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The elect are not personally justified in the Scriptural sense until they accept Christ by faith and
thus appropriate His merits.
b. In Rom. 4:25 we read that Christ was “raised up for (dia, causal, on account of) our
justification,” that is, to effect our justification.
Now it is undoubtedly true that dia with the
accusative is causal here. At the same time it need not be retrospective, but can also be
prospective and therefore mean “with a view to our justification,” which is equivalent to saying,
“in order that we may be justified.” The retrospective interpretation would be in conflict with
the immediately following context, which clearly shows (1) that Paul is not thinking of the
objective justification of the whole body of Christ, but of the personal justification of sinners;
and (2) that he conceives of this as taking place through faith.
c. In II Cor. 5:19 we read: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning
unto them their trespasses.”
From this passage the inference is drawn that the objective
reconciliation of the world in Christ involves the non-imputation of sin to the sinner. But this
interpretation is not correct. The evident meaning of the apostle is: God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, as appears from the fact that He does not impute to men
their sins, and that He has entrusted to His servants the word of reconciliation. Notice that me
logizomenos (present tense) refers to what is constantly going on. This cannot be conceived as
a part of the objective reconciliation, for then the following clause, “and having committed to
us the word of reconciliation,” would also have to be so interpreted, and this is quite
impossible.
In connection with this matter it may be said that we can speak of a justification of the body of
Christ as a whole in His resurrection, but this is purely objective and should not be confounded
with the personal justification of the sinner.
3. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
a. The relation of faith to justification. Scripture says that we are justified dia pisteos, ek
pisteos, or pistei (dative), Rom. 3:25,28,30; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9. The preposition dia stresses
the fact that faith is the instrument by which we appropriate Christ and His righteousness. The
preposition ek indicates that faith logically precedes our personal justification, so that this, as it
were, originates in faith. The dative is used in an instrumental sense. Scripture never says that
we are justified dia ten pistin, on account of faith. This means that faith is never represented as
the ground of our justification. If this were the case, faith would have to be regarded as a
meritorious work of man. And this would be the introduction of the doctrine of justification by
works, which the apostle opposes consistently, Rom. 3:21,27,28; 4:3,4; Gal. 2:16,21; 3:11. We
are told indeed that Abraham’s faith was reckoned unto him for righteousness, Rom. 4:3,9,22;