Arthur B. Crabtree, a Baptist, wrote the following about “justification” being, in part, transformative:
In Rom. 3.21ff this righteousness of God is called justification.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested . . . the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ . . . since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace . . .
It is easy to understand how Paul could identify the righteousness of God with justification. For the righteousness of God is God’s right action in getting men right with himself, and the word ‘justify’ both in Greek (dikaioun) and Hebrew (hizdiq) means ‘to set right’, ‘to make dikaois, zaddiq.’
Justification is thus essentially rectification, the making right (rectus, dikaios, zaddiq) of that which was wrong. It is, in particular, the rectification of personal relationships . . . ‘To justify’ for Paul means ‘to deem right’, ‘to declare right’, ‘to pronounce not guilty’, ‘to acquit.’ This forensic sense of the term is, as Schrenk says ‘crystal clear and indisputable.’
Does this mean that the justification of the ungodly (Rom. 4.5) is merely a forensic act on the part of God? Certainly not. For the justification of the ungodly is essentially the rectification of the ungodly, i.e. the rectification of his relationship with God. And this rectification is accomplished by a whole series of events which involve both forensic and dynamic acts on the part of God. It is effected by the grace of God (Rom. 3.24) operative in the work of Christ (Rom. 4.25) and the Spirit (Rom. 8.1ff), by faith (Rom. 3.21ff) and baptism (Rom. 6.1ff) which unite us with Christ (Gal. 3.26f), by the moral transformation which results in our union with Christ in the Spirit (2 Cor. 3.18; Gal. 5.22ff), by works of love (Rom. 3.ff; 13.8ff), by perseverance (Rom. 11.17-22; Eph. 6.18) in this faith that works through love (Gal. 5.6), and by the verdict of God which pronounces us right with God.
God’s justification of the ungodly is thus neither a purely forensic act, as Protestants tend to assume, nor a purely dynamic act, as Catholics tend to think, but a forensic-dynamic act by which the relationship of God and man is rectified. Or rather, it is a whole series of forensic and dynamic acts involving the manifestation of grace in the whole redeeming work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the mediation of grace through the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments, the kindling and re-kindling of a living faith that works through love, the forgiveness of sins and the transformation of the sinner through that faith that works through love, along with God’s initial acceptance of the sinner as his child and final acquittal in the last judgment. (Arthur B. Crabtree, The Restored Relationship: A Study in Justification and Reconciliation [London: The Carey Kingsgate Press, Ltd, 1963], 39-41, italics in original, emphasis in bold added)
