Cross Friday - Justificiation

Apologies once more for the lateness of this post - I fear this may become a running pattern. One of the downsides of knowing people is that they sometimes wish to do things with you on fridays, leading to this being postponed. I met up with old housemates last friday and this got postponed in the process.

This week I wanted to have a little think about justification. No doubt most, if not all, of my readers, will be familiar with the idea that Jesus was justly punished in our place, for our sins, so that God could be both just in dealing with our sins properly, and also merciful in not holding us accountable for our sins. I expect that in a future week I'll look at that properly, and respond to a few of the more obvious objections.

But one outcome of this is part of justification. Justification is often described as God treating us "just as if I never sinned" - the beggining of that phrase being similar to the beginning of "justification." It's God's forgiveness of our sins and treating us as if they were not there.

This is gloriously true, but it's not the whole truth. The greek "justify" is literally a verb form of "righteous", meaning something like "righteousify", i.e. "declare righteous" or "make righteous". In our culture, "righteous" sounds a bit stuck up - perhaps "declare to be good" or "make morally good" gives us a better feel of what it should "feel" like. But the basic point is this - "justify" means not just "forget about the sins", but also "treat you like you've done something".

The bible is clear that in our baptism, we are baptised into Jesus' death and resurrection. As a result of this - we're drawn into the relationship within the heart of God. We share in Christ's death, and thus our punishment is taken and our sins forgiven. But what's more than this - we share in Christ's obedience to death - as well as his other righteous acts - and thus we share in Christ's positive righteousness, and the new life which comes through his resurrection.

That fact makes me realise one thing - it should excite me a whole lot more than it actually does.