Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ’s work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit’s work in you.
– J. C. Ryle
Justification | Sanctification | The Holy Spirit
Through the death of Christ on the cross making atonement for sin, we get a perfect standing before God. That is justification, and it puts us, in God’s sight, back in Eden before sin entered. God looks upon us and treats us as if we had never sinned.
– A. C. Dixon
Justification
God does not justify us because we are worthy, but by justifying us make us worthy.
– Thomas Watson
Justification
Justification. In popular usage this word means showing proper grounds for. In theological context, however, justification is the judicial act of God declaring one to be righteous by imputation of righteousness to him.
– John F. Walvoord
Justification | Righteousness
If you do not put a difference between justification wrought by the Man Christ without, and sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within, you are not able to divide the word aright; but contrariwise, you corrupt the word of God.
– John Bunyan
Justification | Sanctification
Whom God legally saves, He experimentally saves; whom He justifies, them He also sanctifies. Where the righteousness of Christ is imputed to an individual, a principle of holiness is imparted to him; the former can only be ascertained by the latter. It is impossible to obtain a Scriptural knowledge that the merits of Christ’s finished work are reckoned to my account, except by proving that the efficacy of the Holy Spirit’s work is evident in my soul.
– A. W. Pink
Justification | Sanctification | Holiness
Indeed this is one of the greatest mysteries in the world – namely, that a righteousness that resides with a Person in heaven should justify me, a sinner on earth.
– John Bunyan
Justification
There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not rein; and glorification, that it may not be.
– Richard Cecil
Sin | Justification | Sanctification | Glorification
Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.
– John Calvin
Justification
To be justified means more than to be declared “not guilty.” It actually means to be declared righteous before God. It means God has imputed or charged the guilt of our sin to His Son, Jesus Christ, and has imputed or credited Christ’s righteousness to us.
– Jerry Bridges
Justification | Righteousness
Justification is away beyond anything that a human court of justice ever realizes. It is putting the sinner in the condition before God as if he had never sinned at all. It is giving him a standing in the merit of Jesus Christ of absolute innocency before God.
– A. C. Dixon
Justification
Those who have been justified are now being sanctified; those who have no experience of present sanctification have no reason to suppose they have been justified.
– F.F. Bruce
Justification | Sanctification
Any church which puts in the place of justification by faith in Christ another method of salvation is a harlot church.
– Charles Spurgeon
Justification | Heresy
How pitiful that his mind was overruled by his emotion; his reasoning, overcome by his affection. Why is it that men “did not believe the truth?” Because they “had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:12). It is not that the truth is unreasonable but that it is not loved. Hence when one truly turns to the Lord he “believes with his heart (not mind) and so is justified” (Rom. 10:10).
– Watchman Nee
Truth | Faith | Justification
If thou wouldst be justified, acknowledge thine injustice. He that confesses his sin, begins his journey toward salvation. He that is sorry for it, mends his pace. He that forsakes it, is at his journey’s end.
– Francis Quarles
Salvation | Repentance | Justification
We admit no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works.
– John Owen
Faith | Obedience | Justification
The faith by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us. We are not justified on account of faith; we are justified through faith. It is the work of Christ, not our faith, which is the foundation of justification. Faith itself is a gift of God.
– Alister McGrath
Faith | Justification
It is absurd to imagine that God should justify a people and not sanctify them, He should justify a people whom He could not glorify.
– Thomas Watson
Justification | Sanctification
God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Death | Goals | Justification
The soul is the life of the body, faith is the life of the soul, and Christ is the life of faith. Justification by faith in Christ’s righteousness is the golden chain which binds the Christian world in one body.
– James H. Aughey
Faith | Justification
Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.
– William Gurnall
Faith | The Gospel | Justification
It is entirely by the intervention of Christ’s righteousness that we obtain justification before God. This is equivalent to saying that man is not just in himself, but that the righteousness of Christ is communicated to him by imputation, while he is strictly deserving of punishment.
– John Calvin
Justification
The inner change, justification, is effected at the moment of salvation. The outer change in the believer’s daily walk, sanctification, continues throughout life. But the progressive work of sanctification is only fully effective when the radical, inner transformation of justification is realized and appropriated by faith.
– Neil T. Anderson
Salvation | Sanctification | Justification
Justification is… a completed fact for the believer; it is not an ongoing process.
– John MacArthur
Justification
We are justified, not by giving anything to God, – what we do, – but by receiving from God, what Christ hath done for us.”
– William Gurnall
Grace | Justification
True faith will inevitably manifest itself in the performance of works of obedience… The performance of works are the result of faith and the fruit of justification.
– R. C. Sproul
Obedience | Justification
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.
– Martin Luther
Faith | Justification
The truth is that, though we were justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone (it always produces fruit, “good works,”…a transformed life).
– J.I. Packer
Justification
Justification and regeneration are simultaneous. The pardoned sinner becomes a child of God in justification.
– William J. Seymour
Justification | Renewal
Faith acts upon Christ for justification, as he is a Jesus, or by receiving him as a Jesus; faith acts upon Christ for sanctification, as he is a Lord, or by receiving him as Lord.
– Ralph Erskine
Faith | Justification | Sanctification
Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God’s grace.
– Charles Spurgeon
Justification | Sanctification | Eternal Life