Approaching the Subject

Theology, or the study of doctrine, has fallen on hard times in the church today. Some question the necessity of it. Others consider it an amateur sport to be played casually in small groups meeting in a living room or Internet chat rooms.

But doctrine is a matter of life and death—eternal life and eternal death. What you believe matters. It determines how you live here and in the hereafter. Thus, as in any field where the stakes are high, those who engage in the work must do so with utmost skill, seriousness, and sincerity.

When we consider the doctrine of justification, we must recognize that we are dealing with a subject that does not allow for error. We can be mistaken on many things and, relatively speaking, be OK. But to err on the doctrine of justification is to err to the detriment of your soul.

Cars, Engines, and Destinations

If an engine is to effectually move a car, it must be a working engine, having all the necessary parts put together in the right way, and then be placed in a car that can handle it. You could have an engine placed just right in a car, but not have any spark plugs in it. Although everything looks good and seems ready to go, the car is not going anywhere. Its engine is lacking an essential part.

In like manner, you could have a beautiful, powerful automobile engine, but if you put this quarter-ton engine in a wooden go-cart, the car is not going anywhere.

This analogy can be applied to the doctrine of justification, with the understanding that all analogies are imperfect. The car is a person in a particular context, the engine is justification, and the travel destination desired is heaven. You as a sinner (the car) need justification (a working engine) to get you to heaven (the destination).

Of Cars and Context

Let’s first consider the issue of having an adequate car. This is simply understanding the right context for justification. Remember that we can have an engine, but if we are trying to put it in a wooden go-cart, it is not going to get us to our desired destination. To accommodate a real engine you need a metal frame, fireproof walls, a gas tank, and an electrical system. The wooden go-cart just won’t hold a real engine. In like manner, the doctrine of justification must have the right kind of frame or setting for sense to be made of it.

Justification is a judicial pronouncement. It is the act of a judge declaring a person not guilty of being in breech of the law. Being a judicial pronouncement, the setting of justification must be a courtroom; thus the context is necessarily a legal one. Before we can make sense of justification and before one can be justified, then, there must be the existence of a legal setting or context. There must be a law to be justified in light of, a judge to make the ruling and pronouncement, a person pending justification, and a case asking the question concerning the person’s guilt or innocence, together with benefits or penalties to correspond to the verdict.

The necessary setting or context behind the biblical doctrine of justification is:

God—The Lawgiver and Judge

The Law of God—The standard by which He judges

Man—The party under God’s law

Obedience to the Law—The condition of whether man will be justified

Eternal Life or Eternal Death—The results relative to the verdict

God the creator and ruler of all is, by default and necessity, the lawgiver and judge of all the earth. Man, represented by Adam, was created with the law of God written on his heart, and he was given an exterior command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus man, represented by Adam, is the party under the law of God, and man’s justification is to be determined by his obedience to that law of God.

The context that justification sits in, therefore, is the original situation of Adam in the garden, commonly called the Covenant of Works. By his works of obedience to the law, Adam would be justified and receive eternal life; by his disobedience to the law, Adam would be found guilty and receive eternal death. Therefore the context necessary (the kind of car) for the doctrine of justification (the engine) is man in a situation that required him to perform obedience to God’s law.

Adam’s performance was found wanting. He sinned by disobeying the law of God, and all his posterity fell with him in that first sin. God came to judge Adam. Since Adam was disobedient to the terms of the law, instead of being justified and then rewarded with eternal life, he was condemned and incurred the penalty of eternal death.

Because Adam represented all of us in the Covenant of Works, we are legally liable for his performance—in other words, his sin is reckoned to our account. It is upon this background that the work of Jesus Christ makes sense. Christ comes as a man, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law. Christ obeys the law as the representative last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:18-19) and endures the curse the first Adam incurred. Thus, the work of Christ in the justification of a sinner is outside of them—He obeys for them, and He dies for them. As it was with Adam and our sin, so it is with Jesus and our justification: It is not based on the sinner’s performance, but on Christ’s performance.

Therefore, in justification, Christ’s performance is legally credited to the sinner—which we call imputation. That is opposed to actually changing the sinner into a saint—which would be called infusion.

In summary, the biblical doctrine of justification only makes sense against a legal background. There must be a law, a judge, and a defendant, with conditions, penalties, and rewards. The historic, Reformed doctrine of the Covenant of Works provides the exact legal context (the kind of car) that is needed to make sense of justification (to hold the engine), and is therefore essential to a proper understanding of the biblical doctrine of justification (See the Reformed Presbyterian Testimony, 7:1-3).

Of Engines and Their Parts

As we noted above, engines need all their parts to work properly. Justification, too, is comprised of component parts. If we put the parts together wrong, or if we leave out a part or two, we will not have a true justification (not have a working engine) and we will not arrive at our hoped-for destination.

We can identify five essential parts to the doctrine of justification. Each of these parts has been historically identified as a “cause” because of its relationship to justification, which is seen as the “effect.” With an engine, the spark plug is the part that causes the explosion of the gas in the piston, resulting in the effect of the engine moving and getting us to the desired destination. The kinds of parts or causes that are essential to justification are:

The love of God—the motivating cause

The grace of God—the principle cause

The merits of Christ—the meritorious cause

The gift of faith—the instumental cause

The glory of God—the final cause

The motivating cause has to do with why God would be moved to justify sinners in the first place. The answer is both straightforward and awe-inspiring. The Bible teaches simply and clearly that the motivating cause of the justification of sinners is the love of God (John 3:16). What makes this so profound is that God loves sinners who are described as “weak,” “ungodly,” and even as His “enemies” (Rom. 5:6-10). Therefore, God is not moved by something He sees in sinners, but rather He is moved and motivated by something in Himself—namely His own mysterious and marvelous love.

The principle cause, flowing from the motivating cause, is the grace of God. Since justification is motivated by God’s love and not something inherent in the sinner, it is on the principle of grace that God justifies sinners (Rom. 3:24). Grace is favor in light of demerit—an undeserved gift. This is the principle by which justification is extended to sinners. This gracious principle has been historically identified as the Covenant of Grace. Instead of being according to the principle of works, as with the Covenant of Works, justification of sinners is now on the principle of grace. Because of the inexplicable love of God, by grace we receive the indescribable gift of God (2 Cor. 9:15).

The meritorious cause is essential, in that God, being holy, cannot simply dismiss sin. Sin must be punished and righteousness must be vindicated, or else God Himself would be unjust. For God to be “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), justice must be satisfied.

How can God be gracious to sinners and faithful to His own law? How can God clear the guilty and reward sinners and not be charged with injustice? This is known as the “divine dilemma.” It is answered in God putting forth His Son, Jesus, to be the propitiation (the appeasement of divine wrath) for sin. This showed that God was not unjust to forgive sinners and thus made it possible for Him to be just and the justifier of sinners (Rom. 3:26).

There is more to the meritorious cause of justification than the forgiveness of sin, just as there is more to keeping the law than merely refraining from doing what it forbids. God’s law demands positive obedience as well as forbids negative disobedience. The law was originally given to give eternal life to those who obeyed it perfectly. If a person’s sin is forgiven, that does not make him or her automatically worthy of reward.

For example, if a kid is caught driving without a license and the court forgives his trespass, this does not gain him the right to drive. He still must pass a drivers test, according to the law, to be given this further privilege. In like manner, Christ not only bears the penalty we deserve, gaining us the forgiveness of sin, but He also fulfills the positive requirement of obedience to the law of God, gaining us eternal life.

Thus there are two essential parts to the work of Christ: positive law-keeping and negative penalty-bearing. It is this complete work of Christ that comprises the meritorious ground or part of our justification.

The instrumental cause of justification is faith. By instrument we mean that through which justification comes to the sinner. An instrument, like a pencil bringing the poet’s thoughts concretely onto the paper, is the means by which something is conveyed. God justifies a sinner by or with or through faith in Christ (Gal. 2:16).

It is important to understand faith properly, and especially as an instrument, not as faithfulness or loyalty to God, nor as some kind of good work we do. Faith is only as good as its object—it is actually nothing apart from its object. Faith does not do anything but accept, receive, and rest upon Christ alone. Therefore, when we speak of being justified by faith, we do not mean that God has rewarded the action of believing with the verdict of justification. Justification by faith is biblical shorthand for being justified by the life and death of Jesus Christ received through the instrument of faith (Rom. 4:24-25). When we say we are justified by faith, we mean that our faith lays hold of Christ and unites us to Him who is the righteous Lamb of God whose work merits justification. Faith is sometimes described as living, active, or even working and bearing fruit. This is not because it is to be understood as a little entity with life in itself, or because it is actually a work we do. Rather, faith is fixed upon and has laid hold of the living Christ, the Vine, the life-giving Spirit. Therefore the instrument that causes justification in a sinner is faith or belief, understood as terminating upon, and singularly looking to, Jesus Christ (Heb. 12:2).

The final cause of justification is the glory of God. Even as Paul concludes his teaching in Romans on the doctrine of salvation with a doxology (Rom. 11:33-36), our individual salvation and thus our justification is to result in the praise and glory and honor of God (Eph. 1:6). There is not one point at which our justification hinges upon our performance of anything, for this would diminish God’s glory.

When justification is properly propounded, the question should arise, “Then what becomes of our boasting?” (Rom. 3:27a), to which God answers, “It is excluded.” (v. 27b). Therefore the aim and end being sought in our justification is the glory of God—that is, God justifies sinners so that He will be glorified (John 17:4; 1 Tim. 1:15-17; Rev. 5:13).

When a car has an engine that is working properly, the destination it is heading toward will be reached. When a sinner lays hold of Christ by faith for justification, heaven is his.

Today there are as many hucksters selling false doctrines of justification in the church as there are unscrupulous used-car salesmen selling lemons. When assessing a teaching that proposes to articulate the biblical doctrine of justification, we must make sure that the proposal includes the necessary conditions and parts. It must be built upon the right legal framework. Thus we need to make sure that essential background conditions such as the Covenant of Works, imputation, law, and sin are present. And it must include all the necessary component parts, such as the right initiating motive (God’s love), the right principle (the Covenant of Grace), the right meritorious ground (the total work of Christ, including His law-keeping life and sacrificial death), the right understanding of the instrument (faith alone), and the right aim (God’s glory).

If your engine (justification) has these parts, then your car (you, a sinner), will reach the destination (heaven). May God be pleased to grant His Church clarity again on this important subject.