Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa.

Having considered the amazing truth of justification as the divine wonder of grace in imputing the righteousness of Christ to our account (see Standard Bearer, February 1, 2003), we have yet to consider the manner in which we receive this astounding gift.

Our Reformed confessions expound the Word of God in telling us that we are righteous before God “only by a true faith in Jesus Christ” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q & A 60, 61, 65). The Belgic Confession explicitly and carefully spells out that truth when it says in Article 22:

Therefore we justly say with Paul, that we are justified by faith alone, or by faith without works. However, to speak more clearly, we do not mean that faith itself justifies us, for it is only an instrument with which we embrace Christ our righteousness. But Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead, is our righteousness. And faith is an instrument that keeps us in communion with Him in all His benefits, which, when they become ours, are more than sufficient to acquit us of our sins.

It is by faith, therefore, that the sinner is actually justified before God. When we speak of being justified by faith, we are speaking of the means by which God’s sentence—”Innocent”—is applied to us sinners, so that we pass from that state of guilt to our new state of righteousness before God.

What Is This Faith?

What is this faith that justifies?

The Belgic Confession, in the Article just cited, refers to faith as “an instrument with which we embrace Christ,” or “an instrument that keeps us in communion with Him.” The reference to faith as “an instrument” speaks of the essence of faith.

Faith is not first of all the activity of man, the act of believing.

Faith must be understood as a bond or living union with Christ. Following the example Christ set before us in John 15, we can describe faith as the living graft uniting the branch to the vine.

That living graft is established by the husbandman, who is God Himself. By grafting His elect branches into the Vine, who is Christ, God severs us from our natural and legal relation to the human race fallen in Adam and incorporates us into Christ. Faith “keeps us in communion with Christ in all His benefits.” So the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us!

Faith is our righteousness, not because of its worthiness, or because it is a substitute for obedience to the law, but because it brings us into contact with Christ and His life. It unites us with Christ, so that His perfect righteousness becomes ours. The righteousness of Christ, therefore, becomes ours through faith.

You realize, however, that there is another aspect of faith that we have to consider. For faith is certainly also an activity. Besides being a bond or living graft with Christ, faith is the act of believing and laying hold of Christ and all His benefits. So it is spoken of in Romans 4:3-5, another passage important to consider in this connection: “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”1

Concerning this verse, it is important to face the question: What is first—believing or justification? Verse 5 shows that He that justifies the ungodly is first. Your faith does not bring about that justification. God does not justify the believer. He justifies the ungodly! The act of believing, therefore, does not make you righteous.

Why then is faith—that act of believing—counted for righteousness? It is so as a matter of our own subjective experience. We speak about justification not merely as an abstraction, but as a benefit of salvation in Christ of which we are partakers. This is a personal matter to us, a matter of life-or-death significance!

When Christ died on the cross, He blotted out the sins of His people, justifying the ungodly. God Himself confirmed that blessed truth when He raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 4:25). At the resurrection God testified that His Son had accomplished His perfect work in justifying the ungodly.

But those whom He has justified must become conscious partakers of that salvation. To that end the gospel is preached. It is preached as the power of God unto salvation, the irresistible operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of His own, calling them to faith in Christ Jesus. When Christ so speaks by His Spirit through the preaching, we believe. We believe in Him who justifies the ungodly!

We lay hold of Him whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood (Rom. 3:25). With a certain spiritual knowledge and assured confidence, we receive as applicable to us that absolutely amazing proclamation of God, “You are righteous. I have justified the ungodly.” God has given us His testimony that we are His righteous heirs—through Him that loved us even unto death. We lay hold of our righteousness, which is only in Christ.

God gives us that faith. He alone establishes that union with Christ whereby I am justified. And to bring that wonder of grace to my consciousness, He sends forth His gospel, revealing His own justice in declaring us sinners righteous for the propitiatory sacrifice2 of His Son. By the power of His own Word He calls that faith to action, and we receive Christ and all His benefits, consciously entering into that blessed peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1).

So God reckons faith for righteousness—not for anything in that faith, but because of what is in Christ, whose benefits we receive by faith. In this way we consciously partake of Christ and all His benefits, rejoicing in the God of our salvation who sovereignly and out of free grace justifies unworthy sinners.

By Faith Alone

The keynote of the Reformation was “justification by faith alone.” It was not “justification by faith and works.” It was not “justification by faith as a work.” It was “justification by faith alone.”

This was the insistence of the Reformers over against the error of Roman Catholic theology.

Rome insists that righteousness is merited only by Christ. Rome also insists that our justification comes from the grace of God. Notice, Rome uses the same terms that we use. Nonetheless, those terms are used to express a doctrine very different from that of the gospel.

Rome teaches that the instrumental cause of justification is baptism. By means of baptism, sanctifying grace is bestowed upon the individual, a spiritual quality infused by God into the soul.3

1265 Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte “a new creature,” an adopted son of God, who has become a “partaker of the divine nature,” member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.

1266 The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification:

—enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues;

—giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit;

—allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues.

Thus the whole organism of the Christian’s supernatural life has its roots in Baptism.4

The effects of this sanctifying grace make that person holy and pleasing to God, and give him the right to heaven, so that he merits a heavenly reward for the good works that he performs.5 So Rome clings with an improper understanding to the order set forth in I Corinthians 6:11—”but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified”—and makes justification dependent upon sanctification. Righteousness is infused into the Christian, and the subsequent good works merit his legal righteousness before God. Good works as the expression of the infusion of righteousness is the basis for God declaring a man justified.

Rome denies that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, so as to become the immediate ground of our acceptance with God and the only reason on account of which He declares us “innocent.” In fact, at the Council of Trent, where the Roman Catholic Church definitively set forth its doctrine over against the teaching of the Protestant Reformers, Rome boldly stated that all who teach such are “anathema.”

It is in this context that the Reformers insisted that our works have nothing to do with meriting our justification, either in whole or in part. Justification is by faith alone.

Let us understand, then—this faith is not another work. The Reformers certainly were not so foolish as to deny justification by works, only to replace that Romish error with “justification by faith as man’s work.”

It is not so, that God, seeing we could not fulfill the requirements of His law, put another requirement before us that we must fulfill in order to be justified. It is not so, that God—setting aside the requirements of the law—now demands just one work of us, and that is faith.

If faith is a condition that we must fulfill in order to be justified, we have made faith another work!

Such a teaching is more gross an error than that conceived by Rome! To make faith a condition that we must fulfill in order to be justified is to make that one act of believing so meritorious that it entitles us to all Christ’s benefits and establishes us as heirs of God’s kingdom.

The error is only compounded today by those who would speak of justification by faith and works.

The Scottish theologian James Buchanan (1804-1870), in his classic work, The Doctrine of Justification, documented Rome’s attempts to seduce the church of the Reformation back to Rome’s doctrine of justification.6 Some 15 years after the initial break by Luther, some Romanist theologians held a conference with some of the Reformers, at which they presented a “new” interpretation of Rome’s doctrine of justification—an interpretation that ultimately was found unacceptable to both parties. They claimed that there was really no essential difference between the two parties. They were even willing to speak of righteousness imputed to us through Jesus Christ and His merits. But one point was carefully preserved. The faith by which we are justified was defined as a faith that not only unites the sinner to Christ, but also works in and sanctifies the sinner. It is this faith that is acceptable to God unto justification.

If Rome were to formulate her doctrine in such a way today, evangelicals would be falling over themselves in the rush to return to Rome! The fact is, it is by such a definition of faith that some theologians today in evangelical and Reformed circles are attempting to redefine the doctrine of justification—often in connection with their teaching of a conditional covenant.

That faith produces good works is a sound and wholesome doctrine in its proper place. But as Buchanan points out, “it becomes unsound and dangerous, when it is mixed up with the truth which relates to the ground and reason of a sinner’s pardon and acceptance with God.”7

Those who don’t like the term only, as in justification by faith only, are simply rejecting the corresponding terms of the inspired apostle—freely and without works.

These issues are critically important! To quote the Genevan pastor, Francis Turretin, a successor of Calvin and Beza,

This appears more clearly when we come to the thing itself and the controversy is not carried on coldly and unfeelingly in scholastic cloud and dust (as if from a distance), but in wrestling and agony—when the conscience is placed before God and terrified by a sense of sin and of the divine justice, it seeks a way to stand in the judgment and to flee from the wrath to come. It is indeed easy in the shades of the schools to prattle much concerning the worth of an inherent righteousness and of works to the justification of men…. But when we rise to the heavenly tribunal and place before our eyes that supreme Judge…who does not make the guilty innocent; whose vengeance when once kindled penetrates even to the lowest depths of hell, then in an instant the vain confidence of men perishes and falls and conscience is compelled (whatever it may have proudly boasted before men concerning its own righteousness) to deprecate the judgment to confess that it has nothing upon which it can rely before God.8

Let us glory in the cross, “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28).

This leaves us to consider the fruits of justification. For those fruits must surely follow.

1. For a more complete exposition of this passage and many related concepts pertaining to this doctrine, the reader is encouraged to confer Herman Hoeksema’s Righteous by Faith Alone: A Devotional Commentary on Romans, Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2002.

2. A sacrifice that appeases and satisfies.

3. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, A Catechism of Christian Doctrine: Revised Edition of the Baltimore Catechism, 1941 and 1949, pp. 80-87.

4. The Vatican, Catechism of the Catholic Church. Part Three, Life in Christ; Section One, Man’s Vocation Life in the Spirit; Chapter Three, God’s Salvation: Law and Grace; Article 2, Grace and Justification; I. Justification. Online. Available at http://www.vatican.va

5. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, A Catechism…, pp. 80-87.

6. James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1984, pp. 127ff.

7. Ibid., p. 134.

8. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1994, v. 2, p. 639.