Now that the Christian has become a believer in Christ, God is ready to declare them justified and adopt them.
But two other things must have occurred for God to do so. First, Jesus had to live a perfect life as a complete human being in order to be the proper sacrifice for the sins of the elect. Then, being the perfect sacrifice, he had to die a sinner’s death on the cross as a substitute for the elect’s sins. Therefore, Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty to God for the sins of the elect, namely, He must bear the sins of the elect, past, present, and future, and experience a physical death (Rom. 5:9). This Jesus did.
JUSTIFICATION
This article has been written immediately after the article on “faith.” The reason is that though faith and “justification” are very different, faith is the instrumentality that brings the life and works of Christ to the Christian. It is not the ground of our justification. Instead, Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to those who believe and is the ground of their justification.
The secular world defines justification as an excuse or a vindication.
But in Christianity, it compares an individual’s actions to God’s law. In Christianity, God holds the sinner accountable for the legal sentence of unrighteousness because they have sinned. But Jesus lived a sinless life to become the perfect sacrifice and died on the cross, paying the ransom to God for the sins of the elect, resulting in God’s elimination of the judicial sentence.
In the New Testament, there are a couple of Greek words of interest. Some form of the Greek verb δικαιόω, transliterated dikaiŏō (pron. dik-ah-yo’-o), is translated into some form of the English word justify. In the Bible, it generally refers to a person being considered just and in compliance with God’s law (Rom. 2:13). The Greek word δικαίωσις, transliterated dikaiósis (pron. dee-kah’-yo-sis), is the feminine noun that appears only twice in the New Testament (Rom. 4:25, 5:18) and means that God declares the sinner to be deemed free of sin and reconciled to Himself; justification.
One theologian defines justification as “a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.”[1] This is an external, judicial act of God in which He is commanding something about the individual sinner. This differs from most parts of the Plan of Salvation in that it does not change the sinner internally. Instead, it tells sinners how God looks at them. Basically, God holds the sinners blameless for their sins and restores them to good standing with Him. Finally, the sinner is at peace with God (Rom. 5:1).
When Jesus lived a perfect life as a human being and became the proper sacrifice for believers’ sins, He accomplished something else. By living a sinless life, He earned merited righteousness. This became the ground for the Christian’s justification, and His death on the cross paid the price God required (Rom. 5:9).
When the Christian believes in Jesus Christ, Jesus pays for the sins of the elect, and His sinless life provides the ground for justification; God justifies the Christian. He imputes Christ’s earned righteousness to the regenerated sinner.
After justification, God the Father sends the Holy Spirit to inhabit the Christian’s spirit to help them be more Christlike.
The author of this article wants to make something very clear. This justification is not an internal change in humankind. In Holy Scripture, the justification discussed in the Bible is that the unrighteous human being is justified through the merited righteousness of Christ, which God the Father imputes to each converted human being. God considers the person righteous because the proper ransom was paid and the sinless life was lived. The sinless life Jesus Christ lived on earth is the ground for our justification.
Justification takes place outside the human being, is a legal act by God, and happens only once. Even though the human being is not sinless, God considers them sinless and restores them to the state of a child of God.
ADOPTION
One thing the Christian receives from God is an inheritance (Eph. 1:11). To do this, God adopts the Christian (Rom. 8:15-17; Eph. 1:5).
The English word “adoption” appears in the New Testament as the Greek word υἱοθεσία, transliterated as huiothesia (pron. hwee-oth-es-ee’-ah), which refers to a person who has the status of one’s child even though he is not a natural child of the person granting the adoption. This word appears five times in the KJV Bible (Rom. 8:15, 23, 9:4; Gal 4:5; Eph. 1:5). It means that God’s adoption results from a person’s justification.
This kind of adoption of the believer by God is a legal and external act. It should not be confused with another kind of sonship with God that has a moral basis. A believer’s belief in Christ, which is a moral sonship, gives us the right to be adopted by God (John 1:12, 13).
In chapter 12 of the Westminster Confession, the following is written.
All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have his name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him, as by a father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation (Ps.103:13; Prov. 14:26; Lam. 3:31, 32; Matt. 6:30, 32; John 1:12; Rom. 8:15, 17; 2 Cor. 6:18; Gal. 4:4, 5; Eph. 1:5, 3:12, 4:30; Heb. 6:12, 12:6; 1 Peter 1: 3, 4).[2]
In the secular world, one state changed its inheritance laws regarding adoption a few years ago. Previously, this state’s laws held that there was a difference between natural-born citizens and adopted citizens. However, about 30 years ago, that changed. Now there is no difference between natural-born children and adopted children when it comes to inheritance laws in that state.
The Bible teaches that God has no natural-born children, but He does have adopted children. Jesus was God’s first child, and all Christians follow His example. All adopted children receive the inheritance benefits God gives by His grace, as if they were natural-born children.
Justification and adoption come by God’s grace alone (Eph. 2:8). Since all human beings have sinned and cannot turn to God by themselves, He, by His unmerited grace and through the work of Jesus Christ, offers the free gift of justification and adoption to those who will believe in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:23, 24).
Now that we have discussed justification and adoption, it is time to discuss the next step in the Plan of salvation: sanctification. The author has already written an article on sanctification. Therefore, I recommend that you now read the article entitled “The Doctrine of Sanctification ” on this blog.
[1] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, combined ed. (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2021), p. 533.
[2] The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms (The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2005, 2007), pp. 56- 57.
