and which continues in force only so long as we continue to believe. On all unbelievers the wrath of God abides. The atonement of Jesus was indeed accepted, as from him, at the time when it was offered; but it is not accepted, as for us, to our individual justification, until we individually believe, nor after we cease to believe. The OBJECT of justifying faith may be inferred from what has been before said, as to the originating and meritorious causes of justification. It has respect, in general, to all that Christ is set forth in the Gospel as doing or suffering, by the gracious appointment of the Father, in order to our redemption and pardon. But it has respect, in particular, to the atoning sacrifice of Christ, as exhibited by divine authority in the Scriptures, and as attested to be acceptable and sufficient by his resurrection from the dead, and by his mediatorial exaltation at the right hand of God.
The acts or exercises of this faith seem to be three; or rather, that faith which is required in order to our justification is a complex act of the mind, which includes three distinct but concurrent exertions of its powers. It includes, (1.) The assent of the understanding to the truth of the testimony of God in the Gospel; and especially to that part of it which concerns the design and efficacy of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin.
(2.) The consent of the will and affections to this plan of salvation; such an approbation and choice of it as imply a renunciation of every other refuge, and a steady and decided preference of this. Unbelief is called a disallowing of the foundation laid in Zion; whereas faith includes a hearty allowance of it, and a thankful acquiescence in God's revealed method of forgiveness.
(3.) From this assent of the enlightened understanding, and consent of the rectified will, to the evangelical testimony concerning Christ crucified, results the third thing, which is supposed to be implied in justifying faith; namely, actual trust in the Saviour, and personal apprehension of his merits. When, under the promised leading and influence of the Holy Ghost, the penitent sinner thus confidently relies and individually lays hold on Christ, then the work of justifying faith is complete; then, and not till then, he is immediately justified. On the whole, it may be said that the faith to which the privilege of justification is annexed, is such a belief of the Gospel, by the power of the Spirit of God, as leads us to come to Christ, to receive Christ, to trust in Christ, and to commit the keeping of our souls into his hands, in humble confidence of his ability and his willingness to save us.
The grand doctrine of the Reformation was that of justification by faith, and was therefore held by all the Lutheran and Reformed churches. The Papists assert that man's inherent righteousness is the meritorious cause of his justification: many Protestant divines have endeavoured to unite the two, and have held that men are justified by faith and good works; and others have equally departed from the opinions of the earliest reformers on the subject of justification, in representing it as resulting from the imputation of Christ's active and passive righteousness to those that believe, instead of confining the imputation to the moral consequence and effect of both. In other words, that which is reckoned to us in our justification for righteousness is our faith in Christ's merits, and that not because of any intrinsic value in faith; but only for the sake of those merits.
In a mere moral sense man's sin or righteousness is imputed to him, when he is considered as actually the doer of sinful or of righteous acts. A man's sin or righteousness is imputed to him in its legal consequence, under a government of rewards and punishments; and then to impute sin or righteousness signifies, in a legal sense, to reckon and to account it, to acquit or condemn, and forthwith to punish, or to exempt from punishment. Thus Shimei entreats David, that he would “not impute folly to him,” that is, that he would not punish his folly. In this sense, too, David speaks of the blessedness of the man whose “transgression is forgiven,”
and to whom the Lord “imputeth not sin,” that is, whom he forgives, so that the legal consequence of his sin shall not fall upon him. This non- imputation of sin, to a sinner, is expressly called the “imputation of righteousness, without works;” the imputation of righteousness is, then, the non-punishment, or the pardon of sin; and if this passage be read in its connection, it will also be seen, that by “imputing” faith for righteousness, the Apostle means precisely the same thing: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness; even as David also describeth the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not sin.” This quotation form David would have been nothing to the Apostle's purpose, unless he had understood the forgiveness of sins, and the imputation of righteousness, and the non- imputation of sin, to signify the same thing as “counting faith for righteousness,” with only this difference, that the introduction of the term “faith” marks the manner in which the forgiveness of sin is obtained. To have faith imputed for righteousness, is nothing more than to be justified by faith, which is also called by St. Paul, “being made righteous,” that is, being placed by an act of free forgiveness, through faith in Christ, in the condition of righteous men, in this respect, that the penalty of the law does not lie against them, and that they are the acknowledged objects of the divine favour. See FAITH.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

The English words ‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ are different parts of the same word in the original languages of the Bible. This applies to the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New (see also RIGHTEOUSNESS).
Meaning of ‘justify’ in the Bible
Most commonly the Bible uses the word ‘justify’ in what might be called a legal sense. The picture is that of a courtroom where the righteous person is the one whom the judge declares to be right. The person is justified. In other words, to justify means to declare righteous, to declare to be in the right, to vindicate. It is the opposite of to condemn, which means to declare guilty, to declare to be in the wrong (Deu_25:1; Job_13:18; Isa_50:7-8; Mat_12:37; Luk_18:14; Rom_8:33).
Those who try to show that they are in the right are said to be trying to justify themselves. They are trying to declare themselves righteous (Job_32:2; Luk_10:28-29; Luk_16:14-15). They may even go to the extent of condemning God in order to justify themselves, declaring God to be wrong and themselves to be right (Job_40:8). It is in this sense of declaring someone to be right or wrong that the Bible may speak of God as being justified. People acknowledge that he is in the right and that his judgments are correct (Psa_51:4; Luk_7:29; Rom_3:4; cf. Rev_16:5).
Some may argue that to justify means to make righteous (cf. Rom_5:19 RSV), but if such is the case it is important to understand what is meant by being ‘made’ righteous. People are not made righteous in the sense that a piece of metal placed in a fire is ‘made hot’. They are made righteous only in the sense of being declared righteous. They are put in a right relationship with God (Rom_5:19 GNB). The word has to do with a legal pronouncement, not with changing people from one thing to another by placing some new moral power within them (Rom_4:1-3; Rom_5:17-19; Php_3:9).
Just as condemn does not mean ‘make wicked’, so justify does not mean ‘make good’. Nevertheless, one result of the justification of believers is that their lives are changed so that righteousness (in the sense of right behaviour), not sin, becomes the chief characteristic (Php_3:9-10; Jam_2:17-23; 1Pe_2:24; 1Jn_3:7; see SANCTIFICATION).
Justification by faith
The fullest explanation of justification is in the writings of Paul. There the teaching centres on God’s great act of salvation by which he declares repentant sinners righteous before him. Instead of having the status of those who are guilty and condemned, sinners now have the status of those who are right with God. God brings them into a right relationship with himself, giving them a right standing before him (Rom_5:1-2; Rom_8:33).
This is entirely an act of God’s grace, for no one can have a right standing before God on the basis of personal good deeds. Even a person’s best efforts to keep the law will not help. Since all are sinners and under God’s condemnation, there is nothing anyone can do to gain acceptance with God (Psa_143:2; Rom_3:28; Rom_9:31-32; Gal_2:16). God accepts people not because of anything they do, but solely because of his mercy (Isa_55:7; Mic_7:18; Rom_3:24; Eph_2:8).
However, this gracious work of justification takes place only in those who trust in God. It is through faith that people are justified; more specifically, through faith in Jesus Christ. Christ has done the work and they accept the benefits of that work by faith (Rom_1:17; Rom_3:22; Rom_3:28; Rom_4:2-5; Rom_5:1; Gal_2:16; Gal_3:11; see FAITH; GRACE).
The basis of God’s merciful act of justification is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom_3:24-25; Rom_4:23-25; Rom_5:9; Rom_5:17-19; Gal_2:21). God now sees believers as ‘in Christ’ and therefore he declares them righteous. And those whom God declares righteous are righteous – not in the sense that they are perfect people who cannot sin any more, but in the sense that God gives them a righteousness that is not their own, the righteousness of Christ. God accepts believing sinners because of what Christ has done. Jesus Christ becomes, as it were, their righteousness (1Co_1:30; 2Pe_1:1).
Justification and substitution
Although the word ‘justification’ tells us that God declares sinners righteous, it does not tell us the hidden mysteries of divine activity that make it possible for God to do this. The mysteries of God’s will and the wonders of his salvation are in some ways beyond human understanding. But since justification is concerned with the processes of law, a further illustration from the law court may suggest the way God has worked.
In this courtroom scene, God is the judge and sinners are on trial (Rom_2:2; Rom_2:5-6; Rom_3:23). God loves them and wants to forgive them (1Jn_4:16; 2Pe_3:9), but his love requires that he act justly (i.e. righteously). If a judge acquitted the guilty merely because they were people he liked, he would be unjust. He might claim to be loving, but his love would be no more than an irrational emotion divorced from moral justice and righteousness. True love, by contrast, is so zealous for the other person’s well-being that it reacts in anger against all that is wrong (cf. Heb_12:6).
God is love and wants to forgive sinners, but because he is a God of love he cannot ignore sin or treat it as if it does not matter. His act of forgiveness, if it is based on love, will involve his dealing with sin.
Being a God of love, God must punish sin, but at the same time (being a God of love) he provides a way whereby sinners need not suffer the punishment themselves. He has done this by taking human form in the person of Jesus Christ, living with sinners as a fellow human being in their world, and then, without himself being a sinner, taking sin’s punishment on their behalf (Rom_3:24; Rom_5:9; 2Co_5:18). God is both the judge and the one against whom people have sinned, but at the same time he is the one who bears the penalty of their sin. He forgives sinners only at great cost to himself (Joh_3:16; 2Co_8:9; see SACRIFICE).
Jesus died in the place of, or as the substitute for, guilty sinners (1Pe_2:24). Whereas Adam’s sin brought death, Christ’s death brings life (Rom_5:15; Rom_5:18). Being fully human, Jesus could be a substitute for his fellow human beings, but only because he was sinless and completely obedient. He fulfilled all God’s righteous requirements under the law (Mat_3:15; Php_2:8; 1Pe_2:22; 1Jn_3:5). One who broke God’s law would be under condemnation himself and could not take the place others (Gal_3:10). Jesus, however, kept God’s law perfectly. He was absolutely righteous in the fullest moral sense of the word, and so was able to bear the law’s punishment on behalf of those who had broken it (Gal_3:11-13; Gal_4:4-5).
When he died, the sinless Jesus suffered the punishment that sin deserved. ‘He bore our sins’ (1Pe_2:24). Because of the death of Christ, God can now forgive repentant sinners and accept them as righteous before him. Believers are now in a right relationship with God, because Christ is in a right relationship with God (2Co_5:21). God’s justice and God’s mercy operate in harmony, because both are outworkings of his love. His justice is satisfied in seeing sin punished, and his mercy flows out in seeing sin forgiven. In his love God justifies guilty but repentant sinners, yet he does so justly and righteously (Rom_3:26; Rom_4:5; see also PROPITIATION).
Justification and forgiveness
God’s forgiveness is more than what people usually mean when they talk of forgiveness. It is more than merely the removal of hostility or the ignoring of wrongdoing. When God forgives sinners, he also justifies them, bringing them into a right relation with himself (Rom_5:6-11). God not only removes condemnation, he also gives righteousness (Rom_4:6-8; Rom_4:22; Rom_5:17; Rom_5:19; 2Co_5:19; 2Co_5:21; Php_3:9). Forgiveness is something that believers continue to be in need of because they are still likely to sin (Mat_6:12); justification is a once-for-all act, a declaration by God that he accepts them in his Son (Rom_5:1-2).
The forgiveness that believers need day by day is concerned not with the basic work of justification, but with their daily enjoyment of fellowship with God. Although the penalty of sin has been paid, the evil effects of sin are still in the world and believers cannot escape them. Their failures may disappoint themselves and God, but as they confess those failures they are assured of God’s forgiveness (1Jn_1:7; 1Jn_1:9; see CONFESSION; FORGIVENESS). Their justification, however, is never in question.
Christ’s death deals with sin’s penalty for all believers, whether they belong to generations past, present or future. In like manner it deals with the penalty for all the sins of each individual believer, whether those sins be in the past, present or future Rom_3:22-26; Heb_9:15).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

jus-ti-fi-kā?shu (צדק, cedheḳ, verb צדק, cādhēḳ; Septuagint and New Testament δικαίωμα, dikaı́ōma, δικαίωσις, dikaı́ōsis, verb δικαιόω, dikaióō, ?justification? ?to justify,? in a legal sense, the declaring just or righteous. In Biblical literature, δικαιοῦν, dikaioún, without denying the real righteousness of a person, is used invariably or almost invariably in a declarative or forensic sense. See Simon, HDB, II, 826; Thayer, Grimm, and Cremer under the respective words):
I. THE WRITINGS OF PAUL
1. Universality of Sin
2. Perfection of the Law of God
3. Life, Work and Death of the Atoning Saviour
(1) Paul's Own Experience
(2) The Resurrection Connected with the Death
(3) Faith, Not Works, the Means of Justification
(4) Baptism Also Eliminated
(5) Elements of Justification
(a) Forgiveness of Sins
(b) Declaring or Approving as Righteous
(6) Justification Has to Do with the Individual
II. THE OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS
1. The Synoptic Gospels
2. John's Writings
3. 1 Peter and Hebrews
4. Epistle of James
III. THE OLD TESTAMENT
IV. LATER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE
1. Apostolic and Early Church Fathers
2. Council of Trent
3. Luther
4. Schleiermacher
5. Meaning and Message to the Modern Man
LITERATURE

I. The Writings of Paul.
1. The Universality of Sin:
In this article reference will first be made to the writings of Paul, where justification receives its classic expression, and from there as a center, the other New Testament writers, and finally the Old Testament, will be drawn in. According to Paul, justification rests on the following presuppositions:
The universality of sin. All men are not only born in sin (Eph_2:3), but they have committed many actual transgressions, which render them liable to condemnation. Paul proves this by an appeal to the Old Testament witnesses (Rom_3:9 ff), as well as by universal experience, both of the heathen (Rom_1:18-32) and Jews (Rom_2:17-28; Rom_3:9).

2. Perfection of the Law of God:
The perfection of the Law of God and the necessity of its perfect observance, if justification is to come by it (Rom_3:10). The modern notion of God as a good-natured, more or less nonchalant ruler, to whom perfect holiness is not inexorable, was not that of Paul. If one had indeed kept the law, God could not hold him guilty (Rom_2:13), but such an obedience never existed. Paul had no trouble with the law as such. Those who have tried to find a difference here between Galatians and Romans have failed. The reminder that the law was ordained by angels (Gal_3:19) does not mean that it was not also given by God. It might be reckoned in a sense among the elements of the world (kosmos), Gal_4:3), as it is an essential part of an ordered universe, but that does not at all mean that it is not also holy, right and good (Rom_7:12). It was added, of course, on account of transgressions (Gal_3:19), for it is only a world of intelligent, free spirits capable of sin which needs it, and its high and beautiful sanctions make the sin seem all the more sinful (Rom_7:13).

3. Life, Work and Death of the Atoning Savior:
It was fundamental in Paul's thinking that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures (1Co_15:3). In due season He died for the ungodly (Rom_5:6); while we were yet sinners He died for us (Rom_5:8); we are justified in His blood (Rom_5:9), and it is through Him that we are saved from the wrath (Rom_5:9). While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son (Rom_5:10), being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation (Rom_3:24, Rom_3:25). There is no reconciliation, no justification, except through and by and for Christ.

(1) Paul's Own Experience.
Paul's own experience cannot be left out of the account. He lived through the doctrine, as well as found it through illumination of the Spirit in the Old Testament. It was not that he had only outwardly kept the law. He had been jealous for it, and had been blameless in every requirement of its righteousness (Phi_3:6). What was borne in upon him was how little such blamelessness could stand before the absolute standard of God. Just how far he was shaken with doubts of this kind we cannot say with certainty; but it seems impossible to conceive the Damascus conversion scene in the case of such an upright man and strenuous zealot without supposing a psychological preparation, without supposing doubts as to whether his fulfilling of the law enabled him to stand before God. Now, for a Pharisaically educated man like himself, there was no way of overcoming these doubts but in a renewed struggle for his own righteousness shown in the fiery zeal of his Damascus journey, pressing on even in the blazing light of noonday. This conversion broke down his philosophy of life, his Lebensgewissheit, his assurance of salvation through works of the law done never so conscientiously and perfectly. The revelation of the glorified Christ, with the assurance that He, the God-sent Messiah, was the very one whom he was persecuting, destroyed his dependence on his own righteousness, a righteousness which had led him to such shocking consequences. Although this was for him an individual experience, yet it had universal applications. It showed him that there was an inherent weakness in the law through flesh, that is, through the whole physical, psychical and spiritual nature of man considered as sinful, as working only on this lower plane, and that the law needed bracing and illuminating by the Son, who, though sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin, yet (as an offering) for sin condemned sin and cast it out (Rom_8:3), to the end that the law might be fulfilled in those who through Him walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom_8:4). That was the glory of the new righteousness thus revealed. If the law had been able to do that, to give life, Christ need not have come, righteousness would have been by the law (Gal_3:21). But the facts show that the law was not thus able, neither the law written on the heart given to all, nor the law given to Moses (Rom 1:18 through 3:19). Therefore every mouth is stopped, and all flesh is silent before God. On the ground of law-keeping, what the modern man would call morality, our hope of salvation has been shattered. The law has spoken its judgment against us (Gal_3:10). It cannot therefore lead us to righteousness and life, nor was that its supreme intention: it was a pedagogue or tutor (?paidagōgós?) to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith (Gal_3:24; see Ihmels in RE3, 16, 483-84). What made Paul to differ from his companions in the faith was that his own bitter experience under the revelation of Christ had led him to these facts.

(2) The Resurrection Connected with the Death.
It was remarked above that the ground of justification according to Paul is the work of Christ. This means especially. His death as a sacrifice, in which, as Ritschl well says (Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, 3. Aufl., 1899, II 157), the apostles saw exercised the whole power of His redemption. But that death cannot be separated from His resurrection, which first awakened them to a knowledge of its decisive worth for salvation, as well as finally confirmed their faith in Jesus as the Son of God. ?The objective salvation,? says Ritschl (p. 158), ?which was connected with the sacrificial death of Christ and which continued on for the church, was made secure by this, that it was asserted also as an attribute of the resurrected one,? who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification (Rom_4:25). But this last expression is not to be interpreted with literal preciseness, as though Paul intended to distinguish between the forgiveness of sins as brought about by the death, and justification, by the resurrection, for both forgiveness and justification are identified in Rom_4:6-8. It was the resurrection which gave Christians their assurance concerning Christ (Act_17:31); by that resurrection He has been exalted to the right hand of God, where He maketh intercession for His people (Rom_8:34), which mediatorship is founded upon His death - the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev_13:8 m; compare Greek text).
B. Weiss well says: ?It was by the certainty of the exaltation of Christ to Messianic sovereignty brought about by the resurrection that Paul attained to faith in the saving significance of His death, and not conversely. Accordingly, the assurance that God cannot condemn us is owing primarily to the death of Christ, but still more to His resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand (Rom_8:34), inasmuch as these first prove that His death was the death of the mediator of salvation, who has redeemed us from condemnation.... The objective atonement was accomplished by the death of Christ, but the appropriation of it in justification is possible only if we believe in the saving significance of His death, and we can attain to faith in that only as it is sealed by the resurrection? (Biblical Theology of the New Testament, I, 436-37).

(3) Faith, Not Works, the Means of Justification.
The means or condition of justification is faith (Rom_3:22, Rom_3:25, Rom_3:26, Rom_3:28, etc.) which rests upon the pure grace of God and is itself, therefore, His gift (Eph_2:8). This making faith the only instrument of justification is not arbitrary, but because, being the receptive attitude of the soul, it is in the nature of the case the only avenue through which Divine blessing can come. The gifts of God are not against the laws of the soul which He has made, but rather are in and through those laws. Faith is the hand outstretched to the Divine Giver, who, though He sends rain without our consent, does not give salvation except through an appropriate spiritual response. This faith is not simply belief in historical facts, though this is presupposed as to the atoning death (Rom_3:25), and the resurrection (Rom_10:9) of Jesus, but is a real heart reception of the gift (Rom_10:10), and is therefore able to bring peace in our relation to God (Rom_5:1). The object of this faith is Jesus Christ (Rom_3:22, etc.), through whom only comes the gift of righteousness and the reigning in life (Rom_5:17), not Mary, not angels, not doctrine, not the church, but Jesus only. This, to be sure, does not exclude God the Father as an object of faith, as the redeeming act of Christ is itself the work of God (2Co_5:19), whose love expressed itself toward us in this way (Rom_5:8). Faith in the only one God is always presupposed (1Co_8:6), but it was the apostolic custom rather to refer repentance to God and faith to Christ (Act_20:21). But the oneness of God the Father and Christ the Son in a work of salvation is the best guaranty of the Divinity of the latter, both as an objective fact and as an inner experience of the Christian.
The justification being by faith, it is not by works or by love, or by both in one. It cannot be by the former, because they are lacking either in time or amount or quality, nor could they be accepted in any case until they spring from a heart renewed, for which faith is the necessary presupposition. It cannot be by the latter, for it exists only where the Spirit has shed it abroad in the heart (Rom_5:5), the indispensable prerequisite for receiving which is faith. This does not mean that the crown of Christianity is not love, for it is (1Co_13:13); it means only that the root is faith. Nor can love be foisted in as a partial condition of justification on the strength of the word often quoted for that purpose, ?faith working through love? (Gal_5:6). The apostle is speaking here only of those who are already ?in Christ,? and he says that over against the Galatian believers bringing in a lot of legal observances, the only availing thing is not circumcision or its lack, but faith energizing through love. Here the interest is, as Ritschl says (II, 343), in the kingdom of God, but justification proper has reference to the sinner in relation to God and Christ. See the excellent remarks of Bruce, Paul's Conception of Christianity, 1894, 226-27. At the same time this text reveals the tremendous ethical religious force abiding in faith, according to Paul. It reminds us of the great sentence of Luther in his preface to the Epistles to the Romans, where he says: ?Faith is a Divine work within us which changes and renews us in God according to Joh_1:13, 'who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' This destroys the old Adam and makes new creatures of us in heart, will, disposition, and all our powers. Oh, faith is a living, active, jealous, mighty thing, inasmuch as it cannot possibly remain unproductive of good works? (Werke, Erl. Ausg., 63, 124-25).

(4) Baptism also Eliminated.
Not only are good works and love removed as conditions or means of justification of the sinner, but baptism is also eliminated. According to Paul, it is the office of baptism not to justify, but to cleanse, that is, symbolically to set forth and seal the washing away of sin and the entrance into the new life by a dramatic act of burial, which for the subject and all witnesses would mark a never-to-be-forgotten era in the history of the believer. ?Baptism,? says Weiss (I, 454), ?presupposes faith in Him as the one whom the church designates as Lord, and also binds to adherence to Him which excludes every dependence upon any other, inasmuch as He has acquired a claim upon their devotion by the saving deed of His self-surrender on the cross.? So important was baptism in the religious atmosphere at that time that hyperbolical expressions were used to express its cleansing and illuminating office, but these need not mislead us. We must interpret them according to the fundamental conceptions of Christianity as a religion of the Spirit, not of magic nor of material media. Baptism pointed to a complete parting with the old life by previous renewal through faith in Christ, which renewal baptism in its turn sealed and announced in a climax of self-dedication to him, and this, while symbolically and in contemporary parlance of both Jew and Gentile called a new birth, was probably often actually so in the psychological experience of the baptized. But while justification is often attributed to faith, it is never to baptism.

(5) Elements of Justification.
What are the elements of this justification? There are two:

(a) Forgiveness of Sins
Forgiveness of sins (Rom_4:5-8; compare Act_13:38, Act_13:39). With this are connected peace and reconciliation (Rom_5:1, Rom_5:9, Rom_5:10; compare Rom_10:11).

(b) The Declaring or Approving as Righteous
The declaring or approving as righteous or just (Rom_3:21-30; Rom_4:2-9, Rom_4:22; Rom_5:1, Rom_5:9-11, Rom_5:16-21, etc.). C.F. Schmid is perfectly right when he says that Paul (and James) always uses dikaioun in the sense of esteeming and pronouncing and treating as righteous, both according to the measure of the law (Rom_2:13; Rom_3:20) and also according to grace (Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 1870, 497). The word is a forensic one, and Godet goes so far as to say that the word is never used in all Greek literature for making righteous (Commentary on Romans, English translation, I, 157, American edition, 95). This is shown further by the fact that it is the ungodly who are justified (Rom_4:5), and that the justification is a reckoning or imputation (logı́zesthai) of righteousness (Rom_4:6, Rom_4:22), not an infusing or making righteous. The contrast of ?to justify? is not ?to be a sinner? but is ?to accuse? or ?to condemn? (Rom_8:33, Rom_8:14), and the, contrast of ?justification? is ?condemnation? (Rom_5:18). Besides, it is not the infusing of a new life, of a new holiness, which is counted for righteousness, but it is faith which is so counted (Rom_4:5; Phi_3:9). That upon which God looks when He justifies is not the righteousness He has imparted or is to impart, but the atonement He has made in Christ. It is one of the truest paradoxes of Christianity that unless a righteous life follows, there has been no justification, while the justification itself is for the sake of Christ alone through faith alone. It is a ?status, rather than a character,? says Stevens (The Pauline Theology, 1892, 265); ?it bears the stamp of a legal rather than of an ethical conception,? and he refers to the elaborate and convincing proof of the forensic character of Paul's doctrine of justification,? in Morison, Exposition of Romans, chapter III, 163-200. An interesting illustration of how further study may correct a wrong impression is given by Lipsius, who, in his Die Paulinische Rechfertigungslehre, 1853, maintained that righteousness or justification meant not ?exclusively an objectively given external relation to God, but always at the same time a real inner condition of righteousness? (p. 10), whereas in his Lehrbuch der evangelisch-protestantischen Dogmatik, 1876, 3. Aufl., 1893, he makes the righteousness of God properly an ?objective gift of grace, not simply in the sense in which the Old Testament just one judged his position of salvation as a gift of grace, but as a righteousness specially reckoned and adjudicated by way of grace and acknowledged before the judgment (or court, Gericht) of God (Rom_4:6; compare Rom_4:1-8, Rom_4:11; Rom_3:23; Gal_3:6). This is always the meaning of dikaioun, dikaioústhai, or dikaiōsis in Paul. It consists in the not-reckoning of sins,? etc. (p. 658). Of course justification is only a part of the process of salvation, which includes regeneration and sanctification, but these are one thing and justification is another.


(6) Justification Has to Do with the Individual.
Finally it is asked whether justification in Paul's mind has to do with the individual believer or with the society or Christian congregation. Ritschl (II, 217 f) and Sanday-Headlam (The Epistle to the Rom, 122-23) say the latter; Weiss (I, 442), the former. It is indeed true that Paul refers to the church as purchased with Christ's blood (Act_20:28, or God's blood, according to the two oldest manuscripts and ancient authorities; compare Eph_5:25), and he uses the pronoun ?we? as those who have received redemption, etc. (Col_1:14; Eph_2:18); but it is evident on the other hand that faith is an individual matter, a thing first between man and his God, and only after a man has been united to Christ by faith can he enter into a spiritual fellowship with fellow-believers. Therefore the subject of justification must be in the first place the individual, and only in the second place and by consequence the society. Besides, those justified are not the cleansed and sanctified members of churches, but the ungodly (Rom_4:5).
As to the argument from baptism urged by Sanday-Headlam, it must be said that Paul always conceives of baptism as taking place in the Christian community with believers and for believers, that that for and to which they are baptized is not justification, but the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom_6:3, Rom_6:4), and that the righteousness of God has been manifested not through baptism but through faith in Jesus Christ unto all that believe (Rom_3:22), being justified freely, not through baptism, but through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom_3:24). With Paul baptism has always a mystical significance as symbolizing and externally actualizing union with the death of the Lord, and would be both impossible and impertinent in the case of those not already believers in Christ and thus inwardly united to His society.

II. The Other New Testament Writings.
So much for Paul. Let us now take a glance at the other New Testament books. It is a commonplace of theology that is called ?modern? or ?critical,? that Paul and not Jesus is the founder of Christianity as we know it, that the doctrines of the Divinity of Christ, atonement, justification, etc., are Paul's work, and not his Master's. There is truth in this. It was part of the humiliation of Christ as well as His pedagogical method to live, teach and act under the conditions of His time and country, on the background of Palestine of 30 AD; and it was specially His method to do His work and not His disciples', to live a life of love and light, to die for the sins of the world, and then go back to the Father that the Holy Spirit might come and lead His followers into all truth. A full statement of the doctrines of Christianity on His part would have been premature (Joh_16:12), would have been pedagogically unwise, if not worthless. First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (Mar_4:28). It would also have been spiritually and philosophically impossible, for Christianity was not a set of teachings by Christ - but a religion springing out of His life, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, mediatorial activity in history through the Spirit who works in His disciples and on the world through and by that life, death, etc. The only question is whether the apostles were true to the spirit and content of His teachings in its moral and religious outlines. And especially in this matter of justification, a teaching by Christ is not to be looked for, because it is the very peculiarity of it that its middle point is the exalted Lord, who has become the mediator of salvation by His death and resurrection. Did the Pauline doctrine fit into the concrete situation made by the facts of Christ mentioned above, and was it the necessary consequence of His self-witness? Let us look into the Synoptic Gospels.

1. The Snyoptic Gospels:
So far is it from being true, as Harnack says (What Is Christianity? 2nd edition, revised, New York, 1901, 68), that the ?whole of Jesus' message may be reduced to these two heads: God as Father, and the human soul so ennobled that it can and does unite with Him,? that an essential part of His message is omitted, namely, that salvation is bound up in His (Christ's) own person. (The reader is asked to verify the references for himself, as space will not allow quotation.) See Mat_10:37-39; Mat_16:24-27. Confession of Him (not simply of the Father) determines acknowledgment above (Mat_10:32), where judgment is rendered according to our attitude to Him in His unfortunate ones Mat_25:35 ff). No sooner was His person rightly estimated than He began to unfold the necessity of His death and resurrection (Mat_16:21). The evening before that death occurred, He brings out its significance, perpetuates the lesson in the institution of the Supper (Mar_14:24), and reenforces it after His resurrection (Luk_24:26). Paul himself could hardly have expressed the fact of the atonement through Christ's death more decisively than Mat_20:28; Mat_26:28. With this foundation, could the Christian doctrine of salvation take any other course than that it actually did take? Instead of referring men to the Father, Christ forgives sins Himself (Mat_9:2-6), and He reckons all men as needing this forgiveness (Mat_6:12). While the time had not arrived for the Pauline doctrine of righteousness, Jesus prepared the way for it, negatively, in demanding a humble sense of sin (Mat_5:3), inner fitness and perfection (Mat_5:6, Mat_5:8, Mat_5:20, Mat_5:48), and positively in requiring recourse to Him by those who felt the burden of their sins (Mat_11:28), to Him who was the rest-giver, and not simply to God the Father, a passage of which Rom_5:1 is an echo. For it was specially to those to whom, as to the awakened Paul, the law brought condemnation that He came, came to heal and to save (Mar_2:17; Mat_9:13; Luk_15:7). It was for sinners and to sinners that He came (Luk_15:2; Luk_7:39; Luk_19:7; Mat_11:19), just as Paul understood; and the way for their salvation was not better law-keeping, but trusting prayer in the confession of sin (Luk_18:13), really equivalent to faith, the humble heart and a hunger for righteousness (= faith). See Mat_5:3, Mat_5:6. He who brings most of himself, of his own pride and works, is the least likely to obtain the kingdom of heaven (Mat_18:3, Mat_18:1; Mar_10:14). Not only entrance, but the final reward itself is of grace (Mat_19:30; 20:1-16), a parable in the true spirit of Paul, and in anticipation of whose message was the promise of Paradise to the penitent robber (Luk_23:43). At the very beginning the message sounded out, ?Repent ye, and believe in the gospel? (Mar_1:15), the gospel which was summed up in Christ, who would gather the people, not directly to God the Father, but to Himself (Mat_23:37). All this means justification through that faith in Himself, in His Divine-human manifestation (Mat_16:13-16), of which faith He expresses Himself with anxiety in Luk_18:8, and the presence of which he greeted with joy in Mat_8:10. Ihmels is right therefore in holding (RE3, XVI, 490) that Paul's proclamation was continuous with the self-witness of Jesus, which conversely pointed as a consequence to the witness of Paul.

2. John's Writings:
Justification by faith is not more implicit in John's Gospel than in the first three; it is only more explicit (Joh_3:14-16). Eternal life is the blessing secured, but this of course is only possible to one not under condemnation (Joh_3:36). The new Sonship of God came also in the wake of the same faith (Joh_1:12). The Epistles of John vary from Paul in word rather than in substance. The atoning work of Jesus is still in the background; walking in the light is not conceivable in those under condemnation and without faith; and the confession of sins that leads to forgiveness seems only another name for the justification that brings peace (1Jo_1:9, 1Jo_1:10; compare 1Jo_2:1, 1Jo_2:2). Everything is, as with Paul (Eph_2:7; Tit_3:4), led back to the love of God (1Jo_3:1), who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1Jo_4:10).

3. 1 Peter and Hebrews:
Seeberg's point that the ?Pauline doctrine of justification is not found in any other New Testament writer? (History of Doctrine, I, 48) is true when you emphasize the word ?doctrine.? Paul gave it full scientific treatment, the others presuppose the fact, but do not unfold the doctrine. Peter's ?Repent ye, and be baptized ... in the name of Jesus Christ? (Act_2:38) is meaningless unless faith were exercised in Christ. It is He in whom, though we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable (1Pe_1:8), receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls (1Pe_1:9). It is only, however, through the precious blood as of a lamb without blemish, even that of Christ (1Pe_1:19), and is only through Him that we are believers in God (1Pe_1:21). The familiar expression, ?Come to Jesus,? which simply means have faith in Jesus for justification and salvation, goes back to Peter (1Pe_2:4). The Epistle to the Hebrews has other interests to look after, but it does not deny faith, but rather exhorts us to draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith (Heb_10:22), which it lays at the foundation of all true religion, thinking and achievement (Hebrews 11). The writer can give no better exhortation than to look unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb_12:2), an exhortation in the true spirit of Paul, whose gospel of faith for justification is also summed up in Heb_4:16.

4. Epistle of James:
We come lastly to the core of the matter in regard to New Testament representations of justification - the famous passage in Jam_2:14-26, which at first sight seems a direct blow at Paul. Here we are met by the interesting question of the date of James. As we cannot enter into this (see JAMES, EPISTLE OF), what we say must be independent of this question. A careful look at this vigorous and most valuable letter (valuable in its own place, which is not that of Paul's letters, in comparison with which it is a ?right strawy epistle,? as Luther truthfully said (Erl. Ausg., 63, 115; see also pp. 156-57), in saying which he did not mean to reject it as useless (straw has most important uses), but as giving the doctrine of salvation, for which we must look to Paul) will show us that contradiction on the part of James to Paul is apparent and not real.
(1) In this section James uses the word faith simply for intellectual belief in God, and especially in the unity of God (Jam_2:19; see also context), whereas Paul uses it for a saving trust in Christ. As Feine well says (Theol. d. New Testament, Leipzig, 2 1911, 660-63), for Paul faith is the appropriation of the life-power of the heavenly Christ. Therefore he knows no faith which does not bring forth good works corresponding to it. What does not come from faith is sin. For James faith is subordination of man to the heavenly Christ (Jam_2:1), or it is theoretic acknowledgment of one God (Jam_2:19). Justification is for James a speaking just of him who is righteous, an analytical judgment. (Feine also says that James did not understand Paul, but he did not fight him. It was left to Luther through his deep religious experience first to understand Paul's doctrine of justification.) (2) James uses the word ?works? as meaning practical morality, going back behind legalism, behind Pharisaism, to the position of the Old Testament prophets, whereas Paul uses the word as meritorious action deserving reward. (3) When James is thinking of a deeper view, faith stands central in Christianity (Jam_1:3, Jam_1:6; Jam_2:1; Jam_5:15). (4) Paul also on his part is as anxious as James vitally to connect Christianity and good works through faith (1Th_1:3; Gal_5:6; 1Co_13:2; Rom_2:6, Rom_2:7; see Mayor, The Epistle of James, 1892, lxxxviii ff; Franks, in DCG, I, 919-20; Findlay in HDB, 1-vol edition, 511). (5) The whole argument of James is bent on preserving a real practical Christianity that is not content with words merely (Jam_2:15-16), but shows itself in deeds. He is not trying to show, as Paul, how men get rid of their guilt and become Christians, but how they prove the reality of their profession after they receive the faith. He is not only writing to Christians, as of course Paul was, but he was writing to them as Christians (?my brethren,? Jam_2:14), as already justified and standing on the ?faith of our Lord Jesus Christ? (Jam_2:1), whereas Paul was thinking of men, Gentile and Jew, shivering in their guilt before the Eternal Justice, and asking, How can we get peace with God? ?There is not,? says Beyschlag (New Testament Theology, Edinburgh, 1895, I, 367-68), ?an objective conflict between the Pauline and Jacobean doctrines; both forms of teaching exist peacefully beside each other. James thought of justification in the simple and most natural sense of justificatio justi, as the Divine recognition of an actually righteous man, and he thought of it as the final judgment of God upon a man who is to stand in the last judgment and become a partaker of the final sōtēría ('salvation'). Paul also demands as a requisite for this last judgment and the final sōtēría right works, the love that fulfills the law and the perfected sanctification, but he (except in Rom_2:13) does not apply the expression dikaiousthai ('to be justified') to the final judgment of God, which recognizes this righteousness of life as actual. He applies it rather to that first sentence of God with which He graciously receives the believing sinner returning to Him, and takes him into fellowship with Himself.? Beyschlag rightly insists that James undoubtedly taught with the first apostles that whoever believes in Christ and is baptized receives the forgiveness of sins (Act_2:38; Act_3:19; Act_10:43), and that he would not have contested the Pauline idea of justification by grace on account of faith, insisting only that works must follow. Theologically, the chief if not the only difference is that James has not yet made the cross of Christ the center of his point of view, while the atonement was fundamental with all Paul's thinking. See, further, JAMES, EPISTLE OF.

III. The Old Testament.
A word in conclusion as to the Old Testament. All the New Testament writers built on the Old Testament. That there should be a cleft or contradiction between the Old Testament and what we call the New Testament would have been to them inconceivable. But they realized that that was the early dawn, while they lived in the light of day. Abraham believed in Yahweh; and He reckoned it to him for righteousness (Gen_15:6; Rom_4:3). Who does not keep all parts of the law all the time is condemned (Deu_27:26 Septuagint; Gal_3:10; compare Psa_14:1-7; Psa_143:2; Rom_3:20; see Rom_3:9-20, and the references to the Old Testament in the American Standard Revised Version). The prophets insisted upon the practical works of righteousness - ?What doth Yahweh require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?? (Mic_6:8). No religious attitude or services could take the place of uprightness of life. This does not mean that the Old Testament writers understood that men were justified simply by their good deeds, for it was always believed that underneath all was the mercy and lovingkindness of God, whose forgiving grace was toward the broken and contrite spirit, the iniquities of whom were to be carried by the Servant of Yahweh, who shall justify many (Psa_103:8-13; Psa_85:10; Isa_57:15; Isa_53:11, and many other passages).

IV. Later Development of the Doctrine.
1. Apostolic and Early Church Fathers:
A brief statement now on the development of the doctrine in the Christian church. It is humiliating to confess that the witness immediately after the apostles (the apostolic Fathers) did not reach the serene heights of Paul, or even the lower levels of his brethren. There are passages which remind one of him, but one feels at once that the atmosphere is different. Christianity is conceived as a new law rather than as a gospel of the grace of God. We cannot go into the reasons for this: suffice it to say that in GentileChristendom the presuppositions for that gospel failed, and the New Testament writings were not yet in the consciousness of the church to the extent that they dominated her thinking. The fine passage in Clement of Rome (97 AD, chapter xxxii: ?They all therefore (i.e. Abraham and other early saints) were glorified and magnified, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doings which they wrought, but through His (God's) will. And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that ever have been from the beginning; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.?) is not at all on a paragraph with his whole Epistle, as he coordinates faith with other virtues in chapter xxxv, makes hospitality and godliness the saving virtues for Lot in chapter xi, couples hospitality and faith together as equal for Rahab in chapter xii, and represents forgiveness of sins through keeping commandments and love in chapter l. Ignatius (about 110-15 AD) speaks in one place about Jesus Christ dying for us, that believing on His death we might escape death (Tral. 2), but with him the real saving things are love, concord, obedience to bishops, and the indwelling God = Christ, though he has also the excellent passage: ?None of these things is hidden from you if ye be perfect in your faith and love toward Jesus Christ, for these things are the beginning and end of life - faith is the beginning and love the end, and the two being found in unit are God, while all things else follow in their train unto true nobility? (Eph 14). The so-called Barnabas (date uncertain) puts the death of Christ Jesus at the foundation of salvation, which is expressed by the remission of sins through His blood (Eph 5), the kingdom of Jesus being on the cross, so that they who set their hope on Him shall live forever (Eph 8), while at the time even believers are not yet justified (Eph 4), for which finally a whole series of works of light must be done and works of darkness avoided (Eph 19). The Shepherd of Hermas and the Ancient Homily = 2 Clem are even more moralistic, where with whatever praise of faith we have the beginning of merit. The same legalistic tone sounds through that invaluable little roll found by Bryennios in 1873 and first published by him in Constantinople in December, 1883, The Teaching (Didache) of the Twelve Apostles. That Catholic trend went forward till it is almost full-fledged as early as Tertullian (fl. 200 AD) and Cyprian (250 AD). See a full statement in my Cyprian, 1906, 146 ff. And thus it continued until - as far as our outline is concerned - it struck Augustine, bishop of Hippo (396 ff), who in a masterly and living way united, so far as they could be united, the Pauline thoughts of sin, grace, and justification with the regular Catholic legalism. His book, De Spiritu et Litera (412 AD), was largely after Paul's own heart, and the Reformers hailed it with joy. But the Catholic elements he still kept, as for instance, that in justification a good concupiscence and a good-will are infused, that justification grows, that our merits must be taken into the account even though they are God's merits, that the faith which justifies is a faith which works by love, that faith is the holding true what God (and the church) says, though occasionally a deeper view of faith is seen, and that works are emphasized, as in De fide et operibus, in a Catholic fashion. With profound and thoroughly Christian thoughts, Augustine had not so worked himself clear of his Catholic inheritance that he could reproduce Paul purely. He made a bridge by which we could go either back to Paul or forward to Aquinas. As Harnack well says, Augustine experienced, on the one hand, the last revival in the ancient church of the principle that ?faith alone saves,? and, on the other, he silenced that principle for a thousand years. The very Catholic theologian who stood nearest to that principle overcame it (Zeitschrift f. Theol. u. Kirche, 1891, 177). His misunderstanding of Paul's ?faith that worketh through love? had momentous consequences.

2. Council of Trent:
Those consequences are best seen in the decrees of the Council of Trent (Session 6, 1547), to which we now turn, and which are the definite and final crystallization of the medieval development, so far as that development was Catholic. (1) Justification is a translation from a natural state to a state of grace. With this works prevenient grace, awakening and assisting, and with this in his man cooperates and prepares himself for justification. This cooperation has the merit of congruity, though the first call comes before any merit. (2) Faith is an element in justification. ?Receiving faith by hearing, they of free will draw near to God, believing those things to be true which have been Divinely revealed and promised.? Faith as a living trust in a personal Saviour for salvation is lacking. Among the truths believed is the mercy of God and that He wishes to justify the sinner in Christ. (3) This faith begets love to Christ and hatred to sin, which are elements also of the justifying process. (4) Now follows justification itself, ?which is not a bare remission of sins, but also sanctification and renewal of the inner man through the voluntary reception of grace and of gifts.? (5) But this renewal must take place through baptism, which, to the prepared adult, both gives and seals all the graces of salvation, forgiveness, cleansing, faith, hope and love. (6) Justification is preserved by obeying the commandments and by good works, which also increase it. (7) In case it is lost - and it can be lost, not by venial, but by mortal sin and by unbelief - it can be regained by the sacrament of penance. (8) To get it, to keep or regain it, it is also necessary to believe the doctrines as thus laid down and to be laid down by this Council (see the decrees in any edition, or in Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums, 2. Aufl., 206-16, or in Buckley's or in Waterworth's translations, and for an admirable and objective summary see Seeberg, History of Doctrine, II, 433-38).

3. Luther:
Recent researches in Luther's early writings have shown that almost from the beginning of his earnest study of religious questions, he mounted up to Paul's view of justification by faith alone (Loofs, DG, 4. Aufl., 1906, 696-98). Faith is the trust in the mercy of God through Christ, and justification is the declaring righteous for His sake, which is followed by a real making righteous. From the beginning to the end of his life as a religious teacher these are the elements of his doctrine. Speaking of 1513-15, Loofs says (p. 697): ?Upon these equations (to justify = to forgive, grace = mercy of the non-imputing God, faith = trust in His mercy) as the regulators of his religious self-judgment, Luther's piety rests, and corresponding to them his view of Christianity, and even later? (than 1513-15); and he adds that ?to reckon as righteous? (reputari justum) must not be understood with Luther as an opposition ?to make righteous,? for his ?to be justified without merits? in the sense of ?to forgive? (absolvi) is at the same time the beginning of a new life: remissio peccati...ipsa resurrectio. ?His constantly and firmly held view, even more deeply understood later than in 1513-15, that 'to be justified without merit' = 'to be resurrected (to be born again)' = 'to be sanctified' is a pregnant formulation of his Christianity.? So much being said, it is not necessary to draw out Luther's doctrine further, who in this respect ?rediscovered Christianity as a religion,? but it will suffice to refer to the Histories of Doctrine (Seeberg gives a full and brilliant exposition), to Kostlin, Luthers Theologie, 2. Aufl., 1901 (see Index under the word ?Rechtfertigung,? and I, 349), and especially to Thieme, Die sittliche Triebkraft des Glaubens: eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Theologie, 1895, 103-314.
From Luther and the other reformers the New Testament doctrine went over to the Protestant churches without essential modification, and has remained their nominal testimony until the present. A classic expression of it, which may be taken as representing evangelical Christendom, is the 11th of the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England: ?We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings: wherefore that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort; as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.? It is true that at one time Wesley's opponents accused him of departing from this doctrine, especially on account of his famous Minute of 1770, but this was due to a radical misunderstanding of that Minute, for to the last he held staunchly Paul's doctrine (for proof see my article in Lutheran Quarterly, April, 1906, 171-75).

4. Schleiermacher:
A new point of view was brought into modern theology by Schleiermacher, who starts from the fundamental fact of Christian experience that we have redemption and reconciliation with Christ, which fact becomes ours by union with Christ through faith. This union brings justification with other blessings, but justification is not considered as even in thought a separate act based on Christ's death, but as part of a great whole of salvation, historically realized step by step in Christ. The trend of his teaching is to break down the distinction between justification and regeneration, as they are simply different aspects of union with Christ.
Ritschl carried forward this thought by emphasizing the grace of the heavenly Father mediated in the first instance through the Son to the Christian community, ?to which God imputes the position toward him of Christ its founder,? and in the second instance to individuals ?as by faith in the Gospel they attach themselves to this community. Faith is simply obedience to God and trust in the revelation of his grace in Christ.? This brings sinners into fellowship with God which means eternal life, which is here and now realized, as the Fourth Gospel points out, in lordship over the world (compare Franks in DCG, I, 922-23). The judicial or forensic aspect of justification so thoroughly in-wrought in Paul's thought is denied by Ritschl. ?In whatsoever way we view the matter,? he says, ?the attitude of God in the act of justification cannot be conceived as that of a judge? (Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, English translation, 1900, 90). W.N. Clarke agrees with Schleiermacher in eliminating justification as a separate element in the work of salvation, and harks back to the Catholic view in making it dependent on the new life and subsequent to it (Christian Theology, 407-8). No book has had as much influence in destroying the New Testament conception of justification among English-speaking readers as that of J. H. Newman, Lectures on Justification, 1838, 3rd edition, 1874, which contains some of the finest passages in religious literature (pp. 270-73, 302, 338-39), but which was so sympathetic to the Catholic view that the author had nothing essential to retract when he joined Rome in 1845. ?Whether we say we are justified by faith, or by works, or by sacraments, all these but mean this one doctrine that we are justified by grace which is given through sacraments, impetrated by faith, manifested in works? (p. 303).

5. Meaning and Message to the Modern Man:
Lastly, has the New Testament conception of justification by faith any message to the modern man, or is it, as Lagarde held, dead in the Protestant churches, something which went overboard with the old doctrine of the Trinity and of Atonement? After an able historical, survey, Holl concludes (Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte d. Protestantismus, Tubingen, 1906, 40-42) that there are two principles thoroughly congenial to modern thought which favor this doctrine, namely, that of the sanctity and importance of personality, the ?I? that stands face to face with God, responsible to Him alone; and second, the restoration of the Reformation-thought of an all-working God. Whoever feels the pressure of these two principles, for him the question of justification becomes a living one. ?The standard on which he must measure himself is the Absolute God, and who can stand in this judgment? Not simply on account of single acts, but with his 'I' and even with his good-willing. For that is just the curse which rests upon a man that his 'I' is the thing with which alone he wills and can seek God, and that it is this very 'I' which by its willfulness, vanity and self-love poisons all his willing. Accordingly, it remains true, what the Reformers said, that man is entirely corrupt, and that he can do no otherwise than to despair when the majesty of God dawns upon him? (p. 41). There is, then, no other solution than the venture of faith that the same God who crushes our self-deceit lifts up with His sovereign grace, that we live through Him and before Him. Luther is right that religiously we can find no hold except on the Divine act of grace, which through faith in the Divine love and power working in us and for us ever makes us new in Christ. To give up the doctrine of justification, says Holl rightly (p. 42), is to give up conscious personal religion. Holl writes as a liberal, and he quotes a stronger liberal still, Treitschke, as saying that in the 19th century it was the orthodox preachers who proclaimed this doctrine, who built better than the liberals. Nor, says Holl in another book (Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu sagen? Tubingen, 1907, 26), can anyone who has experienced justification as an inner transformation be misled into moral unconcern. A moral ideal becomes his, much stronger and more compelling than worldly ethics. The new attitude toward God constituted by justification impels to an unending movement in the service of God and man. The doctrine has not had its day. It is a part of the eternal gospel. As long as sinful man has to do with an all-holy God, the experience of Paul, Luther and Wesley becomes in a sense normative for the race.

Literature.
Besides the books mentioned in the text, the following on justification itself may be consulted (those marked with a star are Protestant, those with a dagger are Catholic or High Church Anglican): Goodwin, new edition, with preface by Wesley, 1807; Junkins, 1839; Hare, new edition, 1839 (1st edition with preface by Jackson, 1817); Kerwick,t 1841; Heurtley, 1846 (Bampton Lectures for 1845); McIlvaine, 1861, 3rd edition, 1868 (Righteousness of Faith, important); Buchanan, 1867 (important); Body, 1870; Bunyan, new edition, 1873; Harkey, 1875; Davies, 1878; Sadler, 1888; and Holden, 1901. Besides these, Laurence, Bampton Lectures for 1804, sermon 6; Drummond, Apostolic Teaching and Christ's Teaching (see index); Schlatter, New Testament Theology, 2 volumes, 1909-10; the various systematic Theologies; Theologies of the New Testament, and Commentaries may be consulted; also Menegoz, Die Rechtfertigungslehre nach Paulus und nach Jakobus, 1903; Kuhl, Die Stellung des Jakobusbriefes z. alttest. Gesetz u. z. Paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre, 1905.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Justification
(some form of the verbs צָדִקδικαιόω), a forensic term equivalent to acquittal, and opposed to condemnation; in an apologetic sense it is often synonymous with vindication or freeing from unjust imputation of blame.
I. Dogmatic Statement. — This term, in theological usage, is employed to designate the judicial act of God by which he pardons all the sins of the sinner who believes in Christ, receiving him into favor, and regarding him as relatively righteous, notwithstanding his past actual unrighteousness. Hence justification, and the remission or forgiveness of sin, relate to one and the same act of God, to one and the same privilege of his believing people (Act_13:38-39; Rom_4:5; Rom_4:8). So, also, "the justification of the ungodly," the "covering of sins," "not visiting for sin," "not remembering sin," and "imputing not inequity," mean to pardon sin and to treat with favor, and express substantially the same thing which is designated by "imputing or counting faith for righteousness." SEE PARDON.
Justification, then, is an act of God, not in or upon man, but for him and in his favor; an act which, abstractly considered, respects man only as its object, and translates him into another relative state; while sanctification respects man as its subject, and is a consequent of this act of God, and inseparably connected with it. SEE REGENERATION.
The originating cause of justification is the free grace and spontaneous love of God towards fallen man (Rom_15:3; Rom_15:24; Tit_2:11; Tit_3:4-5). Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole meritorious cause of our justification, inasmuch as it is the result of his atonement for us. The sacrificial death of Christ is an expedient of infinite wisdom, by which the full claims of the law may be admitted, and yet the penalty avoided, because a moral compensation or equivalent has been provided by the sufferings of him who died in the sinner's stead (Eph_1:7; Col_1:14; Rev_5:9). Thus, while it appears that our justification is, in its origin, an act of the highest grace, it is also, in its mode, an act most perfectly consistent with God's essential righteousness, and demonstrative of his inviolable justice. It proceeds not on the principle of abolishing the law or its penalty, for that would have implied that the law was unduly rigorous either in its precepts or in its sanctions. SEE ATONEMENT.
Faith is the instrumental cause of justification, present faith in him who is able to save, faith actually existing and exercised. SEE FAITH. The atonement of Jesus is not accepted for us, to our individual justification, until we individually believe, nor after we cease to live by faith in him. SEE IMPUTATION.
The immediate results of justification are the restoration of amity and intercourse between the pardoned sinner and the pardoning God (Rom_5:1; Jam_2:23); the adoption of the persons justified into the family of God, and their consequent right to eternal life (Rom_8:17); and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Act_2:38; Gal_3:14; Gal_4:6), producing tranquillity of conscience (Rom_8:15-16), power over sin (Rom_8:1) and a joyous hope of heaven (Rom_15:13; Gal_5:3). SEE SPIRIT, FRUITS OF.
We must not forget that the justification of a sinner does not in the least degree alter or diminish the evil nature and desert of sin. Though by an act of divine clemency the penalty is remitted, and the obligation to suffer that penalty is dissolved, still it is naturally due, though graciously remitted. Hence appear the propriety and duty of continuing to confess and lament even pardoned sin with a lowly and contrite heart (Eze_16:62). SEE PENITENCE.
II. History of the Doctrine. —
1. The early Church Fathers and the Latin Church. — Ecclesiastical science, from the beginning of its development, occupied itself with a discussion on the relation of faith to knowledge; but even those who attributed the greatest importance to the latter recognized faith as the foundation. A merely logical division into subjective and objective faiths and an intimation of a distinction between a historic and a rational faith (in Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata. 2, 454; Augustine, De Trinitate, 13, 2), were of little consequence. Two conceptions became prevailing: Faith as a general religious conviction, particularly as confidence in God, and the acceptance of the entire doctrine of the Church, fides catholica. The formula that faith alone without the works justifies is found in the full Pauline sense in Clemens Romanus (1 ad Corinthios. c. 32) and is sometimes used by Augustine polemically in order to defend the freedom of grace and the priority of faith. More generally it is used as an argument against the necessity of the Jewish law (Irenaeus, 4:25 Tertullian, adv. Marcell. 5, 3). The oecumenical synods were instrumental in gradually giving to the conception of fides catholica the new sense that salvation could be found only by adherence to ecclesiastical orthodoxy. But as a mere acceptance was possible without a really, Christian sentiment, and as the Pauline doctrine was misused by heretics in an antinomian sense, it was demanded that faith, be proved by works. Church discipline developed this idea with regard to the sins of the faithful, so as to demand a satisfaction through penances and good works (Augustine, Serm. 151, 12). It became, therefore, the doctrine of the Church that such faith alone works salvation as shows itself in acts of charity, while to merely external works faith or charity is opposed as something accessory. Pelagius assumed only a relative distinction between naturally good works and the good works that proceed from faith; in opposition to which Augustine insisted that the difference is absolute, and that without faith no good works at all are possible. As salvation was thought to be conditioned by works also, it was, even when it was represented as being merely an act of God, identified with sanctification. The importance attributed to abstention created gradually a distinction between commands and advices, and the belief that through the fulfilment of the latter a virtue greater than required would arise (Hermas, Pastor Simil. 3, 5, 3; Origen, In Epistolam, ad Romans 3; Ambrose, De Viduis, 4, 508).
2. The Greek Church. — Little discussion and little controversy has occurred on this doctrine in the Greek Church. Faith and works together are regarded as the conditions of salvation. The words of James are referred to first, yet faith is declared to be the stock from which the good works come as the fruits. The description of faith proceeds from the definition in the Epistle to the Hebrews to the acceptance of the entire ecclesiastical tradition. Man is said to participate in the merit of the Mediator not only through faith, but also through good works. Among the latter are comprised the fulfilment of the commandments of God and of the Church, and, in particular, prayers, fastings, pilgrimages, and monastic life. They are considered useful and necessary not only as a means of promoting sanctification, but also as penances and satisfaction.
3. Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. — The Scholastics regarded faith as an acceptance of the supersensual as far as it belongs to religion, differing both from intuition and from knowledge; and although essentially of a theoretic character, yet conditioned by the consent of the will; which, however, in the description of faith, is reduced to a minimum. Originally only God is an object of faith, but mediately also the holy Scriptures; as a summary of the Biblical doctrines, the Apostles Creed, and, as its explication, the entire doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. As an accurate knowledge of the doctrines of the Church cannot be expected from every one, the subjective distinction was made between fides implicita and explicita; the former sufficient for the people, yet with the demand of a developed belief in some chief articles. There was, however, a difference of opinion on what these articles were, and even Thomas Aquinas wavered in his views. Faith may, even upon earth, partly become a science, and appears in this respect only as the popular form of religion. It is a condition of salvation, but becomes a virtue only when love, as animating principle [forma], pervades it [fides formata]; with a mere faith [informis] one may be damned. The fides formata includes the necessity of the good works for salvation, but they must be founded in pious sentiment. All other works not proceeding from faith, are dead though not entirely useless. The necessity of good works is fully carried out only by the inculcation of penance as satisfactiones, but with constant reference to a union of the soul with Christ, and the moral effect of the good works. Justification, according to Thomas Aquinas, is a movement from the state of injustice into the state of justice, in which the remission of sins is the main point, though it is conditioned by an infusion of grace which actually justifies men. As an act of God which establishes in man a new state [habitus], it is accomplished in a moment. Among the people the Pelagian views prevailed, that man, by merely outward works, had to gain his salvation, and the Church became, especially through the traffic in indulgences, a prey to the immoral and insipid worship of ceremonies. In opposition to this corruption, many of the pious Mystics pointed to the Pauline doctrine of faith.
4. Doctrine of the Reformers of the 16th Century and the old Protestant Dogmatics. — The Reformation of the 16th century renewed the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone, emphasizing in the sense of Augustine, the entire helplessness of man, and made it the fundamental doctrine of the Reformed Church. This faith is represented as not merely an acceptance of historic facts, but is distinguished as fides specialis from the general religious conviction, arising amidst the terrors of conscience, and consisting in an entire despair of one's own merit and a confident surrender to the mercy of God in the atoning death of Christ. Worked by God, it does not work as virtue or merit, but merely through the apprehension of the merit of Christ. Its necessity lies in the impossibility of becoming reconciled with God through one's own power. Hence this reconciliation is impossible through good works, which are not necessary for salvation, though God rewards them, according to his promise, upon earth and in heaven; but, as a necessary consequence, the really good works will flow forth from faith freely and copiously. The opinion of Amsdorf, that good works are an obstacle to salvation, was regarded as an unfortunate expression, which may be taken in a true sense, though it is false if understood in a general sense. As man is unable to satisfy the law supererogatory works and a satisfaction through one's own works are impossible. Justification through love is impossible, because man cannot love God truly amidst the terrors of conscience. Hence justification is a divine judicial act, which, through the apprehension of the justice of Christ, apprehended in faith, accepts the sinner as just, though he is not just. This strict distinction between justification and sanctification was maintained on the one hand against Scholasticism, which, through its Pelagian tendencies, seemed to offend against the honor of Christ, and to be unable to satisfy conscience, and on the other hand against Osiander, who regarded justification as being completed only in sanctification. The works even of the regenerated, according to the natural side, were regarded by the Reformers as sins. The Reformed theology in general agreed with the doctrine of justification as stated above, yet did not make it to the same extent the fundamental doctrine of the whole theology. According to Calvin, justification and sanctification took place at the same time. The dogmatic writers of the Lutheran Church distinguished in faith knowledge, assent, and, confidence, assigning the former two to the intellect, the latter to the will. From the fides generalis they distinguished the justifying faith (specialis seu salvifica), and rejected the division into fides informis et formata. As a distinguishing mark, they demanded from a true faith that it be efficient in charity. For works they took the Decalogue as a rule; a certain necessity of works was strictly limited. But, however firmly they clung in general to the conception of justification as something merely external (actus forensis) and foreign (imputatio justitiae Christi), some dogmatic writers held that justification had really changed something in man, and indeed presupposed it as changed. Hollaz pronounced this doctrine openly and incautiously, while Quenstedt designated these preceding acts as merely preparatory to conversion.
5. Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church since the Reformation. — The Council of Trent, in order to make a compromise with the Pauline formula, recognized faith as the beginning and the foundation of justification, but the full sense which Protestantism found in it was rejected. This faith is the general belief in divine revelation, though in transition to a special faith, yet a mere knowledge which still gives room to mortal sins. Justification is remission of sins and sanctification, through an infusion of the divine grace, in as far as the merit of Christ is not merely imputed, but communicated. It is given through grace, but as a permanent state it grows through the merit of good works according to the commandments of God and the Church, through which works the justified, always aided by the grace of God in Christ, have to render satisfaction for the temporal punishment of their sins and to deserve salvation. Not all the works done before justification are sins, and to the justified the fulfilment of the commandments of God is quite possible, although even the saints still commit small, venial sins. A further development of this doctrine is found in the writings of Bellarmine. He admits faith only as fides generalis, as a matter of the intellect, yet as a consent, not a knowledge. Though only the first among many preparations for justification a certain merit is ascribed to faith. The Council of Trent had rejected the imputation of the merits of Christ only as the exclusive ground of justification; Bellarmine rejected it altogether. He explicitly proclaimed the necessity of good works for salvation, though only a relative salvation. "The opera supererogationis, which were not mentioned at Trent, though they remained unchanged in tradition and practice, are further developed by Bellarmine. According to him, they go beyond nature, are not destined for all, and not commanded under penalties.
6. Modern Protestantism. — Socinus denied any foreign imputation, also that of the merit of Christ. When supranaturalism in general declined, the points of difference from the Roman Catholic Church were frequently lost sight of Kant found in the doctrine of justification the relation of the always unsatisfactory reality of our moral development to the future perfection recognized in the intuition of God. De Wette declared it to be the highest moral confidence which is founded on the communion with Christ, and turns from an unhappy past to a better future. Modern mystics have often found fault with the Protestant doctrine as being too outward, and approached the doctrine of the Roman Church. The Hegelian School taught that justification is the reception of the subject into the spirit, i.e. the knowledge of the subject of his unity with the absolute spirit or, according to Strauss, with the concrete idea of mankind. According to Schleiermacher, it is the reception into the communion of life with both the archetypal and historical Christ, and the appropriation of his perfection. Justification and sanctification are to him only different sides of the carrying out of the same divine decree. Many of the recent dogmatic writers of Germany have again proclaimed this doctrine to be the essential principle of Protestantism, some (Dorner, Das Princip unserer Kirche, Kiel, 1841) taking justification in the sense of a new personality founded in Christ, others (Hundeshagen, Der deutsche Protestantismus. Frankft. 1847) in the sense that God, surveying the whole future development of the principle which communion with Christ establishes in the believer, views him as righteous. One of the last dogmatic manuals of the Reformed Church (Schweizer, 2, 523 sq.) distinguishes conversion and sanctification as the beginning and progress of a life of salvation, and assigns justification to the former. See Hase, Evangelische Dogmatik (Leipzic, 1850) p. 310 sq.; C.F. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte (Stuttgart, 1847); Hahn, Das Bekenntniss der evangelischen Kirchengeschichte in seinem Verhaltniss zu dem der Romischen und Griechischen.
III. Literature. — See, for Roman Cath. views, Möhler, Symbolism, ch. 3; Willett, Syn. Pap. 8, 67 sq.; Cramp, Text-book of Popery, ch. 5; Bossuet, Works, vol. 1 and 2 Stud. und Krit. 1867. vol. 2; D'Aubigne, Hist. Reformation, vol. 2; Forbes, Considerations, 1, 1; Nicene Creed; 1, 173; Hughes, Works, 1, 410. For Protestant views, see Buchanan, Justification (Edinb. 1867, 8vo; reviewed at length in Lond. Review, Oct. 1867, p. 179); Brit. and For. Evang. Rev. Oct. 1867, art. 6; Wesley, Works, 5, 255; 6, 106; Calvin, Instit. vol. 2; Cunningham, Reformers, p. 402; Planck, Hist. Prot. Theol. (see Index); Knapp, Theology (see Index); Wardlaw, System. Theology, 2, 67.8 sq.; Graves, Works, vol. 4; Monsell, 4, 232, 240; Waterland, Works, vol. 6; T. Goodwin, Works (see Index); Wilson, Apostol. Fathers (see Index); Martensen, Dogmatics, p. 390 sq.; Pye Smith, Introd. to Theol. (see Index); Burnet, On the 39 Articles (see Index); Carmich, Theol. of the Scriptures, vol. 2; Neander, Prot. and Cath. p. 131-146; Ch. Dog. 2, 66 sq.; Planting and Train. of Christian Church, vol. 2; Riggenbach, in the Stud. und Krit. 1863, 4:691; 1867, 1, 405, 2, 294; 1868, 2, 201; North Brit. Review, June, 1867; p. 191 sq.; Dr. Schaff, Protestantism, p. 54-57; Good Words, Jan. 1866 Heppe, Dogmatics, p. 392; Biblioth.-Sacra, 1863, p. 615; Bibl. Repos. 11, 448 Christ. Review, Oct. 1846; Jahrb. deutsch. Theol. 7, 516; Ware, Works, 3, 381; Journal of Sac. Lit. 21; 1869, 3, 545; Christian Monthly, 1845, Jan. p. 102; Feb., p. 231; New Englander (see Index); Hauck, Theolog. Jahresber. Jan. 1869, 59; 1867, p. 543; Bull. Theologique. 1, 25, 41; Brit. and For. Evang. Rev. July, 1868, p. 537; Brit. and For. Rev. Oct. 1868. p. 683, 692; Amer. Presbyt. Review, Jan. 1867. p. 69. 202; Evang. Quart. Rev. Oct. 1869, p. 48; British Quart. Rev. Jan. 1871, p. 144; Church Rev. Oct. 1870, p. 444, 462; Zeitschr. wissensch. Theol. 1871, 4.

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