The Only Legal Justification of Sinners by God

The Love and Grace of God serve as the moving cause of delivering His chosen people, having linked the particular election of God before the foundation of the world and the saving benefits of Christ on earth,Eph. 1:3-4. Paul declares that it all is according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His Grace, Eph. 1:5-6. While Grace is the moving cause of our deliverance, the means of deliverance is what God did in Christ as the sin-Bearer. To the Corinthians Paul wrote: “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves…but…God…delivered us from so great a death...” (2 Cor. 1:9-10) By sentence, he meant ‘pronounced judgment’ which occurred when all men became regarded as sinners at the fall of Adam. This is legal condemnation. How did God deliver us from that legal sentence of death? He explained that later in the letter saying: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor. 5:21) This was a legal transfer. The sin of the elect was legally and justly accounted to Christ. His earned righteousness was legally and justly accounted to them. This legal transfer is the only justification before God that has ever existed. This is declared justification.