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What does justification mean? How can we be forgiven?

What does justification mean? How can we be forgiven?

Last updated on: April 23, 2025 at 7:32 am by Adrian Warnock

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What does justification mean? How can we be forgiven? 2025-04-23T07:32:57+01:00 Adrian Warnock

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Lady Justice. Blind with her scales.

Justice according to the Bible is not about weighing up how much good and evil we have done

Justification is a legal term which means “declared not guilty”. It is how God can forgive us our sins and still be a just judge. It is not that God instantaneously changes us and makes us completely holy and sinless, but it is rather a declaration that God has changed our status because he credits Jesus’ perfect righteousness to our account. We are justified because we are incorporated into the people of God and have been made pure because of our connection with our risen Head, Jesus.

Our justification was purchased by the punishment that Jesus received on the cross. As Isaiah says, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace . . . the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief . . . his soul makes an offering for guilt” (Isaiah 53:5–10).

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Death is not merely a natural phenomenon but a punishment for sin, since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Thus, we understand Jesus was taking our punishment since the sinless one did not deserve to die.

Our salvation depends not on good works or on any merit that God sees in us but rather on his free, undeserved mercy and grace. We do not contribute anything to our salvation but come to God with empty hands and a humble heart, asking for forgiveness. We are saved through the means of our faith.

We will be no more justified then than we are already now. No future act of obedience will make God more pleased with us or make us more saved than we are now. Yes, the full effects of our justification will only be ours in that glorious future, but we can also taste the reality of our salvation right now as our standing before God is entirely the same.

Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we can have confidence that we too will be raised. The resurrection causes in us the faith that saves, and it is faith in the resurrection itself that saves.

According to Romans, the substance of a saving response to God consists of a declaration of the lordship of Jesus, which presumably includes both his divinity and his right to rule over our lives, and faith in the fact of the resurrection. Thus Jesus’ resurrection is in this sense the source of the faith that is the grounds of our justification: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

It is important that we understand Jesus’ status on the cross. Two things were simultaneously true. He was still the only sinless man who had ever lived. He had not committed any wrong and had lived a life of righteousness that had warranted merit and reward from God. He, however, also took our sin and bore our punishment. He always remained the holy Son of God who was unstained by sin. Yet he was voluntarily “made” sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) and so was simultaneously subject to the wrath, rejection, and punishment of God.

Yet his Father never stopped loving him. God did not permanently reject him. Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” because at that moment it was as though a rift had opened in the Trinity and God really did turn his back on him. However, the Trinity did not in any sense break up. Some ask, how could God be displeased with his Son on the cross? The answer is that God was displeased with the sin that Jesus was carrying but remained pleased with Jesus’ infinite goodness, which was greater than that sin. Jesus bore the wrath of God against our sin, which had been imputed to him.

The credit of Jesus’ righteousness is much larger than the debt of our sin. His account had more positive approval than the negative disapproval that was due to all of us. The debt was paid, and as a result, as a righteous man and the beloved Son of God, the Father was entirely just to raise him.

Jesus had turned away God’s wrath, he had destroyed sin, our guilt could now be taken away, and we could be counted righteous. If the cross was Jesus’ payment for our sins, then the resurrection marked God’s acceptance of that payment.

Jesus is declared to still be righteous by his resurrection, just as he was declared to have become sin by his death. God’s wrath has been satisfied. Jesus resurrection was God justifying him, declaring him to be righteous. We get to share in that not guilty verdict and have our sins forgiven

The resurrection of Jesus has justifying power. Despite our usual understanding that the cross alone is responsible for our forgiveness, Paul is elsewhere very clear. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). We share in the justification of Jesus. Because of his right standing with God, his people are made righteous too.

Unless Jesus himself had been justified, it is impossible to see how we could have been. If he could not even save himself, how could he save others?

The resurrection shows the positive delight of God in his Son, which is now shared by us.

Many people think of salvation as the removal of our sin and its punishment. If Jesus had only wiped the slate clean, forgiven our wrongdoing, and taken the wrath God had for us, we would be left in a neutral position. We would no longer be under God’s displeasure, but he would not be pleased with us either. Many Christians, even if they do not articulate their theology like that, certainly live as though it was true. Many live as though they must still work to please God.

The resurrection was necessary to allow the credit of Jesus’ righteousness to be shared with us, for it demonstrated that the credit was greater than the debt. Jesus’ favour remained intact when sin was destroyed. God’s hatred for sin was not greater than his love for his Son. Righteousness remained available to credit to our account.

Jesus was so full of merit that not only did he have enough righteousness to cancel out our sin and enough that he deserved to be raised from the dead, but he still had abundantly more credit remaining in his account. As a result, our justification consists not just of a canceling of our debt, but also of an imputing to us of the righteousness of Christ.

It is not only “just as if I’d never sinned,” but also “just as if I’d already completed a perfect life.” Jesus doesn’t merely give us a clean slate and then sit back and watch whether we will mess it up again.

If you think of sin as producing an overdraft, Jesus takes over our bank account and pays off our debt. He then gives us access to his own account which holds so much money that no matter how much sin we commit we could never exhaust the supply.

This all sounds dangerous, and it sounds like Christians need not care about being good because God sees them as good already. But lets be clear that those who know they have been the recipients of such amazing grace know that Jesus loves them exactly as they are, but that he also loves them too much to leave them as they are. As a result, they do not live in such a way as to scorn the giver.

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About Adrian Warnock

Adrian Warnock

Medical doctor · Published author · Patheos writer since 2003

I have always lived within sixty miles of London, UK where I studied, worked and worshipped for thirty years. I began writing for this Patheos blog in April 2003, making it one of the longest-running individual columns on the Christian Internet. My writing here, on Substack, and in my books is influenced by my medical training, eight years of working as a psychiatrist in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), eighteen years working in medical research in the pharmaceutical industry, twenty-five years of serving as a pastoral leader in a growing multicultural church, and a difficult decade of lived experience with chronic illness, including blood cancer, and the unexpected losses, including early retirement, that resulted.

Together, these all shape a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach which I first wrote about on Patheos in 2013. This model offers us hope, compassion, and healing in all life’s challenges. This holistic approach is based on the idea that all truth is God’s truth.

At times, since my illness, my faith has been faint. I wondered if this was the end of my story. I was not strong enough to live for Jesus the way I wanted to. I could not change myself. And then hope reminded me: The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Just not all at once. Healing takes time. Compassion and patience sustain us over a lifetime of change. I aim to approach suffering with hope and compassion, and address tough questions including:

What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for you?

Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010; 2nd edition, Amazon, 2025)
Why is change so difficult? What causes the resistance?

The Traitor Within: Understanding and Healing Our Deceitful Hearts (Amazon, 2026)
Why is change so slow? How does grace lead us over a lifetime?

Amazing Grace: How Faith Grows in the Human Heart (Amazon, 2026)
How do you become a Christian? Can you know if you really are one?

Hope Reborn: How to Become a Christian and Live for Jesus Co-authored with Tope Koleoso (Christian Focus, 2014)

Qualifications

I qualified with an MB BS from the University of London (equivalent to an MD in the United States), hold postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry (MRCPsych) and pharmaceutical medicine (MFFM, DipPharmMed), and took theological training courses run by Newfrontiers.

Connect With me

Substack: adrianwarnock.substack.com (the best way to ask questions)
Twitter/X: @adrianwarnock
Facebook: Adrian Warnock
Email: [email protected] (I may not be able to respond to every message)

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