Saturday, January 20, 2018

Faith Alone in Christ Alone

Romans 5:17-19 “For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”

Reading through another small study of the book of Romans, they state that human beings from every time and place almost universally believe that they are saved through their doing “good works”. In fact, only biblical Christianity teaches that the salvation of sinners is not based on the merit that accrues to their good deeds. Our salvation is actually dependant on good works, but not the good works of sinners. The good works of Jesus Christ are the basis of our being found righteous in the sight of God. The point is that God demands perfect obedience to His law and it is Christ’s prefect obedience that can justify us. Since we do not have perfection, trying to use the law to justify ourselves brings only condemnation.

Why can’t God’s law save us? The answer to this question is that the law’s inability to provide for us the righteousness that avails before God’s judgment has nothing to do with the law itself. Reformer John Calvin stated that “as it teaches us what is righteousness, the law of God is indeed by itself the way to salvation, but our depravity and corruption in sin prevents it from being any advantage to us. It is futile for us to try to claim righteousness before our holy and just Creator God based on our obedience to His law.

In justification by faith alone (sola fide), we are declared righteous before God because of Christ alone (solus Christus). Faith is the means by which we receive the righteousness of Christ and not what actually secures our justification. We must have faith in Christ to be justified, but faith is not the righteousness that avails before God’s judgment. Only the obedience of Christ can do that. God demands complete obedience. Keeping His holy Commandments halfway or even most of the way is not enough to meet His judicial standard. The Lord has never relaxed His demand for perfection. But, we have also seen that because of sin, not because of any flaw in God’s law, this standard is impossible for us to meet. So, in His grace, God chose a different way to give us the perfect obedience we need to stand before him. He chose to accept the obedience of another in place of our own.

The flawless obedience of our Savior Jesus Christ is what constitutes us as righteous or what provides the basis for God’s declaring His people righteous. The question is not whether we are going to be saved through “good works”, the question is “whose works”. The good news of the gospel is that Christ obeyed for us. He took upon Himself the yoke of the law, fulfilling it perfectly on our behalf. There is no righteousness of any creature that can be added t the righteousness of Christ, for it is perfect. We rejoice in His righteousness and tell others that they can stand before God unafraid if they are clothed with Christ’s righteousness alone by faith alone.

Blessed in Christ

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