Quotes about Justification

Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest.

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.

What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.

And many other places to the like purpose. And therefore men can be justified by their words, no otherwise than as evidences or manifestations of what is in the heart. And it is thus that Christ speaks of the words in this very place, as is evident by the context, ver. 34, 35. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart," &c. The words

They justify themselves with their inability; and the design and end of the law, as a school-master to fit them for Christ, is defeated.

So in the sense in which the apostle James seems to use the word justify for manifestative justification, a man is justified not only by faith, but also by works; as a tree is manifested to be good, not only by immediately examining the tree, but also by the fruit,664 Prov. xx. 11. "Even a child is known by his doing, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.

To be justified, is to be approved of God as a proper subject of pardon, with a right to eternal life. Therefore, when it is said that we are justified by faith, what else can be understood by it, than that faith is that by which we are rendered approvable, fitly so, and indeed, as the case stands, proper subjects of this benefit?

Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and—without really consciously dealing with it intensively—let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made; whether one can adequately justify it retrospectively is another question. "Thus" it happened that I went. Bonhoeffer was always thinking about thinking.

Faith and pride. If people think that sanctification adds anything to their justification, there is room for them to become spiritually prideful. At the very least, they can begin to congratulate themselves that they are less in need of God's sheer grace than they once were and no doubt less in need than other believers now are.

If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am, He would have given me better excuses.

Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.