Romans 3:24

"We now come to the greatest single verse in the entire Bible on the manner of justification by faith: We entreat you, study this verse. We have seen many a soul, upon understanding it, come into peace." [Note: Newell, p. 114.]

It is all who believe (Romans 3:22), not all who have sinned (Romans 3:23), who receive justification (Romans 3:24). [Note: See Blue, pp. 338-50.] Justification is an act, not a process. And it is something God does, not man. As mentioned previously, justification is a forensic (legal) term. On the one hand it means to acquit (Exodus 23:7; Deuteronomy 25:1; Acts 13:39). On the other positive side it means to declare righteous. It does not mean to make righteous.

"The word never means to make one righteous, or holy; but to account one righteous. Justification is not a change wrought by God in us, but a change of our relation to God." [Note: Newell, p. 114. See also Moo, p. 227.]

Justification describes a person’s status in the sight of the law, not the condition of his or her character. The condition of one’s character and conduct is that with which sanctification deals.

"Do not confuse justification and sanctification. Sanctification is the process whereby God makes the believer more and more like Christ. Sanctification may change from day to day. Justification never changes. When the sinner trusts Christ, God declares him righteous, and that declaration will never be repealed. God looks on us and deals with us as though we had never sinned at all!" [Note: Wiersbe, 1:522.]

God, the judge, sees the justified sinner "in Christ" (i.e., in terms of his relation to His Son) with whom the Father is well pleased (Romans 8:1; cf. Philippians 3:8-9; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Justification includes forgiveness but is larger than forgiveness.

"God declares that He reckons righteous the ungodly man who ceases from all works, and believes on Him (God), as the God who, on the ground of Christ’s shed blood, ’justifies the ungodly’ (4.5). He declares such an one righteous: reckoning to him all the absolute value of Christ’s work,-of His expiating death, and of His resurrection, and placing him in Christ: where he is the righteousness of God: for Christ is that! . . .

"We do not need therefore a personal ’standing’ before God at all. This is the perpetual struggle of legalistic theology,-to state how we can have a ’standing’ before God. But to maintain this is still to think of us as separate from Christ (instead of dead and risen with Him), and needing such a ’standing.’ But if we are in Christ in such an absolute way that Christ Himself has been made unto us righteousness, we are immediately relieved from the need of having any ’standing.’ Christ is our standing, Christ Himself! And Christ being the righteousness of God, we, being thus utterly and vitally in Christ before God, have no other place but in Him. We are ’the righteousness of God in Christ.’" [Note: Newell, pp. 100, 104.]

God bestows justification freely as a gift. The basis for His giving it is His own grace, not anything in the sinner.

"Grace means pure unrecompensed kindness and favor." [Note: Lewis Sperry Chafer, Grace, p. 2.]

Grace (Gr. charis) is the basis for joy (chara), and it leads to thanksgiving (eucharistia).

The redemption that is in (i.e., came by) Christ Jesus is the means God used to bring the gift of justification to human beings. The Greek word for redemption used here (apolutroseos) denotes a deliverance obtained by purchase (cf. Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Peter 1:18; 1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23; Galatians 3:13). Everywhere in the New Testament this Greek word, when used metaphorically, refers to "deliverance effected through the death of Christ for the retributive wrath of a holy God and the merited penalty of sin . . ." [Note: A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. "apolutrosis," p. 65.]

Paul’s use of "Christ Jesus," rather than the normal "Jesus Christ," stresses the fact that God provided redemption by supplying the payment. That payment was the Messiah (Christ) promised in the Old Testament who was Jesus of Nazareth.

Though the question of who received the ransom price has divided scholars, Scripture is quite clear that Jesus Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice to God (Luke 23:46).

"Before you leave Romans 3:24, apply it to yourself, if you are a believer. Say of yourself: ’God has declared me righteous without any cause in me, by His grace, through the redemption from sin’s penalty that is in Christ Jesus.’ It is the bold, believing use for ourselves of the Scripture we learn, that God desires; and not merely the knowledge of Scripture." [Note: Newell, p. 116.]