As we continue our trek into the glories of sola fide, we must be constantly reminded that the fallen heart of human beings will fight the Gospel that is to the glory of God alone. Man always wants to leave something for him to do and at the least, that will be the deciding act or choice. The word “by” in justification by faith alone has stood in the writing and preaching of the Reformed as indicating that grace saves sinners by itself with no hope or cause within the sinner. William Cunningham said it this way in the second volume of his Historical Theology:
“We have good and sufficient grounds in Scripture for maintaining-first, the justification of the sinner is a purely gratuitous act of God, to the exclusion of all merit or desert on the part of the sinner himself; secondly, that the imputed righteousness of Christ is the sole ground, basis, or reason of the divine procedure in justifying a sinner,-the only thing to which God has respect or regard, as that on account of which He acts, in bestowing upon any one pardon and acceptance; and, thirdly, that faith in Jesus Christ is the only thing in men themselves, to the exclusion of all works, or mere obedience to law, to which their justification is ascribed, or which is represented as exerting, in any sense, anything like a causality or efficiency in obtaining for them pardon and acceptance at God’s hand” (pp. 68-69).
What we simply must see is the biblical theology applied with rigorous logic in the statements above. Justification of sinners is of grace and grace alone. When anything is credited to grace alone or accomplished and applied by grace alone, this is done without any merit or desert on the part of the sinner. Cunningham is using word upon word to show us the real nature of grace. When God acts by grace, it is by grace alone. By sheer definition of who God is and of what His grace is like, there is nothing that man is or can do regarding justification without making justification something other than God’s work by grace alone.
Cunningham then shows us what the sole ground, basis, or reason is for God to justify a sinner. It is Christ and His imputed righteousness alone. In the first point Cunningham shows us that there is nothing in man or that man can do to add to grace or move grace to justify. In the second part we see that Christ alone is the sole reason and basis for justification. He then moves to the third thing which in a sense is a conclusion of an argument. If we accept the fact that grace alone justifies which means that there is nothing that man is or can do to justify himself and that Christ alone is the only basis for justification at all, then the third point is seen with clarity. Faith in Jesus Christ is all that a person must have. However, it is not just that a person is to have some objective or subjective type of faith, but a person must have a true faith in the true Christ. A true faith in Jesus Christ by definition excludes all works, obedience to the law in the sense of any causality or efficiency in obtaining a pardon from God. The logic in applying these points is relentless and irresistible. They force us into a corner and we will either flee from the Gospel of Christ alone or we will bow in humble submission to it.
In the next paragraph and then following on for several pages Cunningham gets to the same issue that this BLOG has been dealing with. It has to do with the “by faith” in the phrase of justification by faith alone. Notice how in his statements listed above he has shown us how he sees that grace alone and Christ alone are linked to faith alone. But here is where people object and here is where true Pelagians true Arminians will object against the truly Reformed position. Again, the vital issue is over what Scripture says, but we must remember that Cunningham is giving us a condensed version of what he believes Scripture says. When people see the first two points as scriptural, they can go in different ways but in two central directions. In the first, they can simply deny that faith is necessary at all since there is nothing that man can do to merit or be the ground of justification and say that grace saves all human beings. The other primary direction is to manipulate what faith is to allow it to be an act of man but deny that it has merit or can provide a basis for the salvation of God. Cunningham understands this very well and says this: “men’s views of the place which faith holds, and the influence which it exerts, in the justification of sinners, are usually determined by the views they take of the other departments of this subject, and especially of the grounds or reasons on which God’s act in justification is based.” In other words, what we believe about faith in relation to justification will be determined by what we believe about God’s work in justification. To say it yet another way, our view of faith in justification is determined by our view of God, the work of Christ, and then of grace in justification. The little word “by” in justification by faith alone can hide terrible heresies of reflect the truth and love of the Gospel. It is a vital word to the teaching of the Gospel as it reflects a lot of doctrine under it.
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