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Course 10 · Lesson 3.2

Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 10 outline

Module 1: Sin and Human Nature

  1. Human beings in the image of God
  2. The fall in Scripture: Genesis 3 and Romans 5
  3. Original sin in Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. Ancestral sin and mortality in the Eastern tradition

Module 2: Grace and Free Will

  1. Pelagius and Augustine
  2. The church responds: semi-Pelagianism and the Council of Orange
  3. Luther and Erasmus on the bondage of the will
  4. Monergism and synergism across the traditions

Module 3: Justification and Sanctification

  1. Justification in Paul and James
  2. Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions
  3. The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent
  4. Sanctification, holiness and theosis
  5. Recent ecumenical discussion of justification

Module 4: Predestination and Election

  1. Election and predestination in Scripture
  2. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination
  3. Arminius, Wesley and conditional election
  4. Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

Module 5: Atonement, Redemption and Adoption

  1. Atonement and its extent: for whom did Christ die?
  2. Redemption: the images of ransom, freedom and return
  3. Adoption: sons and daughters of God
  4. The order of salvation across the traditions

Module 6: Death, Resurrection and Judgment

  1. Death and the intermediate state
  2. The resurrection of the dead in Scripture and the creeds
  3. The final judgment: Christ the judge
  4. Purgatory, the Orthodox practice of praying for the dead, and the Protestant objection

Module 7: Heaven, Hell and the New Creation

  1. Heaven and the vision of God
  2. Hell: eternal torment, annihilationism and universal hope
  3. The fate of those who have not heard the gospel
  4. The new heavens and the new earth

Module 8: The Millennium and Christian Eschatological Traditions

  1. Revelation and apocalyptic literature
  2. Premillennial views, historic and dispensational
  3. Amillennial and postmillennial views
  4. Preterist, historicist and futurist approaches
  5. What the traditions hold in common about the end

All courses

Program / Course 10: Salvation and Eschatology / Lesson 3.2

What you will learn

  • State the Reformation teaching of justification by faith alone in the terms the Lutheran and Reformed confessions use.
  • Explain imputation, the forensic sense of justify and the phrase ‘at once righteous and a sinner’.
  • Describe how Luther came to his view and why he thought everything depended on it.
  • Identify the points where Lutheran and Reformed teaching differ in emphasis.

The big idea

The Reformers taught that a sinner is accepted by God, not because of any righteousness of his own, but because of the righteousness of Christ, which God reckons to the believer and which is received by faith alone. This verdict of pardon and acceptance is complete at once, not a process, and it is the ground of assurance. Lutheran and Reformed churches share this teaching and differ in how they relate justification to union with Christ, to the law and to the Christian life.

Key terms

Sola fide
Latin for ‘by faith alone.’ The slogan of the Reformation teaching that faith is the only way justification is received.
Imputation
God’s counting of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to the believer, and of the believer’s sin as borne by Christ.
Forensic justification
The view that justification is a legal declaration by God that a person is righteous, distinct from the inward change that follows.
Simul iustus et peccator
Latin for ‘at once righteous and a sinner,’ a Lutheran phrase for the believer who is righteous by God’s verdict and still a sinner in himself.
Alien righteousness
Luther’s term for the righteousness of Christ, which is outside the believer and given to him.
Union with Christ
The Reformed emphasis that believers are joined to Christ by the Spirit through faith, and so receive both justification and sanctification.
Law and gospel
The Lutheran distinction between God’s commands, which show sin, and God’s promise, which gives forgiveness.
Assurance
Confidence that a person is accepted by God. The Reformers taught that justification by faith makes it possible.

Background

Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar who suffered over the question of how he could stand before a righteous God. He later wrote that he came to see, in studying Romans 1:17, that the righteousness of God is not the standard by which God condemns but the gift by which he justifies those who believe. The exact date and nature of this change is debated among historians, and Luther’s own account was written later. What is clear is that justification by faith became the center of his preaching.

John Calvin, a second-generation Reformer, took over this teaching and gave it a distinctive setting within his doctrine of union with Christ. The Lutheran confessions (the Augsburg Confession of 1530, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord of 1577) and the Reformed confessions (the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession) state the doctrine in detail. This lesson describes it as these churches themselves state it.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The basic claim

The Augsburg Confession, Article 4, says that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins. God counts this faith as righteousness in his sight.

The key point is that faith is not itself a work that earns. It is the empty hand that receives. What justifies is Christ and his work. Faith is the instrument by which it is received.

Step 2: Verdict and imputation

Lutheran and Reformed teachers read justify in the sense of declare righteous. The Formula of Concord says that justification means to absolve from sins, and that the righteousness of faith is the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and our adoption as children of God, for the sake of Christ’s obedience. The Westminster Confession, Chapter 11, says that God justifies by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ to those who believe, not by infusing righteousness into them.

In this view the believer is righteous in God’s judgment even while he remains a sinner in himself. Luther’s phrase for this is simul iustus et peccator. It does not mean that a person may sin freely. It means that the Christian’s standing does not depend on the state of his heart on a given day.

Step 3: Justification and sanctification

Both traditions distinguish justification from sanctification, the process of being made holy, and insist that the two always go together. Calvin said that Christ cannot be divided, so that one who receives him as justifier also receives him as sanctifier. He called these the double grace. The Reformed tradition speaks often of union with Christ as the source of both.

A sixteenth-century Lutheran theologian, Andreas Osiander, taught that believers are justified by the indwelling of Christ’s divine righteousness. Both Calvin and the Lutheran confessions rejected this, holding that justification rests on Christ’s obedience and death for us, not on his presence in us. This episode helps show the line the Reformers drew.

Step 4: Assurance and the works that follow

Because justification depends on Christ’s work and not on the believer’s progress, it can be known with confidence. The Heidelberg Catechism, in Question 60, answers how a person is righteous before God: only by true faith in Jesus Christ, though conscience accuses him of breaking all the commandments. Luther called this the great comfort of the gospel.

Good works follow as fruit. The Augsburg Confession, Article 6, states that faith should bring forth good fruits. The Westminster Confession, Chapter 11, says that faith is not alone in the person justified but is always accompanied by all other saving graces, and is no dead faith but works by love.

Step 5: Differences in emphasis

Lutherans give the distinction between law and gospel great weight, and they tie justification closely to the preaching of the Word and the sacraments as the means by which God gives forgiveness. Lutheran teaching also holds that a justified person can fall from faith.

Reformed churches place justification inside the doctrine of union with Christ and the covenant of grace, and they teach that those whom God justifies he also preserves in faith to the end. Reformed teaching also gives a more positive place to the law as a guide for the Christian life, sometimes called the third use of the law. Lutherans affirm that Christians should obey God’s commands, but they have debated how the law functions for the believer.

  1. What does it mean to say that faith is an instrument and not a work?
  2. Can a person be truly righteous in God’s sight and still a sinner in himself? What does the claim protect?
  3. Why is assurance so central to Luther’s concern?
  4. If works do not justify, why do the confessions insist they must follow?
  5. What problem did Osiander’s view create, in the Reformers’ judgment?
  6. How might the difference between law-and-gospel and covenant shape a sermon?

Examples

Luther’s comfort

Luther counseled troubled people to look away from their own failings and to Christ. A person worried that his repentance was not deep enough was told that his repentance was never the basis of acceptance. Christ’s work was. The advice illustrates the pastoral purpose of the doctrine. (A paraphrase of a common pattern in his pastoral writing.)

The robe

Reformation preachers often compared imputation to a beggar who is clothed in a king’s robe. His own rags remain beneath, but the king sees only the robe. Critics from the Catholic side say the picture suggests a mere covering. Protestant teachers answer that the clothed beggar is also being renewed by the Spirit. (A traditional illustration.)

Different perspectives

Lutheran

Justification is the article on which the church stands or falls. God declares the sinner righteous for Christ’s sake, apart from the person’s works, and the declaration is received by faith, which is itself a gift of the Spirit. Good works follow and are necessary as fruit, though not as a cause of justification.

Reformed

Justification is an act of God’s free grace in which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. It cannot be separated from sanctification, because the same union with Christ gives both.

Catholic (response)

Catholic teachers respond that the Reformers rightly stress that salvation is a free gift, but they err in making justification only an outward declaration. Trent condemned the claim that faith alone means that nothing else is necessary, and it taught that justification includes inner renewal. Many Catholics today think that the disagreement is partly about the meaning of words.

Orthodox (response)

Orthodox writers usually find the legal frame of the Reformation debate foreign to the Eastern tradition, which speaks of healing and union with God. They criticize a view that separates the verdict from transformation, while valuing the Reformers’ emphasis on God’s mercy and the sufficiency of Christ’s work.

Arminian and Wesleyan

Wesley accepted justification by faith as pardon and acceptance through Christ’s atonement, and he preached it vigorously. He differed from many Reformed writers in teaching that believers can fall away and in stressing that holiness of life is the necessary result of faith, and that faith is imputed for righteousness.

Why it matters

Justification by faith alone shaped the Protestant churches, their preaching and their hymns. Even a reader who does not hold it should be able to describe it in the way its supporters do, since so many arguments with Catholic and Orthodox teaching assume it. It is also a doctrine with real pastoral weight for those troubled by guilt, since it places the ground of acceptance outside the self.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Faith alone means no works are needed.

Correction: The confessions say that faith alone justifies, but that faith is never alone. It always produces works. Lutherans and Reformed teach that works are necessary as fruit, not as a ground.

Misunderstanding: Imputation means God pretends sinners are righteous.

Correction: Reformers taught that Christ’s righteousness really belongs to believers through union with him, so that God’s verdict is true. They did not teach a legal fiction.

Misunderstanding: Lutherans and Reformed agree on everything about justification.

Correction: They share the core, but differ in how they relate justification to union with Christ, the role of the law and the perseverance of the saints.

Misunderstanding: Luther invented the doctrine.

Correction: Luther believed he was recovering Paul and Augustine. Historians agree that his emphasis on forensic imputation and sola fide is a distinctive development, and that earlier writers also spoke of faith and grace in related ways.

Knowledge check

What does ‘justification by faith alone’ mean in the Lutheran and Reformed confessions?

It means that God declares the sinner righteous for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, imputed to him, and that faith alone receives this gift. Faith is not a work that earns acceptance. It is the instrument that receives. Works follow as fruit, but they contribute nothing to the ground of justification.

What is the Latin phrase simul iustus et peccator?

It means at once righteous and a sinner. A believer is righteous in God’s verdict because of Christ and still a sinner in himself because sin remains. The phrase expresses the Lutheran teaching that a Christian’s standing before God does not depend on his own progress in holiness.

How do Lutherans and Reformed relate justification to sanctification?

Both distinguish and join them. Justification is God’s declaration of righteousness, and sanctification the work of making holy. Calvin taught that Christ cannot be divided, so that all who receive him as justifier also receive him as sanctifier. The Reformed emphasize union with Christ as the root of both.

Why did the Reformers reject Osiander’s teaching?

Osiander said that believers are justified by the indwelling of Christ’s divine righteousness. The Reformers held that this moves the ground of justification from Christ’s obedience and death for us to something within us, which threatens assurance. They kept the ground outside the believer, in Christ’s work.

Think it through

  1. Why might a doctrine that places righteousness outside a person bring peace to some and worry to others?
  2. If you were a pastor, how would you explain imputation to someone who has never heard it?
  3. What would a Catholic reader find missing in this account, and is the complaint fair?

Independent assignment

A summary in confessional words

In your notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Read Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession and the chapter on justification in the Westminster Confession. Copy one sentence of 25 words or fewer from each. Then write a paragraph explaining each in your own words, and a paragraph on the differences you can find between them. End with one question that a Catholic or Orthodox reader might ask of each.

Further study