A. 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.

The first thing to know about justification in the gospel is the first thing that Paul told the Romans about the gospel: “In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed” (Rom. 1:17).

We speak of justification as the legal dimension of salvation. God is called the Judge in Scripture. Heaven is conceived as a courtroom. Christ is called our Advocate, and Satan our accuser and adversary. The sinner is a convict, guilty for having violated God’s law. What all do we have here, but a legal problem in need of a legal solution? 

And here is the basic problem. As Turretin put it, “God, the just Judge … cannot pronounce anyone just and give him a right to life except on the ground of some perfect righteousness.”1 This is the real starting point: the righteousness of God per se.

Justification is by God’s Grace

We saw with Ephesians 2:8-9 that no matter which way you slice it, both the whole and the parts of salvation must be by grace alone. And if that is true, then this good of salvation that comes to us—namely, the righteousness of God—must also come to us by grace. So Paul says that we,

“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” (Rom. 3:24-25). 

To say that justification is by grace is to say that it is unilateral. God is the Actor. It is his gavel that slams down, so to speak, and once it does, Christ’s declaration “it is finished” (Jn. 19:30) on the cross, becomes reckoned to us in the courtroom. That there is a favorable ruling to us based on the cross is the only thing that makes sense of Paul’s words later on: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died” (8:33-34).

You see how the righteous performance of Christ is being asserted as the ultimate silencer to the devil in a courtroom setting. A “charge,” Paul says, has been answered by the performance of Christ. Those who argue against Christ’s righteousness imputed to us are not starting from the right category. Justification starts with the righteousness of God freely given, and so it is first of all Christ for us. Christ in our place—in the way of righteousness.

Now backing up to Romans 3, as Paul moves forward from there in the next chapter, he had used Abraham and then David as Old Testament case studies. And the passages that he draws from are Genesis 15:6 with respect to Abraham and Psalm 32:1 with respect to David. One thing that this accomplishes is forever silencing those who claim to be Christians and yet insist that justification by faith alone is not an Old Testament doctrine. 

“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 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’” (Rom. 4:1-8) 

I mentioned last time how God’s way of salvation by grace is positioned against human boasting. And that if that is true of the whole being by grace, then it will be true of its parts as well—like faith. So, for example, “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” (Rom. 3:27). To speak of faith as a “law” here is to speak of it as a principle. Paul is showing how faith has a quality that stands in sharp contrast to the principle of what he calls “works of the law.”   

“That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring” (Rom. 4:16).

So putting this whole first point together, we can say that both the thing provided for us (righteousness) and the means of it being given (faith) are both God’s gift.

Justification Consists in Full Forgiveness and Perfect Righteousness

Turretin calls the two parts of justification (1) remission of sins and (2) the right to life.2 He treats the imputation of righteousness as the foundation with absolution and adoption being the two benefits flowing from it. This is that double cure that follows the double curse of guilt and alienation. So, we needed a real righteousness to be presentable to God, but we also needed to escape the punishment of God. All of this hung in the balance in the courtroom. 

By this “fullness” and this “perfection” we note that justification is a perfected work. It is not, like sanctification, an ongoing work. This is the glory of justification. The forgiveness is perfected, as we have already heard from “it is finished” (Jn. 19:30); but also in the words, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph. 1:7), or elsewhere, “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7).

When we insist that justification is not everything in salvation, we are protecting justification from being watered down by taking on more than it is. For example, Hodge says, “It does not produce any subjective change in the person justified. It does not effect a change of character, making those good who were bad, those holy who were unholy. That is done in regeneration and sanctification.”3

“in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them … For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:19, 21).

So, thus far we have seen that justification is legal, unilateral, and perfected. Now we must add a fourth and fifth component. It is alien or objective—that is, a righteousness “outside of us” (iustitia extra nos); and since this is what God the Judge recognizes in his Son, it is declarative. We will see what is meant by that.

Justification Follows Christ’s Righteousness Imputed to Us

Several of the verses we have already examined make plain that it was Christ’s action which, in some way, achieved the righteousness that has been freely given to us (Rom. 3:21-25, 2 Cor. 5:21). Christ “became to us …righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). The question is how that connected with our real lives. In order to understand the heart of the controversy in the sixteenth century, we have to introduce two key terms. Rome insisted that justification was by an infused righteousness and the Reformers insisted that it was by an imputed righteousness. Now what is the difference?

So, whereas Rome saw justification as a moral-transformative work, the Reformers saw it as a forensic-declarative work.

More than in any other section, Turretin employs the language of Aristotle’s causes to make precise the doctrine of justification. What he calls the “impulsive” or “meritorious cause”4 is the material cause: the object that God reckons as inherently righteous. This could be misleading. Whether this merit is Christ’s, Turretin wrote, “the Romanists do not dare deny.”5 So both sides to the sixteenth century controversy could claim Christ’s own merit as that material ground for God’s verdict: 

“For although they do not appear to exclude entirely the righteousness of Christ, inasmuch as they hold that by it he merited that God should communicate to us by the Holy Spirit internal righteousness and thus it is a condition of the formal cause.”6

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for fall men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:17-19).

Rome’s argument against the Reformers at this point was that this is all a “legal fiction,” and that all the doctrine of imputed righteousness does is to impute unrighteousness to God! He would be calling righteous what is not in fact righteous. However, the premises that (1) God could justify whomever he wills and that (2) none is righteous, are perfectly consistent with each other. These do not imply that he justifies without a ground in perfect righteousness. Turretin replies that “Christ by his obedience is rightly said ‘to constitute’ us ‘righteous’.”7 If justice was satisfied, mercy does no injustice. Moreover, God’s ability to impute this righteousness through faith is seen by Turretin to rest in the union we have with Christ. As our Head, “he can communicate to us his righteousness and all his benefits.”8 So while Rome paid lip service to the highest standard — i. e. that God could not call “righteous” what was not in fact — Turretin turns this very truth back upon their notion of inherent righteousness: “because no one is justified by an imperfect righteousness, since the judgment of God is according to truth.”9 In other words, it would be doctrines such as infused, inherit righteousness, and fictions such as Purgatory, that are aimed at a righteousness that can never be good enough. 

Justification is by Faith Alone

When Luther first took Romans seriously, the verse we opened off with (1:17) was the beginning of his nightime sparing matches with the devil. This even caused him to speak of hating God for a time. 

But then as he read on, he came across similar language in 3:21-22, but now with a twist: “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.” The perfect righteousness God demands of us, he freely gives to us.

It should be plain—after seeing that Christ’s performance alone is the material cause of justification—that faith alone must be viewed as the instrumental cause. Faith is not the material cause of justification. In other words, God does not declare us righteous by faith alone because our faith is righteous. Our faith merits nothing in itself. Not even one percent! Christ’s act is one hundred percent of the material cause. Faith is one hundred percent the instrumental cause. 

“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” (Gal. 2:16).

“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” (Phil. 3:9)

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28).

We are now ready to put the two truths of imputed righteousness together to gain closure on our idea of justification. In justification, Christ’s act alone is the material cause and our faith alone is the instrumental cause. 

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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.2.2.

2. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.4-6.

3. Hodge, Systematic Theology, III:117.

4. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.2; II.16.3

5. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.3.13.

6. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.2.4.

7. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.2.19.

8. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.3.5.

9. Turretin, Institutes, II.16.2.9.