Justification and the new birth

This, then, is the salvation that comes through faith, even in the present world. A salvation from sin, and from the consequences of sin. Both are often gathered into the word justification. Taken in its largest sense, justification means a deliverance from guilt and punishment, by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner who now believes in him. And it means a deliverance from the power of sin, through Christ formed in his heart. So the person who is justified, or saved by faith, is indeed born again. He is born of the Spirit into a new life, which is hidden with Christ in God. And like a newborn child he gladly receives the pure milk of the word, and grows by it. He goes on in the strength of the Lord his God, from faith to faith, from grace to grace, until at last he comes to a mature person, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.