Justification by faith.
Chapter 14 Justification by Faith:
In the next couple of chapter’s, we will take a short look at some of the Apostle Paul’s teachings starting here with the theology of ‘Justification by Faith alone’. This idea is, believe it or not, something that many people find particularly hard to accept, conditioned as we are to see the whole idea of ‘Gift’ as, in general terms, an act made in response to something that we have already done. After all we don’t usually either give or receive gifts from people to whom we ‘owe’ nothing, even if that ‘owing’ is a debt of friendship or for that matter receive ‘gifts’ from people with whom we have no previous positive relations.
As I mentioned in the introduction, when I was 22 or so I attempted and eventually failed to become a Baptist minister. In the course of this journey to slight disaster I was initially given a student placement and spent about a year at the Gillingham Baptist Church in Kent as a student Pastor. Whilst there I took part in the ‘Evangelism Explosion’ training course; a course designed to train people in sharing the Gospel.
The course started with a diagnostic question - “If you were to die tonight and stand before God and he were to ask you ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ What would you say?’ The answer to which determined what you were trusting in, in order to be saved, which brings us to the crux of the matter at hand.
Most people when asked this question usually answer in relation to themselves. People think that they will get to heaven and be acceptable to God because, well, they are not too bad. Most people would say something like “well why not” “I am not a bad person, I never killed anyone, I did my best, why shouldn’t I get in?” “There’s a lot worse than me out there!” and so on.
The problem with this view, which in itself doesn’t seem unreasonable on first consideration, is that the idea that any of us, even the best, could ever be good enough to ‘earn our way’ into heaven stems in reality from two misapprehensions. Firstly, the misapprehension that fundamentally we are good, and secondly from the mistake of believing that our ‘comparison web site’, if you like, for such a judgment is humanity itself.
We like to think that we are good, but any sense of goodness that we possess is always relative to our chosen community. In the ‘go compare.com’ comparison web site of humanity we might actually fair quite well but in the ‘go compare.com’ comparison web site of prison populations, for example, burglars and robbers do quite well because compared to murderers and paedophiles they’re pretty good! You see my point, I hope.
The real question then, the one that really matters, is how do we fair in the ‘go compare.com’ comparison web site of heaven, of Gods standards, of Gods absolute perfection? When we stand within that particular ‘comparison web site’ how will we do if we are trusting only in our own goodness for salvation?
According to the Apostle Paul not well.
Romans chapter 1
8 ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.’
The point is quite plain. Humanity is doomed because it has simply failed to worship God as it should and never mind all our other millions of imperfections and sins and in failing to do this we have all become wicked in God’s eyes and objects of his wrath and we are without excuse. It isn’t a question of doing enough good or trying to repair the damage. Yes, we might end up being good compared to most of the world but there is no comparison between even our best and the goodness which is God. According to Paul we have failed already. If we rely on ourselves there is no hope. This idea is what some theologians describe as the ‘total depravity of mankind’. By now, of course, the liberals have burnt this chapter and the humanists are cursing me as one who simply wishes to condemn humanity as if the acceptance of this teaching is in some way a depressing vocation but is it, or is it in fact the only way to true freedom?
To accept our absolute hopelessness before God, you see, is in fact not a condemnation of our souls; it is rather the means by which we realize the joyfulness of God’s Grace. To accept our utter desolation is in fact to realise our need of God; our need of forgiveness; it is to cast all our cares upon him; it is to seek salvation where it truly CAN be found; to hurl ourselves only onto Christ is to discover all that God has to give. It is our arrogance and stupidity that keeps us away and which seals our doom, not any lack of willingness from God. We struggle and struggle to reach up to God. We build our towers of Babel and our Jacob’s ladders when what we should really do is just let go.
The truth is that we all need this salvation and it is in recognising this need, in realising that of ourselves we can never reach God that we discover the God who reaches down to us, the God of the Incarnation and the God of the Spirit, the God of our salvation. Jesus came to us in the form of a human being in order to bring us up with him to heaven. Jesus came down to us as a human being in order to be with us within the quagmire of our lives. Jesus came down to us as a human being in order to take us through our darkest times; to minister to us when we are sick, to bring us home when we are lost, to take us through the valley of the shadow of death and then even through death itself.
In truth, the only way that we can discover this wonderful grace is to abandon ourselves and any confidence that we might have in our own abilities, humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand so that he can lift us up. That great old, and in places much maligned theology of the Total Depravity of Mankind is in fact the theology which leads us to our salvation, found only when we rely completely on God’s tender care and we need to grasp this point before we can get to grips with our topic for this chapter.
The Apostle Paul puts it most succinctly when he says “It is by grace you have been saved through Faith and this is the gift of God not by works so that none can boast”.
So, we cannot find Gods salvation through our own abilities and we need faith to appropriate this grace.
Another common misconception around this whole idea of salvation by faith alone is found within Paul’s letter to the Galatians:
Galatians 3 New International Version (NIV)
Faith or Works of the Law
3 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4 Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Here Paul addresses his readers in relation to a heresy that had infiltrated his Church and which had been brought to his congregations by a group of Jewish Christians who had set out from Jerusalem in a dedicated quest to supersede Paul’s ministry. These ‘Judaiasers’, as Paul calls them, believed that in order to be saved Paul’s gentile converts had to, not only embrace faith in Christ, but also adopt the practice of circumcision and certain other aspects of the old Jewish law. As you can see, Paul vehemently disagreed with this. As far as Paul was concerned his new converts needed no ‘add-ons’ to their faith and in fact to ‘add on’ anything to their new faith in Christ (in this case aspects of Old Testament Jewish law) actually nullified their faith in the first place.
For us, as Christians today, this same practice of ‘adding on’ to our faith is likewise a common experience within Churches. Roman Catholics, for example, ‘add-on’ the sacraments; so, you MUST be baptised / take communion / be confirmed etc in order to be part of God’s Church - to be saved.
For many, particularly conservative evangelicals we find that the ‘add on’s’ appear as well, but normally, in a far more subtle way. Evangelicals will say quite clearly that they believe that Salvation is by faith alone but then, and despite this, some will subtlety subvert this message of freedom through their preaching and teaching on such things as forgiveness, holiness and lifestyle. Interestingly this teaching is also and often, accompanied by the same sort of pharisaic self-righteousness I have experienced within the Charismatic movement described above. Holiness, discipleship, and lifestyle then become indirectly, but nevertheless inseparably linked to and ‘added on’ to faith in the same way as above. Invariably where others lifestyles differs from their own perception of the Christian life these Christians salvation is considered to be null and void. At the very least they are considered to be living in rebellion to God and in danger of falling away or out of his grace unless, of course, they repent and become like them!
The Apostle Paul, of course, dealt with these sorts of misconceptions over lifestyle in his letter to the Church in Rome in chapter 14.
Romans 14
The Weak and the Strong
14 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.
22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Perhaps the most important point to note within this whole passage is the open and honest acknowledgment by Paul of the differences that exist between all of us as Christians. Each of us has a different understanding of what it means to be a faithful Christian. Each of us has different ideas on what makes us holy and each of us has different struggles which we face and have to battle through in our quest to live a better life for God. Each of us have started this race from a different point depending on our background, our upbringing, our inherited genetic make-up, psychological make up and personal life experiences. We cannot then in any realistic way map out a programme of what makes a Christian holy and acceptable to God. As soon as we start to do this, we miss the point of our miraculous salvation in Christ; reject the truth of our salvation by faith alone and start placing ‘add ons’ to our faith denying the efficacy of the cross altogether and, as the Apostle Paul says, ‘nullifying our Faith.’
We must avoid any suggestion, that in order to discover salvation, we HAVE to be holy or that we HAVE to be committed or HAVE to live in a certain way; or that we HAVE to be a heterosexual or if not, celibate. Or HAVE to be penitent or Baptised in the Spirit and so on. All of these, if they are seen even subconsciously as necessary for salvation to work, become no different than the ideas put forward by the Judaiasers in Galatia. Just like the teaching of the Judaiasers in Galatia they fundamentally tie us up again in chains, lead us to salvation by works and undermine the true teaching of the Gospel.
To re-iterate Paul’s teaching:
“We are saved by Grace through FAITH this is NOT FROM OURSELVES but is the gift of God NOT BY WORKS so that none can boast” and by this Paul doesn’t mean Faith AND anything else at all……………just FAITH….!
Now this doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t seek to live a life worthy of our calling. That goes, I hope, without saying. Nothing that I have said above is meant to change the fact that, as Christians, we have a duty to live in love for humankind and in the best way we can for God. The difference is found in the motivation for such living. We choose to live for Christ not because we think that by doing so we are securing our salvation but because we are grateful for this great salvation already given by virtue of our choice of faith in Christ and the difference between these two ideas is enormous.
We are saved only through the sheer grace of God in response to our act of faith in Jesus Christ. We live therefor in gratitude and more importantly in freedom from fear.