On Justification

From Leon Morris:

Justification reminds us that there is a legal aspect to our salvation. In the last resort the law of God is not swept aside a though it did not matter. It mattered so much that Jesus died to bring salvation in a way that is right (Rom. 3:26). This needs emphasis in a day like ours when many people have lost touch with the moral values we see in the Bible and deny that there are moral absolutes. If all morality is relative, then righteousness has little to do with salvation, and sinners are not really blameworthy. 'To understand all is to forgive all' is the kind of maxim that appeals to our generation.

But it does not square with the New Testament. To understand and to make due allowance is important, but it does not make right what is wrong. The Bible is clear that some things are right and some things are wrong. Those who do not reach God's standards are sinners and deserving of punishment. The Christian way does not become meaningful to us until we see this and recognize ourselves for what we are - sinners who have not attained God's standards, sinners who are 'without hope and without God in the world' (Eph. 2:12). We are in trouble because God really means us to live up to the highest and best we know, not simply to find good excuses for not making it.

But when all the evidence goes to provide a verdict of 'Guilty' on Judgment Day, God intervened. This way of looking at salvation makes the cross indispensable, for it was there that the claims of God's law were fully discharged. God's salvation accords with right. God is just in the means whereby salvation is accomplished.

---From The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance, pp. 201-202.

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