Justification (theology)

The collective bodies of most of the largest Christian denominations, including Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Methodist, have affirmed a 1999 Lutheran–Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification that details this consensus, noting different "distinctive emphases" that individual communions consider essential to state.

Broadly speaking, Catholics have spoken of justification—which in their view initially occurs at baptism, partaking of the sacraments and the resulting grace of cooperation with God's will (sanctification)—as an organic whole: one act of reconciliation brought to completeness in glorification.

[4][5] In the Lutheran and Reformed denominational traditions, this righteousness is portrayed as imputed to the inherently ungodly, by grace, through faith in the voluntary sacrifice and resurrection of Christ.

The Reformed, Lutheran and Anglican traditions emphasize that "the observance of the moral law is not necessary either as a prerequisite for obtaining justification or as a means for preserving it.

"[3][6] Therefore, a righteousness from God is viewed as being credited to the sinner's account through faith alone, apart from works, being based solely on the "blood of Christ".

"[9] In Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theology, anyone who has been justified will produce good works as a product of faith, as a result of God's grace in sanctification.

Notable exceptions to the idea that sanctification and good works always accompany justification are found in Free Grace Theology held by many Independent Baptist churches.

[16][17] The Reformed tradition generally holds that justification can never truly be lost: for those who have been justified by grace, will certainly persevere through faith until the return of Christ himself.

Justification as a concept is mentioned in the works of early Church Fathers,[24] and in the sermons of John Chrysostom, but it is not developed until Augustine's conflict with Pelagius.

When they view the good works of Christians as the fruits and signs of justification and not as one's own 'merits', they nevertheless also understand eternal life in accord with the New Testament as unmerited 'reward' in the sense of the fulfillment of God's promise to the believer."

Likewise, some Catholics affirming real and serious differences between the decrees of the Council of Trent and the normative Lutheran documents collected in the 1580 Book of Concord equally reject the 1999 "JDDJ" as fatally flawed.

For the Catholic and Orthodox Christian, justification and sanctification are different ways of speaking of the same reality, rather than positing an actual distinction between the two.

As the individual then progresses in his Christian life, he continues to receive God's grace both directly through the Holy Spirit as well as through the sacraments.

[46] The Greek term for justification (δικαίωσις, dikaiōsis) is not understood by most Eastern theologians to mean simply being pardoned of one's sins.

[50]"The Holy Spirit effects the vocation, the illumination, the conversion, the justification, the rebirth in Baptism and the sanctification in the Church..."[51] Anabaptist theology emphasizes a "faith that works"; Anabaptists teach that "justification [began] a dynamic process by which the believer partook of the nature of Christ and was so enabled to live increasingly like Jesus.

Consequently, early Anabaptism expected an affirmative answer to two basic questions: 1) "Do you believe that Christ bore your sins?"

"[52]Menno Simons wrote in his "Confession of the Distressed Christians" that salvation was not in "works, words or sacraments" but are found only in Christ.

In 1539 he wrote the qualities of this faith; " true evangelical faith... cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it... clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it.

He became convinced that the Church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity, the most important of which, for Luther, was the doctrine of justification—God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace.

[63]Traditionally, Lutherans have taught "forensic" (or legal) justification, a divine verdict of acquittal pronounced on the believing sinner.

Thus, while Calvin agreed in substance with the "simultaneously saint and sinner" formulation,[75] he was more definite in asserting that the result of being justified is a consequent sanctification.

(see New Perspective on Paul) John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was heavily influenced by the thought of Dutch Reformed theologian Jacob Arminius and Hugo Grotius' governmental theory of the atonement.

Hence, he held that God's work in us consisted of prevenient grace, which undoes the effects of sin sufficiently that we may then freely choose to believe.

[81] According to the Articles of Religion in the Book of Discipline of the Methodist Church: We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.

Justification is that gracious and judicial act of God whereby a soul is granted complete absolution from all guilt and a full release from the penalty of sin (Romans 3:23-25).

[83]However, once the individual has been so justified, one must then continue in the new life given; if one fails to persevere in the faith and in fact falls away from God in total unbelief, the attachment to Christ – and with it, justification – may be lost.

Universalism holds that Christ's death on the cross has entirely atoned for the sin of humanity; hence, God's wrath is or will be satisfied for all people.

Others teach that God's love is sufficient to cover for sins, thus embracing some form of the moral influence theory of Peter Abelard.

They argue that Paul's letters have too often been read through the lens of the Protestant Reformation rather than in the context of first-century Second Temple Judaism, and therefore impose a religion of legalism on their understanding of Pharisaism.

concerned with his view of justification worry that he marginalizes the importance of the penal substitutionary transaction that takes place at salvation.