The Judge of the Universe, because of the atoning death of His Beloved Son on our behalf, declares us to be righteous. Our union with Christ makes it so that His death becomes our death, His resurrection our resurrection, His life our life, His righteousness our righteousness. Although we have not yet been perfectly conformed to His image, we are certainly predestined to that end (Rom. 8:29). In other words, God will make us righteous, but this is not what the New Testament speaks about for our salvation. Rather, this is sanctification in which the Holy Spirit works to change us into Christ’s image, but it is a life-long process of ups and downs (see chapter 13).
Blessings of Justification
What is accomplished by God through justification? First of all, as the Confession states, “pardoning their sins” is one of the blessings coming from our justification. For example, Paul says:
Rom. 4:4-8 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Notice how closely is justification tied to the forgiveness of sins that Paul calls upon Psalms 32:1-2 as evidence for the fruit of justification. In this passage, we come also to the second blessing of justification, namely, our faith being counted as righteousness (v. 5), or to state it in another way: “accounting and accepting their persons as righteous”. We spoke about this above (see here). In this connection, we should observe that justification does not only consist of the forgiveness of sins but also is tied to the fact that we are accounted righteous. Matthew Poole comments on v. 5 as follows:
This testimony is taken out of Psa 32:1, and it is well enough accommodated to the occasion, for those two, to remit sin, and to impute righteousness, are inseparable. The one is put here figuratively for the other. They mistake, who take occasion from hence to make justification to consist only in remission of sin: the text will not bear it. The apostle’s design is, not hereby to declare the full nature of justification, which he had done before; but only to prove the freedom of it from any respect to works, in the instance of this principal and essential part of it. Remission of sin and the imputation of righteousness differ, as the cause and the effect. Remission of sin presupposeth imputation of righteousness; and he that hath his sins remitted, hath Christ’s righteousness first imputed, that so they may be remitted and forgiven to sinners.[16]
Philip Schaff comments on the blessedness of v. 6:
Pronounceththe blessedness; speaks the congratulation, the pronouncing blessed. The quotation is of forgiveness, of not being reckoned a sinner; but the Apostle takes this as equivalent to the Lord reckoneth righteousness. ‘It is implied by Paul, that the remission of sin is equivalent to the imputation of righteousness, that there is no negative state of innocence, none intermediate between acceptance for righteousness, and rejection for sin’ (Alford).[17]
These are the two blessings of justification: forgiv...
