Making It Legal

On what basis can God justify sinners? Or to put it another way, what are the legal grounds on which God can declare that an unrighteous person is righteous?

What things can’t be the legal grounds?

• Our works or our righteousness, even Spirit worked works or works done “in Christ.” Only perfect righteousness or perfect works could provide the basis for God, who always judges according to truth, to declare someone righteous, and believers will never in this life perform any perfect works or be perfectly righteous.
• Our faith. God does not accept faith in place of actual righteousness in declaring a sinner righteous. For one thing, our faith has the same problem our works do. It is never perfect. As Joel Beeke writes “My best believing is always defective. I am always too ungodly even in my faith.” 

What is the only thing that can be—and is—the legal grounds?

• Christ’s righteousness—his “perfect obedience and full satisfaction” counted (or imputed) to the believer. This includes both his bearing the curse of the law for us in his death on the cross and his obedience to all of God’s precepts in our place. It’s the full package deal, everything needed for God to justly declare a sinner to be righteous.

Comments

[kim from hiraeth]

Funny, I was just thinnking about this before I got out of bed this morning! So thankful that my salvation rests upon the finished work of Christ and not on my own!

[rebecca]

Funny, I was just thinking about this before I got out of bed this morning!

I was thinking about it last night. :) And so, this post.