You Are and Will Be Justified
If you are in Christ, you have been justified — eternally, irreversibly, gloriously. God has spoken his everlasting sentence over your soul. Through faith alone (Romans 5:1), on the basis of the death and life of Jesus Christ alone (Romans 5:9), you are not guilty, but righteous; not hell-bound, but heaven-bound; not condemned, but justified. You need no longer wonder what judgment day holds. Though men, devils, and a disordered conscience may accuse, there is therefore now no condemnation for you (Romans 8:1). Let your soul sigh with relief: you have been justified. And yet, surprising though it may sound, you also will be justified. As the apostle of justification himself writes, “Through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5) — a statement that seems to suggest some future dimension to the righteousness God reckons to us in Christ. In him, we have righteousness, and we hope for righteousness; we have been justified, and we will be justif...