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IX. Justification
A. THE SCRIPTURAL TERMS FOR JUSTIFICATION AND THEIR MEANING.
1. THE OLD TESTAMENT TERM.
The Hebrew term for “to justify” is hitsdik, which in the great
majority of cases means “to declare judicially that one’s state is in harmony with the demands
of the law, Ex. 23:7; Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15; Isa. 5:23. The piel tsiddek occasionally has the
same meaning, Jer. 3:11; Ezek. 16:50,51. The meaning of these words is therefore strictly
forensic or legal. Since Roman Catholics, such representatives of the moral influence theory of
the atonement as John Young of Edinburgh and Horace Bushnell, and also the Unitarians and
modern liberal theologians, deny the legal meaning of the term “to justify,” and ascribe to it the
moral sense of “to make just or righteous,” it becomes important to take careful notice of the
considerations that may be urged in favor of the legal meaning. That this is the proper
denotation of the word appears (a) from the terms placed in contrast with it, as, for instance
“condemnation,” Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15; Isa. 5:23; (b) from the correlative terms placed in
juxtaposition with it and which often imply a process of judgment, Gen. 18:25; Ps. 143:2; (c)
from the equivalent expressions that are sometimes used, Gen. 15:6; Ps. 32:1,2; and (d) from
the fact that a passage like Prov. 17:15 would yield an impossible sense, if the word meant “to
make just.” The meaning would then be: He who morally improves the life of the wicked is an
abomination to the Lord. There are a couple of passages, however, in which the word means
more than simply “to declare righteous,” namely, Isa. 53:11; Dan. 12:3. But even in these cases
the sense is not “to make good or holy,” but rather “to alter the condition so that man can be
considered righteous.”
2. THE NEW TESTAMENT TERMS AND THEIR USE.
Here we have:
a. The verb dikaio-o.
This verb means in general “to declare a person to be just. Occasionally it
refers to a personal declaration that one’s moral character is in conformity with the law, Matt.
12:37; Luke 7:29; Rom. 3:4. In the Epistles of Paul the soteriological meaning of the term is
clearly in the foreground. It is “to declare forensically that the demands of the law as a
condition of life are fully satisfied with regard to a person, Acts 13:39; Rom. 5:1,9; 8:30-33; I
Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:16; 3:11. In the case of this word, just as in that of hitsdik, the forensic meaning
of the term is proved by the following facts: (a) in many instances it can bear no other sense,
Rom. 3:20-28; 4:5-7; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; 3:11; 5:4; (b) it is placed in antithetic relation to
“condemnation” in Rom. 8:33,34; (c) equivalent and interchangeable expressions convey a
judicial or legal idea, John 3:18; 5:24; Rom. 4:6,7; II Cor. 5:19; and (d) if it does not bear this
meaning, there is no distinction between justification and sanctification.