To say that God justifies the ungodly means quite simply that God in his amazing love treats the sinner as if he was a good man. Again, to put it very simply, God loves us, not for anything that we are, but for what he is.
~William Barclay (1907-1978)
And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
~ Ezekiel 36:23-28
Is it just me? Or do words just sometimes fail?
Justified.
i am one who has committed great evil.
And while He has surely forgiven me…..
And while He has made me VERY sensitive to any sin in my life now……
And while i am totally free from the need to sin ……
i still have a great capacity to commit treason against The Most High.
Apart from His Spirit, i can do nothing good. In my flesh, NOTHING good dwells.
And He declares me righteous.
He says i am perfect. i am justified. In fact, it is like i have never even sinned in His book now. By fully trusting in His perfect and righteous work of salvation, He imputes His righteousness onto me and fulfills the legal requirements needed for me to both escape judgement AND become a member of the family of G_d.
What?!?!
Yeah, justified is one really big word.
We don’t fully understand it (and may never), but we do know from His Word that He did these things because He – being G_d – always does the right thing. Righteousness is the foundation of what He is and does. And so, somehow, in the infinite, manifold wisdom of Himself He declared that it was the right thing to do in saving us. And so further, in doing what He did, He did it fully.
Said differently: G_d is right (and has the right) to save us. And He (being G_d) has saved us perfectly. We are saved to the uttermost. We are perfectly saved by a perfect G_d. And this is very good news. Further, not only has He declared us righteous, He has set about the work of actually making us fit the perfect mold into which He is forming us.
He starts with the heart. That old, cold stony thing gets turned into something that can feel. He frees it from the hard confines of selfishness and pride. He allows it to hurt without the need to lash out at the pain. And He teaches it to love; to love even (almost) as lavishly as He Loves us.
Then this Love catches a fire that never goes out. Yeah, it waxes and wanes. But the fire is eternal. As the final dross of stone fragments break away, we finally begin to Love Him back. We Love Him back with the same fire He has poured onto us. Then the same fire breaks free. We actually, for the first time in our existence, begin to truly love other people. We now know how to truly love one another because He has both declared and made us free to do it.
