An excerpt from his book: "Redemption Accomplished and Applied". Took me a while to finish reading this writing, as I try to read it only on subways and such.
Very mature writing on Justification and faith. Here is my summary:
- Justification is not our apology, nor self-excusation, nor confession, nor good feeling from confession, nor religious exercise.
- To understand justification, we must turn our thought to the action of God in justifying the ungodly.
- At no point is the free grace of God more manifest than in his justifying act.
- Human perversion twisted the meaning of justification.
- Justification does not mean to make righteous, or good, or holy, or upright. Application of redemption does in which God makes people holy.
- Justification does not refer to renewing and sanctifying grace of God which leads to perfect glorification by God, which is one of primary errors of Romish Church: regarding justification as the infusion of grace, as renewal and sanctification whereby we are made holy. Confusing justification and renewal, it has eliminated from the message of the gospel the great truth of free and full justification by grace. Hence we have Luther.
- He simply declares that in his judgment the person is not guilty in terms of the law relevant to the case. Justification is simply a declaration.
- The function of a judge is not to make anyone righteous. Prov. 17:15.
- It is highly commendable if we could convert a wicked man and make him a righteous man. That is God regenerating a man. Simply declaring, but not to make, him to be righteous when he is not is to justify the wicked. It is declarative.
- Justification is contrasted with condemnation (cf. Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15; Rom. 8:33,34). Condemn never means to make wicked, and so justify cannot mean to make good or upright.
- Justification is forensic. Also it is judicial or juridical. These terms distinguish between the kind of action which justification involves and the kind of action involved in regeneration. Regeneration is an act of God in us; justification is a judgment of God with respect to us. Recognizing this distinction is crucial for the purity of the gospel.
- How can God justify the ungodly? He is just when he justifies the ungodly, Rom. 4:5; Rom. 3:19-24, Rom. 3:26. If man were to do this it would be an abomination in God's sight.
- There is no deviation from the rule that what is declared to be is presupposed to be in God's justification of sinners. The judgment is according to truth. He causes to be righteous state or relation which is declared to be. He constitutes the ungodly righteous and consequently can declare them to be righteous.
- Abraham was not Justified on the ground of faith and because of faith. Faith itself is not the requirement necessary for a full and perfect justification. Scripture instead uses terms like by faith, through faith, upon faith. It never speaks of our being justified on account of faith or because of faith. Faith is not itself the righteousness.
- Righteousness wrought in us would not obliterate the sin and unrighteousness of the past and the condemnation resting upon us for our past sin. Justification includes the remission of all sin and condemnation.
- We must bear in mind that the righteousness wrought in us by regeneration and sanctification is never in this life perfect. Hence it cannot in any sense measure up to the kind of righteousness required, the perfect righteousness.
- A righteousness wrought in us equips for the enjoyment of eternal life but it cannot be the ground of such a reward.
- Justification is not by the righteousness of performance on our part; it is not of works (Rom. 3:20; 4:2; 10:3, 4; Gal. 2:16; 3:11; 5:4; Phil. 3:9).
- The perfect righteousness is not found in anything which God does in us. It is in Christ we are justified (Acts 13:39; Rom. 8:1; 1 Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:17).
- The righteousness of God which is revealed from faith to faith is contrasted not only with human unrighteousness but with human righteousness. It is righteousness which is divine in quality. It is not, of course, the divine attribute of justice or righteousness. (This I believe belongs to the human nature of Christ).
- The righteousness of justification is the righteousness and obedience of Christ (Rom. 5:17, 18, 19). It is the righteousness of Christ wrought by him in human nature, the righteousness of his obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. A righteousness of the God-man. A righteousness which measures up to the requirements of our sinful and sin-cursed situation. It fulfills all demands of a complete and irrevocable justification because it is a righteousness of divine property and character, a righteousness undefiled and inviolable.
- The activity on the part of the recipient is that of faith. There is a faith which is consequent to justification. We cannot believe that we have been justified until we are first justified. But there is good reason for insisting that this reflex or secondary act of faith is not the faith in view when we are said to be justified by faith and that this faith by which we are justified is the initial and primary act of faith in Jesus Christ by which in our effectual calling we are united to Christ and invested with his righteousness unto our acceptance with God and justification by him. Galatians 2:16: Paul here says that we have believed in Jesus Christ in order that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, in a word, faith in Christ is in order to justification, and is therefore regarded as antecedent to it (cf. also Romans 4:23,24).
- Faith, though of its action is supervened by the justifying act of God, that God justifies those who believe in Jesus and upon the event of faith, but we must remember, it is an act or exercise on the part of men, not God. We are justified by faith and faith is the prerequisite.
- Only faith is brought into relation to justification. Rom 4:16. In order that it might be according to grace.
- Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. (Many on the internet credit this quote to R.C. Sproul, which is not wrong, if it is acknowledged that John Murray predates Sproul.) Faith works itself out through love (cf. Gal. 5:6). Faith without works is dead (cf. James 2:17-20). It is living faith that justifies and living faith unites to Christ both in the virtue of his death and in the power of his resurrection.
- No one has entrusted himself to Christ for deliverance from the guilt of sin who has not also entrusted himself to him for deliverance from the power of sin. Rom. 6:1,2.