The previous part of this paper dealt with thinking on this subject from time of the Church Fathers to the Reformation.
2. Reformation Teaching
As time went on, the Reformers may have expressed more clearly their understanding of justification, but they taught the substance of it from the beginning. They were clear that justification describes a change in the sinner’s legal state, not in his moral character – yet they were equally clear that a change of moral character must inevitably accompany his justification. When sinners are justified, their guilt has been removed; they are no longer under condemnation; they have been forgiven; they have been accepted before God as if they had always kept His law perfectly. And sinners are justified, not because of anything they have done to deserve it, but only by God’s grace, for the sake of the righteousness of Christ – which has been imputed to them and received by faith alone.
Yet while regeneration and sanctification form no part of justification, every justified sinner is regenerate; his sanctification has begun and it will continue. Thus Calvin corrected Cardinal Sadoletto: “You touch on justification by faith. But this doctrine, which stands supreme in our religion, has been effaced by you from the memory of men. You allege that we take no account of good works. If you look into my catechism, at the first word you will be silent. We deny, it is true, that they are of any avail in man’s justification, not even so much as a hair, for the Scripture gives us no hope except in the goodness of God alone. But we attribute worth to works in the life of the just, for Christ came to create a people zealous of good works.”
Quoted in J H Merle d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, vol 6, p 584.
The Roman Catholic response came ultimately from the Council of Trent, which gathered for three periods between 1545 and 1563 in what is now a northern Italian town but was then within the Holy Roman Empire. On the subject of justification, the Council produced 16 chapters and 33 canons which, says Cunningham, are “characterised by vagueness and verbiage, confusion, obscurity and unfairness”. Indeed he adds, “It is not very easy on several points to make out clearly and distinctly what were the precise doctrines which they wished to maintain and condemn”.
Historical Theology, vol 2, p 12.
But it is important to note that, despite Vatican II, Rome has not rejected the Canons of the Council of Trent; they are still central to her teaching. Pope John Paul II described Trent’s declarations on justification as “one of the most valuable achievements for the formulation of Catholic doctrine”, adding significantly that “the Council intended to safeguard the role assigned by Christ to the Church and her sacraments in the process of sinful man’s justification”.
Quoted in Fesko, Justification, p 363.
The Council was adamant that justification not only includes the forgiveness of sins but also sanctification, a renovation of man’s moral nature.
The official Catechism of the Catholic Church (Geoffrey Chapman, 1994, para 1989) quotes approvingly from the Canons of the Council of Trent: “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man”.
The critical point here, of course, is how the term justification is used in Scripture. In various contexts, it is used as the opposite of condemnation; for instance: the judges in Israel were to “justify the righteous and condemn the wicked” (Deut 25:1); and in a context that is more directly relevant to our present concerns, Paul encourages believers with the words: “It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? (Rom 8:33). In each case, to justify and to condemn are clearly legal terms; to justify is the opposite of to condemn and means to declare righteous; justification is not a term which can be used to describe the infusion of righteousness into anyone – any more than condemnation can be used to describe making that person’s moral character worse.
We may note one further piece of evidence: David’s plea in Psalm 143:2: “Enter not into judgement with Thy servant: for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified”. Here justification is again placed in the context of an act of judgement. In the particular context of a sinner entering the kingdom of God, his justification does not refer to him being made righteous; it refers to him being accounted righteous; it is a statement of how God, as judge, views him. For the sake of Christ, the justified sinner is viewed as free from guilt and as having always kept the law of God perfectly.
Yet in somewhat different contexts, we have what Buchanan refers to as the declarative sense of justification – for example, Luke 7:29, where we are told that “all the people . . . justified God”.
Justification, p 249.
In other words, the people declared, or acknowledged, that God was righteous. Similarly when James asks, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? (2:21), he intends us to understand that Abraham’s works declared the genuineness of his spiritual state. James is not discussing how Abraham entered the kingdom of God. He did so by faith; but where there is faith, good works will follow. Here James is referring to Abraham’s good work of offering his son Isaac on the altar. Good works declare that the faith in the justified person’s heart is genuine.
But not all that seems to be faith is actually genuine. This is what James has in mind when he says, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (v 17). This is why James can ask, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?” (v 14). The question is: Can the dead faith, the faith from which good works do not flow, save anyone? And the answer must be, No, for it is not genuine, living faith – which is clear because there are no works to evidence spiritual life, neither before God or before other human beings. Those individuals whose works justify them, in the sense in which James uses the word, have already been justified by faith without works; and that is now to use the word in a somewhat different sense to how James used it and, more importantly, in a rather different context – that of entering the kingdom of God. In this context it is of unspeakable importance to understand that no works of ours can in the least degree contribute to our acceptance with God.
Trent thundered its anathema against anyone who would deny the need for divine grace in justification – which for the Council included sanctification. But, in the Christian Church, the number of outright Pelagians must always have been minimal (Pelagians claim that human beings are able to make themselves acceptable to God by what they can do, without help from above). The vast majority of professing Christians would allow some place for grace; by far the commoner error is to attempt to divide up the basis for salvation between divine grace and human works – which is semi-Pelagianism, its best-known branch being Arminianism.
But Trent thundered a further anathema against “anyone [who] says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to obtain the grace of justification”.
Quoted from Mark A Noll, ed, Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 1991, Apollos, p 185.
This was the main error confronting the Reformers: not a doctrine, at least in theory, of works alone – but semi-Pelagianism, the doctrine of works plus grace. Cunningham comments that, when we view Trent’s scheme as a whole and “in connection with the natural tendencies of the human heart”, it is “so constructed as to be fitted to foster presumption and self-confidence, to throw obstacles in the way of men’s submitting themselves to the divine method of justification, and to frustrate the great end which the gospel scheme of salvation was, in all its parts, expressly designed and intended to accomplish”.
Historical Theology, vol 2, p 9.
And he expresses that divine purpose in the words of the Westminster Confession: “that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners” (11:3).
We need not go beyond the Epistles of Paul to understand that our works can form no part of the basis for our salvation. Works rule out grace; “to him that worketh”, Paul stresses, “is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt”. But, on the other hand, “to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom 4:4,5); it is the ungodly who are justified. “No place is left”, says Owen emphatically, “for any works to make the least approach towards our justification before God”.
The Works of John Owen, vol 5, p 317.
We may note, at slightly greater length, the views of the English Reformers, as expressed in their Homily on Salvation: “The true understanding of this doctrine – we be justified freely by faith, without works; or that we be justified by faith in Christ only – is not that this our own act to believe in Christ, or this our faith in Christ, which is within us, doth justify us and deserve (or merit) our justification . . . but the true understanding and meaning thereof is that although we hear God’s Word and believe it; although we have faith, hope, charity, repentance, dread and fear of God within us, and do never so many works thereunto, yet we must renounce the merit of all our said virtues . . . which we either have done, shall do, or can do, as things that be far too weak and insufficient and imperfect to deserve remission of sins and our justification. And therefore we must trust only in God’s mercy and that sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, once offered.”
Quoted in Buchanan, Justification, p 485.
It cannot be too strongly stated that the one basis for the forgiveness of sinners and for accepting them as righteous before God – that is, for their justification – is the work of Christ in this world as the substitute of sinners. That basis is the righteousness of Christ imputed to them and received by faith alone. So John Calvin states: “The power of justifying which belongs to faith consists not in its worth as a work. Our justification depends entirely on the mercy of God and the merits of Christ; when faith apprehends these, it is said to justify. . . . We say that faith justifies, not because it merits justification for us by its own worth, but because it is an instrument by which we freely obtain the righteousness of Christ.”
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Beveridge translation), 3:18:8.
Again in the words of the Westminster Confession, God justifies, “nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience, to [sinners] as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness, by faith: which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God” (11:1).
And this issue remains one of the great dividing lines between true, scriptural Christianity and the errors of Rome. For instance, Karl Keating, described as “a Roman Catholic apologist”, wrote in 1988, “The Bible is quite clear that we are saved by faith. The Reformers were quite right in saying this, and to this extent they merely repeated the constant teaching of the Church. Where they erred was in saying that we are saved by faith alone.”
Quoted in Fesko, Justification, p 360, emphasis added.
The error, of course, lies on Keating’s side of the argument but, as we will notice again later, any omission of that significant word alone in this context is downright dangerous.
While justification is by faith alone, faith is not the only activity in the regenerated soul. When God implants new life in the soul – the new life which makes faith possible – He also implants every other grace. Otherwise it would be, to hark back to James’ expression, a dead faith. The Westminster Confession expresses the matter with characteristic conciseness: “Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces” (11:2). We may also note that saving faith is not, as Roman Catholics and others are encouraged to believe, only assent – a mere intellectual acceptance that particular teachings are true.
The Council of Trent’s demand for assent goes so far as to declare in the last of its canons on justification: “If anyone says that the Catholic doctrine of justification, as set forth by the holy Council in the present decree, derogates in some respect from the glory of God or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, and does not rather illustrate the truth of our faith and no less the glory of God and of Christ Jesus, let him be anathema” (quoted from Mark A Noll, ed, Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, p 188, emphasis added).
Faith includes assent, of course, but it is more than assent; it includes trust. In the exercise of the faith that justifies, the sinner receives and rests upon Jesus Christ “as He is offered to us in the gospel”.
The Shorter Catechism, Ans 86.
When sinners believe, they are justified. In other words, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to them. Just as the sin of the human being – his guilt – is put to the account of Christ, so the righteousness of Christ is put to the account of the sinner when he believes, and he is accounted righteous. Charles Hodge explains the righteousness of Christ to mean: “all He became, did and suffered to satisfy the demands of divine justice, and merit for His people the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life”.
Systematic Theology, Eerdmans reprint, 1977, vol 3, p 142.
Christ was in the world as the substitute of His people. In His sufferings, He was bearing the punishment due to those who would believe on Him; in His law-keeping, He was also acting as their substitute. What Christ did as the substitute of sinners is imputed to them – that is, it is put to their account.
Hodge remarks that “Philemon had no doubt what Paul meant when he told him to impute to him the debt of Onesimus”.
Systematic Theology, vol 3, p 144.
Believers are treated, in a legal sense, as if they had brought about these blessings themselves. Because Christ suffered in their place, they are forgiven; because Christ kept the law in their place, they are treated as if they had kept the law perfectly themselves and so they have a right, in Christ Jesus, to eternal life.
Justification is not merely forgiveness. In W G T Shedd’s words: “The law is not completely fulfilled by the endurance of penalty only. It must also be obeyed. Christ both endured the penalty due to man for disobedience and perfectly obeyed the law for him; so that He was a vicarious substitute in reference to both the precept and the penalty of the law.”
History of Christian Doctrine, Klock and Klock reprint, 1978, vol 2, p 341.
This was the understanding of the Reformers but was denied by Rome and by the followers of Arminius.
The Arminians believed that God treated faith as if it was complete obedience to the law – on the grounds that the believer’s faith “is counted [or reckoned, or imputed] for righteousness” (Rom 4:5). Their idea is that God accepts the sinner on the basis of his faith and of the perfect obedience which flows from it, and thus faith becomes the ground of justification. But this is to treat faith as a work, in spite of the fact that this verse refers to the one who is justified as “him that worketh not”. Commenting on this verse, Hodge states: “It must express the idea that it was by means of faith that Abraham came to be treated as righteous, and not that faith was taken in lieu of perfect obedience”. And Matthew Poole notes that faith is “not considered in itself as a work, but in relation to Christ, the object of it, and as an act of receiving and applying Him”; so that the sinner by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to him. Thus Calvin comments: “Faith adorns us with the righteousness of another, which it begs from God”. Faith has no merit whatever in itself; it is just the instrument which lays hold of the glorious provision which God has made in Christ for needy sinners.
To see what is imputed to the sinner in justification we must note the teaching of 2 Corinthians 5:21. There Paul says in the name of all believers: “He [God] hath made Him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him”.
Charles Hodge comments as follows: “There is probably no passage in the Scriptures in which the doctrine of justification is more concisely and clearly stated than in this. Our sins were imputed to Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us. He bore our sins; we are clothed in His righteousness. Imputation conveys neither pollution nor holiness. Christ bearing our sins did not make Him morally a sinner, any more than the victim was morally defiled which bore the sins of the people [of Israel]; nor does Christ’s righteousness become subjectively ours; it is not the moral quality of our souls. That is what is not meant. What is meant it is equally plain. Our sins were the judicial ground of the sufferings of Christ, so that they were a satisfaction of justice; and His righteousness is the judicial ground of our acceptance with God, so that our pardon is an act of justice. It is a justification; or a declaration that justice is satisfied . . . it is not mere pardon, but justification alone, that gives us peace with God.”