Richard M. Riss
Union Bible Church, Old Bridge, N.J., September 27, 1992
During the time of the Reformation, one issue that was hotly
contested was whether a person is justified by faith or by works.
The Catholics emphasized James 2:24, which states that "a man is
justified by works, and not by faith alone," while the
Protestants responded with Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:28,
according to which "a man is not justified by the works of the
Law but through faith."
Which is it? Are we justified by faith, as Paul says, or by
works, as James says? James was worried about people who
accepted Christian doctrine as true but who did not live
accordingly. He wrote that "even the demons believe and
shudder." Paul, on the other hand, was worried about those who
thought that if they followed the law, they would automatically
be acceptable to God. Of course, right standing before God
results neither from believing the right doctrines nor from going
through the right motions.
It's fine to perform good works, but that will not earn a
person right standing before God, since the Lord is not
interested merely in whether we engage in good deeds. He wants
to know why we are performing those deeds. Is it in order to
look good? Is it so that other people will think highly of us?
Is it in order to escape punishment? Do we engage in them so
that others will be indebted to us and we will therefore have a
measure of control over them?
Or, when we do what is right, is it because, more than
anything, we want to do the right thing? Is it because we love
the Lord so much that we desperately want to please Him above all
else? The reasons for our actions are extremely important, even
more important than the actions themselves. God is interested in
our inner motivations. Why do we do what we do? We don't even
know the answer to this ourselves most of the time.
By the same token, it's fine to have faith, but what is the
nature of that faith? Is it merely an acceptance of truth? Is
it only an acknowledgment that miracles are possible, or that the
Scriptures are true? Or is it a love for Jesus Christ, prompting
us to be pleasing to Him in all of our thoughts, words, and
actions?
During the Reformation, both the Protestants and the
Catholics were wrong. The Protestants were wrong when they
implied that merely by believing certain propositions we would be
justified before God, and the Catholics were wrong when they said
that simply by obeying the commandments we would be just.
Neither is sufficient. The thrust of the entire Bible is that it
is our inner motivations, attitudes, thoughts, and desires that
are either pleasing to God or disgusting to Him. If we are
humble and contrite, He will lead us into all truth. If we
sincerely desire to do the right thing because it is the right
thing, then we will automatically begin to follow the dictates of
the law. If we conform to outward obedience without any deep
desire to please God, then it is to no avail. On the other hand,
we can acquiesce that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the
world, and even for our own sins, but if we do not order our
lives accordingly, then we are neither righteous before God nor
pleasing to Him.
We often think that the motivations for our actions are
pure, when they are actually far from it. This is why the law is
so important. Whenever we fail to conform to God's commandments,
it helps us to realize that something is wrong--that maybe we are
not the paragons of virtue that we thought we were. We are thus
confronted with a brutal and startling reality of our own
wickedness, but it is important to come to a realization of this
nature. This is why James said that a man is justified by works,
and not by faith alone. He meant by this that we can have all of
the faith we want, but if we are not conforming to God's
standards, then we really aren't the good people we thought we
were. Our actions against God's word should startle us into
seeking God and asking Him for inner purity. If it were not for
the existence of the word of God as an objective standard, it
would be very easy for us to get complacent, thinking that we are
without any faults, and in no need of any improvement in
character.
On the other hand, there is another form of complacency
which rests assured that, because we are following the
commandments, that we are in God's good graces. But we must not
be concerned merely with appearances. This is why Paul said that
a man is justified not by works, but by faith alone. We can walk
in all of the good works we want to, but if we have false
attitudes or improper motivations for performing them, then we
are hypocrites, and we are only pretending to have faith in God.
It is only true faith that justifies. We can only have right
standing before God when we are motivated in what we do by a true
love for God, desiring with all of our hearts and minds and souls
to do what is pleasing to Him.
When we find that we have transgressed God's rules and that
we are therefore not the good people we thought we were, or, on
the other hand, when we find that we are not transgressing those
rules but come to realize that our reasons for being good are
unworthy of us, then, in either situation, we are presented with
a tremendous opportunity. God is able to change us. As we
repent before Him and ask Him to show us those areas in our lives
that need to be rectified or justified, He will do so, and, in
the process, He will cleanse us and make us right.
Those who engage in this process are said to be justified by
faith, for by faith we appropriate God's power to do this, made
available to us through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And when
we appropriate God's provision in this way, we begin to walk in
the good works without which no man or woman can be justified.
What, then, of the idea of forensic justification, the idea
that, legally, we are just, even though we are sinners, due the
righteousness of Christ which has been imputed to us? Didn't
Martin Luther say that a person is at the same time both
righteous and a sinner?
This idea is fine, as long as we understand that God sees
the end from the beginning. That is to say, the only reason that
the Christian can be both righteous and a sinner simultaneously
is because, in the end, we will be sinners who have been made
perfect, or just, not only in a legal sense, but also in a
practical sense. God is in the process of rectifying us. We are
being renovated. He is in the process of taking us in our
fallenness, and completely realigning our spirits, so that our
motivations, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, and our
priorities conform to what He had in mind when He created us.
He desires to work in us a continual process of
rectification, or realignment. It is not something to be
postponed until the end of our lives, or until the end of the
age. It would be disadvantageous to procrastinate in our
cooperation with Him in these matters. There's a growth process
involved in the Christian life. It's not as though we can arrive
instantaneously, either at the moment of our initial experience
with God, or at some point in the future. He takes us, as it
were, from glory to glory.
There is a sense in which God now views us as perfect, in
light of the end of that process, but it is a process, and moment
by moment, He offers to us the privilege of responding to His
call to blamelessness, by the power of His grace working within
us. This is a blamelessness, not merely in outward actions, but
in attitudes and motivations. This is why Paul wrote that we are
justified by faith alone, and not by works. Yet, as we have
seen, the faith that justifies is never alone. It is always
accompanied with actions of goodness which are a natural outcome
of justifying faith. This is why James states that we are
justified by works, and not by faith alone.
But strictly speaking, we are justified neither by faith nor
by works. Rather, it is God who makes us righteous. He does so
by miraculously working within our hearts and minds so that we
are motivated to love Him, and to love His qualities of virtue,
integrity, altruism, and selflessness. When we love Him, and His
qualities, it motivates us to yearn with all of our hearts to
emulate them. And as He works this desire into us, our response
is to cry out to Him to give us the strength to do these things.
Then, when He grants us this strength, we use it eagerly in order
to think as He thinks, and walk in His ways, moment by moment.
good works can rectify us. Only God can grant us the desire to
walk with Him and the strength to do so. He is our preserver
from wickedness and, therefore, from its serious consequences.
We can rely neither upon faith nor upon works for justification,
for God alone is our salvation.
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