# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2019_S295
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
And the only reason you could choose the Gospel is
because God had already acted to make you alive.
“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit”
(1 Cor. 12:3). Your yes to Jesus is only possible because
God has already given you His Spirit.

Faith is more than mere knowledge. It affects the entire
person.

Christ’s work + a person’s faith = salvation.

Without faith in the Gospel, a person does not receive
the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection.

This one can be tricky! Lutherans certainly emphasize the
importance of faith, as does the Bible. Read Romans 3:28
again. There are two ditches to avoid if one wants to stay
on the straight road. The first ditch to avoid is the refusal
to talk about faith at all, as if any discussion of faith and
its role in justification would turn faith into our part of the
equation. The other ditch to avoid is that of thinking that
faith is my half of the work, what I “bring to the equation.”
In this point of view, what God has done in Christ is only
half of what is needed for justification — as if God’s work is
the unfinished bridge in the French city of Avignon — and
our faith is what completes the building project.

How, then, should we understand and talk about faith so
that we stay on the straight, biblical path?
We must see that faith itself is a gift. God the Holy Spirit
works faith through the Gospel. We cannot make ourselves
believe in Christ.

5. The Basis of Objective Justification:
The Universality of Grace and the
Universal Extent of the Work of Christ.

Faith is always faith in something or someone. There is
no such thing as “absolute” or “abstract” faith — faith
as something that I possess or produce myself. Rather,
faith is trusting in the Gospel and thus trusting in Christ
as my Savior.

• Faith has no value in and of itself.
What about this equation?

295

To understand what is meant by objective or universal
justification, we need to start by looking at God’s
universal grace.

Read 1 Timothy 4:10. In what sense is God the “Savior of all
people”? Does this simply mean that God makes salvation
possible, that He is the “possible Savior of all people”? Or is
God really only the Savior of the believers? Has God saved
all people or only those who believe?

4. Objective or Universal Justification
What do we mean when we talk about “objective”
(“general” or “universal”) justification?

God is the Savior of all people. The Bible explicitly teaches
that He desires all to be saved:

Until now, we have talked about the way in which God
justifies an individual through the Word of the Gospel
which is received in faith. Objective justification refers
to the promise that God has justified the entire world.
Justification and forgiveness of sins are the same thing.
In subjective justification, this word of justification or
forgiveness is received by the individual. When we talk
about objective justification, we are confessing the biblical
truth — the Bible’s declaration and promise — that God
has forgiven the sins of the whole world. Here is a helpful
summary of this teaching:

“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our
Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is
one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony
given at the proper time.” (1 Tim. 2:3–6).
According to this passage, for whom did Christ die?
Christ is the Savior of all people. His death is for the sins
of all people, those who will believe and those who will
not believe. The Gospel is a promise to all people. The
grace of God extends over all people, and so does the
merit of Christ. That is, what Christ has done merits the
forgiveness for all sins. The Gospel is the Good News for
all people. All these universal statements are objective, that
is, they are factual and not influenced by human opinion
or perspective. They declare absolute truths. They become
mine (subjectively) through faith in this Gospel.

“By ‘objective’ or ‘universal’ justification one means that
God has declared the whole world to be righteous for
Christ’s sake and that righteousness has thus been
procured for all people. It is objective because this was
God’s unilateral act prior to and in no way dependent
upon man’s response to it, and universal because all human
beings are embraced by this verdict. God has acquired
the forgiveness of sins for all people by declaring that the
world for Christ’s sake has been forgiven. The acquiring of
forgiveness is the pronouncement of forgiveness.”2

The first thing to remember about objective or universal
justification, therefore, is that it is about the object of faith
(what faith believes in), namely the work of Christ. This
work of Christ is universal, that is, it concerns all people.
Christ died for all people.

We will start to unpack the content of this thesis in the
remainder of this study (Session 1) and continue to
explore it more fully in Session 2.

6. Conclusion

Objective justification means that God has justified the
entire world. Subjective justification describes the way in
which we, as individuals, are justified through the Gospel.
Christ’s work on the cross becomes ours and is received by
faith. We will explore both teachings more fully in Session 2.

Faith is not a human work, even though it is we as human
beings (not God) who believe. To reject Christ and refuse
to believe in Him is to declare God’s promises null and void
for oneself.
2
Commission on Theology and Church Relations, 7KHVHV RQ -XVWL¿FDWLRQ (St.
Louis: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 2015), Thesis 23.

Leader’s Guide |

Subjective and Objective Justification
Pa rti ci pa nt ’s

Session 1

Gui de

3

4 | Subjective and Objective Justification | Session 1

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2019 Convention Workbook