My favorite illustration of what faith does in justification is tongs. Let’s say you are canning green beans. You’ve got your jars in the boiling pot, and it’s time to take out the jars. With what do you remove them? Your bare hands? Not likely, unless you are a leper and cannot feel it. You need something that will lay hold of the jar and lift it out without harming you.

In a similar way, Christ’s righteousness is holy and untouchable by the bare soul. It is a consuming fire. And yet, we need such a righteousness if our guilt towards the law can be expiated. How can we lay hold of such a righteousness? It is by faith alone. Works will not work to do this, since works is our bare soul (sinful and stained) trying to touch the infinite holiness of God. We need faith, which is God-given (see Ephesians 2). Faith is not really a thing, in and of itself. Faith is defined by faith’s object, which is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

In the time of the Reformation, the relationship of faith to justification and what constituted faith was an extremely important question. Very precise distinctions came about as a result of the debates. For instance, there are different causes of justification, which must be distinguished. The ultimate cause (the reason for it) of our justification is the glory of God. The material cause of our justification is the person and work of Jesus Christ (the material cause is the “what” of what caused our justification). The immediate cause (in space and time, the cause that actually effects it in our lives; the material cause of Christ effected our salvation in principle, whereas the Holy Spirit applies it to our lives) is the Holy Spirit. And finally the instrumental cause of justification (the tongs by which we lay hold of it) is faith alone, completely and utterly apart from works. It is vitally important here that in justification, faith is alone. Faith is not alone when considering the Christian life as a whole. But in justification, faith is most certainly alone.

Lastly, when we define faith in justification, we must be very careful not to sneak in works through the back door. It is not “faith formed by love” which justifies. Rather “faith formed by love” sanctifies. Faith has three elements: knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge is the easy part: you need to know God through Jesus Christ. Assent is also easy: you need to agree to what you know. Trust is the hard part. Trust means that you entrust your soul to God. It is the difference between knowing that a chair will hold you up, agreeing that it will, but also actually sitting in it, trusting that the chair will hold your weight. In this sense, we are not talking about the continuous trust in Christ which springs from this initial trust. Justification is a one-time act that occurs in an instant at the time-point of faith. Rather, we are talking about a one-time entrustment of the soul to God (and even this is God-given, lest our perpetually glory-hungry souls seek to steal something from the glory of God).

My apologies to the readers, and especially to Bill for waiting this long for the next post on justification. My last post dealt with where our sin problem leaves us. It leaves us with a two-fold problem. The first aspect of the problem is our guilt due to the law’s accusation. The second aspect is our sin nature, which is the fountain of all our actual sin. We could paraphrase as the hymn “Rock of Ages” does, by saying that we have sin’s guilt and sin’s power. We need something that will be of sin the double cure. That something is actually a Someone, Jesus Christ, in whom we have justification and sanctification, the former of which takes care of guilt and the latter of which takes care of sin’s power. It is of vital and central importance simultaneously to distinguish between justification and sanctification, and yet also to speak of them as inseparable.

If we were to smear the two together, we get legalism. It will mean that justification is delayed, and awaits our good works, for otherwise there is no forgiveness. This is the direction that the Roman Catholic Church took. People who confuse the two are those who are constantly telling us how good there are, and all the wonderful things they have done.

If, however, we separate justification and sanctification, then we will become antinomian. The word “antinomian” literally means “against law.” These people hate the law, and want nothing more to do with law. They are always saying things like “God is in the business of forgiving.” The hint is that therefore they can do whatever they want.

Therefore, we must walk the straight and narrow path between confusing justification and sanctification, on the one hand, and separating them, on the other hand. How does one do that? I believe that it is helpful to think of these two great benefits as being given at the same time, although distinctly, when we become united to Christ by faith. Of course, the nature of the two are different. Justification is a one-time act, while sanctification is a life-long process. But we are given the beginning of sanctification when we are united to Christ by faith, and we are given all of justification when we come to faith by God’s good gift.

Lane Keister

We have seen that God is holy, and that the same holiness pervades the law of God. So, where does that leave us?

Romans 1-3 has a very carefully laid out answer to this question. It can be paraphrased this way: in deep doo-doo. That’s where we are, in deep trouble.

In order to flesh out this answer, we need to look at a concept that is vitally important to the doctrine of justification, and that is federal headship. Adam is our representative. When he sinned, condemnation came upon all people of the earth (see Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15 for the biblical position). This means two things about our sin (and remember that sin is defined as any lack of conformity to the law of God). The first thing it means is that the sin of Adam is reckoned as if we had done it. This may seem unfair to some. However, if you think of a nation and its king, for instance, you can readily see that whatever the king does reflects on his people. If the king does well, it reflects on his people well. If he does poorly, then the people will suffer. Adam represented all of us, since we all come from Adam. The technical term here is that Adam’s sin is imputed to us. “Imputed” means “reckoned.” Even though we have not actually committed Adam’s actual sin, the guilt of Adam’s sin passed on to everyone whom he represented.

The second result of Adam’s sin when connected to federal headship is that Adam’s sin nature is also passed on to us. Just as blue-eyed blond haired Norwegian parents give birth to blond haired blue-eyed children, so also Adam and Eve gave birth to sinful children, who in turn gave birth to sinful children. The proof of this is in Psalm 51: in sin did my mother conceive me. This does not refer to the act of conception, but to the fact that he was sinful from the moment of conception.

So, there are two problems with humanity. One is that the guilt of sin is imputed, or reckoned to all of Adam’s descendants. The second problem is that sin has us in its grip such that we also sin. These are the two problems that have to be corrected. In the next post, we will see that justification takes care of one of those problems, namely, the guilt of sin. We won’t ignore what takes care of the other problem, but we will note just here that justification does NOT take care of the sin nature problem except insofar as a person is forgiven for having a sin nature (which is, of course, in itself sinful).

Lane Keister

Previously, we explored the holiness of God, and the problems that raised. Now, we need to flesh that out a bit in terms of the law.

The holiness of the Law-Giver means that the law itself is also holy. The law is holy, just, and good, as Paul says. Furthermore, the law requires perfection. Paul says that anyone who does not do ALL the things written in the law is under a curse. It is therefore not enough to do some of the things, or most of the things. What is required is to do all the things written in the law.

The standard is not Adolf Hitler, or my kleptomaniacal neighbor, but God Himself as He has revealed Himself in the law. This law, the moral law, has been revealed to all people on earth in every person’s conscience. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that it is wrong to steal, murder, commit adultery, be disrespectful of authorities, covet, lie, and be idolatrous. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that they must love God and neighbor.

The standard is perfection and the reward of perfection is eternal life. Eternal life is defined as a state wherein the body has been transformed so that it will no longer feel sickness, age, pain, or death. It is physical, and yet also trans-physical, since it is like Jesus’ body after the Resurrection, when He could simply appear wherever He wanted to appear. This state of existence is in constant fellowship with God and all the elect for eternity. This is something that was promised to Adam (see 1 Cor 15), if Adam obeyed the commands given to him at the beginning (multiply, fill the earth, rule over all animals, don’t eat from the tree).

Adam disobeyed that moral law. Much more was involved that disobeying the one command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For in so doing, Adam was seeking to take God off His throne and put himself there instead. So, in disobeying the one command not to eat of that tree, Adam also disobeyed the entire moral law. He did not love God, since he wanted to usurp God’s place. Furthermore, he did not love his neighbor (Eve), since he could have stopped her from eating of the tree (see Genesis 3:6, which plainly indicates that Adam was WITH Eve when she was tempted by Satan). So, Adam broke the whole law.

The result of Adam’s disobedience is condemnation upon the whole human race (see Romans 5:12-21, especially verses 17-18). This is called original sin. The sin of Adam is the original sin. However, all human beings are represented by Adam. So, when Adam sinned, he sinned for all of us. This is crucial to justification, since it renders perfect obedience to the law impossible for anyone tainted with this original sin. In our state of fallenness now, no one has the ability to keep the law. There is no one who can please God (see Romans 1-3). We have to know thoroughly how bad things are before we can appreciate how good justification is. We’ll start to get to the doctrine of justification next post.

Lane Keister

Hello, dear readers. My name is Rev. Lane Keister. I am on the Puritan Board as a fellow moderator with Bill, and I have a blog at Green Baggins. Bill graciously asked me to be a part of his blog, and I have accepted. He specifically asked me to post about justification by faith, as if I was some kind of expert or something! But I will do my best to give readers an understandable (as in scholarly and THEREFORE readable, noticing my definition of true scholarship there) grasp of the material principle (main point!) of the Reformation. To start this off, we need to have an understanding of the holiness of God.

The doctrine of justification starts with the holiness of God. Without understanding the holiness of God, we cannot understand our own sinfulness, and therefore our need for a different kind of righteousness than the one we always attempt to provide for ourselves.

The idea of holiness consists in being different. God is different from us and from creation. He is different for two reasons. Firstly, He is different because He is the Creator, and all other things and beings in the universe are created. There is then a distinction between the Creator and the creature. That is part of God’s holiness. It is the main reason why God is distinct from angels who have not fallen into sin. The second reason God is different is that God is sinless. There is no evil in God. Period. God is absolutely good. He defines what goodness (also known as righteousness) is.

The goodness of God is one hundred percent perfection. This must be understood, or else the necessity of  justification is lost. Most people tend to define goodness by looking at themselves and maybe comparing themselves with their neighbors, and especially with Hitler. It’s as if anyone can be an absolute angel in goodness if they are only a little bit better than Hitler. We must rid ourselves of this notion once and for all. To be good, one has to measure up to God’s perfect standard of righteousness. The Bible says, “Do this and live.” “Do this” means do the law in all its perfection (Paul says that anyone who does not do ALL the things written in the law is cursed). “Live” means live eternally. So, hypothetically speaking (meaning, considering this question apart from sin being a factor), a person could obey the entire law and therefore reach God’s level of holiness and thus be ushered into God’s presence as someone with clean hands and a pure heart.

However, we know that, practically speaking, this is impossible, since no one can do all the things of the law. Why is that? The simple answer is sin. Sin is unholiness. It is an alignment with the world against God’s holiness. There is nothing that sinful man hates more than the holiness of God, since it strips away the comparison game mentioned above.

So, I compare myself, a sinner, with the holiness of God, and immediately there looms in front of me the most distressing and important fact of human existence: the problem of the sinfulness of man when compared with the holiness of God. To be continued in the near future…