Intrinsic Justification

The classical Protestant notion is that when God declares a person justified, the person’s justification is merely extrinsic (that is, a mere juridical declaration of a change stemming from a purely legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner).

Under this scheme—a “legal fiction,” as Catholic apologists since the Reformation have rightly termed it—there is no real, inward change in the sinner. His soul remains corrupted, unclean.

The Catholic Church teaches the biblical doctrine that justification is intrinsic. This means that the initial justification of the sinner, wrought by God’s gift of grace and appropriated by faith (in the case of those above the age of reason), produces a real, inward change. The soul is filled with grace and becomes clean.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4).

“We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed [literally: “justified”] from sin” (Rom. 6:7-8).

“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

“Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).

“You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23).

“[I]f we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

“Repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).