Speech #2 of Justification: The Heart of the Gospel
Prof. David J. Engelsma
Introduction
What a grand gospel truth is justification by faith alone. What a blessed gift of God to us is justification by faith alone. And what a blessed work of the Spirit of Jesus Christ in our consciousness is justification by faith alone.
Justification is the strictly legal act of God as judge in which He forgives the sins of the one who believes in Jesus Christ and reckons him righteous on the basis alone of the obedience of Jesus Christ in the stead of this sinner. This is how David describes justification in Psalm 32:1-2, where he proclaims the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness without works. “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” And this is how the apostle Paul describes justification, with appeal to this passage in the Psalms, in Romans 4:5. “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted [or imputed, or reckoned] for righteousness.”