Faith Seeking Understanding by Migliore Daniel L.;

Author:Migliore, Daniel L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2014-06-23T22:00:00+00:00

The Christian Life: Justification

Christian life is based on the grace of God in Jesus Christ to whom we are united by the power of the Holy Spirit. On its objective side, new life in Christ is rooted in his reconciling work and is communicated to us by the activity of the Holy Spirit. Justification, sanctification, and vocation describe the foundation and goal of the Christian life in the power of the Spirit. On its subjective side, Christian life is the free personal appropriation of God’s grace in faith, love, and hope.28

Christian life in the power of the Spirit is a dynamic process of transformation into the likeness of Christ that is set in motion by the gracious initiative of God. It begins with justification, continues in sanctification, and moves to its goal in vocation. Life in Christ is patterned after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and is thus a continuous dying to an old way of life and a rising to a new way of life. It is both mortification and vivification, both a receiving of and a responding to God’s grace, both gift and task, both being freed and exercising new freedom, both being loved and loving others. To be a Christian is “to grow up in every way” into Christ (Eph. 4:15), to be on the way to the fullness of our new humanity in him.

As the first moment of this process, justification is God’s gracious forgiveness of sins that is received by faith alone (Rom. 3:23-28). Accomplished and manifested in Jesus Christ, it is God’s free, unconditional, and unmerited acceptance of us in spite of our sin and alienation from God, from others, and from ourselves. “Justification” is a term from the judicial sphere and means “acquitting” or “making right.” That we are justified means that our broken relationship with God has been restored by an act of free grace and forgiveness. God’s act of justification is by grace alone (sola gratia), in Christ alone (solus Christus), received by faith alone (sola fide).

The doctrine of justification is sometimes expressed in the abbreviated form: we are justified by faith. However, a major distortion of the doctrine occurs if it is taken to mean that faith is the human act by which we merit justification. God’s act of justification is a free gift and is in no way dependent upon us, although it calls for our response. Thus a more adequate brief statement of the doctrine is that we are justified by grace through faith. We cannot merit justification even by our act of faith. Faith is simply the appropriate response of trust and acceptance of God’s unconditional acceptance of us.

The act of faith is not rightly understood when it is viewed as mere assent to propositions presented to us by the church or the Bible. Christian faith is the act of personal trust in God made known in Christ, not bare assent to propositions about God or Christ. The Reformers distinguished between two ways of believing.

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