Question 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is justification?” Its answer puts it well: “Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”

Justification is a legal action. God is depicted in Scripture as a Judge, the perfect Judge, who does all things according to His own justice or righteousness. So this action is set in the heavenly courtroom. It is a one-time declaration of God, and it has two elements. When God the Just slams down His gavel, so to speak, what He is declaring is that the believing sinner is both (1) fully forgiven and (2) perfectly righteous, and that dual status is received through faith alone. The passages that form the basis of this teaching are very familiar to us.

“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:21-28)

“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’ Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised” (Rom. 4:1-10)

“yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified … I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:16, 21)

“just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? … For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Gal. 3:6, 10-11)

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phi. 3:8-9)

Crucial to this idea is that Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30) in this legal sense. This means that He stands in our place before the Father. Just as Adam represented the original humanity by his action of sin, and so brought guilt and death (1 Cor. 15:22), so Christ represents the new humanity given to Him by the Father (Jn. 6:37, Eph. 1:4-11), and by His obedience to the whole law (Gal. 4:4-5), His righteous action counts for ours (2 Cor. 5:21). This divine “counting” or “reckoning” action is what theologians mean by the term imputation. God imputes what Jesus did to our account through that faith alone. Romans 5:12-21 gives Paul’s extended account of Adam and Christ in these roles. 

We might notice that the majority of those verses are found in Paul’s letters. This is a fact that the opponents of the doctrine never tire of reminding us. Actually, it is also misleading. Certainly those most explicit passages are; but suppose someone asks whether or not Jesus ever taught this. What should we say? Our answer is “Yes!” A crucial verse that shows this is Luke 18:14. After the tax collector and Pharisee had prayed their prayers, Jesus concludes the parable, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, RATHER THAN THE OTHER. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” In other words, the prayer of the Pharisee makes one un-justified, or still guilty in God’s courtroom.

Answering Other Objections to Sola Fide

It has been argued that the Reformed doctrine is self-contradictory in teaching that we are justified by understanding the doctrine of sola fide correctly. The reason that this would “contradict itself” is because it would turn right-doctrine into a kind of work that merits God’s favor. N. T. Wright is one who has made this charge in recent years, but the critics have always been a bit shy about producing a single example of a Reformed confessional document, or even a major Reformed theologian who has ever taught anything like this. That said, we need to observe this distinction: While we are justified by faith alone, this does not mean that we are justified by our performance at understanding the doctrine of justification. The doctrine is a description of the process, not a hurdle of merit to clear.

Then of course there was the objection of Rome. First we must see the difference between the Roman Catholic and Reformed view about how one becomes righteous before God. The two positions go by the names “infused righteousness” (Rome) versus “imputed righteousness” (Reformed).

Infused righteousness means that justifying grace first poured into the soul in the sacrament of baptism. Such grace, Rome teaches, can be lost by mortal sin. Imputed righteousness means that justifying grace is credited over to the believer’s account through faith alone. God reckons the record of the believer to be that obedience earned by Christ.

Rome’s infused righteousness makes justification a moral-transformative work; whereas the Reformation doctrine of imputed righteousness makes justification a legal-declarative work. In the former, the righteousness God accepts is an inherent righteousness of our own, whereas in the latter it is an “alien” (outside of us) righteousness earned by Christ.

So what does Rome say about the doctrine of sola fide? They call it a “legal fiction.” They say this on the basis that 1. God cannot call “righteous” what is not in fact righteous, and 2. therefore, the Judge cannot simply transfer his righteousness to the defendant on the basis of the actual righteousness of another. We certainly agree with the premise, but we disagree with the conclusion for this reason: the Substitute (Jesus) was willing to, and in fact did, achieve that righteousness in our place.

In justification by faith alone, God does indeed punish sin, and He does indeed credit righteousness to the believer. But He does not do so by being confused about who is the real sinner and who is the real righteous. 2 Corinthians 5:21 is a powerful verse in this respect.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

There is a double exchange here. And either Paul means this ontologically or else forensically. In other words, either he means that Jesus became the being of our sins, or he means that God considered Christ as if He bore their guilt: that He became the sinner “legally” or “representatively.” Likewise in the other direction. With respect to righteousness, either we believers became a divine attribute (the righteousness of God) or else we obtained that status in Christ, that is, He “legally” or “representative” became our righteousness as 1 Corinthians 1:30 included.

If the first cannot be the case, then one is stuck with the latter. 

In fact, the premise of Rome here actually sinks their own view. If God can only call “righteous” what is in fact righteous, then certainly He can only do that with Christ’s. Not even an eternity in a Purgatory (which is the only fiction involved here) could possibly right what sinners have made wrong. To paraphrase Turretin on the subject: The only righteousness that can possibly cut it in the courtroom of a perfect Judge is a perfect righteousness.1 This is what the believer has in Christ, and it can be found in Christ alone. That is why it must be received by faith alone. 

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1. The actual statements in the Institutes are these: “God, the just Judge … cannot pronounce anyone just and give him a right to life except on the ground of some perfect righteousness” (II:673), and “because no one is justified by an imperfect righteousness, since the judgment of God is according to truth” (II:640).