Justification by Faith Alone
Romans 8
30And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And he gave them right standing with himself, and he promised them his glory.
33Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? Will God? No! He is the one who has given us right standing with himself.”
What is justification? Romans 4:5, “But people are declared righteous because of their faith, not because of their work.” Martin Luther said, “This doctrine is the head and cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends thechurch of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour.” John Calvin said, “Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.”
You can only be made right through being justified since God is the justifier of those who believe in His sacrifice which He wrought for us on the Cross. These men of God above quoted understood well the meaning of justification having revived its meaning during the Protestant Reformation. Where justification is taught souls will be won, and hearts changed in repentance towards Christ. Justification is the ground level doctrine, the very fabric of the Church. After all if Christ doesn’t justify us and atone for our sins, how then can we be made right with God? How can the Blood of Jesus be applied to our sins? This doctrine was so important that Jonathan Edwards said in his five discourse in the Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol 1. (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth press, 1974), 620), “The beginning of the late work of God in this place was so circumstanced, that I could not but look upon it was a remarkable testimony of God’s approbation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, here assereted and vindicated. The following discourse of justification seemed to be remarkably blessed, not only to establish the judgment of many in this truth, but to engaged their hearts in a more earnest pursuit of justification, in that way that had been explained and defended; and at that time, while I was greatly reproached for defending this doctrine in the pulpit, and just upon my suffering a very open abuse for it, God’s work wonderfully brake forth amongst us, and souls began to flock t Christ, as the Savior in whose righteousness alone they hoped to be justified. So that this was the doctrine on which this work in its beginning was founded, as it evidently was in the whole progress of it.”
The importance of justification cannot be overlooked. If we are not made right by the atoning sacrifice of Christ then what are we made right by? Our works? Our deeds? Our zeal? These men of God understood so well the doctrine of justification that not only did they preach it, but once they truly understood it in their hearts there lives were forever changed, oldness of life, replaced with newness of life, the dirty rags replaced with rags of righteousness, the understanding that they were sinners in need of a Savior grew to the point where they not only felt overwhelmed by their sin, but in turn threw the sins they had committed upon the Savior who saved them from that very sin by becoming sin in and of Himself.
John Bunyan in Grace abounding to the Chief of sinners(Hertfordshire, England: Evangelical Press, 1978; original, 1666), 20 said, “I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light. Wherefore we do not separate the whole grace of regeneration from faith, but claim the power and faculty of justifying entirely for faith as we ought. I was all this while ignorant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my own righteousness, and [would have] perished therein, had not God in mercy showed me more of my state by nature… The bible was precious to me in those days.”
Piper points out, “The point of the word ungodly in Romans 4:5 is this, faith believes in Him who justifies the ungodly. When faith is born in the soul we are still ungodly. Faith will begin to overcome our ungodlinesness. But in the beginning of the Christian life-where justification happens we are all ungodly. Godly works do not began to have a role in our lives till we are justified. We are declared righteousness (whose word comes from dikaiooo meaning declare righteous not make morally righteous. We see this especially in Romans 3:4 where god is justified (dikaiothes) in his words, that is, declared righteous, not made righteous) by faith alone while we are still ungodly. And that is the only way any of us can have hope that God is on our side so that we can now make headway in the right direction against ungodliness. He is for us.”
Luke 13
3Not at all! And you will also perish unless you turn from your evil ways and turn to God.”
Acts 2
38Peter replied, "Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 3:19Now turn from your sins and turn to God, so you can be cleansed of your sins.”
Acts 11
18When the others heard this, all their objections were answered and they began praising God. They said, "God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of turning from sin and receiving eternal life."
Romans 2
4Don't you realize how kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Or don't you care? Can't you see how kind he has been in giving you time to turn from your sin?
Corinthians 7
10For God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. But sorrow without repentance is the kind that results in death.
Isaiah 55
6Seek the LORD while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. 7Let the people turn from their wicked deeds. Let them banish from their minds the very thought of doing wrong! Let them turn to the LORD that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
He declares righteous those who, through faith in Christ, repent of their sins. This is the foundation of justification therein, because in turning away from our sins we are in turn made right and as a result of being made right with God, then we can be in Christ. As we are in Christ, we are not therein dead spiritually speaking, we are made alive through that very sacrifice of Christ who saved us and liberated us from the death that we so aptly deserved and even earned. The building up of this doctrine had sparked the fires of many a faith, but it is also the non-preaching of this doctrine that has left the church stagnant, the fires of evangelism cold, and the lives of many living in sin instead of living in the light, left out in the wind.
Romans 10
9For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”
1 Corinthians 12
3So I want you to know how to discern what is truly from God: No one speaking by the Spirit of God can curse Jesus, and no one is able to say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.
2 Corinthians 4
5We don't go around preaching about ourselves; we preach Christ Jesus, the Lord. All we say about ourselves is that we are your servants because of what Jesus has done for us.”
Philippians 2
11and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Justification teaches us that we must confess Him as sovereign Lord over all aspects of our lives. Intellectual knowledge will not save us (Romans 1:21; 2:17) nor will visible morality (Matthew 19:16-21; 27:27) nor religious involvement (Matthew 25:1-10), nor active ministry (Matthew 7:21-24), nor conviction of sin (Acts 24:25), nor will assurance (Matthew 23) nor will time of decision (Luke 8:13, 14). The only thing that can save us is the righteous act of Christ who died on the Cross for our sins, that is the foundation of Christianity, the only way that knowledge of the head, ethics, or moral knowledge can pierce our hearts, is to therein understand that this doctrine as Luther put it is the cornerstone of the Church. As Calvin said, “Wherein the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.” He went on to say, “As all mankind are, in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since, by his obedience, he has wiped off our transgressions; by his sacrifice, appeased the divine anger; by his blood, washed away our stains; by his cross, borne our curse; and by his death, made satisfaction for us. We maintain that in this way man is reconciled in Christ to God the Father, by no merit of his own, by no value of works, but by gratuitous mercy. When we embrace Christ by faith, and come, as it were, into communion with him, this we term, after the manner of Scripture the righteousness of faith.” (John Dillenger, John Calvin: Selections from His writings (Scholars Press, 1975), 95.
Bunyan pointed this out well, “One day as I was passing into the field. this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And me thought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, morever, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “The same yesterday, today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. Now did my chains fall of my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons;… now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God.” (John Bunyan, Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Hertfordshire, England: Evangelical Press, 1978; original, 1666), 20.
Romans 3
20For no one can ever be made right in God's sight by doing what his law commands. For the more we know God's law, the clearer it becomes that we aren't obeying it.
Romans 4
6King David spoke of this, describing the happiness of an undeserving sinner who is declared to be righteous.”
This righteousness is apart from any virtue or work of man. We cannot earn our justification in relation to salvation. Justification being made right with God is a gift of free pardon that God extends to all those who will believe in Him. It is like going to the make and making a transaction. You can either deposit the money into the account or withdraw money. In this case God deposited the money into the account and we, those who believe in Christ withdraw that money, in the form of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, and Christ deposited that money into the bank through the shedding of His very blood for us on the Cross. If one were to work for justification they wouldn’t get grace, but a wage, not faith, but a shame.
This again would lead us to turn to Romans 4:5, “But people are declared righteous because of their faith, not because of their work.” The point here is that we are not declared righteous by our work or because of our work. In Romans 6, Paul discussions the nature of sanctification in the believers life, so this is not to discount sanctification but to draw out the point that before sanctification can occur a person must be made right, declared righteous by faith in Christ’s sacrifice. Piper points out, “Justification is a verdict delivered by God in a moment: not guilty, acquitted, accepted, forgiven, righteous! And Paul says it happens to the person who “does not work”! That means it comes by faith alone.”
This doctrine was like a bolt of lighting upon Martin Luther. Martin Luther’s story to salvation is a perfect example of this. He tells this story in the Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin writings. This account of the discovery is taken from that Preface, written March 5, 1545, the year before his death. He wrote, “I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up till then it was… a single word in Chapter 1[:17], “In the righteousness of God is revealed,” that had stood in my way. For I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punished the unrighteous sinner.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly, murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteous wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of th words, namely, “In the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand [that] the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which [the] merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who works through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. Here a totally other face of the entire Scriptures showed itself to me… And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had once before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.”
1 Corinthians 1
2We are writing to the church of God in Corinth, you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did all Christians everywhere--whoever calls upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and theirs.
30God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom.
1 Corinthians 6
11There was a time when some of you were just like that, but now your sins have been washed away,[1] and you have been set apart for God. You have been made right with God because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you.
2 Corinthians 5
21For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
The imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us is thus shown and revealed through Luther’s testimony of salvation in finding out the meaning of what justification is, therein lies the problem. It dwells within the righteousness of God. By this means god is enabled to “be just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).
In Christ Alone,
Pastor Dave
