Morris On Justification

Okay, I finally finished it. It has taken me several months to read this difficult book by Morris. So I thought I’d share a few thoughts from the last chapter on Justification. So many want a self help gospel that is presented by the Joel Osteens. However man doesn’t need help. He needs the righteousness of Christ.

From page 287

“G. O. Griffith reminds us, ‘It is often said that to speak of “justification by faith” is to use language which, to the modern man, is meaningless. What is often forgotten is that such language was as meaningless to ancient man also, apart from the Gospel which gave it significance…the heart of the Christian gospel is that, while no works of our hands will avail to make us acceptable before God, we are acceptable if we come in faith on the grounds of God’s own action in Christ. And this great truth St. Paul delighted to express in the forensic language of justification.”

Now many object to the forensic language of Paul citing other passages to override his plain teaching of the imputed righteousness of God in Christ. On page 291 Morris quotes Halliday:

“it has not always been seen that no man can be justified before God unless his nature is so changed that the assent of God is the assent to a reality.”

Many use James 2 as a counter argument against Paul’s teaching in Romans 4. Morris says on pg 285:

“Moreover the epistle does not inculcate a demand for law-works in the accepted sense; there is no thought of an accumulation of merit by the performance of deeds in accordance with the letter of the law. Rather there is a stress on love, humility, and kindred qualities. The ‘works’ of James are very like the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ of Paul.”

Even the common Muslim argument (one that Shabir Ally raised in the debate with White) offers a similar objection raised on page 280:

“It is objected to this interpretation that the bearing of penalty by one in place of another is not really just, so that when Christ suffers for us it is not a matter of fulfilling legal requirements.”

To which Morris replies:

“There is some force in this objection, and there would be more if we were dealing with human law. But the fact is that we are not. The law in question is the law of God’s holy nature, and that nature is merciful as well as just.”

Morris spends much time studying the justification word group and sees that it is overwhelmingly used in the forensic sense. So much so, that even his conclusion at the end of the book leads him to the ojective view of salvation. While modern preaching leads many to look inwardly, Morris concludes on page 299,

“This examination of the evidence has, I think, demonstrated that there is much support for objective as opposed to subjective views of the atonement. None of the concepts we have considered fits naturally into a subjective view. Something happened on Calvary quite objective to man, and it is because of this that we can have the completest assurance of our salvation. In the last resort it depends on what God has done, not upon some effect of that action upon the human heart (which is not to deny that there is such an effect, and that it is important).”

As the White Horse Inn program has articulated so many times, the preaching of the Law brings men to look inwardly. It is the preaching of the true Gospel that brings men to look outwardly to a Savior who is perfect and will save perfectly. It is Christ’s full and complete alien righteousness that is forensically imputed to me by faith alone.