It Is God Who Justifies- Romans 8:33

In this verse, Paul tells us plainly that it is Go who “justifies” us. The concept of justification is a fundamental teaching of the New Testament, and we will examine several passages of Scripture in order to see what justification is and how it is accomplished. We will begin in Romans 5:12-21. Paul begins by telling us that “sin entered the world through one man”. The one man referred to here is Adam, whose sin in the Garden of Eden brought death to the human experience, for the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). This death is then passed on to all of Adam’s descendants, who inherit a “sin nature” from Adam. Paul tells us this can be clearly seen because all sin and because all die. He then tells us that sin goes beyond merely the breaking of a command, and this can be seen because people died before the law came through Moses. All were subject to death, due to both the sin of Adam and their own sin. What is foremost in Paul’s mind here and critical to understand in his teaching is that the sin of Adam brought death (condemnation) to all of his offspring, the entire human race. At this point, many raise the concern that this is somehow unfair, that it is unfair that we should die because of Adam’s sin. This is where we must address Paul’s teaching of Adam as a “type”, for it is critical that we understand this concept if we are to understand what Paul is telling us here. Paul tells us, in verse 14, that Adam was a “pattern of the one to come”. The Greek word translated “pattern” here is tupos, and it is commonly used to refer to Old Testament characters who were an example, model or pattern for something the Messiah would do when he came. Adam here is a pattern, model or example of some facet of what Jesus would do, something from the life of Jesus would be patterned or modeled on Adam. This then is where the issue of “fairness” comes in, for it is the concept of the type which eliminates the charge that God is being “unfair”. Paul tells us here that Adam’s sin is “credited” to all of his offspring, that “the many died by the trespass of the one man” (verse 15), but because Adam is a type, model or pattern of Jesus, in the same way all are able to be made alive by the righteousness of Jesus. In the same way in which Adam’s sin is credited to his offspring, the righteousness of Christ can also be credited to all of His offspring. All of Adam’s offspring are condemned by what Adam did, and in the same way all of Jesus’ “offspring” are justified by what Jesus did (verse 16). The Greek word justification here is dikaios, which basically is used to describe the standard by which things are measured. One who is justified is one who measures up, one who conforms to a standard. We learn from the Old Testament idea of tsedeq that God sets the standard and the standard is perfection, a standard to which none of us measure up. So Jesus came as one of us and lived a life which did measure up, which did conform to the standard, and according to our passage here, Jesus righteousness is credited to all of His offspring (all who trust in Him as Lord and Savior) just as Adam’s sin was credited to all of his offspring. So what Paul tells us here is that it is God who “justifies” us, it is God who determined that just as the sin of Adam was credited to all his offspring, so also the righteousness of Christ would be credited to all of His. God says that all who are “in Christ” measure up, they conform to the standard, not based upon what they do, but based upon what Christ did for them, and once God declares someone “justified” there is then no one who can “condemn” (Romans 8:33).