Rom.4:20-21 ... "With respect to the promise of God, he (Abraham) did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform."
Justification is not a word of common daily use. In fact, few people use it once a week or once a month, at least not in the Biblical sense. But justification refers to something the importance of which is monu-mental to everyone. It refers to God pardoning a person of sin and treating him as if he had never com-mitted the sin. How is this so important to every person who walks the earth? Two Scriptures show us that importance. The first is Rom. 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The second is Rom. 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." In short, every person sins, and sin leads directly to death. Were it not for justification, the future for each of us would be as barren as the Sahara Desert ... and a great deal hotter! God's mercy and love offer everyone justification and the renewal of the pros-pect of eternal life. It is the purpose of this essay and the next to outline how we may be justified by God. In the following presentation in this post, the Jewish idea (of ancient Judaism) is presented. In the following post, the Christian idea is presented. The latter is the way to justification that God offers to the world through Christ.
For several tears after the church was established in Jerusalem, it had a strong Jewish identity. Jewish prejudice against Gentiles was very strong. Eph. 2:14 called it a "dividing wall" and a "barrier" which kept Jews and Gentiles separate. Within the church the influence of Jewish thought and custom was powerful and posed a challenge to Gentiles who came into the church without this mental and cultural baggage. In fact, many Jewish Christians did not want Gentiles in the church. God found it necessary to prepare Peter with a vision (in Acts 10) to persuade him to enter the house of the Gentile Cornelius, teach him the Gospel, and baptize him. And Acts 15 is devoted to a great conference of apostles, elders, and others at Jerusalem to deal with the consternation it caused Jewish Christians to accept Gentiles as brothers in Christ.
One of the major challenges that faced the early church centered on the doctrine of justification. The Jews thought that because they were genetically descended from Abraham, justification was their birth-right. Abraham was their spiritual hero, being the "father of the faithful" and having the distinction of being called "the friend of God," (Jas. 2:23). His faith was the epitome of human response to divine promise, so much so that Gen. 15:6 reports that "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness," which is quoted by Paul in Rom. 4:3. Since all Israel were genetically in Abraham when righteousness was conferred upon him as reward for his faith, they believed it was also conferred upon everyone descended from him as well. Therefore, so they argued, to be a descendant of Abraham was to be justified the moment one was born. The Jew thought he was born righteous, lived righteous, died righteous, and joined Abraham after death.
Beyond all this, the Jews also thought they accumulated righteousness by the scrupulous performance of the rituals and other religious acts taught in the Mosaic Law. The Pharisees, the most conservative party within Judaism, carried this doctrine of righteousness by works to the ultimate by "hedging the Law about" with endless deductions from Mosaic requirements to ensure that everything would be done that could be done to increase one's righteousness through participation.
(In the next post, Paul's refutation of the Jewish doctrine of justification will be presented. Then the Gospel doctrine of justification will be revealed.)
