“Justification for us is nothing other than the gracious declaration of God whereby He absolves a sinner, on account of Christ’s righteousness imputed to him and apprehended by him with a living faith, from the guilt of all his sins, and declares him righteous for eternal life…
Fourth, the intrinsically moving cause is, as it were, namely God’s pure and unadulterated grace (Rom. 3:24, “freely by His grace“; 4:24; Eph. 2:8; Titus 3:5-7).
Insofar as we are justified not on account of our own and inherent righteousness, good works, or anything in us that would merit being justified, for we all have sinned, and are destitute of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Nor is our justification anything but the blotting out of our sins (Isa. 43:25), their forgiveness, their covering (Ps. 32:1), for which reason Scripture declares throughout that we are justified without the deeds of the law (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:8-9), so that every opportunity of boasting is excluded from us (Rom. 3:27; 4:2; Eph. 2:9), by the same grace also whereby God gave the Redeemer to the world (John 3:16; 4:10), whereby He calls the elect to receive the Redeemer given to them (2 Tim. 1:9), and whereby He grants faith to them, by means of which they receive Him (Phil. 1:29) and are united with Him (Phil. 3:9); the same grace, I say, whereby He reckons and pronounces them righteous in Christ.”
–Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology: The Application of Redemption and the Church, Volume 5, Trans. Todd Rester, Ed. Joel Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1698/2025), 5: 170.
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