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Commentary on "Justification by Faith Alone"
Day 2: Sunday, October 16, 2011 - The Question of "Justification"
Overview
Today’s lesson examines the word “justification”. The author parses the definition of the word and does make the point that justification “is the positive declaration that a person is righteous.” He then veers away from this reality-altering point and explains that some Jewish believers understood justification to be a relational term.
The text the author asks the reader to read today is Galatians 2:15-17:
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not!
The lesson ends by asking the reader how he or she can apply these words to his own Christian experience.
Observations
It’s not possible to write about justification without establishing the truth about who we are and who Jesus is before we launch into a discussion of the term. The Sabbath-school lesson engages in defining the word “justification” and its related terms without ever taking the concept to a personal level. “Justification” is not a theory or a concept; it is a reality that changes our lives is we receive it.
Moreover, the lesson today deals with Galatians 2:15-17. This passage is ripped out of context; verse 17 is the beginning of a train of thought that is not mentioned. Here is the whole passage including the train of thought that begins with verse 17 and ends with verse 21:
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Galatians 2:15-21 ESV)
This passage does not end with an admonition to to observe the law, as the truncated passage in the lesson seems to imply. Rather, this passage ringingly declares that the life a Christian lives is lived, not by the law, but by “faith in the Son of God”. In fact, “if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”
Further, this lesson’s ending makes no sense from a biblical perspective. Here’s the thought question at the end: “Read Galatians 2:15-17. What is Paul saying to you here, and how can you apply these words to your own Christian experience?”
First, Paul is not speaking to “you” here. He was writing to the Galatians who were being threatened by a deadly heresy: the pressure to be circumcised and thus brought into the full observance of the law. Second, these words are not things to “apply” to one’s Christian experience. They define the Christian experience—and this presupposes that one’s “Christian experience” matches the biblical definition of one: being born of the Spirit (Jn. 3:3-6).
How does one have a “Christian experience”?
This week’s lessons on justification by faith will make no sense at all apart from a biblical understanding of why we need to be justified and how this justification happens.
We are born dead, slaves to the passions of our bodies and minds, “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:1-3). We are born citizens of the domain of darkness (Col. 1:13), unable to seek God, to understand, or to do good. We are not righteous, nor can we be; we know nothing of the way of peace, and there is no fear of God in our eyes (Rom. 3:10-18). We are born utterly devoid of any ability at all to seek God or to please Him.
In fact, we are so hopelessly flawed that, until we believe in the name of the Son of God, we are under judgment, and the wrath of God abides on us (Jn. 3:18; 36).
This death into which we are born is not genetic deterioration leading to propensities to sin. Rather, it is spiritual death. This is our legacy from Adam, who did die the day he ate that fruit, just as God said he would. Adam and Eve lost their connection to the life of God, and they knew shame and guilt, and they hid.
This spiritual death is our legacy from Adam. When God met Adam and Eve and delivered His consequences for sin, He did not curse Adam directly. Rather, he cursed the earth, causing Adam to suffer in order to live (Gen. 3:17-19). Even more significantly, God’s cursing the earth was a deeper curse than merely cursing Adam and his offspring; He cursed the actual “stuff” from which Adam’s physical body was made.
In other words, our legacy from Adam is inescapable. We are born cursed. Our actual substance is cursed, and we are born spiritually dead, children of wrath, and God’s wrath abides on us. We are born into the curse of death, and there is absolutely no escape from this curse from a natural point of view.
We are born unable to seek or to please God because we are spiritually dead, disconnected from His life, and our physical substance is cursed and doomed to destruction. We are born hopeless, all of us being locked up in a “communal grave” of God’s decree (Rom. 8:19-25). There is no chance any of us could have a “Christian experience” apart from an intervention from God.
The Incarnation
Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, came into the world wrapped in a mortal body. He was not just like the rest of us, however, because He was not spiritually dead. He was God, and He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was never under the curse of Adam. He was the “seed of Eve” (see Genesis 3:15), but He was not the son of Adam. Rather, He was the “second Adam”, the One through whom came Life in contrast to Adam through whom came death (1 Cor 15:21-23).
Jesus, eternally alive, eternally God, wrapped Life inside a package of mortal flesh and entered Time. No other human has ever been born who did not need to be made spiritually alive—born again. He came unable to sin and unable to fail. He was God—and God cannot sin. His flesh was tempted and suffered from unspeakable assaults of suffering and testing, but there was nothing in His nature to be attracted to sin. He was utterly sinless; He had God’s Life in Himself from the moment He was conceived. He was Light, and in Him was no darkness at all.
He came as a mortal human because human sin had to be paid for with human death. And this point introduces another way in which Jesus was different from us. He was our Substitute, not our Example.
Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Wages are what we earn. We are born deserving death; we receive our just wages—death. Because we are born dead, we have no choice but to earn death. We do not “pay the price” of sin by dying. A price is something we can choose to pay if the benefit we receive is worth it to us. We do not ever have the privilege of deciding that we will choose to be sinners, thus choosing to pay the price of death.
No! We are born deserving death; we are born earning our just wages: death.
Jesus, however, was not born deserving death. He had no sin in Him. Rather, He actually did pay the price of sin. He voluntarily wrapped His eternal life and power and nature into mortal flesh and chose to die a human death in order to pay the only price that could atone for sin an propitiate God’s wrath against sin. That only acceptable price was the death of a sinless, perfect human...a perfect sacrifice. Jesus died that perfect death. He paid the price for human sin.
Moreover, He never stopped being God the Eternal, Living Son—even in the tomb. His spirit did not die; God did not disappear. This fact is the reason death could not hold Him. He WAS Life; He rose from death on the third day by the Life that was in Him and by the will of His Father who received His sacrifice as the acceptable price for sin.
Thus, Jesus broke the curse into which every one of us is born. He transported Life into the human race via His own incarnation, and because He never stopped being fully and eternally God, He rose from death and undid it. He broke the curse.
Thus, when we face the fact that we are hopeless, unable to stop sinning even by constant prayer, when we realize that we are in a tomb of wrath and death by virtue of being born into the human race and then throw ourselves as the feet of Jesus and receive His payment for our sin, at that moment we are justified.
Jesus’ death does not benefit us until we repent and receive His sacrifice for us and submit to Him as our Lord and Savior. When we finally to repent and believe that He has paid for our sin and has broken the curse into which we are born, at that moment we receive the Holy Spirit who is the Guarantee that our mortal bodies will also be redeemed (Eph. 1:13-14).
Because Jesus broke the curse of death, He Himself is the Door through which we can escape our communal grave, the tomb of death into which we are born. Jesus is not the One who shows the way; He IS the way. He IS the door. John 10:7-9 says,
So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
He is not merely one who opened the escape hatch from the curse of death; He IS the door. We enter by receiving His blood on our behalf, and He makes us spiritually alive with His Spirit. We leave our tomb of death in Jesus, and our Father transfers us into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col 1:13).
Justified by faith
We are justified by faith not by a mental assent to Jesus or by understanding what “justification” means and then cognitively figuring out how to believe we are justified while also trying to hang onto the law which articulated the curse that bound us. Rather, we are justified by faith when we repent of who we are and receive Jesus’ blood on our behalf.
We do not stop having temptations and urges to sin; we still inhabit mortal bodies. But now we are freed from death, from the curse God delivered as the consequence for sin, and we are spiritually alive with the Life of God.
When we are transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, we pass from being in Adam to being in Christ (1 Cor. 15:21). We move from that inescapable tomb of death into the Life of Jesus, and we are hidden with Christ in God. Now, when the Father looks at us, He sees Jesus. He credits Jesus to our account. It is not us becoming sinless that counts as righteousness for us; it is Jesus Himself whose righteousness is considered to be ours.
We are counted sinless, past, present, and future, because we are in Jesus, and He is eternally sinless, and His shed blood paid for us. Even if out bodies sin, we are still counted justified. The indwelling Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and teaches us to say no to ungodliness, but our physical struggles do not define our spiritual condition.
When we have been born again, we are eternally justified.
If you do not know that you are saved, I urge you to receive the Lord Jesus. He is asking you to trust Him and to repent of your hopeless brokenness and receive His blood as the propitiation for your sin.
Receive Him as your Lord and as your Savior, and experience being sealed with His eternal Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14) and being adopted as God’s child (Rom. 8:14-16). When you are born again, His Spirit testifies with your spirit that you are His child. Saving faith, which is itself a gift of God (Eph. 2:8-9) always comes with the security of salvation. His Spirit brings yours to life, and even though your body is not yet redeemed, your spirit is, and you will begin living eternally at that moment.
Jesus said, “…everyone who believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Let this be true for you today. God is faithful. He receives sinners.
Summary
- We are born cursed, spiritually dead, and helplessly locked up in a communal tomb of death.
- Jesus “smuggled” Life into the human race by packing His eternal, complete deity into a mortal body and being born to Mary.
- Jesus died a human death.
- Jesus rose to life because His Spirit was alive; it was NEVER dead and had no ability to be attracted to sin.
- Jesus broke the curse into which we are born.
- He asks you to trust Him, to repent of who you are and to receive His Life.
- You must be born again.
- When you are born again, you are eternally justified by Jesus’ sinless blood which paid the price of human sin.
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised October 16, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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