JUSTIFICATION - According to NIB, "to be justified" is a divine fiat, an objective, God-initiated word that declares someone in right standing or relationship to God, or someone else who has been placed [by another] in right standing with God. [1] Yet the earliest version of justification has this word bantered around the courts, but later became more associated in eschatological terms. That is, that God will one day, vindicate or 'justify" God's people.

TAMPERED WITH - The construction here is in the passive voice: we have been acted upon. We’ve been tampered with! God will ultimately act to acquit us of guilt and will set right everything that's gone awry.

FAITH IN JUSTIFICATION? - Paul tacks on to his word the instrumental phrase, ek pisteos, by faith. Faith is not the ground of justification; if it were, faith would become a meritorious work and Paul would not be able to describe the Christian as ‘one who does not work’ (Romans 4:5). Faith is, as Packer says, "the outstretched empty hand which receives righteousness by receiving Christ." [2]

WHO DOES WHAT IN SALVATION? - Jonathan Edwards places a bit more balance on our relationship in appropriating justification: we are not exactly passive, he says, but rather that God does all and we do all! God produces all and we act all. God is the author, we are the actors. [3]

God-Father, Son, and Spirit-are found in these few verses. How do you understand the role of the Three in reconciling humanity and all of creation to God? What does it mean to have the Spirit funneling God’s Love into our lives? (I have this image of two planes side by side in mid-air; a fuel line connects the two planes; that is the sustaining energy of the one goes into the fuel tank of the other.)

We have several homilies on this lesson available on DPS as well as sermons on the Trinity; check them out first.

For further ideas-since this is the Sunday that we shore up our theologies of the Trinitarian God, you might rummage around through other chapters in the history of the Church where people have struggled to come to a balance of power, actions, and essences of the triune God.

But you’ll of course, want to make the lesson practical too; so you might offer a basic distinction of what God does in saving us or healing our brokenness, or "justifying" us.

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), page 237.
[2] God’s Words, page 142.
[3] Quoted in The Christian Story  by Gabriel Fackre (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978, rvd. ed. 1984, page 199.