Salvation’s Application

In this series of articles, I have been explaining the riches of Christ that become the possession of the elect people of God in their union with Christ. Union with Christ is the essence of the elect’s salvation. The elect are conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins on account of their union with Adam. Being guilty of Adam’s sin, the elect bear Adam’s punishment of death. The work of God to save the elect consists in cutting them out of the rotten corporation of Adam and engrafting them into the righteous corporation of Jesus Christ. This union with Christ we call faith. By faith the elect are one plant and one body with Christ. Through faith the elect receive all that is Christ’s. Christ is the great treasure house of salvation, and all that he stored up in himself by his death on the cross and through his resurrection becomes the possession of the elect by this union. This union with Christ by faith is demanded and indeed is the effect and fruit of the elect’s eternal union with Christ in election. This union with Christ is wholly the work of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who operate within the elect to make them one with Christ and who preserve that union unto the perfection of salvation in the new heaven and the new earth.

While we can and do distinguish many aspects of the riches of salvation that become the possession of the elect in Christ, nevertheless we can never lose sight of the fact that it is one salvation, decreed from all eternity by God, stored up in Christ through his cross, and bestowed graciously by the Holy Spirit. The elect are engrafted into Christ, regenerated, called, come to conscious faith, and are justified, sanctified, and glorified; they receive the whole of their salvation as it were in a single moment. To use a figure, there is one stream of salvation that flows to the elect out of the fountain of salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Many waters make up this stream, yet it is one stream. Or to use another figure, if we take the pure, white light of salvation and refract it through a prism, we will see that the light is made up of many colors, yet it remains one beam of light. To use yet another figure, the sap of life that flows in the tree of Jesus Christ has many aspects to it, yet it is one sap that fills all the branches with the life of the tree of Jesus Christ.

It is this idea of salvation that stands behind the Reformed question to believing parents at the baptisms of their children: “Whether you acknowledge that…our children are conceived and born in sin, and therefore are subject to all miseries, yea to condemnation itself, yet that they are sanctified in Christ, and therefore, as members of his church, ought to be baptized?” (Form for the Administration of Baptism, in Confessions and Church Order, 260). The point of the question is not to focus only on the benefit of salvation called sanctification but to point out that the elect infant already possesses the entirety of his salvation as a member of Christ by faith. The infant has faith, regeneration, calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification. Nothing changes between the infant and the adult regarding the way of salvation, except that the adult becomes aware of his salvation, can be instructed in the truth of that salvation, holds the truth of that salvation over against all evil that comes upon him in this life, and consciously joys in God as the God of his salvation.

 

Application is Salvation

Thus the application of salvation is not to be viewed as the distribution of a series of discrete gifts given in succession, one after the other, with one benefit depending on the reception of the previously bestowed benefit. The application of salvation may not be conceived of this way: The first benefit is regeneration, which is necessary before the second benefit, calling, is given; and the second benefit is necessary before the third benefit, faith, is given, and so on. The application of salvation is not to be thought of as though the elect receive regeneration; then later they are called; later they are given faith; and later they are justified. Then too the application of salvation is not to be viewed as a temporal order.

Such conceptions are barren and mechanical and tend to view the application of salvation as though it were a mathematical equation. We especially reject these temporal and mechanical views of the order of salvation when the reception of the gifts of God is made to depend upon works of man that are the fruits of God’s grace. To make this rejection concrete, we reject as a corruption of the truth of the application of salvation that God makes the believer repent in order that God might be able to forgive or that God makes the elect believe in order that God might be able to justify them. We reject this man-first conception of salvation that has taken root in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) to the overthrow of the truth of gracious salvation. For that denomination there are activities of man—by grace, of course—that are necessary for man to perform in order for God to be able to perform his part. This man-first conception is essentially an Arminian conception of the order of salvation. Man is first—by grace, of course—and in response to man’s activity, God gives the next benefit of the order of salvation. This conception has been described as a mutual interplay between God’s grace, man’s activity, and a gracious reward. The end result of this conception has been the denial of salvation by grace alone and especially the denial of gracious justification without works.

In their consciences and experiences, the children of God do not experience that God responds to them and their activities, but the children of God experience their salvation at every point as a divine wonder of grace that God performs without their deeds and activities. God’s people experience that this divine wonder of the reception of their salvation produces in them fruits of repentance, faith, and good works. Salvation in the consciences and in the experiences of the elect is always and at every point in their lives an experience of the irresistible grace of God. In a moment the elect pass from death to life and from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son; they are cut out of Adam and engrafted into Jesus Christ; and in that moment salvation and all its riches are given to them. And such is always the reality of the experience of salvation for the elect. The elect are saved and being saved. The elect know their gracious salvation, and they grow in that knowledge.

Of this reality of God’s gracious work to give salvation unto them wholly as a gift, God’s people become more and more aware as they mature and grow. Sunday after Sunday the elect enter church as sinners and leave as the justified, until at last they leave this life and enter into the fullness of their salvation in eternal life. For this reason we do not need to speak of the application of salvation to the elect, but we can speak simply of their salvation. The application of salvation is salvation. The elect are saved at the moment of their engrafting into Christ, and they are saved all their lives as God brings into their consciousnesses the truth of their salvation and of the riches of that salvation that is theirs in Christ Jesus their Lord. This all is only a revelation of the elect’s eternal salvation in the counsel of God as election has its fruits and effects in the hearts and lives of God’s people and as the powerful word of salvation that God spoke at the cross comes to the elect and takes them up into that salvation so freely accomplished for them. Each aspect of that rich salvation God impresses upon his elect people as wholly his work as the triune God, and God excludes all their works as salvation’s explanation and power. Never is the thought of the children of God in faith, “We must do this in order to receive that from God.” God’s children are not mercenaries who fight for their pay or laborers who work for their wages. God’s children are beneficiaries and heirs who receive what God has appointed to them and stored up for them in Jesus Christ, his Son. Whom God loved he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son; and whom God predestinated he regenerates, calls, gives faith, justifies, sanctifies, turns from sin to him as their God, graciously preserves, and finally presents in the assembly of the elect in life eternal.

 

Justification’s Importance

Among these benefits of salvation is justification. The justification of the ungodly sinner freely by God’s grace for Christ’s sake alone is the heart of the gospel that Jesus Christ commanded his church to preach in his name throughout all the earth. The church that does not preach that gospel is no church, despite what she claims. By the mark of their respective messages, the true church and the false church are easily distinguished from one another. The true church teaches the truth of justification by faith alone. The false church does not. The false church may have a certain confession about justification, but she corrupts that confession with all sorts of lies. The church that corrupts her message concerning justification ceases to be church in the world. The church that teaches the truth of justification is a pillar and ground of the truth in the world.

The act of God to justify the ungodly sinner freely by grace for Christ’s sake is the ground of the Christian’s glory, hope, and patience in the world. The Christian stands in the world before God without fear as an ungodly sinner whom God has justified and who has peace with God through Jesus Christ. The justified, ungodly sinner is freed from wrath, the law, and death. He has hope that he will inherit eternal life and that he will see God in the face of Jesus Christ. This very peace with God that the justified sinner has and his hope in the glory of God are transformative of his view of the tribulations that he must pass through in this life because he knows that as a justified sinner all things work together for his good and that the tribulations work in him patience, experience, and hope. Having hope, he presses on in his pilgrim’s journey here below toward the heavenly city, where his citizenship resides and to which he has the right to enter for Christ’s sake. Over against the testimony of the law and of his own sin and guilt, the justified sinner stands persuaded that he is justified in Christ and is an heir of eternal life. In his conscience the justified sinner has passed in Christ from death to eternal life, from wrath to favor, and from curse to blessing.

The true church of God in the world always has cherished the doctrine of justification as the bedrock of her peace and assurance in this valley of tears and of the shadow of death. This doctrine promises to her a new day in a new world in which all will be made perfect in Christ.

This doctrine also ascribes all glory to God. Out of his own grace and love for his elect church and motivated only by his own sovereign good pleasure, freely by his grace God justifies the elect, who in themselves are worthy only of condemnation.

Because the pure preaching of justification is the mark of the true church, is the ground of the Christian’s hope in the world, and gives all glory to God, the doctrine of justification has been the object of Satan’s continual assault throughout history. It can be argued that the doctrine seldom has been held in its purity for any length of time by that which is called church in the world. Yet we maintain that the gates of hell never have been able to prevail against God’s church and that there always has been that which was truly church in the world that believed this truth, although we might not be able to point to it historically. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. David sang of the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputes righteousness without works. The prophets proclaimed this message, so that the apostle Paul takes the theme of his epistle to the Romans from the prophet Habakkuk: Those who are righteous by faith shall live. Christ preached justification as the gospel of the kingdom, and the apostles carried that message into the world. The ancient church confessed in the Apostles’ Creed that she believed the forgiveness of sins. And it was especially in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century through the work of Christ in Martin Luther that this confession was brought out of the shadows in a way not seen since the time of the apostle Paul. The Reformed fathers in the Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, Canons of Dordt, and liturgical forms placed the confession of the doctrine of justification on the lips of every Reformed believer. And we confess it yet today.

 

Justification and the Reformed Protestant Churches

This doctrine of justification comes very near to the heart of the reason that the Reformed Protestant Churches were formed by Christ. The Protestant Reformed Churches had corrupted this doctrine. This has been proved at length on the pages of Sword and Shield, and I do not intend to establish that in any detail again. The Protestant Reformed Churches’ corruption of the doctrine has been long-standing, if not so obvious at first. That corruption goes all the way back to the division in the PRC in the 1950s over the conditional covenant. That the controversy concerned justification is clear from the false doctrine of the then Protestant Reformed minister Hubert De Wolf. He taught that repentance is a prerequisite or condition to enter the kingdom of God. However, according to Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 31, our entrance into the kingdom is our justification. Thus De Wolf made repentance the prerequisite of justification. Another way to state the truth is that entrance into the kingdom is our conscious experience of God as our God and the assurance that we are members of his covenant and that all our sins are forgiven. Thus De Wolf made repentance the prerequisite of that knowledge and assurance. The conditional covenant and conditional forgiveness are two sides of one coin, just as the unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone are two sides of one coin. The promise of the covenant is always the promise of the forgiveness of sins and that on the basis of forgiveness we are friends of God and heirs of eternal life. Therefore, if the promise is conditional, the forgiveness of sins is conditional. If the forgiveness of sins has a prerequisite, then the covenant promise and the covenant itself must have a prerequisite.

The connection between the promise and the forgiveness of sins has been shown especially in the false doctrine promoted by the Reformed and Presbyterian theologian Norman Shepherd, who taught a conditional covenant and right along with that and with perfect logical consistence also taught that man is justified by an obedient and a repentant faith. Shepherd sneered at the Reformed confession of justification by faith alone. For him and all who follow his doctrine, the faith that justifies does not justify alone, but faith justifies when it repents and obeys. According to Shepherd, repentance and obedience are necessary for justification. Justification is not by faith alone but is by faith, repentance, and obedience. De Wolf in the PRC taught essentially nothing different. Both he and Shepherd were enamored with the conditional covenant view of Klaas Schilder and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Liberated), and both necessarily then also corrupted the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone.

That teaching of Reverend De Wolf was never fully excised from the Protestant Reformed Churches. The teaching was promoted already at the time of Reverend De Wolf’s trial by men who were intent on talking his theology straight, as found in their majority report to Classis East. Some of De Wolf’s supporters never left the PRC, and the theology of that report never left the PRC. The false theology came to the surface from time to time, but it was excused and explained away. For years many ministers in the PRC have insisted that they preach the gospel. However, their gospel is no gospel. Gradually it became clear that the theology of the PRC is not much different from Hubert De Wolf’s and Norman Shepherd’s.

While insisting that they teach an unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone, Protestant Reformed ministers and theologians undermine and deny those truths in all sorts of ways. Rev. Ronald Cammenga taught that Jesus Christ and his atonement are not enough for rest—justification—but that we must also come to Christ in true repentance. Rev. David Overway taught that Jesus and the Spirit-wrought good works of the believer are the way to God. Rev. Wilbur Bruinsma taught that we will be justified before God on the last day by our words—works. Rev. Kenneth Koole taught that our righteousness in the kingdom that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is our acts of love. He taught that when Paul told the Philippian jailor to believe, that his believing was the act of man. Along with this Reverend Koole taught that if a man would experience the favor of a reconciled God, he must perform that act of believing. He also taught that good works are not to be slighted in assuring souls of their justification. The Protestant Reformed Classis East in recent decisions agreed that good works are not to be slighted in assuring souls of their justification and likewise insisted that good works are necessary for fellowship with God. Prof. David Engelsma led the way by his teaching that the covenant is destined to become a mutual relationship between God and man. He clearly stated what he meant by that when he taught that man must first repent and then God will forgive or that man must first draw near to God and then God will draw near to man. Prof. Barry Gritters took that teaching and ran with it and taught that man is unforgiven unless and until he repents and that God cannot and will not forgive man unless and until he repents. Not to be outdone, the slippery Rev. Martyn McGeown taught that faith is man’s activity and not God’s act. All of this has been demonstrated and responded to on the pages of Sword and Shield. Those who are interested can search the archives of the website of Reformed Believers Publishing (reformedbelieverspub.org). Protestant Reformed ministers and theologians maintain that they teach an unconditional covenant, but because they teach that forgiveness has a prerequisite repentance, that works are part of the way to the Father, and that works of love toward the neighbor are first before God can or will forgive, they necessarily teach a conditional covenant.

What must stand out in all this apostasy that has happened is that these all are denials of the absolutely unconditional nature of God’s covenant and of the truth of justification by faith alone. To teach that faith is man’s activity and not God’s act is to make faith a condition of justification. To teach that man must first repent and then and only then can and will God forgive man is to make repentance a condition of justification. To teach that our works are part of the way to the fellowship of God or part of the way of maintaining and having that fellowship with God is a denial of justification by faith alone.

Justification by faith alone teaches that the ungodly sinner, whom God has forgiven freely by his grace for Christ’s sake, stands in God’s fellowship in this grace. That sinner has fellowship with God by faith alone and is justified by faith alone. Nothing else—no activity or deed of the sinner—may be injected into his standing in God’s fellowship as its cause or explanation. Faith alone truly means faith alone. As important, necessary, and good as repentance and good works are, they are not part of the cause, reason, or explanation of justification or of the cause, reason, or explanation that the ungodly, forgiven sinner stands in God’s grace. Faith alone means nothing is required of the sinner for salvation. He does nothing; he has in himself only his sin and guilt; and he stands in the grace of God, at peace with God, and as an heir of eternal life. By faith alone everlasting righteousness, the favor of God, and eternal life are his.

And it is this precious truth, which is the source of all Christian comfort, joy, peace, assurance, and hope, that I must explain.

 

The Definition of Justification

Key to the truth of justification is righteousness and God’s attitude toward the righteous. Righteousness simply means conformity to the law of God as the standard of righteousness according to God’s own judgment. Before men it is easy to appear righteous, and men may readily justify their fellow man and say that he is an upright man. When men judge men whom they favor, the standard of their judgment is an easy standard, which sometimes is based on nothing more than whether they find someone pleasing and interesting; certainly that standard consists of nothing more than what men can see. But God knows the heart, all the inner recesses of man’s mind, and the truth of man’s nature. God does not judge outwardly and superficially, but he judges what is inward and according to the strict interpretation of the law, which demands perfection of nature and deeds. According to the standard of the law, God judges one to be righteous or unrighteous. The unrighteous he curses and only curses. Those whom God judges to be righteous he blesses. He only blesses the righteous. He always blesses the righteous, for the Lord loves the righteous.

How then shall a sinner be right with God? If God would enter into judgment with a man, how could that man answer even one of a thousand different charges that God might bring? Man is a sinner in his nature and by birth. He incurred a debt that he cannot pay, and that sinner daily increases his debt. God justifies the sinner as an act of free grace out of his love for the sinner.

The heart of justification is grace—a grace that is rooted in God’s eternal election of grace, which is itself motivated by the free love of God. Nothing in the sinner, not even his worthlessness and misery, moves God to love that sinner and to justify him. God’s good pleasure to love this sinner and not that one, to choose this sinner and not that one, is the deep and eternal explanation of the sinner’s justification. It is as the apostle says in Romans 3:24–26:

24. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

Justification then is the gracious act of God to forgive the elect sinner’s sins, to impute righteousness to the sinner, and to declare the ungodly sinner to be righteous in God’s sight. To make it simpler, God declares the sinner who in himself is guilty to be not guilty. The scene is the courtroom of God. God is judge, and the sinner is in the place of the accused. Justification is a legal, declarative act of God that changes the sinner’s state before God and as a fruit places that sinner in a whole new relationship with God. The sinner’s state is his legal standing before God. His state can be one of guilt or one of innocence. The guilty one God punishes, and the righteous one God blesses. In himself the justified one is ungodly, has in himself no good thing, and has broken all God’s commandments. In himself the sinner is guilty and worthy of condemnation. In the act of justification, the sinner appears before God only and always as the sinner. He does not appear as the repentant sinner. He does not appear as the obedient sinner. He does not appear even as the believing sinner. He appears as the sinner and as the ungodly. This one—the ungodly—God forgives; this one—the ungodly—God declares to be righteous. Because God justifies the sinner, God adopts him as his child, declares him to be worthy of eternal life, speaks peace into his heart, gives him an unashamed hope, and assures him of his salvation. Because God justifies the sinner, God frees the sinner in his mind from wrath, delivers him from the bondage of sin and death, sets him at liberty from the cruel bondage of the law, and pours out in his heart the Spirit of life in Christ, who testifies that God loves the sinner. In short, everything that is good and lovely and blessed comes to the sinner because of his justification.

The elect sinner’s salvation consists in his justification. All the other blessings of salvation are wrapped up in this one blessing. This view of justification is biblical, as David teaches us in Psalm 32:1–2:

1. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

2. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

God does not impute to his people iniquity (guilt), as Paul also teaches in Romans 4:6–8:

6. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

7. Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

8. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Justification is a man’s blessing, joy, hope, and glory. God does not impute the sinner’s sin to him and declares him to be righteous.

 

Justification’s Two Sides

There are two sides, or aspects, to justification.

First, God declares the sinner to be righteous because God forgives the sinner’s sins. Another word that is used to describe this aspect of justification is remission. Jesus was speaking of this when he taught us to pray for our justification by praying, “Forgive us our debts.” Remission of sins is the forgiveness of sins. Frequently remission or forgiveness is used as a simple, shorthand expression for the whole act of justification. God justifies because God forgives. He sends away the sinner’s debts and does not hold the sinner responsible for his sins.

Second, God imputes righteousness to the sinner. In himself the sinner does not have righteousness but unrighteousness. Imputation means that God legally counts another’s righteousness as the sinner’s own. Imputing is a very important word, which is creedal and found in Belgic Confession article 22: “Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead, is our righteousness” (Confessions and Church Order, 50). Scripture teaches the truth of imputing when it speaks of reckoning or “reckoned”:

4. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

5. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

6. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works. (Rom. 4:4–6)

The word used for reckoning and imputing is a Greek word that means a legal counting. Imputing is the legal counting of another’s righteousness as one’s own. Sometimes the King James Version translates this legal act as makes or “made,” as in Romans 5:19: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” This translation is unfortunate because in this verse the Greek word translated as “made” means constitutes. That word is often used of appointing someone to office. It is a legal word meaning the legal appointment to office that confers on an officebearer the right of rule, though he may be both foolish and unfit for office. In Romans 5:19 the idea is that God constituted us righteous. He held us in the office of the righteous, though we in ourselves were unrighteous. That was God’s legal act. He did not make us righteous people inside; we were still rotten sinners when this happened.

We insist on this legal concept of imputation to guard against the error that justification consists in making the sinner a righteous person or consists of the infusion of righteousness to the sinner. Justification does not consist of imparting (infusing) righteousness to the sinner, so that instead of being a bad man he is made into a good person who does good works. The sinner does not receive justification that way. In justification his spiritual condition remains the same—sinful. God justifies the ungodly. This is Romans 4:5: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Always, as long as we live, God is justifying a sinner, an ungodly and impious person. The sinner’s condition in justification does not change. Rather, his legal position changes from one of guilt to innocence.

 

Grounded in Christ

The question is, how can God be just if he declares an ungodly sinner to be righteous? God wills to be known as the God who is just and the justifier of those who believe in Christ. Yet is that not, in fact, a corruption of justice to declare the guilty to be not guilty? If an earthly judge were to declare a criminal who is obviously guilty to be innocent, then that judge would reveal himself to be corrupt, and the justice of his courtroom would be no justice at all. But God is just, and he is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. The righteousness that God imputes to the sinner is not that of the sinner himself, but it is the righteousness of Christ.

The creeds are clear on this truth. Answer 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism says that “God…of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ” (Confessions and Church Order, 106). The Belgic Confession drives this truth home throughout articles 22 and 23. Article 22 says that “we embrace Christ our righteousness” and that Jesus Christ imputes “to us all His merits and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead.” Article 23 says that we rely and rest “upon the obedience of Christ crucified alone” (Confessions and Church Order, 50–51). Justification is imputing, reckoning, or accounting to the sinner a righteousness that is not his but is the righteousness of Christ.

Yet how is it just to take the righteousness of one and impute that to another? How can the judge say that because my brother obeyed the law, then I have obeyed the law? How is it just to declare that because Christ obeyed, I obeyed, and that because Christ suffered for sins, he suffered for my sins?

It is thus crucial to understand that Christ is not in this sense another from those whom he justified, but he is the head of a spiritual corporation that has its origin in eternity. Christ is one with his people as the head of the covenant and the head of the elect. He represents them according to God’s own appointment and thus is responsible for them, for all their sins, and for all their salvation. Christ’s relationship to the elect explains that he stood in their place, made atonement for them, and accomplished all obedience to the law for them. There is an identification between Christ and the elect church such that he is able to stand in their place and accomplish their righteousness for them. The relationship between the elect and Christ in justification is not like the relationship between a criminal accused in the courtroom and a random man off the street who happens to be in court and whom the judge decides to punish instead of the criminal or whose civil obedience the judge decides to impute to the criminal. The relationship between Christ and his elect is more akin to the relationship a minor child accused of arson has to his parents, which parents the judge justly holds accountable and orders to make restitution for their son’s crimes.

Because we are part of Christ by election and because in that relationship he is our head, then what is his is legally imputed to us.

 

Faith Alone, Not Works

This justification of ungodly sinners is by faith alone.

We must understand precisely how we are justified by faith alone. Faith is our union with Jesus Christ whereby we are made members of his corporation. By faith then we have titles to his righteousness as members of his corporation. As members of that corporation and possessing the righteousness of Christ, God justifies us in our own consciences by faith. Faith is the means by which we are joined to Christ; then also faith is the means through which we become aware of, are convicted of, and rest in that verdict of God that God passed upon us in Jesus Christ. Faith itself is nothing less than the knowledge and conviction of our justification. So the Belgic Confession in article 22 says that faith is the embrace of Christ, who is our righteousness. Righteousness is not something that is infused or moved around. Righteousness is in Christ. Christ is our righteousness. And becoming one with him, what is his is ours.

This truth stands over against the false doctrine that justification is in some sense dependent on the works and activities of the sinner. There are no deeds, activities, or works of the sinner that are the cause or explanation of his justification. Throughout history in their assault on the gospel truth of justification by faith alone, the devil and his teachers have found all sorts of ways to insert man’s works into his justification. Man’s works cannot be a part of his righteousness with God and are excluded in order that God is completely glorified in salvation and no glory goes to man. Even our very best works, such as prayer, suffering for righteousness’ sake, going to church, and reading the Bible are all polluted and tainted with sin. The righteous God cannot approve as righteous anything defiled with sin. Only perfect works will do.

The Reformed faith has a tremendous conflict at this point with the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church denies the truth of justification by faith alone. Rome’s teaching is that Christ works in the sinner when the sinner by his free will allows Christ to do that. Then by grace the sinner can do good works and contribute in part to his own righteousness. When a sinner stands before God, the righteousness of that sinner is partly what Christ did for him and partly what the sinner did. Therefore, justification is by faith and works. The controversy between Rome and her doctrine of justification by faith and works and the Reformed and their doctrine of justification by faith alone remains yet today. The truth is that works and man’s activities are totally excluded in justification.

In this connection warnings especially must be given against three forms of the devilish doctrine to bring works into the sinner’s justification.

The first form is that faith itself is a work or an act of man that makes him worthy of justification. That we are justified by faith alone does not mean that faith becomes the substitute work or activity of man that God accepts in the place of perfect obedience. When we say that we are justified by faith alone without works, this does not mean that faith itself justifies us.

That faith is meritorious is Arminianism’s denial of justification by faith alone. The Canons of Dordt clearly lays out and rejects the error that God “chose out of all possible conditions…the act of faith, which from its very nature is undeserving, as well as its incomplete obedience, as a condition of salvation.” That is the nasty, demonically clever lie of Arminianism. God counts faith in the place of good works, and faith is meritorious. The Reformed answered that error this way:

For by this injurious error the pleasure of God and the merits of Christ are made of none effect, and men are drawn away by useless questions from the truth of gracious justification and from the simplicity of Scripture, and this declaration of the apostle is charged as untrue: Who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal (2 Tim. 1:9). (Head 1, error and rejection 3, in Confessions and Church Order, 160)

In head 2, error and rejection 4, the Canons also brings up and rejects the same Arminian corruption of justification. Especially shown in this article is that the Arminian corruption of justification corrupts the unconditional covenant doctrine, for the Arminians teach

that the new covenant of grace, which God the Father, through the mediation of the death of Christ, made with man, does not herein consist that we by faith, inasmuch as it accepts the merits of Christ, are justified before God and saved, but in the fact that God, having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of the law, regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as the perfect obedience of the law, and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.

The synod rejected that false doctrine in these words:

For these contradict the Scriptures: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:  whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24, 25). And these proclaim, as did the wicked Socinus, a new and strange justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church. (Confessions and Church Order, 165)

All who teach in some sense that man is justified because of his faith, that faith is man’s act that brings God’s justification into man’s consciousness, or that faith is substituted for perfect obedience to the law likewise teach that new and strange justification of the wicked Socinus.

Belgic Confession article 22 also denies this idea of meritorious faith when, talking about justification by faith alone, it says that we do not mean “that faith itself justifies us, for it is only an instrument with which we embrace Christ our righteousness” (Confessions and Church Order, 50). Here we see that the Belgic Confession was warning about the Arminian error some fifty years before the Arminian controversy in the Netherlands. The Arminians simply took up as their own a doctrine that the Reformed had long condemned as an error regarding justification. This error teaches that yes, we are justified by faith alone, but this means that God declares us to be righteous because of our faith. Thus what is being taught in this error is that we are justified on account of faith. Our work of faith earns righteousness. The Bible never says that we are justified because of faith, but it says that we are justified by means of faith or justified through faith. Faith does not create or deserve righteousness, but faith is the means by which righteousness comes to us through God’s imputation.

To teach that faith is a work that earns righteousness is just as serious a departure from the truth as Rome’s teaching that by repentance and good deeds man is justified. Faith becomes a kind of work that God pays with righteousness. This error must be condemned along with the Roman Catholic error of faith and works.

The second form of this devilish doctrine is that repentance is a work or an activity of man upon which his forgiveness waits. The warning must be given at this point that repentance is not a work or an activity of man upon which his forgiveness waits. Repentance is not another side of the one coin, faith. Faith and repentance are not to be mingled together. Repentance is the good work of sorrow for sin and the whole life of obedience that proceeds from it. Faith is union with Christ and the conviction of one’s justification. When repentance is mixed with faith, then a toxic doctrine of justification is the result, that is, that God cannot forgive us until we repent, or that God will not forgive us unless we repent. Repentance rather is the evidence that the righteousness and grace of God have so laid hold on the heart of the sinner that he is turned from sin to God. Repentance is not the hinge on which justification turns, but repentance is the evidence of the faith by which alone a man is justified. Yet however good, necessary, and lovely repentance is, it is not faith. Repentance is not that by which, through which, or because of which we are justified. The statement that we are justified without repentance is as true as the statement that we are justified without works. To put it bluntly, God does not justify the repentant, believing sinner, but God justifies the ungodly. That ungodly sinner whom God justifies will become manifest in sorrow for his sin.

The third form of this devilish doctrine is that the believer’s assurance of his justification comes from and is maintained by his obedience. This is the particularly nasty development in the PRC’s wholesale departure from the truth, which development is openly taught in those churches. In the PRC’s other departures from gracious justification, she is clever and underhanded, but in this departure she is bold and God-defying. The PRC in her Classis East simply came out and said that good works are not to be slighted in assuring souls of their justification. That is the rank and blatant denial of justification by faith alone and the teaching of justification by faith and works.

Rather, the believer has his justification and the assurance of his justification by faith alone. 

Indeed, it is proper to say that our justification is the assurance of our justification, or our justification is our confidence of our justification. We are justified in our consciences, and the justified conscience is the assured and confident conscience.

In light of the corruption of the truth of justification—specifically in the form found in the Protestant Reformed Churches—two important points must be made about justification.

First, there is no essential difference between the truth of the remission of sins and the truth of justification. In the Protestant Reformed Churches, ministers and theologians are making a distinction between forgiveness and justification. These ministers and theologians are doing this in the interest of teaching that a man must first repent, and then and only then can and will God forgive him. The distinction serves the teaching of a prerequisite repentance. For the PRC justification is an objective reality that has no real bearing on the life and consciousness of the sinner from day to day, but the reality of the sinner’s daily experience is that he must first repent, and then and only then can and will God forgive him. Thus man is first in his repentance, and then God responds with his forgiveness.

Those who are keen to make such a distinction between justification and the forgiveness of sins are up to no good. They are false teachers who with sleight of hand and cunning craftiness lie in wait to deceive. If forgiveness is by means of repentance, or, as they say, repentance is a means unto forgiveness, or if God will not forgive unless and until one first forgives the neighbor, then justification is by means of repentance, and that doctrine is no different than Rome’s.

However, this distinction between justification and the forgiveness of sins could not be further from the truth. Remission of sins is part and parcel of justification. The doctrine of justification is the same as the doctrine of forgiveness. Sinners are justified by faith alone, and they are forgiven by faith alone.

Second, good works are not helps to the assurance of one’s justification. It is not that the sinner is justified, and then he must look to his works for maintaining the confidence of his justification or that he must view those works as additional proofs of his justification. Works are excluded from justification and the assurance of justification. Justification by faith alone truly means justification by faith alone.

 

The Truth of Justification

We can do no better as a conclusion to this first article on justification than to quote the words of the Belgic Confession’s teaching of justification in article 23:

We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake, and that therein our righteousness before God is implied; as David and Paul teach us, declaring this to be the happiness of man, that God imputes righteousness to him without works. And the same apostle saith that we are justified freely by His grace, through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ.

And therefore we always hold fast this foundation, ascribing all the glory to God, humbling ourselves before Him, and acknowledging ourselves to be such as we really are, without presuming to trust in any thing in ourselves, or in any merit of ours, relying and resting upon the obedience of Christ crucified alone, which becomes ours when we believe in Him. This is sufficient to cover all our iniquities and to give us confidence in approaching to God; freeing the conscience of fear, terror, and dread, without following the example of our first father, Adam, who, trembling, attempted to cover himself with fig leaves. And, verily, if we should appear before God, relying on ourselves or on any other creature, though ever so little, we should, alas! be consumed. And therefore every one must pray with David: O Lord, enter not into judgment with Thy servant: for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. (Confessions and Church Order, 51–52)