The one is complementary of the other. One cannot stand without the other. Justification without justification of life would lead to the Name of God being blasphemed. Justification of life without justification would be an utter impossibility. To make these statements plain is the object of this article.
Justification is the happy portion of the believer on the Lord Jesus. “By Him [the Lord Jesus] all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). God is “Just and the Justifier of him which believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). Christ “was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).
Justification is accomplished outside of and apart from the effort of the believing sinner in any shape or form. The believer is cleared from every charge of sin, as if he had never sinned at all. It is the portion equally of the babe in Christ as of the oldest saint of God—of the convert of today just as much as the Apostle Paul, who has been with the Lord all these centuries.
The believer stands before God in all the virtue of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross, so much so that God Himself is his Justifier. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is GOD that justifieth” (Rom. 8:33).
This all being given to us on the authority of the Word of God, we will now make clear the statement that justification without justification of life would lead to the name of God being blasphemed
Suppose a drunkard were converted, and learned the truth of justification. Suppose further the evil nature in him dominated him entirely, as it must, if the evil nature alone is his. The thirst for drink governs him. He has no conscience as to the allowance of his sin. He is seen day by day reeling drunk in the streets. In short his life is unchanged. What would the world say? Would the Name of God not be blasphemed because of him? Assuredly it would be so.
What is the remedy? A converted drunkard with nothing but a fallen evil nature dominating him would certainly be unhappy in heaven, and heaven would be unhappy with him. Of course this is a supposed case which can never happen, as we stated in our opening sentence. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8).
What is the remedy? we ask again. It must be the impartation of divine life—a life which can be pleasing to God and glorifying to Him before men. So we read of a two-fold result of the death of Christ for the believer. “God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him … God … loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). Life and propitiation are the possession of the believer through the atoning work of Christ.
Now we would make clear our second statement that justification of life without justification would be an utter impossibility. If a man is without justification then he is in his sin and under the judgment of God. How could that man have justification of life? Impossible! But on the ground of the righteous claims of God being met at the cross God has a righteous basis on which to communicate life, and this is a necessity if a man is to know and enjoy justification, and the stirrings and actions of new and divine life are to be pleasing to God—in short, justification of life. “The Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).
The interesting expression, “Justification of life,” occurs in Romans 5:18. There we read, “By the righteousness of One [The Lord Jesus by His sacrificial death] the free gift came upon all men to JUSTIFICATION OF LIFE.” It is clear that all believers must possess this life. A life must be ours before we can live it, or its powers and activities be put forth.
Life is given to be expressed. When life ceases to be expressed it means death. It was indeed sad that it should be necessary to to say to the Sardis assembly, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and ART DEAD” (Rev. 3:1). Things must have got to a pretty low pass when this could be said. Sometimes we say of a sick man, who is alive, but his life at such a low ebb, that the ordinary activities of life such as walking, attending to business and the like are suspended, “Poor fellow, he is more dead than alive.“
So let it be clear that “justification of life” belongs to all Christians, and that the activities of that life are always pleasing to God. So that the Apostle John can write, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9).
But what we are concerned with in this article is that all of us may be exercised as to living that life. Perhaps an illustration as to this may help. A gentleman has a beautiful garden, employing several gardeners. One day he is walking through his grounds, giving instructions to his head gardener. Suddenly he spies a self-rooted apple shoot. He looks at it and sees it is a crab-apple, a wild, sour shoot. He says to his gardener, “I won’t have anything wild and sour in my garden. Please attend to that shoot.” The gardener cuts the shoot down close to the ground, and grafts upon it a Cox’s Orange Pippin. The graft takes, and develops into a fine tree.
One day the gentleman stops before this tree, admiring its shape, and the fruit upon it. The gardener says, “Do you remember, sir, the little crab apple shoot you condemned? I cut it down and grafted a good graft upon it, and you have enjoyed many a beautiful apple from that tree at your dessert.“
The gentleman said, “I’ll have nothing wild and sour in my garden,” just as God may say, “I will have nothing wild or sour in My heavenly garden; I will have no flesh, no carnal mind in My presence.” But just as the gardener implanted new life which bore beautiful dessert apples, so God imparts new and divine life to the believer.
There was no justification of life in the crab apple stock. Its fruit was displeasing to the owner of the garden. There was justification of life in the Cox’s Orange Pippin stock. It bore fruit pleasing to the owner of the garden.
So the flesh in fallen man cannot please God, and the flesh in the believer is no better. It cannot be drilled, educated, improved, or bettered in any way, whether found in the dying thief, ending a life of sin at the hands of his fellow sinners, or in Nicodemus, the ruler of the synagogue, with all his religiousness and knowledge, or in the Apostle Paul, Pharisee of the Pharisees as he had been, and as touching the law blameless. No wonder our Lord said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7), and that the Apostle Paul in the light of God found out he was “the chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).
Now the gardener would be careful to cut off every sign of the old life below the graft on the shoot, and cultivate every sign of life above it. So the believer is called upon to put to death every stirring of the old nature, the flesh. We read, “Mortify [put to death] therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13).
As for justification of life, wherever there is life there is action, motion, expression. If divine life, it is seen in “the fruit of the Spirit … love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance [self-restraint] … if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22-25).
Now wherever there is justification, it is the gift of God, procured by Christ’s death at the cross, apart altogether from the sinner’s merit or work in any way, but it is always accompanied by “justification of life” (Rom. 5:18), which is the product of divine life, divine life in action, by the power of the Spirit of God, giving right desires, affections, will.
Justification cannot mark one believer more than another. We are justified or we are not. The youngest believer is as much justified as the oldest, the raw recruit in God’s army as much as the oldest veteran.
But some believers are marked by justification of life in greater degree than others. Surely the Apostle Paul was more marked by justification of life than the Christians he wrote to in Corinth, saying, “Ye are not carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and division, are ye not carnal, and walk as men” (1 Cor. 3:3).
Now the great concern of the Spirit of God is to bring the state (justification of life) into correspondence with the standing (justification), and this will be accomplished surely when the Lord comes, when the flesh in us in left behind, and our very bodies are changed into likeness to Christ,
How beautiful and helpful it is to see that justification and justification of life are complementary. On the one line, “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ … is upon all them that believe” (Rom. 3:22). “Christ is made to us … righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). Could any judicial standing be fuller than that? On the lines of “justification of life” holiness comes in “without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:1). One can understand and rejoice in this. God will have no wild plant in His heavenly garden. There will be no weeds there.
Our illustration fails in one point. In nature the graft, the new life, is placed on the wild shoot, and gains its nourishment from the old root. In grace this is not so. The flesh is flesh. The divine nature is the divine nature. There is no connection between the two.
May we, believers, rejoice in the absolute justication that is ours, our project standing before God, and be concerned that we do really walk in justification of life for God’s pleasure and our own joy and comfort and the blessing of others for “none of us lives to himself” (Rom. 14:7).