The doctrine of Justification was “the storm center of the Reformation” (Packer 164).  This concept also was very important to the Apostle Paul.  Throughout the last six hundred years, many of those claiming to be a part of the one true and holy catholic Church have had many discussions, debates, and arguments over the why’s, how’s, and who’s of this particular doctrine.  There have been differing opinions on why man must be justified before God and how that status is gained.  The Catholic Church has claimed that the grace that brings justification comes through the Catholic Church and the partaking of the sacraments and by the purchasing of indulgences and through a number of other means.  This essentially implies that grace can be gained by a number of acts that the individual might participate in.  In essence this belief leads to the fact that man in one sense or another is meriting his own salvation or forcing God’s hand to move on his behalf because of some observance to an ordinance of the Roman Catholic Church.  This in turn is the idea that the theologians during the time of the Reformation so adamantly opposed and it was expressed by the five Protestant cries:  Sola Gracia, Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, Soli Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria:  meaning that justification comes by grace alone, through faith alone, on the authority of scripture alone, by Christ alone, and for the glory of God alone.
    Justification is “a judicial act of God pardoning sinners, accepting them as just, and so putting permanently right their previously estranged relationship with Himself” (Packer 164).  So in saying this we acknowledge that initially man is in a state before God in which there stands punishment which man will receive unless the situation is changed.  Justification is the act of man being taken out of the state of punishment and being placed into another state, one of right standing before God.  In this state of being justified the punishment once due man no longer rests over his head.
    This need for justification is the whole purpose behind the proclamation of the Gospel.  The Gospel is a message of God reconciling to Himself those who are unfit to be counted as righteous.  For if man is right before God he needs no help.  All is well.  But Scripture tells us that this is not the case at all.  Scripture teaches us that we are sinners above anything else that we might be.  We see in the first book of Holy Scripture that “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).  Although man may think he is good, the Bible tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:  who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  God declares to the world “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).  Throughout these scriptures it is seen that man is desperately wicked and stands in a position of offense to God therefore requiring Him to judge and condemn because He has revealed to man that He is a just being.
    This condition was handed down to all of the descendants of Adam.  He was the first man, set to rule and have dominion over the earth, and as a result this the repercussions of his initial disobedience in the Garden of Eden left man in a state of not only alienation, but of disgusting standing before God.  The best depiction of this position that the entire human race has inherited is found in the book of Isaiah the prophet.  He tells us that “we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6).  Because of this inherited standing and condition, man as a race rests in a seat of judgment and wrath.
    God, because He is holy, cannot have an intimate relationship with man because of this natural state of sin.  Sin can be correctly defined as anything that is in opposition to the nature of God.  In turn sin is sin because the act that is sinful is one that proclaims that the pleasure received from the act is greater than the pleasure that is received through fellowship with the Father.  This proclamation is an act that attempts to, intentionally or not, diminish the glory of God by placing other things above Him.  It is an act of valuing something other than that which is supremely valuable.  And because God is “a jealous God,” He will not share His glory with anything else.  So the act of sin is an attempt to deprive God of the proper glory that He is due.  This is the essence of sin.
    The holiness of God is what causes him to act against sin.  On one hand, God is holy because there is no sin present within Him.  He is morally perfect and is the standard by which all other moral actions are judged.  It is not that He merely follows some moral code that is set forth outside of Himself, it is that He constitutes the moral code.  Therefore all of the actions that proceed from Him are not good and just in and of themselves, but rather they are good and just because He does them.  There is no law outside of Himself that God is required to abide by in order to stay holy; He simply is holy.
    The other aspect of this holiness is the view that is taken on sin by God.  We are constantly reminded in the Bible that God is holy.  In Isaiah’s account of the scene in heaven there are seraphim calling out “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3).  As a result of this holiness, God hates sin.  It is an infinite offense to Him because He is infinitely holy.  For this reason God must punish sin.  And because He is infinitely holy, and every sin is an infinitely heinous act against His glory, the punishment for each sin is justly an infinite one.  His punishment of sin in this manner displays the degree of hatred that He has for it.  It shows how detestable sin is to Him.  That God would cast His creation, which He proclaimed to be good (Gen. 1:31), into a pit of eternal death where His wrath would be present forever, says much about the measure of revulsion He has toward sin.
    There must be a sacrifice from God that atones for the sin of man in order for man to be counted as righteous before God.  We know that God is holy.  We know that God is just.  As a result of these attributes, He cannot fellowship with man who is sinful.  He hates sin and must require that sin receive its due punishment.  For this reason God could not simply declare man righteous and sweep his sin under the rug.  While this would satisfy the need for reconciliation (man would be declared righteous and no longer a sinner), His justice and holy standard would go unappeased for the sin that had been committed would not have been punished.  God cannot claim for Himself the title of Just Judge and then simply disregard the adultery of David and the slaying of Uriah.  This cannot be.  These and the sins of all who would be declared righteous must be paid for.  The wrath of God must be appeased for these particular sins.  So God killed His Son because He is both holy and just.
The ground for the justification of the believer was a large issue of debate during the Reformation.  Men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin claimed that justification was based on the merit of Jesus Christ who lived thirty-three years, fulfilled the law and all righteousness, and died suffering the wrath of God for the sin of “whosoever believes” (John 3:16) and was raised by God on the third day after His death.  This is the groundwork of justification.  It is because Christ, the second Adam, fulfilled the law perfectly and suffered the wrath of God willingly that God can now declare sinners just.  “If we had never broken the laws of God we should not have needed [justification], for we should have been just in ourselves” (Spurgeon 20).  But this is not the case and so the Christ had to do this on our behalf and then suffer our punishment.  “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”  (2 Corinthians 5:21).  This explains how God imputed our sin to Christ.  God as judge assigned the responsibility of our sin to Christ, making it possible for Him to be punished justly for that sin.  It proclaims Christ was our substitute, accepting the penalty of sin in our place.
    Not only did God impute the penalty of our sin to Christ and He pay the just penalty for our transgressions, God also imputed Christ’s perfect righteousness to us.  This imputation is the basis for the progressive realization of God’s righteousness in our moral character.  Christ lived a perfect life so that His life may be given to those who would believe on Him as Lord and Savior.  The foundation of justification is that God treated Christ, while He was hanging on the cross, as if He personally committed every sin of every man that would ever believe so that God could treat those same believers as if they personally had lived the life that belonged to Christ.  This is the essence of justification and it is how God can be both just and holy and also the justifier of the ungodly.  It is God who justifies the sinner.
    In addition to this, the men who were at the center of the Reformation relied heavily on the writings of the Apostle Paul to show that man is not only in need of being justified because of his sin but, he is unable to justify himself before God.  They claimed that, not only is man in offence to God and must be punished, but man is unable to help himself in any way out of the position in which he now resides.  He tells the Romans “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and that “There is none righteous, no, not one:  There is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God” (Romans 3:10-11).  He also proclaims that men are “dead in their trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).  Directly after this assertion he says, “Ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worked in the children of disobedience…fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:2-3).  Paul clearly states that not only is man in open defiance and rebellion toward God, he cannot do anything about it.  Man is in a situation in which it is impossible for him to do anything, or want to do anything, about it.  This theological doctrine that declares that man is dead in his sin “does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is evil in itself, nor that man’s spirit is inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead” (Boettner 61).  It simply means that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that “he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation” (Boettner 61).
    Showing that it is only God who is capable to, and indeed does, justify the saints, those who opposed the Roman Catholic Church used scripture to show that grace is the means of salvation (i.e. justification) and that it comes from God alone and is unmediated by the Roman Catholic Church.  Paul writes to the Ephesians that it is “by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8).  As a result of this, all of the “works” that the church was at the time requiring for salvation were shown to be of no benefit for bringing about justification.  The indulgences and confessions that were said to absolve an individual of his sin and therefore set them in right standing before God were fruitless actions that in light of scripture are seen to be ridiculous and a waste of time and money.  Because the Reformers, Martin Luther in particular, emphasized in scripture the aspect of unmediated grace, grace that comes from the Father to the believer apart from the priest or the church, there was no reason to buy forgiveness since it is the “gift of God.”  Justification therefore comes apart from any act of man.  It is solely the work of God.
    There is another opinion that differed from that of the reformers regarding how one is declared justified before God.  These would agree that justification is based on the merit of Christ.  They would also agree that it is a work of God.  But, in differing from the viewpoint of the Reformation, they would say that justification requires an acceptance of the individual that is being justified.  These that follow this flow of thought believe the fall of man “was not total, and hold that there was enough good left in man for him to will to accept Christ unto salvation” (Spencer 14).  They go on to insist that God wanted all individuals to be saved.  As a result of this “He sent the Holy Spirit to woo all men to Christ.  However, since man has absolute free will he is able to resist God’s will for his life” (Spencer 15).  Therefore these individuals maintain that the actions and thoughts of men can obstruct and prevent the ultimate will of God from coming to pass by resisting His offer of eternal life and a righteous status before Him.
    Scripture drastically opposes this idea.  The thoughts found in the Bible are far from claiming that man, and not God, has the final say in what happens in the events of history.  It in fact states that “whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…who He predestined, these he also called; whom He called, these He also justified” (Romans 8:29-30).  This states that it is God’s act, contingent only upon Himself and what He chooses to do, which has predestined, called, and justified whom He has chosen to.  This in no way leaves room for an assertion of the plans of man thwarting what the Bible has claimed that God has already accomplished.  The actions are in the past.  They have happened.  Who is strong enough to undo what the Father has already done?
    Because of this we see that justification is the act of God alone by which he declares sinners to be righteous.  The foundation of justification is the perfect righteous life that was lived by the Son and His sacrifice on the cross.  This justification is given because of God’s grace through faith alone.  It does not come by means of some action taken by man.  And this justification is completed, it is not contingent upon whether men ask for it or refuse it.  “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” (Romans 9:16).