A Review of “Justified by Grace through Faith without
Deeds of Law”
In an article or outline, a brother we care about, tries to explain salvation by grace through
faith, but it seems to me that he has not grasped the significance of saving
faith and what is involved with saving faith. In his article he separates
himself from churches of Christ, making some claims about what churches of
Christ believe and what he now believes. For example, he asks this misleading question:
“ b)
Are we saved by what we do, or are we saved by trusting in what Christ has
done?” That is misleading because it is
self-contradicting. Don’t we do the
trusting? Isn’t that something we
do? Furthermore, while we fully
understand and appreciate the fact that it is only because of what Jesus has
done that any of us can be saved, the
fact remains that Jesus is not going to save any of us unless we trust Him
enough to OBEY His terms of pardon. Our
brother is making an unfair contrast between two ways of saying the same thing.
What we do is trust and obey Jesus to receive what He has done. Why? Because we trust Him even on the terms
of pardon He has required. Are we saved
by what we do? Yes and no! Yes, if you mean “are you saved by JESUS if you DO what He
said to receive His grace?” But, “no”,
if you mean that doing something on our own has inherent power to save us
exclusively by the mere doing of those things.
But, the question is misleading because we cannot be saved by Jesus
unless we do the hearing and believing the evidence and do the repenting and
being baptized in His name, and do it because we want HIM to pardon us on the
terms He commanded and gave promise to.
Apart from Jesus, those activities have no saving ability any more than
Naaman could dip himself in the Jordan seven times and save himself from
leprosy by the mere action he took. But,
he could not be saved from leprosy by grace if he did not have the faith to do
what was required of him as a condition to being healed by grace.
A little further into the outline our brother says:
a) NO BOASTING: Justification by grace thru trust in Christ eliminates
any reason for boasting.
If we are saved by obedience, we leave room to boast. (cf. Lk.
18:9-12; Mt. 7:21-23)
We will not be saved if we do not obey God, but we are not saved by
obedience.-Unquote!
Reply: One can just as
easily boast about doing the “trusting” as one can boast of repentance and
baptism. In fact, one cannot really say that they “trust” Jesus at all unless
they trust what He says, and trust him enough to repent and be baptized IN HIS
NAME for remission of sins (remission that only HE can give us. We don’t give
it to ourselves. He gives it when we trust Him obediently in this manner). It
seems to be some double-talk to say: 1)
we will not be saved if we do not obey God (meaning we must be saved by obeying
God), but 2) we are not saved by obedience.
Well, that is cutting too jagged a line.
We are saved only WHEN we obey. Jesus is the Savior. He saves us when we
obey Him, and He sets the terms of obedience so that if we obey we will be
saved. Repentance and baptism cannot be “in
His name” if it is an action we take wholly on our own and apart from trusting
Him to cut our sins away (Col.2:12; Acts 22:16). Those who do it “in His name” are trusting
what He says and believing that He will do the cutting away of sins as He
promised. There is no boasting in
recognizing we are sinners in need of His grace and appealing to Him to forgive
our sins as we obey His terms of pardon.
We are not saved by a list of things to obey (apart from any connection
to Jesus), but we are saved by obedience to Jesus’ terms of pardon (because
that is WHEN He will save us). Our
brother shows great confusion.
Further, one can boast of “trusting” as easily as one can
boast of repentance and baptism in Jesus’ name.
So, he solves nothing by taking up the denominational faith-only song we
have heard and defeated in every debate I’ve heard or read for decades. It is puzzling how every few decades a new
group of preachers come along who think they have discovered something that the
older preachers just missed entirely.
Then a little later in his outline our brother makes this
claim:
1. Many in churches of Christ have assumed Paul’s contrast in
Romans/Galatians is OT vs. NT.
a) E.g. We are not saved by obeying the OT law; we are saved by obeying
the law of Christ.
b) This assumes we are saved by obeying law; the only question is which
law we must obey. –Unquote.
Reply: I would not say
that we are saved by obeying law (a book of rules), but by obeying Jesus’ terms
of pardon(found in His law). Now, to
show the further fallacy of our brother’s reasoning we ask: 1) does the law of
Christ require us to “trust” Him? Does
the law of Christ require us to believe in Jesus? If it does, then our brother has shot his own
position in the foot. If the law of
Christ requires “trust” or “faith” or “repentance” as CONDITIONS for pardon,
then our brother really has not escaped the dilemma he thinks “many churches of
Christ” have gotten entangled in. Since
the law of Christ is built into believing in Jesus, it is not a similar thing
to the Law of Moses or moral code only.
Those are law-only codes. The Jew
refuses to believe in Jesus and claims devotion to the Law of Moses. Can that
law save him? No! A Gentile may have “law”
apart from Jesus. Can his “law” save him? No!
But, a Christian does not have a law apart from Jesus, but law built
into the very relationship with Jesus. It is not a separate entity as it is an
expression of Jesus Himself. A person
does not enter into this law or covenant apart from trusting and believing
Jesus. Thus, it is better to think of
obedience to Jesus as “faith” and to think of the systems of Jews and Gentiles
who do not know and follow Jesus as totally dependent on law and works, but
that their systems do not provide salvation because their systems inherently
condemn them rather than saving them. By
works shall no flesh be justified. There
is no salvation apart from Jesus. The
law of Christ is not something apart from Jesus.
A little later our brother says: 2. Romans 4 does not allow us to
distinguish works of merit and works of divine command. –Unquote!
Reply: But Romans four DOES allow us to distinguish works of
faith from all other kinds of works.
Abraham showed works of faith and so did David. Trust is a work of faith. Repentance is a
work of faith. Baptism in Jesus’ name is a work of trust or faith, but these
are not works of merit, and they are not works of divine command that one can
perform apart from faith in Jesus. So,
there is a subtle mistake our brother makes here with his choice of terms. The ‘steps
of the faith” of Abraham were activities of effort such as packing and
traveling to a place God would show him.
Don’t say there is no “work” involved with faith. It is simply a
different KIND of work than the meritorious kind of work one would have to
engage if they are hoping to earn a place with God on the basis of personal
merit. Later, our brother says: 2.
Paul’s contrast is not between kinds of works; his contrast is between works
and faith. 4:4-5. –Unquote! But, that is not quite right either. It is a kind of works that Paul is
contrasting because faith is a kind of works too. A faith in Jesus kind of work is far
different from mere works of law. It
takes work on our part to commit our trust to Jesus. It takes work to believe,
because that demands the work of listening, studying, analyzing the evidence of
God’s word so that it can convict us, and conviction demands the work of
repentance, confession, and baptism in Jesus’ name. So, a contrast between works and faith IS
indeed a contrast between KINDS of works. In Galatian Paul terms is “faith
working by love”(Gal.5:6). Isn’t that a different KIND of works? Of course it is!
One kind depends on
personal merit and work that earns continued partnership with God, at least
theoretically. The other kind of works
is dependent on Jesus, trusting Him, obeying Him, meeting His conditions of
pardon, which means I have not worked meritoriously, which is the reason I
recognize a need for pardon and am willing to meet His terms of pardon, and am
calling on Him for pardon. The man of
works does not see his need of pardon, and does not need what Jesus did on the
cross. The person who believes in Jesus
has works of a different nature or kind altogether. So, because it is two
entirely different KINDS of works, it is best to use two different summary
words to make the contrast. The standout
feature of justification by law would have to be WORK, entirely a matter of
personal performance, and therefore no need of mercy. The standout feature of
justification by faith is that it looks away from self to someone else. People
look elsewhere because they know they cannot present a case for justification
on the basis of personal performance. Thus, faith looks to someone else to
provide a basis for justification before God.
Does that mean that you don’t have to believe, trust, and obey any
conditions? No! It will be works of
faith, looking for justification through faith in that other person. In our
case, we look to Jesus for justification.
We work a different kind of works. They are not meritorious.
They are actions of faith. Obedience is
actions that surrender to another. So,
Paul does contrast two systems, and because they are so different, the main characteristic of each system is
emphasized with one word. But, to say
that faith is not characterized by works of any kind is to overstate the
case. This can be seen by the activity
of Hebrews 11. By faith Abraham….did
something. By faith Noah did something.
The main characteristic of faith is that it does what God says. It
demonstrates its reality by works of obedient faith (See James 2:14ff). So, in all reality, Paul is contrasting two
different KINDS of works: 1) Works of Law where personal performance merits a
just standing before God, and 2) Works of faith where Jesus provides the basis
of justification on His own conditions of pardon.
Our brother then argues with the above conclusions by
saying: a) But the context simply does not picture this contrast. It is not
about perfection vs. grace.
b) Is man justified by what he does in obeying God or by trusting in
what God has done? –Unquote!
Reply: It does indeed
contrast perfection of standing before law versus grace and its provisions
through surrendered and obedient faith.
But, our brother makes a false contrast in his point b. He asks “Is man justified by what he does in
obeying God or by trusting in what God has done?” Well, that is self-contradictory. Does man HAVE to “trust” in what God has
done? Yes! If he does not, God will not justify that
person. Well, if God refuses to justify
a person unless they trust God and obey His terms of pardon, then it is not an
either-or situation. It is a BOTH situation.
Now, the opposite side of that coin is: Is man justified solely by what he does in obeying
God? The answer is absolutely not! The other question that comes into play on
the second half of the question is: What all is involved in “trusting in what
God has done”?, and, does trusting in God exclude or include such terms of
pardon such as repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ? Now, obviously what God has done is the only
BASIS for our justification, but He has
done that for all people whether they believe or not. So, the acquiring of the benefits of what God
did for us in Jesus is conditioned upon something God expects from us. If you want to summarize it, it would be
belief or trust in Jesus. But, no person
really knows how to express the kind of trust God has in mind except God says
what He expects. Let us use the story of
Naaman again. Is Naaman going to heal
himself by what he does in obeying God?
Yes and No! Only because God told him the conditions he has to meet, and
he has to do it. But, if God had not provided the means and conditions, Naaman
certainly would not choose to dip in the Jordan seven times and think that has
ANY power to heal his leprosy. Likewise, if Jesus had not told us to repent and
be baptized in His name for remission of sins, there is no way anyone would
have ever come up with that as a means of being cleansed from our spiritual
leprosy, sin. It is the fact that God
commanded it as a condition for healing that made Naaman begin to trust and
obey the words of the prophet of God. ONLY when Naaman washed in the Jordan did
God cleanse him of his leprosy. And ,
only when the 3000 on Pentecost and later the Ethiopian Eunuch, and later Saul,
were convicted and were baptized in Jesus’ name were any of them able to lay
claim to faith or salvation. So, the
truth is in the middle of what our brother said. Man is justified by what he does
in obeying God because in obeying God he is trusting in what God has done and
what God has said. The man who does nothing to obey God’s terms of pardon does
not trust God at all, for how can one truthfully say “I trust what you DID, but
I don’t trust what you told me to do?” Those that gladly received his
words were baptized in the manner Peter, by Spirit-guidance, commanded. If they did not, they did not trust the
Savior at all. It is very easy to tell WHEN the 3,000 Jews “trusted” Jesus and
received “remission of sins”. It was
when they trusted enough to ‘repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
for remission of sins”(Acts 2:36-41). Be careful of straining at Romans to make
a false distinction. Obviously, even in Romans Paul is not speaking of a faith
that was not the kind that moved them to be “baptized into His death”(Rom.6:1-5).
We should be careful to include in “faith”
all the terms of pardon that the Lord commanded. Otherwise we cannot lay claim
to believing Him at all. At least not the right Jesus(2 Cor.11:-4).
(to be continued)
