NOTE: in using the ESV as a pony for these searches, I realized that I had left out words about vindication. That is now corrected.

If you want to research Calvin’s reasoning on why “justification” is a judicial act rather than a transformation of character, here’s a way to start. Of course, the concept opens up in more than one word. A look at all the things saying about how God “judges” are also relevant.

• Genesis 20:16  (Genesis 20)

  To Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.”

• Deuteronomy 32:36  (Deuteronomy 32)

  For the Lord will vindicate his people

  and have compassion on his servants,

  when he sees that their power is gone

  and there is none remaining, bond or free.

• Job 6:29  (Job 6)

  Please turn; let no injustice be done.

  Turn now; my vindication is at stake.

• Job 32:2  (Job 32)

  Then Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God.

• Job 33:32  (Job 33)

  If you have any words, answer me;

  speak, for I desire to justify you.

• Psalm 17:2  (Psalm 17)

  From your presence let my vindication come!

  Let your eyes behold the right!

• Psalm 26:1  (Psalm 26)

  Of David.

  Vindicate me, O Lord,

  for I have walked in my integrity,

  and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.

• Psalm 35:23  (Psalm 35)

  Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication,

  for my cause, my God and my Lord!

• Psalm 35:24  (Psalm 35)

  Vindicate me, O Lord, my God,

  according to your righteousness,

  and let them not rejoice over me!

• Psalm 43:1  (Psalm 43)

  Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause

  against an ungodly people,

  from the deceitful and unjust man

  deliver me!

• Psalm 51:4  (Psalm 51)

  Against you, you only, have I sinned

  and done what is evil in your sight,

  so that you may be justified in your words

  and blameless in your judgment.

• Psalm 54:1  (Psalm 54)

  To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A MaskilO God, save me by your name,

  and vindicate me by your might.

• Psalm 135:14  (Psalm 135)

  For the Lord will vindicate his people

  and have compassion on his servants.

• Proverbs 17:15  (Proverbs 17)

  He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous

  are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

• Isaiah 45:25  (Isaiah 45)

  In the Lord all the offspring of Israel

  shall be justified and shall glory.”

• Isaiah 50:8  (Isaiah 50)

  He who vindicates me is near.

  Who will contend with me?

  Let us stand up together.

  Who is my adversary?

  Let him come near to me.

• Isaiah 54:17  (Isaiah 54)

  no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed,

  and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.

  This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord

  and their vindication [or righteousness] from me, declares the Lord.”

• Jeremiah 51:10  (Jeremiah 51)

  The Lord has brought about our vindication;

  come, let us declare in Zion

  the work of the Lord our God.

• Ezekiel 36:23  (Ezekiel 36)

  And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

• Ezekiel 38:16  (Ezekiel 38)

  You will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

• Ezekiel 39:27  (Ezekiel 39)

  when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies’ lands, and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many nations.

• Joel 2:23  (Joel 2)

  “Be glad, O children of Zion,

  and rejoice in the Lord your God,

  for he has given the early rain for your vindication;

  he has poured down for you abundant rain,

  the early and the latter rain, as before.

• Micah 7:9  (Micah 7)

  I will bear the indignation of the Lord

  because I have sinned against him,

  until he pleads my cause

  and executes judgment for me.

  He will bring me out to the light;

  I shall look upon his vindication.

• Matthew 11:19  (Matthew 11)

  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

• Luke 7:35  (Luke 7)

  Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

• Luke 10:29  (Luke 10)

  But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

• Luke 16:15  (Luke 16)

  And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

• Luke 18:14  (Luke 18)

  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

• Acts 19:40  (Acts 19)

  For we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.”

• Romans 2:13  (Romans 2)

  For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

• Romans 3:4  (Romans 3)

  By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

  “That you may be justified in your words,

  and prevail when you are judged.”

• Romans 3:20  (Romans 3)

  For by works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

• Romans 3:30  (Romans 3)

  since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

• Romans 4:5  (Romans 4)

  And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith [i.e. trust] is counted as righteousness,

• Romans 4:25  (Romans 4)

  who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

• Romans 5:16  (Romans 5)

  And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

• Romans 5:18  (Romans 5)

  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

• Romans 8:33  (Romans 8)

  Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

• Galatians 3:8  (Galatians 3)

  And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

• 1 Timothy 3:16  (1 Timothy 3)

  Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

  He was manifested in the flesh,

  vindicated by the Spirit,

  seen by angels,

  proclaimed among the nations,

  believed on in the world,

  taken up in glory.

Warning: this is a Presbyterian geek post. If it doesn’t seem relevant to you, that is probably because it isn’t. Not worth your time.

I constantly hear that John Murray “came up with” the doctrine of definitive sanctification. Here’s the essay.

This really involves a confusion of semantics over substance. To some extent, Murray himself is a source of this confusion since he insists “regeneration” has to be a different thing (?) or point in the order of salvation. This gets especially weird when he appeals to Titus 3. He seems aware of this, because he then adds a footnote (4):

While regeneration is an all-important factor in definitive sanctification, it would not be proper to subsume the latter under the topic “regeneration.” The reason is that what is most characteristic in definitive sanctification, namely, death to sin by union with Christ in his death and newness of life by union with him in his resurrection, cannot properly be referred to regeneration by the Spirit. There is multiformity to that which occurs at the inception of the Christian life, and each facet must be accorded its own particularity. Calling, for example, as the action of the Father, must not be defined in terms of what is specifically the action of the Holy Spirit, namely, regeneration. Definitive sanctification, likewise, must be allowed its own individuality. We impoverish our conception of definitive grace when we fail to appreciate the distinctiveness of each aspect or indulge in over-simplification.

I don’t see any basis for this assertion. There is every reason in the world to believe that “death to sin by union with Christ in his death and newness of life by union with him in his resurrection” can indeed ” properly be referred to regeneration by the Spirit.” Nor have I ever felt as confident as Murray that different actions toward saving the sinner must only be attributed to one person in the Trinity. I don’t see how we “impoverish” any thing.

In any case, “definitive sanctification” is just another term for “effectual calling,” as the Westminster Confession states:

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.

So, in an instant, at the start of the true Christian life, God makes sinners ready and willing to leave disobedience and embrace obedience. How is this now sanctification.

In fact, it seems to me that the first sentence on sanctification acknowledges that the sanctification was already begun earlier:

They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them: the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

If someone can prove that “further” meant additionally I’ll not fight it. But as it stands, it sounds like an admission that Christians are being more sanctified as they continue in or from their effectual calling.

So, while I respect and learn from John Murray, I think he attributed more novelty to his thinking here than he should have done. And likewise, Murray’s enemies have no basis here for pointing to some sort of innovation that makes Murray suspect.

Effectual calling is the beginning of sanctification and later sanctification is the continuance in one’s calling.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

One idea one gets from some notable Reformed theologians is that only faith justifies because only faith is passive and outward looking (or worse, “extraspective“). Hope and Love are active, would imply works and merit, while faith is not and does not.

But it seems to me that all three could easily be understood as outward oriented. “Hope” can be used as virtually a synonym for trust or faith.

Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

And likewise, Paul does not portray loving God as some kind of moral heroism but as nothing more than caring and hoping in one’s own well-being with the recognition that it is bound up in the other:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

There is no great credit in loving your wife because you are insane and self-hating not to love her. How much more is there no credit or merit in loving Jesus and God when one recognizes that they are the key to one’s own purpose and provision!

So when taking “love” and “hope” in the abstract, I don’t think that it would be difficult to produce credible descriptions from the Biblical data that are just as passive and outward looking.

It seems to me that the reason that faith is singled out as the means by which we are counted righteous before God needs to be sought elsewhere. Sociologically, I think the point is that all those who confess the true God (confess their faith or belief) belong to Jesus whether or not the are circumcised. All are righteous before God, belong to his covenant people, without any other condition.

On a more personal level, I suspect the key issue is the promissory nature of salvation. While one could easily also put hope in this place, the more fundamental reality is one has hope because one trusts God to keep His promises. So faith is the human response to God’s faithfulness that He has kept and keeps His promises:

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

This last I take as a word play that is stating from God’s faithfulness to our faith. That, I believe, matches the appeal to Habakkuk which is all about God’s faithfulness in adversity and how those who trust Him, count him faithful, are righteous in His sight.

When Paul speaks of justification in his letter to the Romans, he clearly builds a judicial or forensic context for the meaning of the word. Specifically, to be justified means to be declared righteous before God on the Judgment day that is coming:

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus (Romans 2.12-16).

So everyone will be judged and, at that judgment, some will be justified, officially found righteous before God. Thus, we find that to be justified is the antonym of being condemned:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? (Romans 8.33-34)

So justification is a courtroom act. The judge declares a person to be righteous. But does God justify or condemn only on the Last Day?

Let’s expand a bit on Romans 8.33ff:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us (Romans 8.33-35).

While God will justify and condemn on the Last Day, there is a sense (and an important one!) in which he has already declared his verdict. Jesus suffered condemnation in history on the first “Good Friday.” And likewise, Jesus experienced God’s verdict over him on Easter Sunday.

No unbelief made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Romans 4.20-25).

Jesus was justified by the Spirit (Romans 8.11; c.f. First Timothy 3.16). God declared Jesus righteous by a public vindication. Jesus was justified by being raised from the dead.

So it would be  improper infer that we are not justified until we too are raised from the dead. The justification has already been made in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But to whom does this justification apply? Who shares in the vindication of Jesus? Paul makes it clear that our belief is our vindication even now. God declares us right with him by delivering us from unbelief and all the sins that follow from it.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been justified from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (from Romans 6).

So Jesus’ justification, which was his resurrection, is now ours. He received a condemnation he did not deserve in order to share with us a vindication we do not deserve. But even though we have not been raised from the dead yet, we are still, in common with Jesus new life, raised to a new way of living by the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

This new life is not perfect. We still daily rely on God’s forgiveness, but it is a real break with the state of death and enslavement to sin with which we were cursed. And the most fundamental aspect of this new obedience is faith itself. As goes on to write in Romans 6:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6.16-18).

Paul is referring to the Romans having come to saving faith. He describes this new faith as having “become obedient fromt he hear to the standard of teaching.” This lines up with the what Paul writes and the opening and closing of Romans:

we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of Jesus’ name among all the nations

For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ… Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind:

1. Sin is not only the reason for condemnation but is the penalty of unbelief

Paul makes this clear:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Thus Paul presents the world of downwardly spiraling sin as a prison world for sinners. They are not only punished for sin, but they are sinners as a punishment for sin. To be given a declarative verdict is, thus, a declaration of freedom from sin. That is why Paul can say so readily in Romans 6 of being “justified from sin.”

2. The primal sin is unbelief so that the gift of faith is also the primal beginning of sanctification.

Faith fundamentally receives God’s grace; unbelief fundamentally spurns God’s blessing in ingratitude: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1.21). Paul draws this out by portraying Abraham’s faith in Romans 4 in a way that contrasts with the unbelief of Romans 1.

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4.16-22).

Unbelievers turn from the true God to creation for their life and blessedness. Abraham saw nothing in creation that could help him but trusted in the living God for new life. Unbelievers give glory to created idols; Abraham gave glory to the true God. This is all described as Abraham’s faith. God counted that faith as his righteousness, a righteousness delivered to him in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So justification is a verdict and, as a verdict, a deliverance from the curse of unbelief. While the verdict was declared in the resurrection of Jesus, and will be declared at the final judgment, God also declares it when, by his mercy alone, he turns sinners away from unbelief and grants them true faith in Himself through His Son.

Author and theologian N.T. (Tom) Wright was the guest teacher at Willow Creek Community Church’s weekend services on November 5 and 6. Author of the recently released Simply Jesus, Wright expounded on who Jesus is, what He did, and why He matters.

One of foremost professors and theologians of New Testament and early Christianity in the world, Wright taught New Testament studies at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities, has served as the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, and is currently the Chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews’s School of Divinity in Scotland. Newsweek calls him “the world’s leading New Testament scholar.”

via Willow News » Blog Archive » Theologian N.T. Wright Speaks at Willow Creek.

I’m watching the video now. Really appreciated the introduction.

Go here to download the audio.