December 16 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"... 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).

Devotional

The term, "justified," is forensic; it is employed in judicial affairs and transacted in a court of justice.

We find an illustration of this in God's Word. "If there is a dispute between men and they come into court and the judges decide between them, then they shall justify the innocent and condemn the guilty..." (Deut. 25:1). This passage makes it clear that a status of justification stands opposed to a status of condemnation.

It is also in this sense that the text under consideration employs it. To "justify," in its proper and fullest sense, is to release from all condemnation.

Now, it is important that we do not mix up this doctrine as the Church of Rome has done, with other and kindred doctrines.

We must clearly distinguish justification from sanctification. As closely connected as they are, yet they entirely differ.

Justification is a change of status; sanctification is a change of condition. By justification we pass from guilt to righteousness; by sanctification we pass from sin to holiness. In justification we are brought near to God; in sanctification we are made like God. Justification places us before him in a condition of non-condemnation; sanctification transforms us into his image.

Yet the Church of Rome blends the two states together, and in her formularies teaches a justification that is based on sanctification rather than vice versa, that his verdict for the believer depends on his work in the believer rather than vice versa.

We must also distinguish justification from pardon. Justification includes pardon, but it is a higher act. By the act of pardon we are saved from hell; but by the decree of justification we are brought to heaven. Pardon discharges the soul from punishment; justification places in its hand a title-deed to glory.

The Lord Jesus Christ is emphatically the justification of all the predestined and called people of God. "By him everyone who believes is justified from everything" (Acts 13:39). The preceding step was to put himself in the exact position of his church. In order to do this, it was necessary that he should be made under the law. Why? Because as the Son of God, he was above the law and could not therefore be answerable to its precept. But when he became incarnate, it was as though the Sovereign of a vast empire relinquished his royal character for the sake of his subjects. He, who was superior to all law, by his mysterious incarnation placed himself under the law. He, who was the King of Glory, became, by his advent, the meanest of subjects.

Oh, what a stoop this was! What a descending of the Son of God from the height of his glory! The King of kings, the Lord of lords, consenting to be brought under his own law, a subject to himself—the law-giver becoming the law-fulfiller.

Having thus humbled himself, he was prepared, as the sacrificial Lamb, to take up and bear away the sins of his people. The prophecy that predicted that He should "bear their iniquities," and that he should "justify many," received in him its literal and fullest accomplishment. Thus upon Jesus were laid all the iniquities, and with the iniquities the entire curse, and added to the curse, the full penalty, belonging to the church of God.

This personal and close contact with sin did not affect his moral nature; for that was essentially sinless, and could receive no possible taint from his bearing our iniquity. He was accounted as "accursed," even as was Israel's goat, when Aaron laid the sins of the people upon its head. But as that imputation of sin could not render the animal to whom it was transferred morally guilty, though it was treated as such by the law, so the bearing of sin by Christ could not for a single instant compromise his personal sanctity.

With what distinctness has the Spirit revealed, and with what strictness has he guarded, the perfect sinlessness of the atoning Savior! "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Oh blessed declaration to those who not only see the sin that dwells in them, but who also trace the defilement of sin in their holiest things, and who lean alone for pardon upon the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God! To them, how encouraging and consolatory the assurance that there is a sinless One who, coming between a holy God and their souls, is accepted in their place, and in whom they are looked upon as righteous! And this is God's method of justification.

Thy works, not mine, O Christ,
speak gladness to this heart;
they tell me all is done;
they bid my fear depart.

(Horatius Bonar, 1857)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.