1. Participation in the blessings of the union with Christ comes when the faithful have all the things needed to live well and blessedly to God. Eph. 1:3, He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing; Rom. 8:32, He who spared not his own son . . . how shall he not freely with him give us all things also?
2. This participation therefore brings a change and alteration in the condition of believers from the state of sin and death to the state of righteousness and eternal life. 1 John 3:14, We know that we are translated from death to life.
3. This change of state is twofold, relative and absolute (or real).
4. The relative change occurs in God's reckoning. Rom. 4:5, And to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is imputed as righteousness. 2 Cor. 5:19, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their offenses.
5. The change, of course, has no degrees and is completed at one moment and in only one act. Yet in manifestation, consciousness, and effects, it has many degrees; therein lie justification and adoption.
6. Justification is the gracious judgment of God by which he absolves the believer from sin and death, and reckons him righteous and worthy of life for the sake of Christ apprehended in faith. Rom. 3:22, 24, The righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ in all and upon all that believe. . . . they are freely justified by his grace . . . through the redemption made by Jesus Christ.
7. It is the pronouncing of a sentence, as the word is used, which does not denote in the Holy Scriptures a physical or a real change. There is rather a judicial or moral change which takes shape in the pronouncing of the sentence and in the reckoning. Prov. 17:15, He that justifies the wicked; Rom. 8:33, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifies.
8. Therefore, Thomas and his followers are completely mistaken for they would make justification a kind of physical motion from the state of unrighteousness to that of righteousness in a real transmutation. They consider that it begins with sin, ends in inherent righteousness, with remission of sin and infusion of righteousness the motion between.
9. The judgment was, first, conceived in the mind of God in a decree of justification. Gal. 3:8, The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. Second, it was pronounced in Christ our head as he rose from the dead. 2 Cor. 5:19, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their sins to them. Third, it is pronounced in actuality upon that first relationship which is created when faith is born. Rom. 8:1, There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Fourth, it is expressly pronounced by the spirit of God witnessing to our spirits our reconciliation with God. Rom. 5:5, The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. This testimony of the spirit is not properly justification itself, but rather an actual perceiving of what has been given before as if in a reflected act of faith.
10. It is a gracious judgment because it is given not by God's justice but by his grace. Rom. 3:24, Freely by his grace. For by the same grace with which he called Christ to the office of mediator and the elect to union with Christ, he accounts those who are called and believing, justified by the union.