Our Only Means

The most important doctrinal question of the Reformation was “How does God save sinners?” To say it another way, “How are sinners justified in the sight of God?” The answer to these questions is only found in a salvation that comes in Christ by grace through faith alone. The doctrine of justification by faith alone was and remains the defining tenet of Protestant evangelical Christianity. At the heart of this doctrine was the issue of whether righteousness of God was infused in us or imputed to us. R. C. Sproul said it this way, “The crucial issue of infusion or imputation of righteousness remains irreconcilable. We are either justified by a righteousness that is in us or a righteousness that is apart from us. There is no third way.”

The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines justification as, “An act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” Christ is our mediator and all sufficient merit. His birth, life, death and resurrection fully propitiated the judgment of God and expiated our sins. Grace is the unmerited favor of God who pardons our sins and accepts us as righteous for Christ’s sake. Faith is the persuading power of the Holy Spirit that convinces us of the incarnation of Christ, what Christ did as our substitute on the cross, what Christ is doing as mediator of the new covenant, leading us to offer to God our “Amen” for all the promises that are ours in Jesus.

Salvation by grace through faith in Christ plus something is not the gospel. Only the work of the Son of God, freely given by the grace of God, appropriated through the faith of God alone, in any way can be called “good news.”

“We shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” John Calvin