REFORMED WITNESS
Volume XIII, June 2005, Number 6
Justified By Faith Alone
A meditation by Rev. James Slopsema
From the October 15, 1990 issue of The Standard Bearer
"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." - Romans 3:28
Man is justified by faith alone, without works!
Martin Luther's rediscovery of this precious truth sparked the great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
This truth is stated most concisely by the apostle Paul in his epistle to the church of Rome. "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."
The great apostle is drawing a conclusion. In the preceding verses Paul demonstrates that no one shall be justified in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, by the law is the knowledge of sin. Paul adds that the law bore witness to a righteousness that God would provide for His own without the law but by faith alone. This righteousness God has provided through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Now Paul sums this all up in one grand conclusion: "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."
* * * * *
Justification places us in God's courtroom.
God is our Judge, Who judges our lives every day according to His holy law. As Judge, God gives either of two verdicts. He either declares us righteous, or He declares us guilty. Should we appear before God as sinners, God declares that we are guilty. Should we appear before God with so much as even one sin, God will find us guilty. Remember that God knows and sees all, even the secrets of our hearts. On the other hand, should we appear before God without sin, in perfect obedience to His law, God will declare us to be righteous. For righteousness has the idea of obedience to the law.
Justification means that God declares us righteous before Him, and how important this justification is! For God is a righteous God, Whose eyes are too pure to behold sin. Should, therefore, God find us guilty, even if it is only of one sin, He will damn us to eternal ruin under His wrath. God's blessing and favor are reserved for those only who are righteous in His judgment.
* * * * *
A most important question pushes itself to the fore.
We are sinners all! How then can we be justified by God?
The answer is very beautiful. God has provided for His own a righteousness in Jesus Christ.
According to the apostle Paul this righteousness was spoken of both by the law and by the prophets of the Old Testament. This righteousness consists first of all of payment for sin. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. For us to appear righteous before God, payment must be made for all our sins. Jesus Christ has made this payment by taking our sins upon Himself and bearing the punishment of sin in the form of God's eternal wrath. This Jesus did all His life on the earth, but especially on the cross. This payment of sin is our righteousness before God.
But there is more.
God's law lays many obligations and duties upon us. In our sin we have failed to meet these divine obligations. Nor can we be righteous before God until every obligation of the law is met and we appear as those who have kept all obedience to the law. It is not enough; therefore, that Jesus merely pay for our sins. If we will be righteous before God, Jesus must also keep the law for us. This too He has done. Through all of His inexpressible sufferings on our behalf He also walked in perfect love and obedience to the Father, fulfilling every obligation of the divine law.
This is the righteousness of God of which Scripture so often speaks. It is a righteousness prepared by God for His own in Jesus Christ. If we will be justified by God, we must stand in God's courtroom with this righteousness.
* * * * *
The righteousness of God in Jesus Christ becomes ours by faith.
Faith is our spiritual connection to Jesus Christ. As a branch is one with the tree from which it grows, so we become one with Jesus Christ by faith.
This is due to the character of faith. Faith is clinging to Jesus Christ, a relying upon Him for all things. Faith also relies upon Jesus Christ to be righteous before God. For when the believer falls into sin, his faith leads him, first, to confess his sins before God in true sorrow and repentance. But his faith also leads him to cling to the righteousness of the cross. His prayer is that God will forgive him and receive him back on the basis of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
Through this faith we are justified.
In the next chapter of this epistle to the Romans the apostle Paul points out that God counted the faith of Abraham as righteousness. Abraham also clung by faith to the works of Christ as they were promised in the Old Testament. When God saw the faith of Abraham, He accounted the righteousness of Christ to be Abraham's righteousness, so that Abraham, even though a sinner, appeared righteous before Him.
In like manner does God count the faith of every believer as righteousness. The righteousness of Christ becomes ours through faith so that we are justified.
Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith.
* * * * *
But let us hasten to add that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law!
There were certain Jews (Judaizing teachers) in the church of Paul's day, who claimed that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is not sufficient for justification. If a man will be justified, he must, in addition to having Jesus' righteousness, present God with a righteousness of his own. This righteousness consists of the deeds or works of the law. We must observe the Mosaic laws, said these Judaizing teachers, especially the rite of circumcision. This is part of our righteousness before God. A man is justified by faith in Christ and the deeds of the law.
Not so, says the apostle Paul. The purpose of the law is not to work righteousness before God. The purpose of the law is to show to us our sin and our need for Christ's righteousness. By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. We are justified by faith alone, without the works of the law. The righteousness of Christ is perfect, lacking nothing. To it nothing need be or can be added.
Over the course of history the error of the Judaizing teachers crept into the church again. In fact, it took hold of the Roman Catholic church. The church of Rome has taught for centuries that the work of Christ alone is not sufficient for one to be righteous before God. To the work of Jesus one must add his own works. These works are prescribed by the church. They consist primarily in the reciting of the rosary, fasting, pilgrimages, and various services performed for the church.
In this system Martin Luther grew up and labored, seeking justification with God. But he found neither justification nor peace with God. The more he sought to establish his own righteousness according to the prescription of the church, the more he became convinced that he stood as a guilty, damnable sinner before God.
It was not until he rediscovered the great truth that we are justified by faith alone, without the works of the law, that Martin Luther found justification with his God and the peace for which he so desperately sought.
Let us, as children of the Reformation, embrace with all our hearts this glorious truth of the Reformation.
Man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
God's Continuing Controversy with Unchanging Rome
An editorial by Prof. David J. Engelsma
From the October 15, 1990, issue of The Standard Bearer
See more articles by this author
In March of 1545, less than a year before he died, Martin Luther published the most vehement condemnation of the Roman Catholic papacy that he had ever written, "Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil." It was timed to coincide with the opening of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, the council that was intended to resist the Protestant Reformation. The title itself is condemnation of the Roman Church, inasmuch as the papacy is the Roman Church. But Luther made explicit the condemnation of the church that has the papacy as her head: "devil's synagogue ... the devil's church ... an un-Christian and anti Christian church, i.e., a papal school of scoundrels" (cf. Luther's Works, Fortress Press, Volume 41, pp. 263 376). God's great scourge of the Roman Catholic Church went to his grave warring against the Church of Rome.
The conflict continues at the end of the 20th century. The Reformed church has a controversy with Rome. It is the continuation of the war opened up by the Reformation.
It is necessary to remind ourselves of this because the notion prevails in Protestant churches that Rome has changed. Men suppose that since Vatican II, the Roman Catholic council that met from 1963 to 1965, Rome is no longer the enemy of the gospel that once she was. Now it is possible for Protestants to commune and cooperate with Rome.
Lutheran and Anglican churches are conducting official conferences with Rome that have union as a goal. These conferences have already resulted in statements of doctrinal agreement. Protestant churches in the British Isles have recently reorganized their ecumenical set up to include Rome. Reformed churches in The Netherlands swap preachers and priests at worship services. A prominent Roman Catholic lawyer in the United States pleads in Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine, for cooperation of evangelical Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in matters of social action. Recently there have been significant defections to Rome on the part of leading evangelicals and Presbyterians in the U. S, and it is common today that neighborhood Bible study groups include staunch Roman Catholics, not as objects of evangelism, but as full, participating members of the class.
Rome has not changed. Although God rebuked her sharply and plagued her severely in His great controversy with her that we call the Reformation, Rome proved incorrigible.
Rome continues to carry a huge load of guilt for her persecution and killing of untold thousands of Reformed and Presbyterian saints. To name only two instances, she murdered scores of thousands of Reformed Christians in The Netherlands and perpetrated unspeakable atrocities upon the French Huguenots in the 16th and 17th centuries. At the moment of my writing this and at the moment of your reading this, there goes up in heaven a cry from these souls, killed by Rome for the Word of God and for their testimony to the truth, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:10).
Let no one respond that present day Rome may not be held responsible for those deeds of a bygone age. For first, Rome has never repented for these sins, and second, Rome today takes the very same stands, e.g., the absolute supremacy of the pope over church, state, and purgatory, and maintains the very same doctrines, e.g., the sacrifice of Christ for sins in the mass, that moved her to slaughter God's people in the 16th and 17th centuries. Third, corporate responsibility means that a church in the 20th century continues to be responsible for the sins she committed in the distant past. Jesus said to the Jerusalem of His day, "ye slew (Zacharias)," even though Zacharias had been slain hundreds of years earlier by men long dead (Matthew 23:35). Hundreds of years after the deed, God visits the righteous blood of His martyrs upon the apostate church that shed this blood. During all this time, He sees such a church as a bloody church.
When the present pope visited Chicago a few years ago, I could never see the white clad, saintly, benevolent old man that millions of others saw. I saw only a man whose garments were drenched with blood, a man whose hands extended in blessing of the multitudes dripped blood, and a man who was drunken with blood the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. This is why, when Reformed ministers in the Chicago area were praying for the pope as a "man of God," I was praying in my congregational prayer, "From the tyranny of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, O Lord, deliver us."
Rome has not changed.
Her doctrines remain the same. The RCC maintains as her confession "The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent." This is Rome's official rejection of every distinctive doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. Maintaining this confession, Rome continues to pronounce her official curse upon every church and upon every person that holds the Reformation-gospel: "Let him be anathema!"
Consider only two instances of Rome's damning of fundamental Reformed doctrines in these "Canons and Decrees." Against the truth that is the cornerstone of the Reformation gospel of salvation, "justification by faith alone," Rome declares, "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified ... let him be anathema." Against the doctrine that is the heart of the church, sovereign predestination, Rome inveighs, "If any one saith, that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate: let him be anathema" (cf. "The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent," "On Justification," Canons 9 and 15).
Not only did Vatican II not change a single Roman Catholic doctrine, but it also expressly reaffirmed every important Roman doctrine. In the "Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation," the RCC reaffirmed that tradition is an equal authority in the church with Scripture: "It is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of devotion and reverence." In the "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," Rome reaffirmed, among other things, that as head of the Church "the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme, and universal power over the Church"; that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins," i.e., to believe the monstrous fiction of purgatory; and that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is to be worshiped and preached ("Let the entire body of the faithful pour forth persevering prayer to the Mother of God....") as "Mediatrix" (this blasphemous title was expressly given Mary by Vatican II).
In the "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests," the RCC reaffirmed its teaching that its mass is a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of men: "Through the hands of priests... the Lord's sacrifice is offered in the Eucharist in an unbloody and sacramental manner until He Himself returns."
As though to rub the noses of Protestantism in unchanged Roman doctrine, Vatican II deliberately "proposes again" all the past decisions of the RCC on the meritorious works of saints; the intercession of saints in heaven; prayers to the saints; and indulgences granted by the church because of the merits of the saints (cf. the "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church").
Rome is unchanged in her doctrinal apostasy.
This is the issue between Rome and the Reformed church. Our conflict with Rome is theological. It has to do with God's gospel of sovereign grace; with the pure worship of God; with the authority of God in His Word, Holy Scripture; with God's one Mediator, Jesus the Christ; with God's Headship of the church in Jesus.
God has a continuing controversy with the RCC. God has pronounced His decisive "anathema" upon the RCC: "If any preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:9).
Every Reformed church and every member of the Reformed church is committed to God's controversy with Rome by the Reformed confessions. In Question 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism, church and believer condemn Roman Catholicism as "a denial of the one sacrifice and sufferings of Jesus Christ and an accursed idolatry." In Article 29 of the Belgic Confession, they judge the RCC a "false church." Every condemnation by the Canons of Dordt of the teachings of Arminianism is a condemnation as well of Rome. For Rome's gospel too is a message of salvation by the "free will," the working, and the worth of man.
If a Reformed church has no controversy with Rome, the reason is not that Rome has changed, but that this Reformed church has changed. Doctrinally, she is one with Rome. She has made her peace with Rome's rebellion against God. Reunion with Rome will follow. God has a controversy also with such a Reformed church.
The Reformed church worthy of the name, the church faithful to the sole authority of Scripture and to the gospel of salvation by grace alone, cannot but have a controversy with Rome. God has summoned her to the battle under the banner of His own Name. She engages in the controversy in a spiritual manner by the Word not by earthly force and political action. She instructs her own people thoroughly in the truths of the Reformation gospel. She sharply and clearly exposes the Roman errors. She refuses to have any communion with Rome in ecumenical organizations; in local services of worship; or in cooperative ventures of social action. She warns Reformed people against an unequal yoke with Rome, especially in marriage. She engages in evangelism with Roman Catholics, calling them away from the pope to Christ. And in the end she will once again suffer at Rome's hands, as the Lord foretold in His answer to the martyrs' cry in heaven: "rest yet for a little season, until (your) fellow servants also and (your) brothers... should be killed as (you) were...." (Revelation 6:11).
Why there must be controversy with Rome, and what the controversy is, the old Luther pointed out in his parting blast against Rome. In the midst of all the invective, vitriol, and vulgarity of "Against the Roman Papacy," Luther wrote, with unerring insight into the real issue to the very end:
Here it is firmly forbidden to preach or hear human teachings in the church, for they do not give honor and glory to God, but instead seduce people away from the faith and seek the glory of man. For God alone would speak, work, and govern in His church, so that He alone is glorified, which we have, praise God, managed to achieve in our churches.
DJE
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