Theological Term of the Week

 

forensic
Having to do with legal proceedings or a court of law; used in regards to justification in order to designate it  as a judicial act of God.

• From scripture:

  Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? (Romans 8:33-34 ESV)

  He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
  are both alike an abomination to the Lord. (Proverbs 17:15 ESV)

• From The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 9:

  Of the True Justification of the Faithful

  WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION? According to the apostle in his treatment of justification, to justify means to remit sins, to absolve from guilt and punishment, to receive into favor, and to pronounce a man just. For in his epistle to the Romans the apostle says: “It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?” (Rom. 8:33). To justify and to condemn are opposed. And in The Acts of the Apostles the apostle states: “Through Christ forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone that believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38 f.). For in the Law and also in the Prophets we read: “If there is a dispute between men, and they come into court…the judges decide between them, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty” (Deut. 25:1). And in Isa., ch. 5: “Woe to those…who acquit the guilty for a bribe.”

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:

  The idea that justification is a legal declaration is quite evident … when justification is contrasted with condemnation. Paul says, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?” (Rom. 8:33-34). To “condemn” someone is to declare that person guilty. The opposite of condemnation is justification, which, in this context, must mean “to declare someone not guilty.” This is also evident from the fact that God’s act of justifying is given as Paul’s answer to the possibility of someone bringing an accusation or “charge” against God’s people: such a declaration of guilt cannot stand in the face of God’s declaration of righteousness.

• From Sole Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification by J. I. Packer:

  2. The meaning of justification. What justification is, said the Reformers, must be learned from Paul, its great New Testament expositor, who sees it clearly and precisely as a judicial act of God pardoning and forgiving our sins, accepting us as righteous, and instating us as his sons. Following Augustine, who studied the Bible in Latin and was partly misled by the fact that justificare, the Latin for Paul’s dikaiou’n, naturally means “make righteous,” the Mediaevals had defined justification as pardon plus inner renewal, as the Council of Trent was also to do; but the Reformers saw that the Pauline meaning of dikaioun is strictly forensic. So Calvin defines justification as acceptance, whereby God receives us into his favour and regards us as righteous; and we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.” Justification is decisive for eternity, being in effect the judgment of the last day brought forward. Its source is God’s grace, his initiative in free and sovereign love, and its ground is the merit and satisfaction—that is, the obedient sin-bearing death—of Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son.

Learn more:

1. Charles Hodge: Forensic Justification
2. Francis Turretin: Justification: Forensic or Moral?
3. S. Lewis Johnson: Justification (mp3 and more)

Related terms:

• imputation
• justification

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