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Those who consider themselves to be Christians embrace a fundamental Biblical truth: we are justified by faith in Christ. We trust that Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross on our behalf has satisfied our sin debt before God. And so we stand before God’s throne clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
Justification by faith is a theme that runs through the New Testament. It is a prominent topic in the letters of the Apostle Paul. Paul frequently found it necessary to exhort those under his care to remember that a believer’s life of faith requires dependence on the Lord for their justification and not on their Christian performance. Salvation—righteousness before God—is a gift that we receive when we enter into a faith relationship with Jesus Christ. Salvation by faith and not by works was at the heart of Martin Luther’s reformation message.
I often remind my counseling clients that bond-servants of Christ are the freest people on the planet. We are free from the penalty and power of sin. We are free from the opinion and expectations of others (even and perhaps especially ourselves). And, we have nothing to learn and nothing to prove.
Justification by faith is not merely about our relationship with the Lord. It is my experience and observation that even while we trust the Lord for our justification before Him, we relate to others as if we have something to prove. How often, when we are confronted by someone who has been hurt by a manifestation of our sin nature, do we say, “I was just….” ? We may trust Jesus to restore our relationship with Him, but we nonetheless feel the need to try to justify ourselves—never successfully—in our relationships with others.
Please consider with me the relational power that Jesus offers us if depend upon Him for our justification as we deal with others. If Jesus is the source of our identity, value, and security, then we have the freedom to engage with others without the need to prove our worth. We need not defend ourselves when our sin nature surfaces. Instead, we can confess and repent. In doing so, we exercise important spiritual muscles as we rest in who we are in Christ. And, we bless the person we have hurt as we affirm their worth instead of defending our own. As we depend upon our Justifier, we become better able to build deeper and more intimate relationships with one another, which in turn reinforces our relationship with our Lord. It is in our relationship with the Lord and in our relationships with our brothers and sisters that we can truly know the joy of the Lord, and it is in the expression of these relationships that others will know us by our love.
