Eight Ways of Getting Justification Wrong
Justification is the Bible’s teaching on how a sinner may be right before God. It is God’s declaration as Judge that a sinner is righteous. This declaration is made solely on the basis of what Christ has done for the sinner in his active and passive obedience. The sinner receives the benefits of Christ for justification through faith alone apart from works.
It has been said that justification is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. John Calvin called it the hinge on which all Christian doctrine turns. However we state it, Reformed theologians have unanimously agreed about its vital place.
It’s also important to know the key pathologies associated with justification. There are various ways this doctrine can become infected with falsehood. Below I briefly note eight ways in which this can happen. Please note that this list isn’t exhaustive.
- Charles Finney: Justification is a governmental pardon on the condition of full penitence and reformed behaviour – you lose your justification if you sin.
- Modernists: We’re justified by following the example of Jesus, the true human being. He was justified by living a sinless life. We have to do the same.
- Friedrich Schleiermacher: “…justification is not a transcendent act of God, but only the removal of the consciousness of guilt, a change in the consciousness of one’s relation to God.” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, p.552)
- Albert Ritschl: “Justification, contained in Jesus’ proclamation of the love of God, is a possession of the church as a whole, so that the individual receives it by joining the church.” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol.3, p.554)
- N.T. Wright: “Justification is not about how a person ‘enters’ into the true community of faith but about how a person continues to be identified with that community through faithfulness (faith plus good works. When God ‘justifies’ a person, he is declaring that person to be one who is persevering as an ongoing part of the end-time covenant community.” (Covenant Theology, eds. Waters, Reid, Muether, p.495)
- Rick Warren: in justification, God gives you a mulligan (a do-over).
- Benne Holwerda: “Does God speak one time, and I believe then one time, and is justification then completed? Oh no! We live in covenant with God and that is a living relationship; when I believe, then God comes again with his word of acquittal to the person who now believes and thus drives them to works of gratitude: justification by faith. And when they do these, then God appears again and acquits them again, he justifies them also by works, says James.” (De dingen die ons van God geschonken zijn, vol. 2, p. 162).
- John Wesley: “We have taken it for a maxim, that ‘A man is to do nothing in order to attain justification.’ Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favour with God should ‘cease from evil, and learn to do well.’ Whoever repents should ‘do works meet for repentance.’ And if this is not in order to find favour, then why does he do them for?” (quoted in A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley, Arnold Dallimore, p.237).
