Justification occurs as an act of God’s Perfect Justice in check by His Perfect Righteousness.
We are born condemned, so something has to happen to us prior to anything being found righteous in us, i.e. justification.
Only God can justify us by judicially imputing that righteousness into us, prior to Him being free to give us eternal life by His grace, for Him to remain Holy.
The imputation of that righteousness occurs only by faith in what Christ performed on the Cross, because it is identified, exactly the same faith as His faith on the Cross. This is why it is much safer to rely on faith alone in Christ alone, than to convolute that faith with any work.
Rom 3:21-26
(21) But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
(22) Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
(23) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
(24) Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
(25) Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
(26) To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Romans 3
(21) But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
(22) Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
(23) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
(24) Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
(25) Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
(26) To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
AMEN