“To conclude, it is most clear in Scripture, that our Justification, at the great judgment, will be according to our Works, and to what we have done in the Flesh, whether good or evil; which can be no otherwise than as it was the Condition of that Justification.”
Advocating Final Justification
If one talks about “Final Justification” in terms of our works vindicating and agreeing with our forensic Justification which is/was by Christ alone there should be very little problem since Scripture talks about how our works shall follow us (Rev. 14:13). Further “Final Justification might be allowed as long as everyone agrees that all who were forensically justified will be finally justified without exception. However, to talk about a “final Justification” that somehow eclipses our forensic Justification is just Remonstrant trash. The same kind of trash being dished out by Federal Vision today;
“Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives — the obedience we’ve preformed, the sins we’ve committed, the confessions and repentance we’ve done … God’s verdict over us will be in accord with, and therefore in some sense based upon, the life we have lived.”
Rich Lusk
Federal Vision Remonstrant
As a brief aside here having interacted with the FV crowd quite extensively in days gone by, keep an eye out for the language above where we find the phrase “in some sense.” That is a weasel phrase that can mean just about anything.
Note, that while I do think that ever increasing obedience should be characteristic of the believer I would never think or say to myself that I really believed that my obedience would be connected to any final justification — even if in the way of vindication. Honestly, I know too well of my ongoing battle to put off the old man and put on the new man created in Christ Jesus to ever take hope in my “obedience performed,” for any kind of Justification. It strikes me that only someone not conversant with the depths of their own sin would write the way Lusk does.
We all would do well to remember our confessions;
“Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works are also accepted in Him, not as though they were in this life wholly unblameable, and unreprovable in God’s sight; but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.”
Westminster Confession of Faith – 16:6
