John Owen on Justification
Forensic — righteousness imputed, not infused
This imputation is an act of God 'ex mera gratia,' — of his mere love and grace; whereby, on the consideration of the mediation of Christ, he makes an effectual grant and donation of a true, real, perfect righteousness, even that of Christ himself unto all that do believe; and accounting it as theirs, on his own gracious act, both absolves them from sin and grants them right and title unto eternal life.
THE POSITION
Forensic, and defined with unusual care against both Rome and the Socinians. Owen distinguishes imputation of what is already ours — an act of justice — from imputation of what is not ours until imputed, which is of mere grace, and puts justification wholly in the second class. He denies that imputation transfuses righteousness into the believer, and denies the Socinian reduction of imputation to a sharing in the effects of Christ's righteousness rather than in the righteousness itself.
6 Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
18 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
The most formidable English Puritan theologian: Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford under Cromwell, later a nonconformist pastor in London. This entry rests on The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647), The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677), Pneumatologia and the Discourse of Spiritual Gifts (1674), and the Two Short Catechisms (1645), read in the Goold edition of the Works.
Cite this page
"John Owen on Justification", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/owen/justification (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/owen/justification).