Justification is a gift of God’s sheer grace, not a reward for any merit or works of ours. For God’s ‘grace’ is his spontaneous generosity, his free and unmerited favour, his gracious kindness to the undeserving. Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming, God giving.

Justification (its source God and his grace, its ground Christ and his cross, and its means faith alone, altogether apart from works) is the heart of the gospel and unique to Christianity. No other system, ideology or religion proclaims a free forgiveness and a new life to those who have done nothing to deserve it but a lot to deserve judgment instead. On the contrary, all other systems teach some form of self-salvation through good works of religion, righteousness or philanthropy. Christianity, by contrast, is not in its essence a religion at all; it is a gospel, the gospel, good news that God’s grace has turned away his wrath, that God’s Son has died our death and borne our judgment, that God has mercy on the undeserving, and that there is nothing left for us to do, or even contribute. Faith’s only function is to receive what grace offers.

Justification is a legal pronouncement which is instantaneous. As soon as any sinner turns from his sin and commits himself in absolute trust to Jesus Christ who died for him and rose again, God pronounces him righteous. He is ‘accepted in the Beloved’ (Eph. 1:6), or ‘justified in Christ’ (Gal. 2:17).