(See: William Barclay. The Letter to the Romans, Saint Andrew Press, (1963), pp.53-54)

The Greek word that Paul uses for to justify is dikaioun, of which the first person singular of the present indication is dikaioo. We have to be quite clear that the word justify, used in this sense, has a quite different meaning from its ordinary English meaning. If we justify ourselves we produce reasons to prove that we were right. If someone justifies us he produces reasons to prove that we did act in the right way. But all verbs in Greek which end in oo do not mean to prove a person or thing to be something, or to make a person or thing to be something; they always mean to treat, or account or reckon a person to be something. Now if God justifies the sinner, it does not mean that He finds reasons to prove that the sinner was right—far from it. It does not mean that, at this point, He even makes the sinner a good man (or woman). What it does mean is that God treats the sinner as if he had not been a sinner at all. Instead of treating the sinner as a criminal to be obliterated God treats him as a child to be loved. That is what justification means. It means that God reckons us not as His enemies but as His friends; that God treats us not as bad people deserve, but as good people deserve. It means He looks on us not as law-breakers to be punished, but as men and women only to be loved. That is the very essence of the gospel.

Remember: just-if-I’d never sinned.

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