We all know that the law is useless to save since its purpose was to punish error and reveal hidden wickedness, but today I realized it's fundamentally incapable of justifying.
Justification means to count as not sinful, or pardon, when God looks at us and treats us as if we had been perfectly righteous. It's a legal declaration, it ends the trial, case closed.
In other words, it's the pronouncement of the judge.
The law can therefore never justify us because it's not a pronouncement from the judge. In the courtroom it would be the attending witnesses and the evidence table. It does not make a final verdict because God the righteous judge does that, the witness just brings forward proof of the record. It does not make anything new, it does not change things moving forward, it just provides evidence of what already happened.
And for that reason justification, when God declares something to be true, can never be by the law. Therefore justification must be by another means, in this case, by faith alone.
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