Justification - the true reformed view

Dr. Joseph Mizzi shares his Biblical views regularly with an audience through a gospel E-letter and through a website, justforcatholics.org. Since this month he speaks of the matter of justification, it was appropriate to add in to this discussion (text below). Of course, Dr. Mizzi rightfully points out that the faith that justifies is the faith that trusts God who "justifies the wicked." Thus, Romans 4:5 specifically stands at the crux of the matter that Paul so vehemently fought for. Dr. Mizzi also makes it a point that we are justified, as Scripture says, for the purpose of good works, that God predestined us to do (Ephesians 2:10-11). An amazing thing to me about Reformed theology is its inability to communicate this, leaving non-reformed Christians scratching their heads at the apparent gap between the obvious moral code Jesus neccesitated in His followers, and the love God showed to us, Romans 5:8, "while we were still sinners." Justification and Works

Do you believe that faith leads to justification? Faith does not only lead to justification, faith in Christ actually and really justifies the ungodly. The Bible states that "everyone who believes is justified" (Acts 13:39), the sinner is justified “through faith” (Romans 3:25), “justified by faith” (Romans 3:28), God justifies “by faith” and “through faith” (Romans 3:30), we are “justified by faith” (Romans 5:1); one is justified “by faith” and again, “justified by faith” (Galatians 2:16), God justifies “by faith” (Galatians 3:8), righteousness is received “through faith” and “by faith” (Philippians 3:9). Do you believe that justification leads to good works? Yes, justification inevitably and most certainly leads to good works. We are not justified before God on account of the merits of our good works, but, having been justified by faith, we are at peace with God, and therefore God is pleased by our moral and spiritual sacrifices. A person who is not yet justified is at enmity with God and therefore nothing that he does can ever please him as long as he remains an outlaw and rebel against the throne of heaven. Good works are impossible unless one is already justified by faith. Does this mean that the person who is justified never sins and will always do good works? No, it does not mean that the justified never sin, nor does it mean that the justified are always and constantly doing good works. As Christians we readily confess and admit our many failures. When we read in the New Testament about the life of the early believers, we discover that they too endeavored to act righteously and shun every sin, and yet they too were not as fruitful as they could have been, and sometimes they sinned against their God and Father. If the justified person does sin, what’s the difference between a sinner without faith and a sinner with faith? There is all the difference in the world. A sinner without faith is under the curse of the law. With every sin he increases the weight of guilt and punishment that will be meted out to him on the Day of Judgment. When a saint sins, he is still a saint and a child of God; he is still in Christ; he is still justified on account of his blood. The disobedient child incurs the displeasure and discipline of God his Father and is moved by the Spirit to repentance. The consequences of sin in the believer are many – the disobedient son displeases God the Father, loses the joy of salvation, suffers personal misery and spiritual weakness, hurts others, tarnishes his testimony, and loses rewards that the Lord gives when he comes again -- but the believer does not loose his legal right-standing before God. If it is true that the believer is still justified when he sins, it would make faith in Jesus is a license to sin. This is the accusation that has been made against the gospel of justification by grace through faith ever since the beginning (‘Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?’ Romans 6:1). Does faith in Jesus imply a license to sin? No! A million times, no! Faith in Christ is the first place, the ONLY way we can be freed from the guilt and condemnation of sin, as well as giving us a right relationship with God, which is the basis for our sanctification, the work of the Spirit in the justified, teaching us to abhor and avoid evil, and to love and practice righteousness. Don’t think that the only motive that will keep people from sin is the threat of hell; the believer has a purer motive -- the glory of God his Saviour. The believer is moved by love to the one who loves him with infinite love! What makes me treat my wife with kindness and gentleness, seeking to bring her joy and not sorrow – is it the fear that I will be brought to court and sentenced to prison? No, rather I am moved by love – her love to me and my love to her. Does that mean that I never offend her or that I always treat her in the best way possible? No, but loves gives hope of change, growth and maturity in our relationship. Am I correct in stating that under your concept of justification, that once a person is justified, the intent is to do good works because you love God and want to please him, but always doing good works is not possible or is not a requirement? God intends that all his children, who were justified on account of Christ’s blood and righteousness, should do good works in response to the grace they had received. We love him, says the Bible, because he has first loved us. Whether it is possible to ‘always’ do good works, to live a perfect moral life on this earth – I answer that on this side of eternity all Christian fail to reach moral perfection. Indeed, we must confess in the words of the apostle John, ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’ Our Lord taught to ask the Father for forgiveness in the same breath that we pray for our daily bread. Whether good works are a requirement or not, it is important to qualify that question – a requirement for what? If you ask whether good works are optional or obligatory in the life of the justified, then the answer is an emphatic ‘yes’ - good works are obligatory and commanded by God! While the Bible excludes personal works for salvation, the same inspired text informs us that we are saved for that purpose, ‘unto good works’ that we should walk in them. But if you ask whether good works are required for our justification, i.e. to be justified on account of personal merit, the answer is plain, no! For justification personal merit must be excluded. The Bible says that it is him who does not work but believes in God who justifies the ungodly that his faith is credited for righteousness. We are justified freely by grace, through faith, on account of the perfect obedience and the shed blood of our Redeemer. We ought to be careful not to allow what is good (‘good works’) keep us from fully relying by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for our justification.

Piper, Wright, and the great Justification fog

Many folks have been familiarized with the N.T. Wright-catapulted conversations concerning Pauline interpretation on justification. As a non-scholastic onlooker, I can only be quietly surprised at the amount of attention Wright, and the entire "New Perspectives on Paul" group has been able to draw (I'm a guilty contributor - I dropped 25 bucks on Wright's new hardcover... woops) This is not because their arguments are not illogical or even precise. For me, the entire case of justification by faith has gotten to be quite complicated, much more so than "believing" on Jesus Christ.

Of course, in his day, Edwards did not hear of the "New Persepective on Paul". But I cannot afford not to go back to Edward's summations of Pauline justification, as the Holy Spirit superintended his words 2000 years back. The question for me is If you don't count justification as an imputed righteousness in its complete whole, and everything that must be true that follows, is that another gospel? (Note, I use "gospel" in the non-Wright tradition) This is an excerpt from Gerstner's piece on Edward's beautifully clear illustrations of exactly what God and Paul meant, by justification.

So justification is righteousness, however we come by it. We do not come by it by ourselves, but by Christ. How we come by it by Christ is the question. Edwards’ answer is clear: Christ’s righteousness belongs to the faithful by virtue of their “natural union” with him. The Reformers, especially Calvin, and the Puritans, especially Owen, also saw union with Christ as the basis of justification. Edwards is, perhaps, even more precise. He observes that Christ achieves his own righteousness which, second, becomes ours by union with him. Christ “was not justified till he had done the work the Father had appointed him, and kept the Father’s commandments through all trials; and then in his resurrection he was justified.”

Since the faith that justifies is a true faith and is seen as such by God when he justifies the believer, Edwards stresses the importance of faith’s being a working faith. “They that do truly come to Christ they at the same time take Christ’s yoke upon them.” In the application he urges his people not to trust in their supposed comings to Christ which may be nothing more than a “flush of affection.” Rather, let them examine themselves to see whether they have counted the cost, whether they are laboring under the yoke of Christ. Any other type of faith is vain, he insists.

Noted as Edwards is as a champion of solafideanism, he believed ultimately in justification by works. The only basis that justification could ever have was works or actual righteousness. Justification by faith is justification by faith in Christ’s justification by works! “If we inquire what we must be saved for or on account of the answer is it must be for works, but not our works; not any works that we have done or can do but works that Christ has done for us.” The justification of the sinner is by his union with Christ, who is justified not by faith but by works. So in the ultimate sense of the word the sinner too is justified by works — not by his own, originally and actually, but none the less his own by faith. “God acting the part of a judge determines and declares that men have a righteousness and so they are justified by their works.”

From http://www.apuritansmind.com/Justification/GerstnerJohnOnEdwardsOnJustification.htm

Let me add this though: I simply do not think anybody fully understands what it means to be justified by our Holy God. In terms of the Piper and Wright camps, I think it is difficult to argue against anything but the traditional reformed Pauline understanding of imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

One of the things I really like about what Wright says, however, is one end point which he hopes evolves from this soteriological and ecclesiological debate with Piper; that is, the returning of believers to Scripture.

If this conversation is a means to get believers to Scripture, I applaud it.

This blog is for sinners, for "Christians"

I decided to spend time on a blog in hopes to reach any of the masses that have been deceived by the false teachers, the agents of Satan, that have been working diligently throughout history.

Perhaps the most strikingly false and dangerous doctrine that has crept into contemporary Christianity is that God justifies the "good" Christian, the one that believes and is overall, "good".

(I'll pause here - this conversation can only include those whom trust Scripture as our source of truth.)

Why do people become Christians?

Why we need a Savior can seem simple to some, but gets complicated with time clocked on this earth. Minimally, we are by nature born into this world as children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) with every ounce of our body and soul oozing with a proclivity towards evil, away from God. As life progresses, this gets complicated with consciousness of our deceitful heart (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9) and all its inevitable desires, the general weariness of the life (and people) around us, and the general surrender to the horrendous lie that some of us are relatively good people, and, if we believe in hell and all those things, it is something for the Stalins and Madoffs, and, possibly even, the Vicks of the world.

The conversation of saving faith I think begins here, because true conversion I think begins here. "If we claim to be without sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth isn't in us" (1 John 1:8). Jesus came to save "sinners and not the righteous" (Mark 2:17). In fact, God's whole redemptive plan can be hung on Romans 5:8 and Romans 5:12: "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, " and "Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned."

If we claim Christianity, if we claim Christ as our Lord and Savior, we need to understand, err, firmly believe, that through Adam we inherited a sinful nature, and our only chance is Jesus the Christ (John 14:6).

We maintain, that we are justified by the righteousness of God, as manifested by the faith of Jesus Christ. As Luther and some of the original reformers pointed out, Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference”, Romans 3:22, is central to understanding this. In other words, we are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16), both through his perfect obediance, and his death and resurrection.

One of the most striking lines found in Scripture is "for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13b).

I am hopeful that this entire blog will begin, end, and hover over this Biblical Truth.

What does it mean to call on the name of Jesus to be saved?

Certainly, certainly, an awareness of a sinful condition must be present in order for anyone to be so desperate, so out of options, that they rely solely on mercy for their reconciliation to an invisible God.

The awareness of this condition was certainly present in Abraham, in Job, in David, in the sinner that beat his chest with is arms in agony of his self, and in the thief on the cross who saw his only hope at eye level.

Christianity, eternity, and this conversation, begins here, I believe.