There’s something deeply wired into us that wants to be in the right.
We feel it in arguments with our spouse. We feel it after a hard conversation at work. We feel it when someone cuts us off in traffic and we rehearse our case to nobody in particular. We want to be justified — vindicated — found innocent.
But there’s a courtroom far more serious than any of those moments, and lots of people are walking into it completely unprepared.
The Verdict We’re All Chasing
The word justification is good word. Don’t be tempted to think this only for word nerds. This is a word that is very much tied to eternal realities. When each one of us stands before God one day, we will want nothing more in that moment than to be justified in God’s sight. So what is it?
Justification is a legal term — and one of the most important realities in all of human existence.
To be justified means to be declared righteous. Not just forgiven in a loose, “don’t worry about it” kind of way, but legally acquitted. Think of it like a courtroom after a car accident: you explain why you slammed on the brakes, you present your case, and the judge either finds you in the right or he doesn’t. That verdict changes everything.
The apostle Paul puts it plainly in Romans 5:1 — “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice the tense: have been. It’s a completed verdict, not an ongoing negotiation. And Romans 4:5 frames justification in financial terms as well: “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Righteousness credited to your account. Not earned. Credited.
The Hamster Wheel Many People Are Running On
Here’s the problem: very few of us actually believe that deep down.
Most people in the world today are quietly operating on a system that goes something like this — if I’m generally a decent person, do more good than bad, and don’t hurt anyone too badly, then I’ll probably be okay. They construct their own personal moral scorecards and assume that if they’re passing, God will grade on a curve.
The Bible calls this way of thinking exactly what it is: a dead end.
Paul writes in Galatians 3:10, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” If you’re going to stand before God on the basis of your own obedience, you don’t get to pick the questions on the exam. You have to pass all of it. Perfectly. Always.
The law was never meant to be a ladder we climb toward God’s approval. It was meant to be a mirror — held up to show us what we actually look like. And what it reveals isn’t a person who’s mostly good. It reveals a person who is broken and in desperate need of rescue.
Galatians 2:16 closes the door on any remaining optimism about the self-justification project: “by works of the law no one will be justified.” Not “very few people.” Not “only the especially wicked.” No one.
What Real Faith Actually Is
So if moral performance can’t get us there, what does?
Faith. But not a vague, fingers-crossed, “I hope things work out” kind of faith. The power of faith isn’t found in how intensely you believe something — it’s found entirely in the object of that belief. You can have fierce, white-knuckled faith in a frozen lake that won’t hold your weight. You can have timid, trembling faith in a bridge made of solid steel. The ice doesn’t become safer because you believed harder. The bridge doesn’t become weaker because you hesitated.
This is why Paul hammers the phrase “faith in Jesus Christ” repeatedly in Galatians 2:16. He’s not being repetitive for the sake of it — he’s making sure we don’t miss where the weight of faith must rest. Not in a feeling. Not in a prayer you once prayed. In Him.
Real, saving faith has real shape to it. It means (1) knowing the facts of what Christ actually did — his life, death, and resurrection for sinners. It means (2) assenting to those facts — not just knowing them as interesting history, but believing them to be true about you and for you. It means (3) trusting — moving from intellectual agreement to something the Westminster Catechism beautifully calls “receiving and resting upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.” And it means (4) treasuring — seeing Jesus not just a heavenly ticket-puncher, but as the supreme prize you’ve been given.
First Peter 1:8 captures this last dimension in a way that’s hard to read without feeling the weight of it: “Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” That’s not the language of someone who checked a religious box. That’s the language of someone who found what they were looking for… and it’s thrilled them.
How a Just God Can Declare the Guilty “Innocent”
Proverbs 17:15 says, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.” In other words — a judge who lets the guilty walk free is not a good judge. He’s corrupt. How, then, can a perfectly holy God look at people who are genuinely guilty and declare them righteous without compromising his own justice?
The answer is the cross.
Our guilt wasn’t swept under a rug. God didn’t simply decide to overlook it. Romans 8:3 tells us that God, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The punishment was real. The condemnation was real. It landed — fully, finally — on Jesus. Every legal demand that stood against us was satisfied in him.
Colossians 2:13–14 puts it in terms that should wreck us: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses… God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Nailed to the cross. Not filed away. Not deferred. Cancelled.
The “genius” of the gospel — if we can even use a word that small — is that God is simultaneously just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26). He doesn’t compromise his holiness to save sinners. He satisfies it in Christ, and then offers that satisfaction to anyone who will receive it.
Empty Hands
So here’s where it lands.
You can keep pulling your little wagon of good deeds to the throne of God — the volunteer hours, the religious habits, the general decency, the years of trying hard. But when you arrive and offer them as payment, you’ll find you’ve brought the wrong currency. God isn’t grading on effort. He’s requiring perfection — and only one Person has ever met that standard.
That Person is Jesus. And the stunning news of the gospel is that His perfection can be yours — not because you earned it, but because He offers it freely to anyone who will stop trusting themselves and start trusting Him.
Come with empty hands.
Not because God wants you to feel worthless, but because empty hands are the only ones He can fill. The grace that justifies the ungodly isn’t offered to people who’ve earned a portion of it — it’s offered freely, fully, to anyone who stops trying to earn it and starts trusting the One who already paid it.
Romans 5:1 says it plainly: we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not “we are working toward peace.” Not “we have a decent shot at peace.” We have it — past tense, settled, done.
The verdict has already been declared over everyone who trusts in Christ — not guilty, fully righteous, permanently at peace with God. That’s not something you work toward. It’s something you receive.
This is a summary of the sermon “The Core of Galatians” which can be found in its entirety here: “The Core of Galatians”
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