God Justifies the Wicked

The righteousness of God is a command that condemns us all, but the righteousness from God is a gift that saves all who believe. This gospel announces that sinners "are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith" (Rom. 3:24-25). God imputes (credits) our sin to Christ and Christ's righteousness to us. "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). This is the simplest news to grasp and yet the most difficult news to accept. Paul considered this doctrine to be so central that he regarded its explicit denial as "anathema" --that is, an act of heresy that the Galatian church was on the verge of committing (Gal. 1:8-9). For Paul, a denial of justification was tantamount to a denial of grace and even to a denial of Christ, "for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose" (Gal. 2:21).

_Michael Horton__ from The Gospel-Driven Life
 
(Last October I posted a "paraphrased quote" from Michael Horton. I went back to revise the post and get his exact quote, and ended up expanding the entire post. So...here it is "not-really-again" in its new and improved version. _Craig)