June 7 – LD 23, Day 4: The Blessedness of Justification
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Romans 8:31-39
Justification is a great
work of God in Jesus Christ, and is a blessing that forms the basis for all the
other blessings of salvation. If we are not justified before God, we do not have
a right or claim to any of the blessings of salvation, for we are then sinners,
worthy only of hell.
But if God justifies us,
then we have the rightful claim to all the blessings of salvation, for we are
found by God to be without sin.
This is a very personal
confession on the part of the believer. The teacher in this classroom asks:
What doth it profit thee now that thou believest
all this? And the answer we give to our teacher is this: I am
righteous in Christ, before God, and an heir of eternal life.
This very personal
aspect of justification is underscored in the passage of Scripture assigned to
us in our lesson: Rom 8:31-39. The scene is a courtroom where God is Judge and
into which we are brought to be judged. We have many accusers: the devil is there
to point out that we really belong to him and have no right to heaven. The
world is present to bring accusations against us that we are no better than
they are. And our own consciences condemn us so that we are forced by the
testimony of our consciences to agree with our accusers and to admit with
hanging heads: Yes, it is all true.
But then the Judge
speaks. After examining all the evidence and weighing it carefully in the
scales of absolute justice, the Judge pronounces us innocent: “I have not found
iniquity in Jacob, neither transgression in
At first, we are not
sure we have correctly heard it. It seems too good to be true. But then, the
sentence of the divine Judge sinks into our souls and we become confident that
this amazing wonder is ours. And so we turn on our accusers: “Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God’s elect? Who is he that condemneth?”
That means that, in our
lives, when the devil or the world, or even our own consciences try to sow the
seeds of doubt in our minds by pointing out our sins, we are able to say: “Go
away devil; get far from me, world; be still, conscience. I know that what you
say is true. But I have Christ. He is mine. He bore my sins. He earned for me
my innocence. He freely and graciously gives it to me. God imputes it to me for
Christ’s sake. Whatever you say is a lie. I am righteous in Christ before God.”