Justification

Gravity holds me to the earth and keeps order between living things and the structures of the earth. The atmosphere guards my head from the wrath of destructive rays that try to invade from space to kill our fragile flesh. The planets are strung together in circles that are spaced specifically to prevent collision. Our earth revolves so that one side of the earth is not in perpetual darkness, ensuring the death of all things on that side. The sun awakens to give nourishment to the plants and animals that will be my food in the tomorrows to come, if they will come. Plants and animals are programmed to reproduce so that we will never run out of food. Trees are created with the mechanisms needed to create oxygen, which happens to be exactly the gas we need in order to breathe. Today I have awakened to life. My heart beats and circulates blood, nutrients, oxygen. My brain is in control of my systems, which function as they should. I have a family which protects me, loves me, provides for me. I have a home. I have clothing. I have a car and a job, which gives me the means to buy necessities and to afford pleasure. My family has land on which we grow our own food. We have time in which we function and have our being. 

That is the common grace of God.

God in His generosity has given me all these things for my good. He did not have to do it.

After all that He has set up for me, I in my perversity have rejected Him, rebelled against Him, spit in His face with my sins. And now I have been caught. I am brought into the court room of holy justice.

I stand before God, the great and good, holy and exacting Judge. He is not a God who is separate from the sentence He gives, leaving it in the hands of others to enforce the sentence given; He Himself executes the verdict. 

I have sinned. God has been patient with me. He has suffered the disgust, the vulgarity, the obscenity of my ungrateful rebellion against Him--Him who has permitted me to open my eyes today, Him who has not cut me off from the land of the living in accordance with the multitude of my trespasses against Him. He has suffered, and suffered long, to see me in my whoring, in my lust for the eyes, attention, love, esteem of people who give only in their own interest. He, who has in His generosity given me free favor, who has given me this common grace of life, is holding me accountable. 

Under the weight of my conscience and the great crippling terror of punishment, I promise the Judge that I never will sin again, if He will only give me life in misery instead of death. But no, sin is like debt: even if from this moment on I could somehow, some way stop myself from falling short of the standard of perfection, I still would have to pay for the entire cost of my accumulated transgressions. Debt doesn’t just disappear; someone still has to pay for it and the wages of sin is death. I tremble violently at the thought that now justice has caught up with me and I will have to pay with my life for every dark thought and action of wrong that I have committed. No excuses are accepted. No circumstances, no environmental shortcomings can share the blame. I have to pay because it was I who chose to act below the standard in all instances. 

I fall to my knees with a sickness in my stomach that rips me apart inside. I know that death is certain and there is no way out. I cry out in fear because now I have fallen into the hands of a great and holy God who is angry with the wicked every day, a God who is a consuming fire. I have no chance.

And then I hear a voice: “I will pay her debt.”

It is the Son of God. He, blameless One, who has never known sin, who alone is worthy to be in the presence of holiness, will take the punishment for my sin. He says He will die in my stead.

No!  It isn’t fair! You don’t deserve to die. It’s my sin, I must pay for it myself.

But Jesus went to the Judge and the Judge accepted this deed. Though it pained Him beyond measure to do so, God poured out all of His wrath on His own innocent Son. The wrath that was to fall on my head, the weight of darkness that was supposed to crush me, and the separation from the One on whom my existence depends—Jesus took on Himself.

And He left for me His record of sinlessness. He has taken my entire record upon Himself and has given me a new record, a clean record—His record. Now God the Judge looks at me as He looks at His Son—as blameless. This is justification. This is the work done by Jesus on the cross and in His resurrection.

I am not justified and given a new clean record so that I can dirty it up again. I am given a clean record so that I can be accepted by God in order to now build His kingdom on earth. Because now I do not have to try to work off my sin-debt, I am free to build up wealth for my future inheritance in heaven. I even now make investments by taking dominion of every area of my life and every area in my sphere of influence. I work to bring them into conformity with God’s design.

I no longer owe Him for my debt. He has forgiven me my debt. Out of gratitude now I work to build up His cause. I am no longer my own. He owns me now.

1.       Jesus took my sin and gave me His clean record.

2.       I no longer have to work to be in good legal standing with God.

3.       Now I work to build up God’s kingdom.