Jesus came to planet 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 humankind 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.
- Someone had to take the punishment for humanity’s sin and rebellion against God. Either all humans had to be condemned or a perfect substitute had to take on our collective sin, guilt, condemnation, and sentence of death. Jesus the Messiah came first of all 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 planet and its people could be regained and retained by a new Lord, Jesus the Messianic 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.
An 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.
It means that those of us who put our faith and allegiance in Christ are forgiven and declared “not guilty” in the court of heaven. It means that God sees us as if we had never sinned. 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, just as is true of our Lord Jesus.
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 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 paid the complete penalty for our sin and disobedience toward God and others. Amazingly his payment, which was made on a particular day in Israel some 2000 years ago, still reverberates in the universe and continues to impact people backward and forward in time.
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 an eternal sacrifice accomplished in historical time.
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 the verse. 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 dimensional world. God’s sovereign choice must interface with our responsibility to choose. There is a mystery in how we cooperate with God’s Spirit in the entire process.
God’s eternal choice impacts us when it becomes part of our personal history through our participation in the process. The eternal must be “fleshed out” in our lives. What is eternally true must become experientially true or it is not yet historically real.
But how about the NIV translation of the above verse? 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. 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 considered to be 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 dimension 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 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 freely forgave David. How could a just God do that? When the woman caught in adultery was dragged before Jesus in John Chapter 8, he forgave her outright 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 was making “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.
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.
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) 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 was a once for all completed past event in God’s eyes and in truth.
Think about this: God sees you already in heaven with a new resurrection body! How can this be? Obviously this is not true yet in my present historical context here on planet earth, but it is true in the eternal realm of God’s Spirit. However, the eternal must become my actual experience at some point, or it is not real for me yet. One day Christ will raise me (and you, if you are a believer) from the dead, and we will receive a new spiritual body. At that point in time, the eternal truth of glorification will be fulfilled historically and become my experiential reality. Until that point, God expects us to believe what the Bible teaches us and rest in Christ’s finished work as we allow the Spirit to help us “work out” what he has put within us. (Philippians 2:12-13)
Conclusion
God cannot be thwarted. His plans will come to pass. His words will be fulfilled. He calls that which does not yet exist in our time-space dimension as already existing, because to him 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 truths.
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 navigate the here and now process of sanctification/transformation by faith and grace in the fear of the Lord and in cooperation with the Holy Spirit.
How do we live in the present from an eternal perspective? How can we use the knowledge of our past justification and future glorification to motivate us to live for Christ right now? How can we use the guard rails of grace and responsibility to keep us from going off the cliff into legalism or licentiousness? That will be the subject of my next article.
