Quote 1374
the words for "righteous" (dikaios) and "righteousness" (dikaiosyne); it is typically used in a legal setting, where it means "declare innocent", "find righteous", "acquit."
Stephen Westerholm
Justification Reconsidered, 81.4K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
This doctrine is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. What Luther Says: An Anthology Vol 2 (704)
Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown. John Calvin: Selections from His Writings (95)
Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.Systematic Theology, 513
the Article of justification is the Master and the prince, the lord, the ruler, and judge, over all the kinds of doctrine, which preserves and governs the entire church doctrine and sets up our conscience in the sight of God.
In the plan of God, the covenant and laws of Mount Sinai played an important but temporary role as guardian of God's people until Messiah should come and deliver themJustification Reconsidered, 14
Let us remember that our justification means not only that our sins are forgiven and that we have been declared to be righteous by God Himself, not merely that we were righteous at that moment when we believed, but permanently righteous.Spiritual Depression (74)
It is its conviction that there is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only 'when we believe.' It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always on His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest.Miserable-Sinner Christianity in the Hands of the Rationalists, chapter III in Perfectionism, Part One, vol. 7 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (New York: Oxford University Press, repr., 2000), 113-114
No doctrine can be imagined so beautifully simple as justification by faith. It is not a dark mysterious truth, intelligible to none but the great, the rich, and the learned. It places eternal life within the reach of the most unlearned, and the poorest in the land. It must be of God.Old Paths, Chapter 8
Justification, of course, has no degrees and is completed at one moment and in only one act. Yet, in manifestation, consciousness, and effects it has many degrees.The Marrow of Theology, 161
But when we rise to the heavenly tribunal and place before our eyes that supreme Judge... then in an instant the vain confidence of men perishes and falls and conscience is compelled... to confess that it has nothing upon which it can rely before God.
To claim that the Paul of Galatians was exercised over the terms by which Gentiles can belong to the people of God while overlooking his (still more fundamental) concern with the dilemma facing all human beings responsible before God is to suffer from a peculiarly modern myopia.Justification Reconsidered, 18
For Gentile believers in Christ, to be circumcised now would be a disaster, not because they would unnecessarily take on requirements binding only on Jews, but because they would be abandoning Christ, whose death is the sole means by which Jews and Gentiles alike can find righteousness; and they would be embracing life under a covenant that can only condemn them. Such is the thrust of Galatians.Justification Reconsidered, 14-15
We have been called by God's will in Christ Jesus, and are not justified by ourselves. We are not justified by our own wisdom, understanding, godliness, or works that we have done with the right intentions. We are justified by that faith by which Almighty God has justified all men from the beginning.Epistula I 32
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