How can a man be just with God.?

'How can a man be just with God.?'

— Job 25:4

This is the question that causes me most concern. Like other men, I am curious about the decrees of God and the events of the future. But this is the question which outweighs all others. I know that God is holy, righteous and just, and that I am a sinner. Soon I will stand before the bar of God’s judgment and be weighed in the balances with his strict righteousness and justice. Woe unto the man who is found wanting in that day! How can a man be just with God?

I know this: I cannot justify myself. Job said, ‘If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me.’ It is not possible for me, (or any other man) to be justified before God by my own works. It is written: ‘By the work of the law shall no flesh be justified.’ Having once broken God’s law, we can never make reparation.

This too I know: if ever I am justified, it will be by the work of God alone. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘It is God that justifieth.’ God can and does justify sinners. Justification is a gracious work of God, accomplished through the shed blood of Christ, his Son. The Lord Jesus Christ stood before God as the sinner’s Substitute. He legally represented us before the law by the appointment of God himself’. The law required perfect obedience to its precepts. Christ rendered that obedience. The law required a full payment for sin. Christ paid the awful debt. This is the only way that God could forgive sin. His law had to be fulfilled. Therefore, Jesus Christ voluntarily assumed our nature and place. Since he fulfilled the law’s righteousness and its penalty, all who ever believe were justified freely by his grace’. Through the blood of Christ, God is both just and the justifier of all who believe.

Yet it is equally clear that if I am justified, I must receive that justification by faith alone. My faith will not satisfy the law’s requirements. Christ alone can do that. But as I rest in Christ and trust in the merits of his righteousness and shed blood, God declares that I am justified! ‘All that believe are justified from all things.’ ‘We have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ.'