Many years ago, the White Horse Inn radio program did a survey at a Christian Booksellers’ convention. They asked a number of questions relating to justification. The results were extremely disappointing. For instance, 71% agreed with the Roman Catholic notion that justification is the process by which we become holy. However, only 54% agreed with the teaching of Romans 4:5, namely that “salvation is for those who do absolutely nothing to help save themselves, but simply trust in a God who justifies sinful people.” We shouldn’t be surprised that the doctrine of justification is so often ignored, forgotten or misunderstood by Christians in our day.
But what about us? Do we have a firm grasp on this biblical doctrine? This doctrine has rightly been called the one by which the church stands or falls. Therefore, in what follows, I’ll briefly sketch this doctrine and then we’ll look at two contemporary challenges.
Justification Described
At its heart, justification is about how a person obtains a right status with God. Naturally, the implication is that we start off with a person in the wrong before God. This person is in a courtroom facing God as judge. Justification basically means that the judge of heaven and earth declares we are right with him on the basis of what Christ has done for us. Justification is not a process (as the Roman Catholics teach), but a one-time declaration. Once we’ve been declared justified, we are always justified.
So, it is an acquittal, but it’s also more than that. Not only does the judge pronounce us “not guilty,” he also goes one step further and says we’re positively righteous. Everything that Christ has done is given to us and so God looks at us as he looks at his own Son – he sees men and women who have kept his holy law.
This justification is necessary because we’re sinners. Since we’re sinners, the basis of this justification must be entirely and solely in Christ. The only instrument or means by which we receive this justification is faith, trusting and resting in Christ. This is why we say that we believe that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone and on the basis of Christ’s suffering and obedience alone.
Finally, though it is not properly part of justification, we also have the wonderful truth that after declaring us righteous, the judge adopts us for his children and heirs. In other words, this is the sort of courtroom you will never find on earth with earthly judges and judicial systems. God’s courtroom and the justification taking place there is entirely unique. For all who believe in Christ, this is all part of the biblical good news.
Narcissism
There are a number of challenges to this doctrine that could be mentioned. However, I’d like to focus on two cultural challenges directly facing us. We began by noting that this doctrine is not well understood or well accepted in broader Christian circles. The reasons for this may be theological in nature, but my reading of the situation is that it may have more to do with worldliness. In other words, this is a matter of Christians becoming too much like the culture around them. By calling attention to some of these challenges, my hope is that we can guard ourselves against losing the precious good news of the doctrine of justification.
The first contemporary cultural challenge is narcissism. Perhaps you’ve heard about the Greek myth of Narcissus. He was a Greek hero famous for being an attractive man. There are several versions of the myth, but in one of them he had an identical twin sister with whom he would hunt. They dressed similarly and did everything together. Narcissus fell into an incestuous relationship with his sister and then, for some reason, she died. Afterwards, Narcissus saw her reflection in a pool of water and became obsessed with it. He only realized that it was his own image after he tried to kiss it. Narcissism is named after this Greek hero and is defined as an obsession with self.
Our culture promotes and exalts narcissism. It’s so self-evident that I don’t need to prove it. But how does our contemporary turn to narcissism challenge the doctrine of justification? Justification involves what the Reformers called an “alien righteousness.” In other words, the righteousness we have before God belongs to another; it belongs to Christ. We have to look outside of ourselves to be right before God. Narcissism, on the other hand, directs us to keep looking inside ourselves for everything. When we think about it carefully, that kind of naked narcissism is just another variation on the original lie told to Adam and Eve: “You shall be as God.”
But it can be more subtle than that. For narcissism also teaches that there is value in others – we have to look for the value in others so we can exploit and manipulate them for our own benefit. With all their selfishness, narcissists can still be (and often are) sociable people. Other people are the means they use to serve themselves and their interests.
For believers, this becomes problematic. We say that it is Christ’s righteousness which brings us into a right relationship with God. However, we can embrace that in a narcissistic and entirely self-serving way. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions: do we serve God only because of what we can get out of it? Do we embrace Christ merely because we think we can manipulate and exploit him like we do other people? Or do we serve God because we earnestly desire his praise and glory to be magnified? Narcissism tells us to serve God merely because of what we can get from him – to manipulate and exploit God out of pure self-interest. The Bible tells us to serve God because we were created for his glory.
Busyness
Today, everyone is busy. In fact, if you are not busy (so the thinking goes), you must be lazy or perhaps retired – but even retired people should be busy. Our culture, inside and outside the church, demands we have a plate full of things to do and not enough time in which to do them. For many today, busyness is a measure of one’s status. Every week, our local newspaper features a story about a prominent business person. In a side bar, you can read about how many e-mails this person gets each day and other such indicators of their busyness. In our culture, and this includes the church, people are defined by what they do and what they accomplish.
This challenges the gospel of justification because that gospel says that there is nothing you can do to earn favour with God. You will never make God owe you anything. We have to be careful because when we define ourselves in terms of what we do and when we find our identity in our accomplishments, we’re not far from denying the gospel. One author called it “justification by busyness.” Though we would never say it, the mindset works something like this: if I can work just a bit harder, then I’ll be successful – God will regard me positively and love me more. That only gets complicated by a desire to impress others with our busyness. In that case, God is being idolatrously re-worked into the image of the people around us.
Meanwhile, the biblical gospel of justification tells us there is nothing we can do to earn favour with the God revealed in the Bible. It’s only when we’re weak and powerless that we are strong. We’re only saved because we have a Saviour who has come down to us. Now more than likely we don’t connect our obsession with busyness to a denial of the gospel, but let’s be aware that this could be our ultimate destination. We have to find our identity and the basis of our relationship with God, not in what we do, but in who Christ is and what he has done for us apart from us.
The biblical gospel of justification is counter-cultural in every age. It goes against the grain of our fallen human nature. That nature always gravitates towards the exaltation of self. Therefore, it takes not only the divine gift of faith to embrace this doctrine, but also its close cousin, humility. We need to pray God would give us these gifts and continue giving them to us and our children so that, embracing our justification in Christ alone, the church would continue to stand.
Abounding Grace Radio