Justification by faith in the finished work of Christ is one of the gospel’s most important truths, which unites us who believe to the eternal reality of our Lord’s right standing with God the Father.
Jesus came to the earth in order to reverse what Adam’s rebellion against God’s rule set in motion. When Adam fell for Satan’s lie in the garden, he set humanity on a destructive sinful trajectory that has produced untold suffering, destruction, and death. To reverse this, several things had to take place.
- A new representative head of humanity had to do what Adam failed to accomplish– live a surrendered life of obedience to and dependence on God. This person would be a “Second Adam,” the source of a brand new edition of humanity. (1 Corinthians 15:47)
- To rescue humanity, someone had to take the punishment for our sin and rebellion against God. Either all of us had to be condemned, or a perfect substitute had to take on our collective sin, guilt, condemnation, and the sentence of death. Jesus came to die as God’s Lamb for the sins of the world. (John 1:29)
- The authority given to mankind by God, which Adam ceded to Satan by obeying him rather than the Creator, had to be recaptured, so that God’s effective rule over the earth and its people could be regained and retained by a new Lord, Jesus the Savior King.
- In order to prevent a repeat of Adam’s failure, a New Covenant had to be established that would guarantee that humanity would live a surrendered, dependent, and victorious life in partnership with God’s Spirit.
When Jesus died on the cross at Calvary and subsequently rose from the dead, he accomplished all these things. This article will focus on justification by faith, which is possible because Jesus did all four things mentioned above.
Justification: Eternal Reality Accomplished in Time
Justification means that Jesus put us who believe into a right relationship with his heavenly Father, from whom we had been alienated by sin.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, shed his blood to satisfy the wrath of God against sin and provide us with forgiveness. Our debt toward God was completely and forever paid! This is called propitiation. We who put our faith and allegiance in Christ not only are forgiven, however; we are declared “not guilty” in the court of heaven. Justification means that God sees us as if we had never sinned at all. It means that in God’s eyes it is as if we had already completed lives of perfect devotion and surrender to him in the face of every sort of adversity, temptation, and test, as was accomplished by our Lord Jesus on our behalf.
Justification means that Christ’s perfect right standing with God, which he earned at the cost of his life, has been given to us as a free gift!
When those who put their faith and allegiance in Christ one day stand before his judgment seat, we will be declared “Not Guilty” based on our identification with the risen Lamb of God who was slain for our sins. This is what it means to be “written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
Christ accomplished our justification by taking our place upon the cross. Since the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), we all deserved to die because of our sin, but Jesus volunteered to take our sin upon himself, even though he was completely without guilt. He fulfilled the meaning of the Passover feast by offering his innocent blood on our behalf as God’s Lamb, so that God’s judgment would “pass over” us, just as happened to the Israelites so long ago before their historic Exodus from Egypt.
According to the Bible, Jesus so identified himself with us that he actually “became sin.” In exchange, he gave us his perfect righteousness.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB)
He completely paid the penalty for our sin and disobedience toward God. This payment, which was made on a particular day in Israel some 2000 years ago, extends and continues to impact people who believe backward and forward in time. It is an eternal reality.
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, 13 waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. 14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:10-14 (NASB)
Jesus’ death on the cross was accomplished on an historical day in the history of the world, while at the same time being an eternal reality. Only God, who is unencumbered by the restraints of time, could do this.
Slain before the Foundation of the World
Please read the following verse, which is presented from two different, yet reliable, translations and consider the implications.
All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. Revelation 13:8 (NIV)
All who dwell on the earth will worship him [the beast], everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. Revelation 13:8 (NASB)
Obviously the above verse poses a challenge for translators. Is the eternal aspect to be assigned to our being written in the book of life or to the crucifixion, or to both? I say both.
We know from Ephesians that God chose the “elect” (his special people) from before the creation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4) This is another way to say that the elect were written in God’s book of life before the creation of the world. Therefore, the NASB translation above fits with Ephesians 1:4 and should be accepted as a valid way to translate Revelation 13:8. But let me remind you that, even though God chose his special people before the creation, we each must encounter God in our time-space experience of life. God’s sovereign eternal choice always interfaces with our responsibility to choose at some point in time. It is a mystery in how we cooperate with God’s Spirit in the entire process, upholding both his sovereignty and our responsibility.
God’s eternal choice impacts us when it becomes part of our personal history through our participation in the process. The eternal choice and work of God must be “fleshed out” in our lives. What is eternally true must become experientially and historically true for us.
Now let us take a look at the NIV translation of Revelation 13:8. Could it be correct, too? We know from Scripture that Jesus died according to the predetermined plan of God. (Acts 2:23)
God, who dwells in the eternal now (which encompasses our past, present, and future), saw his Son crucified from all eternity. This is because in God’s eternal perspective, the most real of all, his Son was already crucified, dead, buried, risen, and glorified. The plan for him to die on a given day in the history of the earth was preset, predetermined, foreordained, and certain. It was so sure, from God’s eternal perspective, that it was done even before it took place in history.
This is why King David, who was a prophet, could write about the crucifixion as if he were experiencing it himself. (Psalm 22) That is why the prophet Isaiah could write about Christ’s coming crucifixion using the past tense. (Isaiah 53) From God’s eternal perspective, the eternal now, something in our historical future was already completed. This is why I contend that Christ was indeed slain before the foundation of the world; even though he was also put to death on a specific historical day. Once again, eternal truth must be fleshed out in human history in order for it to become part of our reality in the time-space experience which God created for us to inhabit.
By One Offering Perfected for All Time
Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, 13 waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. 14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:11-14 (NASB)
Think about this amazing fact. When Jesus died and rose some 2000 years ago, the benefits of his sacrifice went backward and forward in time. It provided forgiveness and reconciliation for those who trusted in God before Christ’s coming to earth and provides the same for all who would come after.
In other words, God forgave past, present, and future sins by Christ’s one sacrifice.
King David was forgiven for his adultery and the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. Both sins were punishable by death; yet, God forgave David. How could a just God do that without violating his just wrath against sin? When the woman caught in adultery was dragged before Jesus in John Chapter 8, he forgave her instantly for a sin that was punishable by stoning under the Law of Moses. How could a just God do that? The answer is that Jesus’ looming sacrifice was already considered to be in effect. Jesus made “draws” from a future deposit, which from God’s eternal perspective had already been accomplished.
It is fair, then, to say that the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection are not time bound. They are eternal, complete, and finished.
Our Future Glorification Is Also a Done Deal from God’s Eternal Perspective
Not only is our justification an eternal timeless truth; so is our glorification.
This is something that should “blow our minds,” if we are honest about it. Paul taught that our glorification is inexorably linked to our justification. Anyone reading Paul’s letter to the church in Rome would believe that their justification was already accomplished through a past event, Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. Romans 8:28-30 (NASB)
Astoundingly, Paul used the same aorist past tense to describe what for them and us is still historically in the future, our glorification at the resurrection of our bodies. Our threefold salvation is all included in this passage – justification, transformation (being conformed to Christ’s image), and glorification.
Election (God’s choosing us), justification (God’s declaring us righteous in his eyes), transformation (God’s conforming us to Christ’s image in our everyday life), and glorification (God’s giving us a new resurrection body) are all described using the Greek aorist past tense, which lets us know that each of these is a once-for-all-time completed event in God’s eyes.
Think about this: God sees us already in heaven with a new resurrection body! How can this be? Obviously this is not true yet in our present historical context here on the earth, but it is true in the eternal realm of God’s Spirit. However, the eternal must become my historical experience at some point because that is where we experience the eternal for now. One day Christ will raise us who believe from the dead, and we will receive a new spiritual body. At that point in time, if time still exists, the eternal truth of glorification will be fulfilled in my experience. Until then, God expects us to believe what the Bible says is true and rest in Christ’s finished work, as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit who was sent to help us “work out” what God has put within us. (Philippians 2:12-13)
Conclusion
God’s will cannot be thwarted. His plans will come to pass. His words will be fulfilled. He says that which does not yet exist in our time-space experience already exists eternally because it does.
(as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”). He is our father in the presence of God whom he believed — the God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. Romans 4:17 (NET1)
But God’s eternal perspective is not ours. We still live in a time-space restricted world. We must learn to navigate the historical present on the basis of eternal truth.
I hope that most readers who have professed faith and allegiance in Christ will have no difficulty believing that Christ accomplished our justification on the cross once for all and that our righteous standing before God depends wholly on that glorious truth. I also think that most followers of Christ believe that Jesus will certainly raise us from the dead on the Last Day.
However, not so many understand how to live in the present from an eternal perspective.
Many struggle to navigate the here and now process of sanctification or transformation by faith in the finished work of Christ combined with a complete reliance upon the Holy Spirit. I will discuss this in more detail in my next article entitled “What is Sanctification?”
