The 2019 film Just Mercy, tells the true story of Walter McMillian, who waited on death row for a wrongful accusation of murder. Having few financial resources, Walter is unable to secure adequate legal counsel to pursue a retrial. Thankfully, recent Harvard Law graduate Bryan Stevenson takes on Walter’s case. Bryan is a man who has chosen a career in defending the powerless.
Walter and Bryan meet obstacles at every turn. Even with sufficient evidence of the truth, the presiding judge denies the request for Walter’s retrial.
But Bryan doesn’t give up. Finally, the case makes its way to the Supreme Court of Alabama, which grants Walter a retrial. In one of the most moving scenes I’ve ever seen on screen, the judge looks Walter deep in the eyes and speaks with authority: “All charges against you are dismissed, Mr. McMillian.”
The Doctrine of Justification
It moves us to see Walter acquitted because we see his innocence. But as human beings, none of us are. Due to the disobedience of our forefather Adam, all human beings are subject to an eternal sentence because of our sin. From birth, regardless of background, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or gender, all “have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Thus, we stand—middle schoolers, high schoolers, parents, and youth workers—all with a debt we cannot pay. We need a representative, a legal counsel, to put his authoritative word on the stand before the Judge, that we, too, might hear God the Father say the same words, “All charges against you are dismissed.”
This is the doctrine of justification—what every human heart is ultimately desperate for. Through the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross, God declares a guilty sinner is righteous in his sight, once and for all.
John Calvin pled for the importance of the doctrine of justification. He wrote, “For unless you understand first of all what your position is before God, and what the judgment which he passes upon you, you have no foundation on which your salvation can be laid, or on which piety towards God can be reared” (Institutes, III.xi.2). In other words, if you feel unsure of your standing before God, the ship of your faith will be tossed every which way. Youth ministers, we must teach students their need for justification, and how it is they are justified.
Teaching Students Their Need To Be Justified
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous” about this very doctrine (Luke 18:9). The parable features two main characters: a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee goes into the temple, praying, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke 18:11-12). He stands before God declaring his own righteousness, listing all the good things he does.
Jesus goes on. “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'” (Luke 18:13) This man approaches the Lord of glory with a recognition of his own guilt. He can’t even look up. And what’s his prayer? Beating his breast in a gesture of grief, he pleads for mercy.
The tax collector in Jesus’ story demonstrates the starting point of our justification: the recognition that we stand before the Law of God guilty, unable to do anything about it.
Youth minister, your students know that for whatever reason, they don’t measure up. Many of them consistently carry guilt and shame. They may be the students—the ones who are first to volunteer, who invite their friends to youth group, who write thank-you notes to their small group leaders every year. Or they’re deep into the world of resume-building and the comparison game on social media. Regardless, students feel plagued by a general sense of religious guilt. They know they don’t pray enough. They know they don’t read their Bible enough. They’re mired in shame by their addictions, pornography or otherwise.
As youth ministers, we can help connect the guilt students feel to the insufficiency of their own righteousness. We can help them to see that Jesus is the answer for our insufficiency—for us youth pastors, for parents, for the star students as well as the struggling ones.
How Jesus Achieves Justification For Us
The apostle Paul, a man well acquainted with a sinful past, has insight to this problem. He writes, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13-14).
On that dark day thousands of years ago, when the sun went black, our Lord Jesus Christ cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Jesus drained the cup of God’s holy wrath to the very bottom. What separates Just Mercy and the gospel is that, unlike Walter, we are not innocent. We stand before a Judge rightfully charged as guilty. And yet, in the most profound upside-down work of Jesus Christ, the innocent One became guilty, that the guilty ones can become righteous. Christ stood in our place on the cross. He received the guilty penalty on our behalf so that we can hear the same words Walter heard: “All charges against you have been dropped.” Thus, anyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ will find their record of debt paid in full.
The Significance of Justification
Here’s why the doctrine of justification is so vital to student ministry. Student ministry messages in a previous era (particularly in the 90’s up to the 2010’s) tended to focus on “good” behavior. Students surmised that they will probably go to heaven if they don’t drink, smoke, or have sex. Central to the teaching was not the cross of Christ but moralistic rules. Sadly, that thin message has contributed to a mass exodus of millennials and older Gen Z’ers from the church. How could it not? When students recieve a false gospel of a moral checklist, they will find themselves either exhausted and despairing because they know they aren’t keeping the list well enough, or falsely proud because they believe they are. Deconstruction becomes inevitable.
But the doctrine of justification is not a peripheral doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the essential doctrine. It is the door through which students enter into their identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. Students grow in Christ not without growing deeper in their understanding and appreciation of justification. Fun games, engaging messages, and pizza might get students to show up, but the doctrine of justification is the food their souls most desperately long for.
Help Teenagers Remember the Cross
Youth minister, you can’t talk about justification too much. There is nothing more relieving to student souls than to be convinced that they—sinful, messy, and doubting as they are—stand acquitted, declared innocent before God. For students who are hungry for approval, this doctrine provides what they desperately long for. For students addicted to pornography, this doctrine is the engine for healing, relief, and security with God. And for students who carry a foggy sense of guilt, the black-and-white nature of this doctrine makes sense to their brains and hearts. (You were guilty; in Christ, but now God declares you innocent.). We can tell our students that Jesus knew, precisely, the exact sins he was dying for on the cross. We can assure them that Jesus’ death paid for their salvation in full; the big sins, the little sins, the hidden sins, all of it.
Youth ministers, the doctrine of justification—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—is the rock on which all Christian activity stands. It is the engine that drives all other ministerial endeavors. As we prepare messages, meet students for coffee, partner with parents, or destroy a middle school boy at spike ball, let us hold fast to the cross. Let us never graduate from it. We must never move on from it.
In the words of John Stott, “It was by his [Jesus’] death that he wished above all else to be remembered. There is, then, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.”
We who are in Christ have been justified. All charges against us have been dismissed. Let us always labor with the cross as the centerpiece of our ministries.
If you’re looking to grow in teaching teenagers with theological depth, Rooted has Bible-based curriculum to support your efforts.
