October 17, 2006

Salvation Part 1: Justification

“Free from the penalty of sin.”

‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’  - Romans 5:1

 

There you stand in the courtroom.  You have been charged with theft, murder and an assortment of other charges too numerous and heinous to name.  While you wish there was a way to claim innocence and escape the judicial process and reclaim your life, the truth is you’re guilty and there is no way to prove otherwise.  What’s done is done.  You look the judge in the eye, declare your guilt, and with a repentant heart you ask for leniency in sentencing.  Still it is hopeless.  You know it deep inside.  There is no escape.  The judge draws a deep breath and begins to speak.  Just two words come out his mouth before the gavel slams down and court is dismissed.  It takes a few seconds, which seem like hours, to wrap your mind around what just happened.  The judge said, “Not guilty!” 

Not guilty!!  How?  Why?  What happened?  You have a new lease on life.  You can never be charged again.  Innocence has been declared and the judge has closed the case.  What an amazing turn of events!  A guilty man has been declared innocent and released from the deserved punishment for his deeds.  What an amazing turn of events.  One you will not soon forget.

            Though the story may be fiction, the truth behind it is even greater than the story itself.  You see, we all stand guilty as charged.  Every single one of us is deserving of punishment; one greater than a prison sentence or even a sentence of death.  The reality is, we have ‘all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,’ (Rom.3:23) the result of this being our eventual eternal separation from God in hell.  There is no escape from the sentence because there is no doubt that the crime has been committed and all mankind stands condemned under sin.  Every one of us has a date with the judge and whatever our plea, or whatever our excuse, we will still be found guilty, unless another solution may be found. 

Enter the Cross of Calvary, the death of Jesus and His glorious resurrection.  Law demands death (Romans 6:23) and He died.  He then rose again to plea the case for all who receive Him as Lord and Savior.  The interesting thing is, He doesn’t plead our innocence, nor does He look for loopholes to get us around the law.  Rather, His plea is Himself, dying on that Cross, paying the penalty for us.  As a result, the pronouncement is, “Not guilty!”  We who have trusted in Jesus have had all charges dropped.  Dawson McAllister said its this way: “It is just as if I’d never sinned.”  The technical theological term for this is ‘Justification.’  L. Berkhof in his book Systematic Theology said, “Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.”  This is an amazing truth that every believer must get a grip on in order to move forward in their lives. 

            Justification frees us from the past in order that we may move into the future with a clean slate.  All things are new in the life of the believer.  Guilt and shame have been disarmed.  The power that the enemy, Satan, had over the new believer’s life has been removed.  The Christian now stands clean before God, at peace, and may rest in the fact that hell is no longer an option.  Heaven is now his final destiny.  All of this occurs because the believer has been justified. 

            Not guilty.  Beautiful words in the ears of the guilty.  Beautiful words for all who have trusted Jesus.  Death is no longer to be feared.  Life can now be lived to the glory of God without the burden of sin or the fear of judgment.  In the words of our Lord Jesus, “Go and sin no more.”