The doctrines of justification and union with Christ are the best pieces of news sinners in this sin-scarred world could ever hear. What we never could have dreamed has become ours. And what we have no capacity to earn is now ours in Christ.

The Need for Sacrifice

I spent one year in my personal devotions in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It was a rich experience. Here’s one thing I learned: You cannot see the brilliant glory of justification until you look at it through the lens of the Old Testament sacrificial system. Here’s how.

In that system of regularly repeated sacrifices, you begin to see how seriously God takes sin. Every drop of animal blood was a reminder of the huge gap between the perfectly holy God and his consistently unholy people. The bloody, noisy slaughter of each animal confronted every Israelite with this truth: His or her sin caused that animal’s death.

How in the world could the holy God have communion with unholy people? Would God bridge this huge, life-destroying sin gap, and if he would, how would he do it?

The answer is that sacrifices had to be made. These sacrifices had to satisfy the requirements of God’s justice so he could extend the mercy of his forgiveness to sinners. The problem with the Old Testament sacrifices was that the satisfaction they supplied was sadly temporary.

Clearly a greater, final sacrifice was needed for the justification of sinners to be final and complete. A payment for sin needed to be made that would once and for all satisfy God’s requirements and allow sinners to be forgiven and to live at peace with him.

This means that the entire old system, with all of its blood and gore, was a daily cry for the final Lamb of sacrifice, Jesus. He is our substitute. His substitutionary obedience and his substitutionary sacrifice mean that all who put their trust in him are fully and completely forgiven and able to stand before God as righteous.

This is what justification means. We are declared forgiven and righteous by God.

No sinner can earn, deserve, or achieve any of this on his own. Justification comes only through the righteous life and the acceptable death of Jesus. He is the only way by which justifying grace can flow to sinners like you and me.

Two Huge Tiny Words

Justification focuses on our legal standing before God. We are declared righteous! However, there’s more. Justification is also about a brand-new identity. We are God’s children!

This new identity can be summarized in two of the most important words in the Bible: in Christ.

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