“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). What does this mean? What is it to be justified? Both professors and non-professors often mistake its meaning. Many of the former think that it is a sort of halfway house to perfect favor with God, while the latter think that it is a substitute for real righteousness. They think that the idea of justification by faith is that if one will only believe what the Bible says, he is to be counted as righteous when he is not. All this is a great mistake.
Justification has to do with the law. The term means making just. Now in Rom. 2:13 we are told who the just ones are: “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” The just man, therefore, is the one who does the law. To be just means to be righteous. Therefore since the just man is the one who does the law, it follows that to justify a man, that is, to make him just, is to make him a doer of the law.
Being justified by faith, then, is simply being made a doer of the law by faith. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3:20). The reason for this is given in the previous verses. It is because there is none that does good. “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:12). Not only have all sinned, but “the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). So there is a double reason why a man cannot be justified by the law. In the first place, since he has sinned, it is impossible that any amount of subsequent obedience could make up for that sin. The fact that a man does not steal anything today, does not in the least do away with the fact that he stole something yesterday; nor does it lessen his guilt. The law will condemn a man for a theft committed last year, even though he may have refrained from stealing ever since. This is so obvious that it does not need any further illustration or argument.
But further, the man has not only sinned, so that he cannot be justified by any amount of after obedience, even if he were to give it, but, as we have read, it is impossible for any man by nature to be subject to the law of God. He cannot do what the law requires. Listen to the words of the apostle Paul, as he describes the condition of the man who wants to obey the law: “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that
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