Romans - understanding justification

This is our Sunday teaching from Senior Pastor, Tom Thompson. Recorded live at our Sunday Service in Harris Academy Purley, Croydon on Sunday 25th January, 2026.

Romans: Understanding Justification

This week’s teaching continued our journey through one of the most powerful paragraphs in Romans, focusing on a single word that sits at the heart of the gospel: justified. Paul writes that those God foreknew, he called; those he called, he justified; and those he justified, he glorified. But what does it mean to be “given right standing with God” and why does it matter so deeply?

For Paul, understanding justification is not a side issue. It is the engine that powers a resilient, hope-filled Christian life. To believe that God has already acted decisively in Jesus to make you right with himself changes how you suffer, how you persevere, and how you live. If God has already secured the ultimate victory, then no present hardship—loss, conflict, fear, or uncertainty—can derail his purposes. This conviction produces assurance and perseverance: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Justification also grounds us in the love of God. If God did not spare his own Son, Paul argues, then he will not easily abandon us now. There is no charge left to bring, no condemnation left to fear. Christ has died, been raised, and now intercedes for us. To grasp this is to live with deep hopefulness—a settled confidence that God is for us.

At the same time, justification awakens gratitude. When we realise the cost at which we were forgiven, love begins to flow back toward God. Paul describes this response as offering our lives as “living sacrifices”—not out of guilt or fear, but joyful devotion. Believing what God has done precedes becoming who God is shaping us to be.

The teaching then stepped back to trace the bigger story. God created humanity to share in stewarding the world under his loving rule, yet again and again humans chose self-rule instead. This rebellion fractured the world with injustice, greed, and harm. God’s anger toward sin is not a failure of love, but a guarantee of it—his commitment to oppose what destroys his good creation.

And yet, God did not abandon his plan. Through Abraham, and ultimately through Jesus, God chose to deal with sin decisively. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the judgment that human failure deserved. To believe this is not to imagine God as permissive or indifferent, but to trust that his perfect justice and perfect love meet in Christ.

Paul lands with breathtaking hope: because we are justified by faith, we have peace with God, access to grace, confidence in suffering, the presence of the Holy Spirit, freedom from condemnation, and restored friendship with God. This is our future in Jesus—and the invitation is clear: to believe this deeply, and to become people shaped by it.