Declared Righteous

The Reformers believed that Scripture taught a significantly different view of justification than that promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman church said that God declares a person just after he has been baptized and the righteousness of Christ has been infused into his soul. In other words, when God evaluates a person, He does not declare him just unless He actually finds righteousness in him. His justification must be true by definition.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other Reformers, of course, insisted that justification is solely by faith, which led to the Reformation slogan sola fide (“by faith alone”). Their view has been called “forensic justification.” The word forensic is used in both legal matters and to describe types of oratory, the making of declarations. Therefore, the Reformed view is that justification occurs when God makes a legal pronouncement, declaring a person to be righteous in His sight. And what is the basis for this declaration? Simply put, it is the righteousness of Christ. Whereas the Roman Catholics said God infuses Jesus’ righteousness into a person’s soul, rendering him actually righteous, the Protestants said that God imputes Jesus’ righteousness to a person. This, too, is a legal maneuver—God credits the righteousness of Christ to the “account” of the sinner, with the result that, when God studies the sinner’s record, He finds only righteousness (the sins of the person having been imputed to Christ and punished on the cross).

The Reformed view of justification never declares that the sinner is actually righteous. Though he is now declared righteous, he remains sinful. That led Luther to describe justified sinners as simul justus et peccator, a Latin phrase meaning “at the same time just and sinner.” At first glance, this sounds like a contradiction. However, a contradiction occurs when we say something is what it is and also that it is something else at the same time and in the same relationship. But justified sinners are not just and sinners at the same time and in the same relationship. They are just in one sense (legally) and sinners in another (actually). Luther’s point, which meant so much to him personally, is that sinners do not have to wait until they achieve actual righteousness before God will accept them in His sight as justified.