In the last post on the Gospel and the Enslaved will, I quoted Packer and Johnson from the Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will. I then made a couple of comments on it. Part of that is reproduced in the quote below:
The true core was “that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only.” Justification by faith alone was vital only because it was a safeguard to the principle of sovereign grace. We must not hurry by that statement. The importance of justification by faith alone is not because of what it is in and of itself, but because it safeguards the principle of sovereign grace.
The point or the main point of justification by faith alone from the Reformers point of view was to safeguard the principle or doctrine of justification by faith alone. This drives us to an important question. If we don’t believe or are ashamed to stand for and teach sovereign grace, how can we truly believe in justification by faith alone as the Reformers believed? When a Pelagian or Arminian claims to believe in justification by faith alone, and yet denies sovereign grace, we know that the person making that claim does not understand justification in the same way it was understood by Luther and the Reformers. Those who claim to be Reformed and yet are willing to join hands with Pelagians in some understanding of the Gospel cannot believe it as the Reformers believed it either. In our day when unity and tolerance is thought to be more important than truth, the Gospel is being sold out in the interests of unity. In our day when it is thought that to be gracious is more important than to state the truth with clarity, the Gospel is being sold out in less than clear thinking though in a very nice way. But the Gospel is still not being declared with clarity if at all. Sovereign grace is a necessary teaching for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies believers without works of Law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith. Here was the crucial issue; whether God is the author, not merely of justification, but also of faith; whether, in the last analysis, Christianity is a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, or of self-reliance and self-effort. ‘Justification by faith only’ is a truth that needs interpretation. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood till it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia (Johnson and Packer’s introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will).
In the quote above I underlined and highlighted the words “broader question” to make a point. To the Reformers the main issue was not (though vital) whether God justifies sinners apart from works of the Law, but what they were justified apart from the Law for and by. If the sinner is justified apart from the Law and yet is not helpless in sin, then that is something different entirely from those who teach that sinners are wholly helpless in their sin and to be saved God must save them by His unconditional and free grace. Unless sinners are wholly helpless in their sin then they are not raised from the spiritual dead but from the spiritually sick. Unless sinners are wholly helpless in their sin then they are not wholly reliant upon the Holy Spirit to make them alive to bring them to faith. If the Holy Spirit is not the One who gives them faith itself, then God is not the author of faith (Heb 12:2). It was important to Luther that in order for grace to be grace that sinners had to be utterly helpless in their sin and God has to be the author of their justification and their faith. The broader question must be taken into consideration if we are to hold to justification by faith alone as the Reformers did.
All of these things are involved in what the Gospel and Christianity are in the last analysis. Is the sinner to utterly rely on God for all things or look to self for something? If we don’t teach sinners their helplessness in sin and of the source for faith we are not teaching justification by faith alone as the Reformers taught. One may decide that they were wrong in this matter, but at least we should be clear that we don’t teach what they taught even if we use the same words. Justification by faith alone (sola fide) cannot be understood in and of itself but must be taught and can only be understood in its relation to (sola gratia). To put it a different way, justification by faith alone cannot be understood in relation to itself and it cannot stand alone by itself. It must be understood in relation to the broader principle of justification by grace alone. As Romans 4:16 teaches, justification is by faith in order that it may be in accordance with grace. It is not justification by faith alone if it is not also and more importantly justification by grace alone. It is not justification by faith or grace alone apart from the sovereign grace of God to those who are utterly helpless in their sins. We have gone far astray from this in our day. But we are nice about it.
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