Justification

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Our Word of the Year justice , plus 10 more. Yeggs, jackrollers, footpads, and more. How we chose 'justice'. And is one way more correct than the others? How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts. The awkward case of 'his or her'. Identify the word pairs with a common ancestor. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Build a chain of words by adding one letter at a time. Synonyms for justification Synonyms alibi , apology , defense , excuse , plea , reason Visit the Thesaurus for More.

Examples of justification in a Sentence He tried to present a justification for his behavior.

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There is no possible justification for what she did. His behavior is without justification. First Known Use of justification 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2. History and Etymology for justification see justify. The faith must produce good fruit as a sign lest it become the occasion for self-justification. After the Apostolic era , the concept of justification was secondary to issues such as martyrdom. Pelagius taught that one became righteous through the exertion of one's will to follow the example of Jesus' life. Over against this, Augustine taught [13] that we are justified by God, [14] as a work of his grace.

The accused heretic wrote an appeal of his own, declaring his innocence, which was duly accepted by Innocent's successor, Pope Zosimus. However, the Council of Carthage again renounced Pelagius with papal approval. Christian traditions answer questions about the nature, function and meaning of justification quite differently. Is justification an event occurring instantaneously or is it as an ongoing process? Is justification effected by divine action alone monergism , by divine and human action together synergism or by human action?

Is justification permanent or can it be lost? What is the relationship of justification to sanctification , the process whereby sinners become righteous and are enabled by the Holy Spirit to live lives pleasing to God? Catholics and Protestants believe that we are justified by grace alone through faith, a faith that is active in charity and good works fides formata in case of Catholics, whilst Protestants believe through faith by grace they are justified.

Most of Protestants believe they are justified by God's grace which is a free gift but it is received through faith alone. Catholics believe they are justified by God's grace which is a free gift but it is received through baptism initially, through the faith which worketh by love in the continuous life of the Christian and through the sacrament of reconciliation if the grace of justification is lost through mortal sin.

To Catholics, justification is "a translation, from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Savior", [16] including the transforming of a sinner from the state of unrighteousness to the state of holiness. This transformation is made possible by accessing the merit of Christ , made available in the atonement, through faith and the sacraments.

In Catholic theology, all are born in a state of original sin , meaning that the sinful nature of Adam is inherited by all.

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Following Augustine, the Catholic Church asserts that people are unable to make themselves righteous; instead, they require justification. Catholics use Mark 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.

This has the effect of combating sin in the individual's life, causing him to become more righteous both in heart and in action. If one falls into mortal sin they lose justification and it can be gained back through the sacrament of confession. At the Final Judgment , the individual's works will then be evaluated. This is the permanent justification. In the Council of Trent , which Catholics believe to be infallible, the Catholic Church declared in the VII session in canon IV that, "If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification;-though all the sacraments are not indeed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema excommunicated.

Eastern Christianity, including both Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy , tends to not have a strong emphasis on justification as compared to Catholicism or Protestantism , seeing it as part of the concept of "theosis"; justification is often viewed by Eastern theologians has too highly forensic and reject it. In large part, this de-emphasis on justification is historical. The Eastern church sees humanity as inheriting the disease of sin from Adam, but not his guilt ; hence, there is no need in Eastern theology for any forensic justification. The Orthodox see salvation as a process of theosis , in which the individual is united to Christ and the life of Christ is reproduced within him.

Thus, in one sense, justification is an aspect of theosis. In the words of one Orthodox Bishop:. Justification is a word used in the Scriptures to mean that in Christ we are forgiven and actually made righteous in our living. Justification is not a once-for-all, instantaneous pronouncement guaranteeing eternal salvation, regardless of how wickedly a person might live from that point on. Neither is it merely a legal declaration that an unrighteous person is righteous.

Rather, justification is a living, dynamic, day-to-day reality for the one who follows Christ. The Christian actively pursues a righteous life in the grace and power of God granted to all who continue to believe in Him. Anglicans , particularly high-church Anglo-Catholics , often follow Catholicism and Orthodoxy in believing both man and God are involved in justification.

The objective is the act of God in Christ restoring the covenant and opening it to all people. The subjective aspect is faith, trust in the divine factor, acceptance of divine mercy. Apart from the presence of the subjective aspect there is no justification. People are not justified apart from their knowledge or against their will God forgives and accepts sinners as they are into the divine fellowship, and that these sinners are in fact changed by their trust in the divine mercy.

In historic Anglicanism, the eleventh article of the Thirty-Nine Articles made it clear that justification cannot be earned, "We are accounted righteous before God However, certain Anglican theologians especially Anglo-Catholics argue for a faith characterized by faithfulness , where good works and the Sacraments play an important role in the life of the Christian believer.

As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in their 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. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace , attainable only through faith in Jesus.

Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. When God's righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God's action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. He explained his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:. The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification Romans 3: He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world John 1: All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood Romans 3: This is necessary to believe.

This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls Mark Traditionally, Lutherans have taught forensic or legal justification, a divine verdict of acquittal pronounced on the believing sinner.

God declares the sinner to be "not guilty" because Christ has taken his place, living a perfect life according to God's law and suffering for his sins. For Lutherans justification is in no way dependent upon the thoughts, words, and deeds of those justified through faith alone in Christ.

The new obedience that the justified sinner renders to God through sanctification follows justification as a consequence, but is not part of justification. Lutherans believe that individuals receive this gift of salvation through faith alone. For Lutherans, justification provides the power by which Christians can grow in holiness. Such improvement comes about in the believer only after he has become a new creation in Christ.

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This improvement is not completed in this life: Christians are always "saint and sinner at the same time" simul iustus et peccator [52] —saints because they are holy in God's eyes, for Christ's sake, and do works that please him; sinners because they continue to sin until death. 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.

Justification - Wikipedia

An individual's act of faith then results in becoming part of the body of Christ, which allows one to appropriate Christ's atonement for oneself, erasing the guilt of sin. 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. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort. 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.

John Calvin 's understanding of justification was in substantial agreement with Martin Luther's. Calvin expanded this understanding by emphasizing that justification is a part of one's union with Christ. The center of Calvin's soteriology was Union with Christ. Therefore, anyone who is justified will also receive all of the benefits of salvation, including sanctification. Thus, while Calvin agreed in substance with the "simultaneously saint and sinner" formulation, [57] he was more definite in asserting that the result of being justified is a consequent sanctification.

For Calvin, Adam and Jesus functioned as federal heads , or legal representatives, meaning that each one represented his people through his actions. When Jesus achieved righteousness, all of his people were accounted to be righteous at that moment. In this way Calvin attempted to simultaneously solve the problems of original sin, justification, and atonement.

Some of the technical details of this union with Christ are tied into Calvin's understanding of the atonement and of predestination. One outcome of Calvin's change in center over against Luther was that he saw justification as a permanent feature of being connected to Christ: This idea was expressed by the Synod of Dort as the "perseverance of the saint.

In recent times, two controversies have arisen in the Reformed churches over justification. The first concerns the teaching of "final justification" by Norman Shepherd ; the second is the exact relationship of justification, sanctification, and church membership, which is part of a larger controversy concerning the Federal Vision. According to the doctrine of The New Church , as explained by Emanuel Swedenborg , the doctrine of justification by faith alone is a false belief which forms the foundation of much of Protestant theology. Man must of his own volition justify himself, and yet believe that justification comes from God only.

Not only must man believe in God, but must love God with all his strength, and his neighbor as himself. It is from this that man's belief becomes a living and saving belief. Man's mind consists of understanding and will; and as the understanding deals with thinking and the will with doing, so when man's acknowledgment is merely from the thought of the understanding he comes to the Lord with only half of his mind; but when there is doing he comes with all of it; and this is to believe.

Universalism became a significant minority view in the 18th century, popularized by thinkers such as John Murray the American, not the Scot.

Justification (theology)

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. Conservative and liberal varieties of universalism then point in different directions. Pluralistic Unitarian Universalism asserts that many different religions all lead to God. Others teach that God's love is sufficient to cover for sins, thus embracing some form of the moral influence theory of Peter Abelard. For some universalists, justification either was accomplished once and for all in the crucifixion, or is altogether unnecessary.

Wright , and James Dunn , have given rise to a re-thinking of the historical Protestant understanding of justification. Proponents of this view 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.

This view has been strongly criticized by a number of Reformed ministers and theologians including John Piper , D. Carson , and Sinclair Ferguson. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also known as the LDS or, informally the 'Mormon' church , believes that while justification is a gift from God [67] , the recipient must choose it through striving to do good works to the extent possible.

The ancient American Prophet Nephi wrote " In LDS theology, justification is not earned through good works, but rather chosen by striving to rid one's life of sin. This allows God to rescue his children from sin while not infringing on their agency. Luther's reformulation of justification introduced the phrase sola fide , or "by faith alone". That phrase has been one of the uniting factors among various Protestant denominations; despite the wide variety of doctrines and practices among Protestants, they all agree that one is saved often meaning "justified" by faith alone. Roman Catholics and most Lutherans as represented by most of the Lutheran councils worldwide that agreed with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification JDDJ , believe that they have found much agreement on the subject of justification.

Other Lutherans, especially Confessional Lutherans , maintain that this agreement fails to properly define the meaning of faith, sin, and other essential terms and thus do not support the Lutheran World Federation's agreement. Likewise, Catholics affirming the real and serious differences between the decrees of the Council of Trent and the normative Lutheran documents collected in the Book of Concord equally reject the " JDDJ " as fatally flawed.

Wright has written extensively on the topic of justification [69] see also New Perspective on Paul. His views are troubling to many evangelicals, and have sparked some debate. Those concerned with his view of justification worry that he marginalizes the importance of the penal substitutionary transaction that takes place at salvation. Defenders of Wright respond by saying that, while the bishop acknowledges advocacy of penal substitution in many biblical texts, he does not see its application in scriptures other evangelicals might.

Proponents of Wright's view of justification warn detractors to "read him well" before criticizing his theology forthright. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the theological concept.