Near the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification (as Barth saw) is the insistence that God, not man, is Judge. Efforts at self-justification are NOT merely moralistic efforts to recommend ourselves to God (though they are that). Efforts at self-justification are also (perhaps more fundamentally) assaults on God’s Lordship; our efforts to justify ourselves and others are efforts to usurp the unique judicial role of God, namely, that He is the Judge of all the earth, and that our hearts are open and laid bare before His eyes. The Protestant doctrine of justification restored the biblical insistence that God is Lord, Sovereign, Judge. From this perspective, the medieval Catholic view (in the eyes of the Reformers) flirted with a particular soteriological form of idolatry.
To say that justification is an act of God, therefore, is an analytical statement ?Etrue by definition. Of course justification is an act of God, since justification is the act of a judge, and He alone is Judge. Theologically, to talk in terms of “justifying ourselves” is simply a category mistake, though morally speaking it is an act of rebellion.
This doesn’t answer all the issues surrounding justification. By no means. But it does seem to get to (or very near) the heart of things.
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