What does justification have to do with the Holy Spirit? What is justification in the first place? Justification can be defined simply as God's act of declaring the believing sinner righteous. And righteousness is obtained through faith, through the New Covenant, and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So we see that there is a direct connection between the two, and we see that if Jesus had not gone away, believers could not have been counted as righteous.