Hi, everyone
I am not officially Semper Reformanda, but JM has invited me to share what I understand about justification.
My basic explanation of justification is > it means being made right, or just. But there can be different things involved in being made right with God.
When one first gets saved, one is justified . . . made right with God. I think when a person first trusts in Jesus > Ephesians 1:12 > the person is justified by faith. This justification includes how the person is made right with God because of turning from one's sin and giving oneself to Jesus. One's status of being a child of Satan is changed to being a child of God; so have been made right in our standing. It is like how a football player can be a free agent and has no status, at all. But if the player joins a championship team, right away the person becomes a champion player.
But, in being justified, a person also is changed by God in one's heart, when a person gets started with Jesus. I believe this is included > justification, then, is not only a change of status so someone has a clear record in Heaven and the standing of being God's child, but also a person's nature is changed to be right in God's sight. But this is only getting started, in how to be right or just.
We do not become perfectly God's way, right away. There needs to be correction and transformation with maturing so we are more and more like Jesus. And this is making us right, also, more and more maturely right like how Jesus . . . and therefore we are being justified by becoming more and more maturely God's way. And, of course, the process of this is called sanctification or being made holy. I think the two terms can be talking about the same thing, then > because becoming right like His love is becoming holy like His love > 1 John 4:17-18.
What matters more than what labels to use is if and how we are becoming in God's love so we are pleasing to God like Jesus is and we are loving the way Jesus has loved, on the cross, even > Ephesians 5:2. God's love is holy and right, so becoming like Him in His love is both justification and sanctification . . . the way possibly the Bible means these terms.
But most of all is how our character becomes, being cured by God's love.