Few doctrines have shaped the church more profoundly—or been more easily misunderstood—than justification. At stake is nothing less than the gospel itself: how sinful people can stand righteous before a holy God. In this series, we’ll walk carefully through the doctrine of justification as summarized in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, exploring what it is, why it matters, where it’s often distorted, and how it grounds assurance, fuels obedience, and magnifies the grace of God in Christ alone.
In the last post, we defined justification and explained why it sits at the very heart of the gospel. That clarity matters. But clarity doesn’t preserve itself.
Every generation receives the doctrine of justification and, often without realizing it, begins to reshape it. Not out of bad intentions, but out of instinct. We adjust the language. We emphasize one part and soften another. Over time, what was once clear starts to drift.
Justification is rarely rejected outright. That kind of error is usually easy to spot. Far more often, it’s adjusted—softened, supplemented, reframed. And those shifts almost always feel reasonable. Sometimes they even sound spiritual.
They usually appeal to good instincts: a desire for holiness, a concern for obedience, a fear of cheap grace, a longing for assurance that feels concrete and measurable. None of those concerns are wrong. But when they begin to reshape how we think about justification, the center of gravity quietly moves away from Christ.
And when justification shifts—even slightly—the effects ripple outward.
Assurance becomes unstable because it’s no longer anchored firmly outside of us. Obedience becomes distorted, either driven by anxiety or drained of joy. Grace starts to lose its sweetness, weighed down by conditions and quiet expectations.
That’s what makes this so dangerous. Nothing sounds obviously wrong. Christ is still mentioned. Faith is still affirmed. Grace is still part of the vocabulary. Yet the ground of confidence begins to shift—from what Christ has done to what we are doing, or at least how well we think we’re doing it.
That’s why getting justification almost right is still getting it wrong.
A gospel that’s slightly off-center doesn’t announce itself as false. It slowly reshapes the Christian life from the inside out—until what was meant to bring peace produces either pride or despair. That’s why justification must not only be affirmed, but carefully guarded.
Most distortions of justification don’t come from subtraction, but from addition.
Christ remains important. Grace is still mentioned. Faith is still affirmed. But something extra sneaks in—often quietly, often unintentionally. Over time, that “something” begins to carry real weight.
Paul understood this danger well. That’s why he spoke so sharply about “a different gospel” in Galatians. The problem wasn’t that Christ was denied. The problem was that Christ was no longer enough.
The same thing happens today.
Justification gets reframed in ways that sound helpful, practical, or balanced. But beneath the surface, the ground of our standing before God begins to shift. And when that happens, everything downstream gets distorted.
These distortions don’t all look the same. But they tend to follow familiar patterns. The first—and most common—appears when justification quietly shifts from a verdict declared by God to a verdict measured by change.
Do you ever find yourself looking at your progress to reassure yourself that you’re right with God?
If so, you’re not alone—and you’re not unusual. But you may be measuring justification by the wrong standard.
One of the most common and damaging distortions of justification happens when it quietly becomes tied to behavior modification. It shows up in thoughts like these:
Those statements sound reasonable because there’s truth mixed in. Growth matters. Holiness matters. Obedience matters. Scripture is clear about that.
But none of those things answer the courtroom question.
A judge doesn’t declare someone righteous because they’ve shown improvement. A verdict is based on law, not trajectory. It’s a declaration, not an evaluation.
Justification answers the question of status, not condition.
When moral progress becomes the measure of justification, assurance becomes fragile. Growth is uneven. Repentance is incomplete. Obedience fluctuates. And the verdict begins to feel provisional—always under review, always vulnerable to the next failure.
That’s not how justification works.
The gospel doesn’t say, “You are righteous because you are changing.”
It says, “You are righteous because Christ is.”
Change follows justification. It never creates it.
When your assurance wavers, do you start examining the quality of your faith rather than the sufficiency of Christ?
If so, you may be resting your confidence on faith itself instead of on the Savior faith is meant to receive.
This error is subtle—and incredibly common. We say all the right things: saved by faith alone, trusting Christ, believing the gospel. But quietly, almost without noticing, faith itself begins to carry the weight that only Christ should bear.
It sounds like this:
Again, there’s truth mixed in. Faith matters. Scripture commands us to believe. Without faith, no one is justified.
But faith is never the ground of justification.
Faith does not justify because it is strong, consistent, or impressive. Faith justifies because of the One it clings to. Its power lies not in itself, but in its object.
The Confession is careful here for a reason. It says we are justified:
“…not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience… but by imputing Christ’s righteousness…”
That distinction is everything.
When faith becomes the ground of justification, assurance turns inward. Instead of asking, “What has Christ done?” we start asking, “Do I believe enough?” And that question is a bottomless pit. Faith fluctuates. Confidence rises and falls. Doubts creep in. And suddenly the Christian life becomes an exhausting exercise in self-measurement.
Ironically, this error often masquerades as humility. It sounds cautious. It feels careful. But it quietly shifts your eyes off Christ and back onto yourself.
Scripture never tells us to rest on our faith. It tells us to rest through faith—on Christ.
Faith is the empty hand, not the treasure it receives. It’s the instrument, not the righteousness. It’s the means, not the merit.
The moment your peace depends on the quality of your believing rather than the completeness of Christ’s obedience, justification has already been distorted.
And when that happens, grace stops feeling like good news. It starts to feel fragile—always dependent on how well you’re holding on, instead of how firmly Christ holds you.
That’s not faith strengthening assurance.
That’s faith being asked to do a job it was never meant to do.
When you think about standing before God, do you quietly factor in how well you’re obeying—or how long you’ve stayed faithful?
If so, justification may no longer be resting on Christ alone.
This error doesn’t deny grace outright. In fact, it usually claims to protect it. The concern sounds noble: We don’t want cheap grace. We don’t want empty professions. We want a faith that lasts.
All of that is right—as far as it goes.
The problem comes when obedience, perseverance, or long-term faithfulness stop being evidence of justification and start functioning as conditions for it.
It sounds like this:
Again, truth is mixed in. True believers do persevere. Obedience matters. Scripture is clear that faith without works is dead.
But none of those things are ever presented as the ground of our right standing before God.
Justification is not something God grants and then waits to see if we can maintain. It is not a status held on probation. It is not a verdict that must be upheld by continued performance.
Once works—of any kind—are added as co-grounds, justification quietly shifts from a finished declaration to an ongoing evaluation.
And when that happens, assurance can never settle.
Why? Because obedience is real but imperfect. Perseverance is promised, but experienced unevenly. Seasons of faithfulness are often followed by seasons of weakness. If your standing with God depends even partly on how well you’re doing—or how long you’ve endured—peace will always remain just out of reach.
The Confession will not allow that kind of mixture. It insists that justification rests entirely on Christ’s righteousness imputed to us—not on our obedience, not on our endurance, not even on our future faithfulness.
Those things matter deeply—but they matter downstream, not at the foundation.
Works do not secure justification.
Perseverance does not preserve justification.
Obedience does not maintain justification.
They flow from it.
When obedience becomes a co-ground, grace quietly turns conditional. The gospel still sounds familiar, but its center of gravity has shifted. Christ is no longer the whole reason God accepts us—He’s just the starting point.
And that is no longer justification by faith alone.
True gospel obedience flows from a settled verdict, not anxiety over a pending one. Perseverance grows best in the soil of assurance, not fear. And holiness flourishes most when justification is already secure.
The moment we add anything to Christ as a co-ground—even something good—we’ve changed the gospel.
And changed gospels, no matter how well-intentioned, always end up doing harm.
At first glance, these errors can look very different. One ties justification to moral progress. Another leans too heavily on the quality of faith. A third adds obedience or perseverance as co-grounds. But underneath them all runs the same instinct.
Each one shifts the ground of justification—however slightly—away from Christ and back onto us.
Sometimes it’s our growth. Sometimes it’s our believing. Sometimes it’s our staying power. The specifics change, but the direction is the same. Confidence that once rested entirely on what Christ has done slowly begins to depend on something we are doing, feeling, or sustaining.
That’s why these distortions are so dangerous. They don’t reject grace outright. They qualify it. They don’t deny Christ. They supplement Him. And in doing so, they quietly replace a finished verdict with a fragile one.
Justification, however, will not tolerate mixtures. Either Christ alone is the ground of our standing before God, or assurance will always remain uncertain.
The good news is not that we contribute less than we think. It’s that we contribute nothing at all—and Christ has provided everything.
And that’s exactly where we need to return.
The strength of the 1689 Confession isn’t originality. It isn’t trying to say something new. Its strength is clarity—careful, hard-won clarity shaped by Scripture and sharpened through real pastoral battles.
The Confession knows how easily justification drifts, and it refuses to let that happen.
So it anchors justification entirely in Christ’s righteousness, not in our growth, our believing, or our endurance. Our standing before God rests on what Christ has accomplished outside of us and for us.
It insists that this righteousness is received by faith alone—not because faith is strong or virtuous, but because faith looks away from itself and rests on Christ. Faith brings nothing to the table except empty hands.
It speaks of justification as a once-for-all declaration, not a status that rises and falls with obedience. God’s verdict is not provisional. It is final. When He justifies, the case is closed.
At the same time, the Confession carefully distinguishes justification from sanctification without ever separating them. It refuses the false choice between assurance and holiness. Justification does not produce indifference to sin, and obedience does not secure acceptance. Each has its place, and confusing them harms both.
By holding these truths together, the Confession does something profound. It protects assurance without excusing sin. It fuels obedience without turning it into a condition. And it keeps the gospel from slowly shifting back onto our shoulders, where it was never meant to rest.
That balance is not accidental. It reflects pastoral wisdom forged in the fires of real controversy and real consciences—people crushed by legalism on one side and hollowed out by false freedom on the other.
The Confession guards the gospel here because it knows what is at stake: not merely theological precision, but the peace of God’s people and the glory of Christ Himself.
If justification rests entirely on Christ, one question still remains:
How does Christ’s righteousness actually become ours?
In the next post, we’ll look at the doctrine beneath the doctrine—imputation—and why losing it costs us assurance, obedience, and joy.
Because once justification is declared, the next question is unavoidable:
On what basis does God declare sinners righteous at all?