More on Justification

The most succinct definition I can give of justification is 'divine sonship,' the adoption of sons by God in which through Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost we are bold to call God 'Father' and we cry 'Abba, Father.' God in baptism and by faith makes us to be His sons in His only Son by the Holy Spirit, and so we are what we ought to be in Him by His grace - a grace that both declares us to be what we ought to be and makes us what we ought to be. We are filii in Filio, sons of God in the Son of God. The beauty of the orthodox doctrine of justification is that it does not exclude but rather joyfully embraces both aspects of the mystery of God's paternal action in us whereby the heavenly Father makes human beings His true children by adoption and grace: there is no lop-sided emphasis on one aspect over the other, for both the alien righteousness of Christ is given to us freely by grace and that alien righteousness then simultaneously becomes our own possession inherently in us because we are not merely called the sons of God, but are the sons of God in personal reality. 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is' (I St John 3.1-2).

The forensic, exterior and alien becomes the intrinsic, interior and personal. Classical protestant overreaction in the sixteenth century to real abuses of the sacramental system has been proven to be an overcorrection which has ignored half of the biblical data regarding how we are vindicated and declared right before God in Christ, for that vindication has its ultimate victory and accomplishment in making us what God declares us to be. The definition of heresy is in fact lop-sidedness, the emphasis of one aspect of the revealed truth of God's Word over another equally vital and true aspect of the same. The Greek word αἵρεσις, hairesis (from αἱρέομαι, haireomai, 'choice') means that those who embrace false doctrine choose one element of the truth over another and thus introduce an fatal imbalance into the proportion of faith.