Upon receiving a jury summons, the judge told those of us in the courtroom that if seated on the jury, we would not be deciding the innocence of the defendant, but his guilt. A jury can find a defendant “not guilty,” but that doesn’t mean he or she is innocent of the crime. A jury, after weighing all the evidence presented, is expected to render a fair and impartial verdict declaring the individual either guilty or not guilty. They cannot declare him innocent or righteous.

When God saves sinners, he begins by declaring their guilt, only to end by declaring them righteous. To have God assert a person’s “righteousness” is a theological act called “justification.” It is not that God makes us righteous through justification, but rather that he declares us righteous. However there are those who confuse the issue. For example, the official “Catechism of the Catholic Church” states justification is “conferred in baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy.” Such a declaration does not fully agree with Scripture. Romans 3:28, 30 says, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith…since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.”

The Reformation was in part a battle over this key concept. Martin Luther, for example, insisted that justification did not change anyone internally, nor was it based on anything an individual had done. Rather it is a declaration of God based solely upon the person and work of Christ. Many children have been taught that to be justified is to be “just as if I had never sinned.” Such a description may be helpful, but it is terribly incomplete.

Justification does not ignore sin. In fact it begins by declaring our guilt. However, because of who Christ is, God laid our sin on him at the cross while imputing his righteousness to us through faith. This allows God to declare us –righteous- in his sight because he has already laid our -guilt- on Jesus. Thus, God views those in Christ just as righteous as he himself is righteous.

Dana Arledge, Will Uminn, Kevin Farmer, Phil Meade