Guilty, then justified. Romans 3.19-28

Seventeen years old, driving a new Firebird with just a couple hundred miles on it, the day before high school graduation . . . oh, yeah, I thought I
was one bad chick. ‘Loving the ‘get up and go’ in that
V-8, having a great time with my buddies, just didn’t see that black and
white sitting there. I looked down, saw I was doing 55 mph in a 25 mile an hour zone . . . dang! I made a quick right turn, turned into a long driveway, yelled ‘duck’, and then scrunched down in my bucket seat. That is until I heard the knocking at my window. There was no sense in appearing in court to appeal anything—I was guilty. No judge would find me anything but guilty.

But let’s just imagine I had gone before the judge . . . knees knocking, palms sweating, knowing what was ahead of me. But as the judge was ready to bring the gavel down, and pronounce a hefty penalty, instead he says, ‘We all know you are guilty, young lady, but I
am choosing to excuse your actions. You are free to go, your debt to society wiped away. In fact, I have written “innocent” here in your record.’ Justification.

God’s plan of redeeming his children is salvation, made possible through Jesus Christ’s work on the cross--God’s justification. Christ was the propitiation for our sin. From the moment of our salvation, God begins his refining work in us, and we undergo a transformation, as the work of the Holy Spirit’s sanctification process is worked out in us. That is true redemption. ‘Quite a few -tion words! Interesting. While several are obvious, justification is not necessarily so. The concept of justification must be seen in light of the justice system, which is why I used the above illustration. Man, who is guilty, is acquitted because of God’s mercy, and the atoning work (propitiation) of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross. Oh, how the Judge loves us! Once
acquitted, as we walk with God, we experience the sanctification
process—we become more like him, our holiness quotient increases. Glory! Now, our passage:

Romans 3.19-28 – ‘Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world
may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.’

Stop—there’s that word, ‘justified’—the law makes us fully aware that we are powerless to keep every point of it. We all stumble. We will never be ‘justified’, that is to say, made innocent or acquitted, by the law. Paul continues: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 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, 26 to
demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be
just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

Perhaps the greatest passage in the New Testament—at least according to Martin Luther. All men have sinned—prophets, priests, your mother, ministers—we all miss the mark of God’s holiness. Man is made right with God, not through his works, not through the law, but by placing his faith in what Jesus Christ did on the cross for him. Saved by grace + works? No. Saved by grace through faith.

I am glad I did not have to stand before a punitive judge at 17 years of age, but I am much more glad that I will not have to stand before a
punitive judge at the end of my earthly days … no, when I take my place
before him, he will see ‘acquitted’—as Jesus has already gone before me. Can I get an "Amen"?

Christine