By Faith Alone... how important are our good works?

In thinking about the Reformation teaching of salvation by faith alone, I've been thinking about how important our 'good works' are as Christians. The following is adapted from a long email conversation with a friend on this topic.

The main idea of reformation thought is that the Bible teaches that God created man to be in perfect relationship with Him and give Him glory. The fall has severed that relationship, and when man is fallen, even his best efforts cannot please a holy God. Man's fallenness completely incapacitates him. Calvin writes: 'Therefore, since reason, by which man discerns between good and evil... is a natural gift, it could not be entirely destroyed, but... a shapeless ruin is all that remains.' He quotes from Paul's letter to the Romans to give a scriptural basis for this:

'none is righteous, no, not one (which is a quote from Ps 14)... whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.' (Romans 3:10, 19-20)

Paul's letter then continues with one of the great 'turning points' of the Bible:

'But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.' (Romans 3:21-26)

So the main idea here is that Christ's death was a sacrifice of atonement for sins past, present and future. His death was the great act of redemption, even greater than the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt at Passover. He was the Passover Lamb, sacrificed to pay the price for sins. This satisfies God's justice: there must be a punishment for sin, and Christ took it.

But our justification is not just that Jesus paid the price for our sins. His perfect obedience to God, His perfect law-keeping, is credited to our account when we trust in Him. So when God looks at us, He sees the perfection of Christ. Therefore we have total assurance of our salvation, because it depends not on anything we do, but on Jesus, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8). Heb 7:25 says that Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, and this is supported by Jesus' words to the dying thief on the cross next to Him: 'Today you will be with me in paradise'. (Lk 23:43)

Now, what is our response to being justified? It is to now live in a totally different way. Before we were justified, before we came to know and trust in Christ, we were slaves to sin. We were incapable of doing good, even if we wanted to (see Romans 6). But because God has worked a miracle in our hearts to make us 'born again', that is spiritually renewed with real faith, we are now enabled to live in holiness in a way that we were not before. A non Christian has no power to resist sin. A Christian has the Holy Spirit! (See Galatians 5:16-25). We are told to 'walk by the Spirit' and not 'gratify the desires of the flesh' because they are 'against the Spirit'. If we have truly been saved and come to love God, then we will want to give our whole lives to Him to please Him. We will want to walk in purity, rather than pursuing the things that God's Word makes clear are wrong. We won't want to live selfishly anymore. I don't think someone who is a genuine Christian can at the same time not care how they live and what God thinks about their life. I don't see how someone can really understand the cross and God's grace towards them, if they basically reject everything God says in the Bible about the way we should live.

We don't obey God's Word to earn our salvation; we obey because it's right. God knows what is right and best for us, so therefore we follow His way. We uphold marriage, we don't steal, we don't lie, we try to put God first in everything (I'm roughly paraphrasing the 10 Commandments here- see Exodus 20), because this glorifies God and it's the best way to live! And God has promised to 'sanctify' us- every day, we're becoming more and more like Christ. We still fall down and stumble over our old ways of sin, but God promises that sin no longer has mastery over us (Romans 6:12-14).

So much of the New Testament is Paul or other apostles writing to young churches, telling them how important it is for them to live in a way that pleases God. Not to earn their salvation, but as the only proper response to their salvation. And also to make an impact on the world around us. Here's the opening of Paul's letter to Timothy:

'I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— 2for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.'

Notice here how Paul says how important living in godliness is: it pleases God, and it leads others to know the truth and be saved themselves. But look how they must be saved: through the mediator of Christ, who gave himself as a ransom. He's not saying 'live godly lives in order to win salvation'. It is clear that salvation comes through Christ alone.

I think the major difference between Roman Catholic teaching and evangelical teaching is that we are saved by faith alone in the latter. I recently read 'By Faith Alone' by RC Sproul and found it very helpful in explaining this difference.

He highlights the key questions:

Does faith enable us to become actively righteous so that God will declare us righteous? Or does God declare us righteous before we actually become actively righteous by imputing to us the righteousness of Christ?

Sproul argues that the Bible teaches the latter, and I would definitely agree with this.

Catholicism teaches that the sacraments are the instrumental means by which we receive grace, whereas the reformers argued that faith is the instrument by which we are linked to Christ and receive the grace of justification. Sproul also writes:

For Rome the righteousness of Christ is not imputed to the believer, but infused into the believer. When the believer cooperates with this infused righteousness, the believer then possesses an inherent righteousness, which then becomes the ground of justification.

Since the infusion of Christ's righteousness is initiated by faith, Rome can say that justification is by faith. However, since the infusion of Christ's righteousness does not complete our justification immediately, we are not justified by faith alone.

...

Rome declares that sin has a 'double consequences': eternal punishment and temporal punishment. Forgiveness involves the remission of eternal punishment, but temporal punishment remains and must be purified on earth or in Purgatory.

The sacrament of penance and the doctrine of the treasury of merit (that is, Christ's merit plus the merit of Mary and the saints) cast a heavy shadow over the sufficiency of Christ's saving work. According to this doctrine the prayers and good works of Mary and the saints are added to the merit of Christ. In a broad sense the saints contribute to the redemption of others. The expiation of sin accomplished by Christ must be augmented by expiation in purgatory to satisfy temporal guilt.

...

Calvin rejected the RC distinction between mortal and venial sin. All sins are mortal in that they deserve death. No sin is mortal in the sense that it destroys the grace of justification.

I think that the Bible clearly teaches that God saves us by grace alone, but then gives us power to be righteous because we are then regenerated and made new. But the good things we do as Christians aren't really anything we can take credit for, because we are only able to do them by the grace of God working in us through His Spirit.

Let's look at some "controversial" Bible verses with regard to this teaching:

"We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments. Anyone who says, ’I know him’, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth. But when anyone does obey what he has said, God’s love comes to perfection in him. We can be sure that we are in God only when the one who claims to be living in him is living the same kind of life as Christ lived." (1 John 2:3-6)

I think this is teaching us that we can have assurance of salvation ('by this we know') by giving ourselves an 'ethical test'- have we got a changed life? Has our behaviour been transformed? I don't think this is to save us, because 1 John 2:2 refers to Christ as the 'propitiation for our sins'- a sacrifice that bears God's wrath and turns it to favour. So our assurance of salvation comes from
1. Knowing that Christ died for us, taking God's wrath for us
2. Seeing our own lives transformed by the grace of God.

Next let's look at James 2:

21 Was not Abraham our father justified by his deed, because he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
22 So you can see that his faith was working together with his deeds; his faith became perfect by what he did.
23 In this way the scripture was fulfilled: Abraham put his faith in God, and this was considered as making him upright; and he received the name 'friend of God'.
24 You see now that it is by deeds, and not only by believing, that someone is justified.

I think it's important to see how James is writing from a different angle to Paul here. Paul is talking to legalistic law-keepers, telling them 'you are justified by Christ!' James is talking to libertines, telling them 'God cares about what you do!' James is looking at someone who professes faith but doesn't back it up with their lifestyle. He makes it clear that simply saying you believe does not result in salvation. If your life remains unchanged, then there's no use in saying you believe. Effectively, you don't.

It may seem that James is contradicting Paul. But I also think it's important to look at how they both use Abraham. Paul quotes from Gen 15:6 about Abraham's faith being 'counted to him as righteousness'. James looks at the incident in Gen 22 where Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac. I think they are using the word 'justify' in different ways. Paul is talking about being declared righteous by God through faith, on the basis of Jesus' atoning sacrifice, whereas the primary way that James uses the word 'justify' seems to emphasise the way in which works demonstrate that someone has been justified. 'Justify' in James means to declare someone righteous because, at the final judgement, the person's works give evidence of true saving faith.

I think James is a fantastic book and definitely meant to be in the Bible! And I do think that in evangelical Christianity, we err on the side of under-emphasising the importance of how we live our lives as Christians. We are not as good as secular charities at caring for the poor. And James speaks a very relevant word for us.

The Teaching of the Reformation

In my last post, I looked at Luther's discovery and his desire to spread the message that the Bible was actually about God saving humans by His grace, not about humans earning God's favour through their own works. Now I'm going to look in more detail at Luther's key teaching, and the teaching of the Reformation as a whole.

Luther developed three key slogans:

BIBLE ALONE- as the sole source of teaching authority

FAITH ALONE- as the only way to be saved, not through works as well

CHRIST ALONE- as the head of the church, not the pope

Luther realised, as a pious priest, that he could never confess enough. He saw the utter sinfulness of humans, and our inability to be perfectly pure, despite our best efforts to do so. In studying the New Testament, he suddenly saw the Christ offered free forgiveness for those who would trust in Him. This both liberated Luther's sense of guilt of fears of hell, but placed a burden on him: to spread this message.

Initially, Luther acted against corruption within the church. He didn't really see that his complaint (that no extra grace could be bought or sold) attacked the whole system of church ceremony, which was designed to dispense grace. The medieval church had seven sacraments (which the Catholic church still have today), designed to impart grace in a definite, obvious activity. This is the reason the Eucharist became so important, as the sacrament which all could share on a regular basis as a church community. But it had become something almost magical, where the "host", the bread, was stored in an expensive vessel and venerated in front of the whole congregation. The idea had developed that the bread and wine, once blessed by the priest, actually turned into the body and blood of Jesus Christ (transubstantion) in a mystical re-offering of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

Luther, as an early reformer, held a strong belief in the presence of Jesus Christ within communion. Other reformers like Zwingli stressed that the Lord's Supper was meant to be a memorial of Christ's death, and nothing more. All the reformers rejected the idea that the Mass was a sacrifice. This became one of the major contentions of the Reformation, because it stemmed from a deeper doctrinal issue. Reformers were teaching that men couldn't do anything to be saved, and Catholics were teaching in their use of sacraments that men obtain grace by offering God the Mass/devotions/penance.

There were certainly issues with the teachings of the Reformation. Some felt that the emphasis upon salvation by grace alone meant that the reformers were de-valuing the importance of holiness in Christian living, and loving your neighbour. Revolutionary reformers, such as the Anabaptists, stressed personal discipleship and sought to establish a church that was distinct from the state and uncontaminated by the world (the violence of Munster in 1534 showed the more extreme radicals in their worst light). But Calvin emphasised sanctification as well as justification. He taught that we are saved, and then the rest of our life is spent being renewed by the Holy Spirit and striving for holiness. Alistair McGrath points out that one of the major problems was that Catholics used the word 'justification' to mean both salvation and whole-life experience, whereas reformers used it in a narrower sense. Calvin himself wrote that "bad Christians" were the worst enemies of the gospel:

"Of what use is a dead faith without good works?"

Calvin here paraphrases the book of James, a book which Luther had problems in understanding. James' main point is that true faith shows itself in the lifestyle of the Christian. Can someone truly come to accept their sinfulness and trust in Jesus' death for them, without coming to hate their sin and striving to overcome it? Whilst we are not saved by what we do, if we truly believe, we will seek to change the way we live. This was part of Calvin's teaching, and is still part of Protestant thinking today.

Encouragement to keep going

I don't know about you, but I often find it hard to keep sharing the gospel. Many of my friends and family reject Jesus, and it's hard to keep praying for them and keep hoping that God will save them. Well I had a huge encouragement this week that I wanted to share, to help you to keep going too.

I help to run a Christian Union in the school where I teach, and since the exam year groups have left school there have been a core of about 4 students attending. We've been doing an 'exploring the basics of Christianity' course as most of these students come from non-Christian families. A few weeks ago, I asked them how you get to heaven. One boy said that you had to be a good person. Since then we have looked at various Bible passages which show that only through Jesus you can be saved. Yesterday, at the meeting, this boy said outright that you can't be good enough, only through Jesus can you be righteous in God's sight. Hallelujah!

This was really encouraging because it shows that there will always be people who are just waiting to hear the full gospel. When they hear it, they respond in faith through God working in their hearts. I think I spend too much time telling God who to save, and not enough responding to the people in my life that He IS working in, and rejoicing in that.

'Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.' James 1:12

Do Christians have to keep the Law?

Recently I've been studying the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) for an exam. One of the past questions was concerned with how the 10 Commandments relate to the New Covenant, which Christians are under. I've always found this issue really hard to get my head around, so this post is very much my current musings.

Covenant: Old and New

The concept of covenant is very prominent in the Pentateuch. By creating the world, God committed Himself to it. But after the rebellion of mankind and the Flood, God chose to make a covenant with Noah to never again destroy the world by flooding. (Gen 9:11) After the building of the tower at Babel, and God's subsequent scattering of mankind and confusion of languages, God chose to make a covenant with Abraham:
'I will make you into a great nation... I will make your name great... all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.' (Gen 12:2-3)

This covenant was eventually fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He was a descendant of Abraham (Matt 1:1), and through His death on the cross and resurrection, He offers all people on earth the blessing of being reconciled with God, and an eternity in heaven. Paul explains this in the book of Galatians:
'Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.' Gal 3:7-9

430 years after God made His covenant with Abraham, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt (by this time they had indeed become a 'great nation' as God had promised), and at Mount Sinai God made a covenant with Israel as a nation. He gave them the 10 Commandments and a covenant code to follow (these are detailed in Exodus and Leviticus). In Deuteronomy, just as Israel are poised to enter the promised land after 40 years of rebellion in the wilderness, Moses gives three speeches which outline to Israel the options laid before them:

• Obey God's commands and be blessed and stay in the land (Deut 4:40)
  
• Disobey God's commands and be cursed and exiled from the land (Deut 4:26-27)
  

The problem was, and this is really what the rest of the Old Testament is about, that Israel could not obey God's commands. They repeatedly turned against God, and so they were indeed sent into exile. Even when a remnant returned, the same mistakes were made, and the latter prophets such as Malachi preached about the rebellion of the people and urged them to turn back to God.

This, then, is where the concept of the New Covenant comes in. Jeremiah prophesies that there will come a time when God will put His laws into men's minds and hearts, and remember their sins no more (Jer 31). The writer of Hebrews explains that this time has now come: it was inaugurated through Jesus Christ's ministry.

Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses by sacrificing Himself once, for all. His innocent death was the high price necessary to pay for our sins. His blood was shed to cleanse mankind from past, present and future sins, if men claim it for themselves through faith.

'When Christ came as high priest... He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.' (Hebrews 8:11-15)

The 'new covenant', then, is the promise of God that all who believe in Jesus can receive forgiveness through His blood. (see Rev 7:15) Christians do not have to offer up animal sacrifices as the Israelites did, because Jesus' sacrifice was enough. The animal sacrifices of the law of Moses were a shadow of the greater reality of Christ that was to come. For believers before Christ came, sacrifices were a God-given means of forgiveness through His covenant with Israel. They were made valid before God on the basis of Christ's future sacrifice (note that the Old Testament itself recognises that the blood of bulls did not take away sin; God graciously forgave the one who offered the sacrifice if their heart was genuinely repentant and seeking Him -see Ps 51:16 and Hosea 6:6).

The essence of the Gospel

The Christian message is this: that everyone has sinned and turned against God in their heart, and consequently is under God's judgement. So God sent His Son Jesus to earth, to live a perfectly obedient life, and to die an innocent death, so that the price for our redemption could be paid. If we want to escape God's punishment, we need to believe in Jesus and trust that He took our punishment for us. We can be credited with His righteousness through faith in Him.

The Gospel in the Old Testament

Now that message wasn't really 'new' with Jesus' coming to earth. In fact, as Paul points out in Romans and Galatians, God's people have always been saved through faith rather than works. Abraham believed and it was credited as righteousness to him. (Gen 15:6) Also, the prophets looked towards Jesus' coming and Isaiah famously predicted that God's Servant would take on Himself the punishment for our sins:

'But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' (Isaiah 53:5-6)

What, then, was the point of the law?

The law had two purposes:
1. To guide God's people in how they should live, at a time when believers did not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them
2. To expose the fact that men can never perfectly live up to God's standards

The problem with the law, as James explains, was that if you kept all of it except one point, you were guilty of all of it and condemned (James 2:10). Jesus said that the most important commandments were 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Mark 12:29-31, quoting Deut 6:5-6). No one can ever keep these perfectly- hence why Jesus challenged the rich ruler who claimed he had kept all the commandments to:

'Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' (Luke 18:22)

It was obvious that the ruler was not loving God and his neighbour with all his heart, because he walked away with sadness, unable to relinquish his great wealth.

The law then, as Paul writes, 'was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.' (Gal 3:24-25)

So do Christians have to keep the Law?

Finally I'm coming round to this crucial question. The answer is that Christians do not have to keep the Law in order to be saved.

'All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." ...Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.' (Gal 3:10-14)

We are justified through Jesus Christ, not the things that we do. Jesus Christ was the only man to ever keep the law perfectly. He kept it perfectly FOR us. When we have faith in Him, His perfect righteousness becomes ours (see 1 Cor 1:30). God chooses not to see our filthy sins, but Christ's perfection, and that is how we can be accepted into heaven.

The Law has no power to save us, because it cannot give us the strength we need to obey it. It is not life-giving, but brings death and condemnation because we cannot keep it.
'the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life' (2 Cor 3:6)

But, as Christians who are saved by grace and given God's Holy Spirit, the Law and the Old Testament are helpful to us in revealing God's character and how He wants us to live.

'Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.' (Gal 3:21)

It is important to stress that the law is in no way morally deficient. It is not primitive as some may suggest, but it perfectly reveals God's standards and holiness. The ceremonial laws (concerning food to eat and clothes to wear and sacrifices to be made etc) clearly do not apply to Christians, because the New Testament explains that these were fulfilled in Christ and Christians are not like Israel, a physical nation in one physical place separate from other peoples. (see Acts 10) Israel was chosen to be 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation' (Ex 19:6) in the physical region of Palestine, whereas Christians are 'a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God' (1 Pet 2:9) who are sent out into all the world to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28).

The 10 Commandments, as TD Alexander suggests, are fundamental principles of life in covenant with God, universal and timeless. Whilst our salvation does not depend on how well we can obey God, Christians should desire to please God by living to glorify Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expounded what keeping the 10 Commandments really means: not looking at someone lustfully, not feeling angry with your brother in your heart... It's much more than simply not sleeping with another man's wife, or stabbing someone in the chest. The Pharisees tended to do the bare minimum when it came to the law and think they were right with God, but actually Jesus said that the Tax Collector who declares his sinfulness and repents is more in the right with God than a self-righteous religious man. (see Luke 18:13)

If we strive to bring all areas of our life under God's rule, and stay humble to realise that we will never be acceptable to God through the things that we do, then we shall respond rightly to God's grace to us in Jesus.