Justified

In what way does baptism save us and in what way does it not save us.  we may rattle off that fact and it is absolutely scriptural from 1 Peter 3:21 where Peter says “baptism now saves us” . At the same time in some ways we know that the water itself doesn’t do anything for us and the action itself is not something that we can earn anything.  And some of it circles around this whole debate about the concept of faith and works and we’ve touched on that a little bit too. I’m not going to delve deeply into that discussion though it figures into what I do want to talk about. I want to talk about the specific word that is used in some of these verses and that word is justified. We sometimes gloss over this word and we may replace it with something else but this is the word is used in some of these passages for example Romans 3 and 4 which we are going to read. Understanding this word I think can be helpful for us. It is something that when I dug into it and tried to find out what it means, and what the import of its meaning is and our understanding of the new testament I found some things I hadn’t previously heard, or previously understood, or the points hadn’t been made to me so hopefully you find these interesting and helpful in understanding its concept. So, what does it mean to be justified?