, and defines it as an act by which
righteousness is "infused" into believers. We read: "It is apparent that
whatever part Christ, as the faithful Mediator, acted with regard to
God, His heavenly Father, for our sakes, by fulfilling the Law and by
His suffering and death, was accomplished more than 1,500 years ago,
when we were not in existence. For this reason it cannot, properly
speaking, have been, nor be called, our justification, but only our
redemption and the atonement for us and our sins. For whoever would be
justified must believe; but if he is to believe, he must already be born
and live. Therefore Christ has not justified us who _now_ live and die;
but we are redeemed by it [His work 1,500 years ago] from God's wrath,
death, and hell.... This, however, is true and undoubted that by the
fulfilment of the Law and by His suffering and death He merited and
earned from God, His heavenly Father, this great and superabounding
grace, namely, that He not only has forgiven our sin and taken from us
the unbearable burden of the Law, but that He also _wishes to justify us
by faith in Christ, to infuse justification or the righteousness
(sondern auch uns durch den Glauben an Christum will rechtfertigen, die
Gerechtmachung eingiessen)_, and, if only we obey, through the operation
of His Holy Spirit and through the death of Christ, in which we are
embodied by the baptism of Christ, _to mortify, purge out, and entirely
destroy sin_ which is already forgiven us, but nevertheless still dwells
in our flesh and adheres to us. Therefore the _other part_ of the office
of our dear faithful Lord and Mediator Jesus Christ is now to turn
toward us in order to deal also with us poor sinners as with the guilty
party, that we acknowledge such great grace and gratefully receive it by
faith, _in order that He by faith may make us alive and just from the
death of sin, and that sin, which is already forgiven, but nevertheless
still dwells and inheres in our flesh, may be altogether mortified and
destroyed in us. And this, first of all, is the act of our
justification._" (Tschackert, 492f.; Planck 4, 268.)

That Osiander practically identified justification with regeneration,
renewal, and gradual sanctification appears from the following
quotations. To justify, says he, means "to make a just man out of an
unjust one, that is to recall a dead man to life--_ex impio iustum
facere, hoc est, mortuum ad vitam revocare._" (Seeberg 4, 499.) Again:
"