From The Gospel and the Enslaved Will 15 it can be seen with that justification by faith alone must be seen in a broader picture. If it is not seen in light of justification by grace alone, it will be seen in a remarkably different way. But not just in a little bit of a different way, but a way that is different from the Gospel. If it (justification by faith alone) is not seen as fitting in with justification by grace alone as the Reformers understood it, then even justification by grace alone can be understood in a drastically different way. If justification is simply said to be by faith alone and by grace alone today, that is thought to be enough by people today. However, it is not. Apart from understanding the utter and total helplessness of the soul in sin, even the teaching of justification by grace alone will be distorted to a great degree. If we don’t understand justification by faith alone and by grace alone in the context of the deadness and helplessness of man in sin, we will understand the Gospel a lot differently than the Reformers did. Apart from the helplessness of man in sin we will think of God as supplying the Gospel by grace and faith as what man supplies. We may even give that (faith as a gift) lip service to some degree, but apart from a sovereign grace that raises men from the dead and also gives faith as a gift, we don’t believe in a true justification by grace alone. Instead we believe (practically) in a God who alone provides grace rather than provided and applied by grace alone. At the heart of that is a different Gospel than the Reformers preached.
If the soul is able to apprehend Christ by itself, then the soul has the ability to apply grace to itself and that is a work of the soul in the most important realm that does not come by grace alone. If the soul has a free-will (by definition a free soul is free from the internal work of God), then that soul is not saved by grace alone but is free from God and has the power to apply grace to itself. If the soul is free from the internal influence of God and has the power to choose and apply grace to itself, then it is not really dead in sin and does not need to be raised from the dead by the sole working power of God in regeneration. If the soul is not saved from eternity past through all eternity future by grace and grace alone then it is not saved by grace alone. Ephesians 1 and 2 knows nothing of a salvation that is from anything but grace alone. The whole Bible is the same way as well. The demand for the soul to believe is not a demand for the soul to regenerate itself which is necessary to believe. The demand for the soul to believe is not a demand for the soul to give itself belief. It is simply a demand for the soul to be a believing soul which lives by grace alone. But God alone can give the grace of faith and all the grace for a believing soul to live.
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).
The crucial issue is whether God is the author of faith and not justification only. This drives home the point that God did not just provide what is needed for justification and the sinner believes in order to apply it to self, but that God is the author of the faith or belief as well. Christianity, to teach a Gospel of grace and grace alone, teaches the “utter reliance of the sinner on God for salvation and all things necessary to it.” If the sinner is not taught an utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, that sinner will trust in himself and his own “self-reliance and self-effort.” Oh, one might argue, “I do not teach that a sinner is to trust in himself but to believe.” But does that sinner trust in himself to believe or in God to grant Him a believing soul? If the sinner trusts in himself to believe, then the sinner is not trusting in God for salvation and all things necessary to it. This is not just some small issue, but instead it is at the heart of the Gospel and of the glory of that Gospel as declared in justification by grace alone through faith alone to the glory of God alone as the Reformers preached. It is also what Ephesians 2:4-8 declares: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)… 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” If I come up with faith on my own and so am saved, I have something to boast about. The Gospel, however, teaches that justification is by grace and grace alone. We are His workmanship and not our own.
God Loves... Himself 
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