which God effects, of which Christ’s sacrifice is the meri- torious ground, and the people of Christ the subjects, is not an infusion of grace effecting a subjective change in moral condition, but a declarative act pronouncing the believer to be forensically just, and thus effecting a change of legal relation, and not a change of moral character. This principle was the precise truth, the distinct and forceful enunciation of which made the great Reforma- tion of the seventeenth century what it was to the men of that and of all subsequent generations. It has been proved over and over again by such conclusive Scriptural references as the following :—
1. The common sense in which our English word to
justify is used and understood in all secular speech and
literature, is to declare a man to be in the right—never | to make or to constitute him inherently so. To justify is to assert or to vindicate his innocence; it 1s to pro- nounce him to be in fact innocent, or clear of all the claims of that law or standard of conduct or character by which he is tested. This is not only the theological usage of the term, but the sense in which it is universally used in the common intercourse of life. The Latin words justificatio and justifico were never used by classical writers, but were newly-coined terms of ecclesiastical writers for the purpose of expressing theological ideas, and hence neither their etymology nor their usage can throw any additional hght upon this subject.
2. The word which the Holy Ghost has chosen to express the truth he intends to reveal on this subject is dicatow. In classical Greek this word has substantially the same usage which the word to justify, by which it is translated in the New Testament, has in English. Suidas’ Lexicon——‘“‘drcatovy, to justify, has two senses : 1, punire; 2, justum censere. So Herodotus, &e.” Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon—‘“ dicacow: 1, to hold as right or
DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. 192
fair, to think right or fit; 2, to do a man justice: hence cxarzen (a) to condemn, punish; and (b) to make just, hold ** guiltless, justify, N. T.”
3. The Hebrew word pry, in the vast majority of in- stances translated by the authors of the Septuagint by the Greek word dtcaidw, and in our version by the English word to justify, is always used in the sense of thinking or pronouncing just, acquitting, and never in the sense of making good by the exercise of a moral influence. Job ix. 20: “If I justify (pty) myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.” Job xxxii. 2: The wrath of Elihu was kindled against Job, “‘ bevause he justified (pay) himself rather than God.” Deut. xxv. 1: ‘Then they [the judges] shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.” Prov. xvii. 15: “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LorpD.” See also Isa. v. 23; Bg sent (je atidy' Phe ike 4
4. The word dicacow occurs thirty-nine times in the New Testament, and in every case, without a single exception, it signifies to esteem, to pronounce, or to treat as righteous, and never once to make or constitute per- sonally, inherently righteous. Sometimes the word is used to declare the fact that a person is inherently righteous, as Luke vu. 29: “And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God ;” and Matt. xi. 19: “Wisdom is justified of her children.” But in the great majority of instances it is evident that it was used in the sense of pronouncing and treating a person as just, not intrinsically, but in relation to the demands of law as a covenant or condition of life and favour. That is, in the simplest words possible, it is a declaration © that all the claims of the law are satisfied. Thus Gal. ii, 16: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the
CHAPTER XIV.
200 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.