Why issola fideimportant?

(5) The Epistle makes it abundantly plain that the reception of the gospel is by FAITH, and by nothing else. The law cannot bring about this blessing. Nor can any works of man earn it. It comes by God’s grace, its source; by our Lord Jesus Christ as its Mediator on the ground of His redemptive work performed to God’s satisfaction at the cross. It comes as the declaration of God’s righteousness, “that He might be just, and the Justifier of Him, which believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). Faith and faith alone links the believer to the Lord Jesus, with all the blessings—forgiveness of sins, salvation, justification, eternal life—consequent on so believing. It is a glorious gospel, and worthy of God. To Him be all the praise, world without end.

The gospel then preached to this awakened sinner of the Gentiles was salvation by faith. The jailor's thought, like many others, was that salvation was by works; what must I do? But Paul and Silas assured him that he could be saved only in the way of faith. They presented the Lord Jesus Christ to him as the object of faith, and His finished work, and God's acceptance of it, as the ground of salvation, and warrant for perfect peace — "thou shalt be saved." This is very simple, and commends itself to the confidence of an anxious enquirer. The gospel really excludes all idea of creature-doing for salvation, because it testifies that Jesus, the Son of God, hath so completely finished the work of our redemption, so thoroughly purged our sins, that He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, the rightful Lord of heaven and earth, and that all who believe on Him have at once an eternal, interest in that blessed work. The Lord Jesus having magnified the law by bearing its curse, put away sin, abolished death, burst the bars of the grave, and triumphed over Satan, hell, and the grave, has entered into heaven itself with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us; the resurrection and glorification of Christ being God's public testimony of His acceptance of the Saviour's all-sufficient work. What is then to be done for salvation? Nothing; it is done already, and we have the warrant of God's word to receive and enjoy it by faith — "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Faith reads the lessons of redeeming love in the death of the Son of God upon the cross; and those who can say, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us" have peace; they see that God's love has brought salvation to them, even when sinners, in the cross of His Son, and knowing He is now risen from the dead, they approach God with confidence; they know that He declares them saved by grace, through faith. What, I would ask, can exceed this boundless love? What else could have really met us in our low estate? What could so redound to the glory of God? And who so thoroughly reject the gospel, display self-ignorance, and despise the unsearchable riches of Divine love, as those who talk of doing for salvation? "Where is boasting?" said the apostle. "It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." (Rom. 3:27-28.) Blessed gospel for a sin-convicted, heavy-laden sinner!

THE FOURTH CHAPTER is practically a parenthesis. In verse 28 of chapter 4 the conclusion is reached that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. To exactly the same point are we brought back in Rom. 5:1, and then — but not till then — does the Apostle carry us on further into the blessings of the Gospel. In chapter 4 he develops at considerable length certain Old Testament scriptures which support his thesis, that before God a man is justified by faith alone.

The central truth of the Galatian Epistle is that justification is not by the works of the law but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and Abraham is placed before us as an example of a man who exemplified this truth. When we turn to the Epistle of James some may think there is a contradiction, for James says that man is not justified by faith alone but by works; and he also gives Abraham as an example. Both are true, as I will explain.

Faith without works is dead, but it is faith that saves, not faith and works. The works come in as the evidence of the reality of the faith, and very important they are. I am suspicious of the man who tells me that he believes in Christ and yet is not "zealous of good works."

If you see smoke coming out of a chimney you know there is a fire inside. You cannot see the fire, but the smoke is evidence of its existence. But it is the fire, not the fire and smoke, that gives warmth. Faith is like the fire; works are like the smoke. They do go hand in hand, but not in securing salvation. No works that we could do could add to the value of the work done by Christ on our behalf. Faith rests upon His work, and shows itself in works which are done by the saved ones out of gratitude to Him.

Of course it is on the principle of faith, and this excludes all boasting on our part, for faith is merely receiving what God is offering. If a man has been saved from drowning, he does not go about boasting in the fact that he allowed his rescuer to do it by trusting him. He makes his boast in the power and willingness of the one who rescued him, and by so doing confesses that he himself was helpless and lost. So faith means turning away from self-effort and self-righteousness as a means of justification before God to find it in another — even Jesus. And we learn the blessed fact that God is just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus.

Here I must call attention to the difference between justification by blood and justification by faith. Justification by blood is justification on the basis of the sacrifice of Christ. The sacrifice of Christ is God's title, or right, to justify. It does not mean that because Christ died for all, that therefore everybody is justified, but that He died for all as providing a righteous basis for God to justify. But the principle on which He justifies is faith. It is only the sinner who believes that is justified. The actual justification of the sinner, therefore, is individual. We are all individually justified when we believe. Hence we may speak of being justified by faith.

It was a great moment for his own soul, and fraught with immense consequences for many others when Luther learned from God that justification is by faith alone. For centuries the mass in Christendom had groaned under the mistaken notion that only by toilsome works and the observance of religious ordinances could men hope to stand ultimately in the favour of God. The truth was all along enshrined in the Scriptures, but somehow the eyes of men were holden that they could not see it.

The wonderful effect produced by these controversies moved Tetzel to attempt a reply to Luther's attack on the sale of indulgences. Full of vain boasting and blasphemy, he asserts and reasserts the power of the pope, and of the clergy as deputed by him, fully and for ever to forgive all sins. In answer to these daring assertions, Luther wrote a further series of propositions which he termed "Resolutions," or explanations of his former theses. In this treatise the Reformer is more distinctly seen. He brings prominently forward the great truth of the Reformation — that man is justified by faith alone without deeds of law. "For he hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5:21)

That faith alone justifies.