Justification by Christ Alone

The doctrine of justification by faith alone does not imply that you are justified before God because you managed to work up enough faith in and by yourself to believe in Christ, which is impossible in the first place. Rather, the doctrine contrasts faith against works, emphasizing that we are justified by God through faith apart from works. This faith is itself not a work — that is, not a work of man, but a work of God in man.

Faith is a gift of God purchased by Christ for all those whom God has chosen for salvation. It is a gift even though it has been purchased by our Mediator because it is God who sovereignly decreed to save us through this Mediator in the first place. It is God who has sovereignly chosen those whom he would save by his grace through Christ, so that all of salvation is a gift of God — it is a sovereign gift of God, unmerited by man, that at the same time fully satisfies divine justice, since it has been merited by Christ. Thus salvation is from the grace of God alone, through the work of Christ alone, and by means of faith alone (that is, in contrast to works).

Therefore, when discussing the doctrine of justification by faith, we must not portray faith as a condition for salvation that God requires from us, as if we could produce faith in and of ourselves prior to regeneration and apart from the Spirit’s power. So, although it is correct to speak of faith as our necessary response to the gospel, this "response" of faith is in fact one of the very things that Christ’s atonement purchased for his elect, and that God bestows upon his chosen ones by his Spirit. In other words, God is the one who produces this response of faith in his elect.

When Scripture says that salvation is by faith and not by works, it is not throwing out works just to make faith a condition that man must fulfill in order to obtain salvation from God, although this is precisely how the doctrine is frequently but mistakenly portrayed, either by explicit statements or by implication. Faith is not a good work or a condition for salvation that God requires from us before he would do anything to save us; instead, God has already decreed and performed all that is necessary to secure the salvation of his chosen ones, and faith in the gospel is precisely one of those things that he has secured for the elect by the work of Christ, and that he sovereignly produces in their minds when he commands them to believe and summons them to himself by the gospel. There is therefore no place for boasting. Salvation comes from God through Christ alone. We cannot even boast about our faith, since it is a sovereign gift of God, merited by Christ for the elect.

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Below are several related quotations from my books.

(1) From Systematic Theology:

The legal nature of justification means that the righteousness credited to the elect is an IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS rather than an INFUSED RIGHTEOUSNESS. God sent Christ to pay for the sins of the elect, then he grants faith to the elect as the means by which to legally credit the positive righteousness of Christ to them. The righteousness bestowed upon the elect is thus not one that they have earned or produced by themselves, but one that has been generated by Christ and given to them as a gift. Therefore, when we affirm that justification is by faith alone, we are in fact affirming that justification is not by our own efforts, which can never attain justification, but that our justification is by Christ alone, who has attained justification for us.

(2) From Commentary on Philippians:

Since the time of Adam, God has been saving his chosen ones by means of giving them faith in Christ, and salvation comes only from God, who saves only by Christ. Justification is by faith not in the sense that you can save yourself by your faith; rather, the doctrine teaches that you can do nothing to save yourself, but that you must totally depend on someone else to save you. Therefore, the doctrine is teaching justification not by faith as such or by itself, but it is teaching that justification is by Christ alone. It is Christ who saves you, and not faith itself. Faith has a role because it is Christ who saves you by means of giving you faith in him (Ephesians 2:8-9; Hebrews 12:2).

(3) From Commentary on Ephesians:

In addition, Scripture never teaches that faith is something that we must conjure up by ourselves in order to obtain God's blessings; rather, it depicts faith as precisely one of those blessings obtained by Christ's redemptive work for those whom he redeemed. In other words, you do not benefit from the atonement because you have faith; rather, you have faith because it is a benefit of the atonement. That is, faith is not something by which you obtain the benefits of the atonement, but faith is something by which God applies the benefits of the atonement to you. Moreover, faith itself is "a gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8) in the first place; it is something that God gives you, and not something that you just decide to produce.

So we again affirm with Scripture, that salvation is really and wholly from God, from start to finish (Hebrews 12:2). Biblical faith is not something that comes by our own decision or by our own power, but it is a "faith that comes through him" (Acts 3:16). Luther writes that faith is "a special and rare gift of God." Therefore, we unyieldingly affirm that Christ's blood atonement is perfect, complete, final, actual, effective, and particular, and that faith itself is a gift that he obtained for us by his sacrifice, so that there is no room for boasting, except in what Christ has done.

(4) From Commentary on Ephesians:

We need to know that we can never attain true righteousness by our own good works; rather, it must be imputed to us by God. Paul states that righteousness is a gift (Romans 5:17) that God grants to his elect through faith: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Bible teaches that "a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law" (Romans 3:28). Jesus had committed no sin, but "the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6), so that "whoever believes on him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). However, if God has not granted you faith to trust Jesus Christ for salvation, then you are not righteous: "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:18).

Scripture urges us to "draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience" (Hebrews 10:22). The Christian is a righteous person, not because of his own good works, but because he has been justified by God through faith in the work of Jesus Christ. This knowledge gives us the basis from which we can resist anything that seeks to undermine our confidence in approaching God in worship and prayer.