8/14/2023
Elijah McSwain, Sr.
Romans 4:22-5:1 NKJV — And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the court of law, people are given different degrees of punishment for an offense of violating a particular law. The transgressor of the law is deemed guilty for failing to uphold the standard that the law required. Often, people who break the law are penalized by either paying a monetary fine, performing some act of community service, or given a verdict to live out a certain sentence in solitary confinement as a form of punishment based upon the act committed.
The rendering of a verdict is a judicial judgment enforced by a court in relation to what punishment is suitable for the crime. It is very rare that the presiding judge or jury will let a person off the hook for a known crime that was committed. It is safe to say that every court of law thrives by the motto, “you do the crime, then you do the time."
In the spiritual realm, there is another court of law by which the guilty stand accused of transgressing the law of God. The same notion applies that any violation of the law requires punishment.
Sadly, every person that has lived or will live upon the face of the earth, with the exception of Jesus Christ, has a spiritual criminal record. Universally, all of humanity are guilty of criminal acts for failing to adhere to the standard of God.
Therefore, God in His holiness has reached the necessary decision in advance that is suitable to Him in relation to every criminal act of misconduct and lawlessness. But despite our known offenses and criminality, God has made it possible for us to be freed from the blame of the accusations against us as a means of His justification through faith.
What Is Justification?
According to Blue Letter Bible, the word justification (dikaiōsis) implies the act of God declaring men free from guilt and having a newfound position, whereby, repentant sinners are made acceptable to Him”. 1 Justification is the declaration of a change in our standing before God. It is a change of being moved from a state of condemnation to being granted acquittal and given acceptance before a holy God. Justification entails of being pardon of sin and in turn being imparted with the righteousness of God.
Wayne Grudem articulated "justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which He thinks of our sins as forgiven, Christ’s righteousness belonging to us and declares us to be righteous in His sight.” 2
Romans chapters four and five give vivid insight as it relates to the doctrine of justification in terms of its means and the act by which God's righteousness is bestowed upon an individual.
The Means Of Justification
The Apostle Paul so eloquently wrote that justification comes through the personage and work of Jesus Christ. Romans 4:24-25 proclaims that Jesus “was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification.” The phrase “delivered up” speaks to the crucifixion of Jesus as He was put to death because of our sins. Delivered up insinuates that Jesus, the Son of God, was handed over as the object to face the punishment of God for our severe offenses of immorality.
As a fallen world, our sins had to be adequately dealt with and the only means of truly dealing with the malady of mankind was to crush Jesus for bearing the sins of the world.
The death of Jesus was the legal transaction to appease God for our wayward and defiant behavior.
The words of Isaiah 53 are reflective of the satisfaction that the death of Jesus brought God as He was offered up for sin. Isaiah 53:10 declares, "yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin." Through death at the cross, the appropriate offering for sin through the shedding of blood was a judicial act of restoring sinful humanity back unto God.
The sacrificial and voluntary act of Jesus dying for a depraved world enables every believer to be at peace with God and delivered from His wrath. According to the English Standard Version (ESV), Romans 5:9 states "since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." Jesus experienced the fierceness of God's wrath as He was nailed to the cross for sinners.
The violent death that Jesus underwent would change our spiritual landscape and standing before God. As a result of being justified by His blood for the remission of sin.
Jesus was instrumental in God’s plan to bring about justification. He was orchestrated by God to be humanity’s scapegoat and sin offering. In biblical times according to Leviticus16:7-22, the high priest in ancient Israel would take two goats on the Day of Atonement, one to be used for a sin offering and the other as a scapegoat. The first goat would be sacrificed as an offering for sin as a designated for the Lord, while the second goat was let go in the wilderness after the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the transgressing people upon it. This foreshadowed the work of Jesus.
Jesus was both a sin offering and a scapegoat as He fulfilled both tasks. He was the sacrificial offering for sin and as a scapegoat, He carried or took away sin.
The latter part of Isaiah 53:6 speaks of Jesus being our scapegoat as “the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” As aforementioned, Isaiah 53:10 states that He was made an offering for sin. Therefore, He was delivered by God, His Father, to atone for the sins of the world. Romans 8:32a declares this truth “God did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.” He was delivered up for the purpose of atoning every act of transgression that we committed or would commit against the holy law and sacred things of God. Titus 2:14 speaks of this declaration by stating that Jesus "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works." He brought about redemption through His vicarious act of love that was displayed through substitutionary atonement.
“When a world of lost mankind needed to be saved by a sinless Substitute, the great God of the universe did not hold back His heart’s best Treasure, but gave Him over to a death of shame and loss on our behalf.” 3
After addressing the importance of Christ being delivered up for our offenses, Paul dealt with the resurrection of Jesus as He was raised for our justification. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead solidified our justification. Without the resurrection of Jesus, we could not be justified if He was conquered by succumbing to death. Based on the fact that He was raised from the dead, it speaks to the finished work on the cross, the purchase price paid for redemption, and the propitiation that appeased the wrath of God toward.
Grant Richison stated “the resurrection of Christ was the vindication of God’s acceptance of the sacrifice for our sins. His resurrection brought about the reality of our justification before God. God raised Jesus as a preview of all those who follow Him. When we are raised from the dead, we stand right before God, right in His eyes. The resurrection of Jesus authenticates our resurrection.” 4
Romans 6:5 reiterates those same words by highlighting "for if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection." Our death to sin is symbolically tied to His death as becoming ours and our newness of life is interwoven in His resurrection as becoming ours as well.
Through His death, burial, and resurrection repentant sinners at the moment of conversion are justified by the One who is just. “The resurrection provided proof that God had accepted the sacrifice of His Son and would be able to be just and yet justify the ungodly.” 5
1 Peter 3:18 NKJV — For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.
Jesus suffered unjust punishment for our sins that we may be reconciled back to God through His death and resurrection from the dead. Adam Clarke mentioned that Jesus was raised that we might have the fullest assurance that the death of Christ had accomplished the end for which it took place, our reconciliation to God, and giving us a title to that eternal life, into which He has entered, and taken with Him our human nature, as the first-fruits of the resurrection of mankind. 6 The death and resurrection of Jesus made it possible for those who exhibit godly sorrow over their sins to be justified by faith (cf. 2 Corinthians 7:10).
Justified By Faith
Paul iterates in Romans 5:1 that our faith in Christ being delivered up for our offenses and raised for our justification enables us to be justified. Paul tied our justification by faith to that of Abraham’s faith found in Romans Ch. 4 and Genesis chapters 15-21. When Abraham who was known as Abram at the time was childless, God made a covenantal promise to bless him with an heir through whom his descendants would be numbered like the stars. In turn, he would be the father of many nations. Now Abram and his wife Sarai (Sarah) were well beyond childbearing years as Abram was 100 and Sarai was 90. Initially hearing this both Abraham and Sarah thought that this was humorous because of their old age but they eventually believed God and took Him at His Word.
In Romans 4:4 and 4:22, Abraham’s act of genuine faith and belief in the covenantal promise of God was accounted to him as righteousness. Though initially skeptical about God’s promise, Abraham’s faith conquered his skepticism.
Abraham’s faith conquered impossibility, improbability, inadequacy, inconsistency, insecurity, and infidelity. 7
His faith in God was deemed as the appropriate response to what God decreed. Scripture tells us in Hebrews 11:6, "but without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Abraham exhibited this kind of faith.
In the same respect, our faith in the work and person of Jesus Christ justifies us before God and is accounted to us as righteousness.
We are justified by faith as a result of our belief in the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our conviction of the atoning work of Jesus caused us to seek God for the gift of salvation as He sought us out (cf. Isaiah 55:6-7 & Luke 19:10). In the moment of conviction, God revealed our wayward nature and standing before Him as sinners; while at the same time, He revealed the only way for our sins to be forgiven through the life and work of Jesus. The seeking out of sinners and the enablement of sinners to exercise faith in Jesus is all of God; it is the means to save and declare us legally right in His eyesight.
N.T. Wright once penned “we are justified by faith by believing in the gospel that Jesus is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead. Becoming a Christian in its initial moment, is not a result of inheritance by birth or something achieved through human effort. Faith itself is the first fruit of the Spirit’s call to salvation. For the Apostle Paul, justification is something that occurs after the call by which a sinner is summoned to turn from wickedness and sin, to turn from spiritual death, and believe in the transforming power of Christ via His redemptive work at the cross.” 9
As Christians, we have faith that the work of God which was performed through Jesus Christ was prepared in advance for salvation, righteousness, and a change of legal standing before God. Tony Evans, in his book, Tony’ Evans Book Of Illustrations, wrote "have you ever gotten a letter in the mail from a credit card company telling you that you’ve been pre-qualified? These letters will usually tell you that you can spend five thousand dollars because they have already checked you out and decided you would be a good customer. Now, this is just a ploy, a joke, and a gyp. They are trying to get you to spend money so that they can charge you interest. God has also pre-qualified us for righteousness. Unlike the trickery of the credit card companies, He has pre-qualified us by already applying the righteousness of Christ to our accounts. Our balances have already been paid." 8
The work of Christ is the pre-qualifier for our salvation by faith in connection with justification and His imputed righteousness.
Faith in the salvific work of Jesus at the cross enables repentant and believing sinners to be viewed as righteous in the eyesight of God. Through being justified by the blood of Christ and by our faith, believers are given amnesty or pardon from our offenses and placed on a righteous path.
Our faith in connection with the imputed righteousness of God makes us justifiable before God. We are no longer condemned to death. Our lives are no longer marked out by being condemned. Our lives are no longer being governed by sin. Our lives are now governed by righteousness which is the moral and ethical purity that is of God.
Several key Scriptures speak of the righteousness in Christ:
2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV — "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Romans 3:24-26 NKJV — "being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."
Romans 5:16-17 NKJV — "And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ."
The imputation of Jesus’ righteousness affords us to be declared in a favorable condition of peace with God (Romans 5:1) The justified are no longer considered rebels against God as our nature is no longer geared toward being defiant against God. Our new spiritual position is to honor God through holy and righteous living as a result of the saving, redeeming, forgiving, and justifying work performed through Christ.
References
Blue Letter Bible App
Wayne Grudem. Systematic Theology: An Introduction To Biblical Doctrine
Believer’s Bible Commentary
Grant Richison. Verse By Verse Commentary
The MacArthur Study Bible
Adam Clarke. The Adam Clarke Commentary
The Jeremiah Study Bible
Tony Evans. Tony’ Evans Book Of Illustrations
N.T. Wright. New Perspectives On Paul