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.
Adapted from Paul David Tripp’s book Do You Believe? these brief, approachable readings help teenagers learn about 12 doctrines and reflect on their relevance to the Christian life.
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.
These two words point to a Bible truth that’s called “union with Christ.” This truth, that by grace we have been united to Christ, is a dominant theme in the apostle Paul’s writing. In the New Testament, Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” dozens of times. Additionally, he says that we were chosen “in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). By God’s sovereign redemptive purpose, we were united to Christ before we took our first breaths.
This is an amazing thing to consider. It was not that we got smart and found Christ. No, God placed us in Christ as a sovereign decision of his redeeming grace.
By God’s sovereign redemptive purpose, we were united to Christ before we took our first breaths.
It’s impossible to really understand the truth of justification without understanding union with Christ. All of the graces of the gospel flow to us because we are in Christ:
- We are justified because we are in Christ.
- We are being sanctified because we are in Christ.
- We are loved as adopted children because we are in Christ.
- We are forgiven because we are in Christ.
- We have every need supplied because we are in Christ.
- We are objects of the Father’s love because we are in Christ.
- We have eternal hope because we are in Christ.
Here’s what one Bible teacher has said about the blessings of being in Christ: “Union with Christ is the fountainhead from which flows the Christian’s every spiritual blessing—repentance and faith, pardon, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification.”1
Justification means we are no longer enemies of God. Now we are his children. Being in Christ means God is for us. And if God is for us, who can stand against us?
New Life in Christ
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.
God uses these realities to change us. Through uniting us to Christ, he changes how we think, what we desire, and how we live. Here are five words that capture the new lifestyle that is propelled by the doctrine of God’s justifying grace.
Humility. The doctrine of justification confronts me and you with how messed up we are—and the fact that we can’t do anything to restore ourselves. The proper response is humility. Humility is one of the doctrine of justification’s good fruits.
Gratitude. Because sin is self-centered, complaint is more natural for us than gratitude. Here again, a beautiful fruit of justification is a profound sense of gratitude. You can’t properly reflect on the doctrine of justification without a heart overflowing with thankfulness. Gone are the days of “I earned it, I deserve it, so I will boast about it.”
Freedom. Justification by grace through faith really does set you free. The justifying mercies of Christ release you from the requirements of the law and from the paralyzing burden of guilt and shame. We don’t have to go slump-backed through life, protecting ourselves from onlookers as if we are rejected, unwanted, and unworthy. We are children of the King, his door is open, and we are welcomed.
Values. I can lose sight of what is truly important. One of the benefits of God’s justifying mercies is their power to clarify and reorient our values. Think of what God did in order to deliver his justifying grace to you. Could there possibly be any treasure of more value than this?
Defense. It’s true that justifying grace has given us peace with God. Yet spiritual war rages all around us. Even the most mundane moments are complicated by this spiritual war. But the doctrine of justification tells you that your acceptance with God has not been and never will be based on the track record of your righteousness. So whenever Satan throws your unrighteousness at you, throw the perfect righteousness of Jesus back at him, and he will flee.
Notes:
- Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Thomas Nelson, 2010), 759.
This article is adapted from 12 Truths Every Teen Can Trust: Core Beliefs of the Christian Faith That Will Change Your Life by Paul David Tripp.
