...so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Countless times I've rattled off a quick one-liner to explain the bible-word, 'justification'. I've usually used words like, 'God', 'declare', 'pronounce', 'sinners', 'me/us', 'in the clear', 'innocent'.

But next time, I think I'll try a bit harder to bring out the connection between the declaration and the cross--the 'justifying event'.

Donald Carson chews over how Paul talks in Romans about God's way of justifying sinners like us. He thinks we get a bit too simplistic in our talk of what God's justification of sinners is all about--we leave Jesus out of it, or, rather, leave ourselves out of Jesus:

"To think of the justification of the ungodly as mere declaration with respect to the believer, based upon the redemptive event but distinct from it, rather than seeing justification as the great event itself in which God simultaneously is vindicated while justifying the ungodly, thereby incorporating the declaration into the saving event, is a painful reductionism that fails to see how our being "in Christ" ties us to the justifying event itself." ('The Vindication of Justification', in Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates, 77, emphasis original).

When's the last time you wrote a sentence that long? I had to read it a couple of times.