Justification and the Forgiveness of Sins

Justification, we have seen, addresses our legal status before God, and as we dive more deeply into the meaning of justification, let us bring into view several biblical truths. First, we recall that our Creator is the perfect Judge who rewards righteousness and punishes evil (Ps. 58:1; Rom. 2:1–11). Second, because He Himself is perfectly righteous, He demands that we be the same, free from sin, perfect as He is perfect (Matt. 5:48). Third, because we are conceived in Adam, we come into the world already guilty of sin and corrupted in all our faculties, tending toward sin until God intervenes by grace. Moreover, we have committed many personal sins of our own (Rom. 3:9–20; 5:12–20).

Sanctification deals with the corruption of sin, whereas justification deals with the guilt and legal consequences of sin. Francis Turretin writes that “remission of sins does not consist in a removal of the corruption or depraved quality, but in a gratuitous pardon of the criminality and guilt arising from it.” Turretin’s statement reflects texts such as today’s passage, which features one of the Apostle Paul’s most extended treatments of the doctrine of justification. Paul explains that justification entails our being counted righteous “apart from works” (Rom. 4:1–12). The terms “count,” “counts,” and “counted” all translate the Greek verb logizomai, a word used in accounting and legal discussions that means “to put on one’s record” or “to regard as.” When you “count” or “not count” something to someone, you are considering his status before the law, as having met or not met its demands, and you are placing or not placing a debt or credit to his ledger, so to speak. Another way to put this is that you are “imputing” or “not imputing” something to someone.

When we take all of the above into account and look particularly at Romans 4:6–8, we see that on one side of our justification, we have the nonimputation of sin. In other words, in justifying a sinner, God no longer regards that person as guilty of sin and worthy of eternal condemnation. Justification is our Creator’s pardon, remission, forgiveness of our sin. To be sure, justification is more than the forgiveness of sin, as we will see in our next study, but it is not less. Those whom God has justified have had their sins against Him—past, present, and future—all pardoned. Our sins may still have earthly consequences, but we are freed from the eternal condemnation of hell when we trust in Christ alone.