Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Stanford University defines the humanities as: The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience.

That is a broad definition. Cultural studies are broken down to process and document what the humanities mean to individual cultures, because not all cultures have the same experience. Yet in truth, all humanity shares one thing in common, no matter what the culture. Extremes.

Every culture which exists has suffered extremes. At one end is the extreme of violent and hostile domination. Cruelty in extremes assure security for a culture struggling to survive. Wars are littered with human cruelty too ugly to document without losing sight that humans perpetrated those acts. The worst offenders caught are labeled monsters, human monsters.

When a society dominates a large enough region to feel secure, their humanity moves away from cruelty to pleasure. All those energies created to win security are now free to exercise themselves in experiencing the other end of the scale of emotions. Inevitably the unrestrained search for pleasure leads to those extremes, debauchery.  Fleshly lust does not always need a willing partner to satisfy itself.

A close examination of any culture will reveal a natural resistance to extremes. Extremes make people uncomfortable. A culture that has a long history will reveal a pendulum which swings back and forth over time to societies that exhibit puritanical control at one end of the swing to unrestrained pleasure seeking at the other. Extremes.

Philippians 4:5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.

Societies with God at the center avoid extremes.

Extremist see that as a threat.

Romans 4:25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

I was taught to focus on the issue of justification over salvation. The reasoning was simple. Justification is a single issue. It involves only one thing and is therefore more easily understood. Salvation is a continuing process. It has to be revisited continually within our experience because we sin from time to time. Sin and salvation are tied together, justification is not.

The easy way of trying to understand justification is most often referred to as “just as if” you never did it. It is usually identified as sin but we continue to sin, so therefore we confuse ourselves on the issues of justification being “just as if you never did” because we know we will sin again.

In order to understand properly the issues of justification and salvation as they pertain to us in our Christian walk, then we need to start with the single issue, once and done, justification.

Justification is a legal term. We are most familiar with it in our justice system as it is rendered in the form of “justifiable homicide”. The defendant did the homicide but the circumstances were justified. Punishment is diverted, the defendant is granted an acquittal. In the court of heaven, God must deal with the issues of sin. His justice must be satisfied, for He is a just God.

When Jesus Christ offered up His life for the sins of all mankind, He took those sins to the court of heaven and declared, “I have been executed for these crimes. The sentence of death has been carried out.” God accepted His Son’s execution as justice against the offense of sin, all sin, and declared “case closed, the sentence of death against sin has been carried out. I am satisfied.”

God no longer has a problem with sin. God has dealt with sin. We are the ones who have a problem with sin, hence our need for salvation. But justice has been serve. Sin can no longer be brought before the court of heaven.

Romans 5:1-2 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

If you place your faith in Christ you have justified sin, that case is closed.