justification on Relationship with God

Holy God We are holy, Not in the sense of any rightness within us, But because we are in a relationship with you, We are holy because you gift that it is so. We are not called to into a division of us...

We affirm the good news that this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, s...

Introduction In Romans 10 we are encouraged to call upon the Lord. Lest we believe that our returning to God is ultimately a matter of works or our own merit, Paul wants us to see that repentance fi...

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

Justified…for what? This passage from Romans 5 sits at the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification: Paul’s statement that “we are justified by faith” is as clear as we could ask for! The fa...

Justified…for what? This passage from Romans 5 sits at the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification: Paul’s statement that “we are justified by faith” is as clear as we could ask for! The f...

It is as God identifies Himself with man—His participation and intervention is as direct and complete as that—it is as He becomes a man and as this man the Representative of all men, it is as He makes...

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace.

My faith life, like that of every one else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morni...

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

I tell you this: "To those who have received Christ and believed in his name, God has given the right to be called children of God." And "God shows his love for us in that while we were...

Leader: May we go from here knowing we stand upright before the Father because of Christ’s works and not our own. Go, and serve the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit!

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

There are few words in any language that can equal dikaiosis for theological depth and resonance. It has been at the center of scholarly debate for centuries. Known largely as “justification,” it is s...

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...

Let us pray to God the Father, God the Son, And to God the Holy Spirit, Whose infinite greatness Enfolds the whole world, In Persons three and one, In essence simple and triune, Suspending the earth a...

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by his faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteo...

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

Grace is God’s part, faith ours.

Brothers and Sisters, be reassured. Your sins are not held against you. By the work of God in Christ, you are forgiven. God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the king...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

Through the death of Christ on the cross making atonement for sin, we get a perfect standing before God. That is justification, and it puts us, in God's sight, back in Eden before sin entered. God...

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

The church is a community that exists because something has happened that makes the entire process of self-justification irrelevant. God’s truth and mercy have appeared in concrete form in Jesus and, ...

What God said to Abraham was not 'Obey this law and I will bless you', but 'I will bless you; believe my promise'

The Lord says, “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 sp...

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...