Jeff:

I knew you would disagree. But there is not much exegesis needed to support this view. According to you and most, this view teaches that although Christ bore the sin of His elect at the cross, He does not justify them, or impute Christ’s righteousness to them until they believe. Many interpret Romans 5:1 to mean that faith is the cause of God justifying the sinner, and thereby make justification simultaneous with faith. However, the context reveals that God conditioned the justification of the sinner entirely upon the work of Christ in His death and resurrection, NOT FAITH. “Therefore,” refers back to the preceding verse in Romans 4:25- “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” By putting the comma after justified rather than faith, which is how it should read, the meaning is “Therefore being, or having been declared just, (based on the redeeming work of Christ alone), by or, out of faith we have peace with God…” In other words, the peace with God, enjoyed in the sinner’s conscience, is the result of God-given faith, that sinner already having been justified by the death of Christ. The peace of God enjoyed by the justified sinner comes by God-given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is not the reason that God justifies the sinner; it is the result of God having justified him through the blood and righteousness of Christ. Faith is the evidence of the justification that Christ has obtained by His righteous life and death. Those whom God justified by the blood (death) of His Son, He will most certainly in time cause to believe because their sins have already been put away, and He declared them righteous at the cross, Romans 5:9. Colossians 2:13 clearly shows that the reason God regenerates sinners is not in order to justify them, but because they have been justified in Christ through His redemptive work-“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;”
Again, some might conclude then that faith is not necessary in the grand doctrine of justification, if Christ already accomplished it at the cross. The answer is that it has no part as our ground of justification before God; however, it is clearly the EVIDENCE that God has justified that sinner in Christ by His obedience unto death. In time, every justified sinner will by God’s grace and Spirit come to Christ in repentance, believing the record God has given of His Son and submitting to Christ as the end (fulfillment) of the law for righteousness.

We dare not make faith the cause of justification; any more than one would make the will of man the cause of saving grace. The meaning is that in His time, all whom God has justified in Christ, through the death of His Son, He will most certainly cause to believe on Christ. If you are a believer, it is the righteousness and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that already justifies you before God, not your faith. If my justification is in any way conditioned on or tied to my faith, what then when my faith is weak, or seems completely gone. To found justification upon even the grace of faith is to lay it on weak knees at best, and in that, there is no comfort. No! Faith is the result of the Sovereign Spirit’s work in your heart, causing you to enter into the peace, joy, and fellowship established already for you by Christ’s work at the cross. If you are His by grace, faith is the evidence of God having justified you already in Christ. When Christ cried, “It is finished,” it is!

The best definition of the justification is that found in Scripture itself,

Romans 3:24 “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”
Romans 5:9 “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”


When the Scriptures speak of the blood of Christ, it is synonymous with His death. Note how the Scriptures tie our justification before God directly to the death of Christ and redemption in Him. Why would someone say that Christ redeemed sinners at the cross but God did not justify them there?

To say that Christ died, and yet the benefits of His death are not actually accounted until one believes is a conditional salvation message and foreign to Scripture.

There is only one justification of sinners before God, and that accomplished by Christ in His cross death. Like the orange cone, we must not confuse the different views of justification as different types of justification or times of justification. Ken Winmer There is but one, whether viewed from eternity, by faith, or through works. It was all accomplished at the cross

This is as exegetical is it will get from me Jeff. There is enough there to chew on.

Joe

There never was a sinner half as big as Christ is as a Savior.