John
10:27-30 “My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal
life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to
snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”
Those whom God effectually
calls, He also freely justifies. He does not pour righteousness into them but
pardons their sins and looks on them and accepts them as if they were
righteous—not because of anything worked in them or done by them, but for
Christ’s sake alone. He does not consider their faith itself, the act of
believing, as their righteousness or any other obedient response to the gospel
on their part. Rather, he imputes to them the obedience and judicial satisfaction
earned by Christ. For their part, they receive and rest on Christ and his righteousness
by faith (and this faith is not their own but is itself a gift of God).
Faith, thus receiving and
resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the only means of justification. In
the person justified, however, it is always accompanied by all the other saving
graces and is not a dead faith, but works by love.
By his obedience and death Christ completely discharged
the debt of all those who are so justified, and he made the correct, real, and
full satisfaction to his Father’s justice on their behalf. Since Christ was
voluntarily given by the Father for them, and since his obedience and satisfaction
were accepted in their place and not for anything in them, their justification
is the result only of his free grace—so that both the perfect justice and the
rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.
God continues to forgive the
sins of those who are justified. Although they can never fall from the state of
justification, they may by their sins come under God’s fatherly displeasure and
not have a sense of his presence with them until they humble themselves,
confess their sins, ask for forgiveness, and renew their faith in repentance.
The Westminster Confession of Faith
