Justification by Faith Alone

“Grace is not a reward for faith; faith is the result of grace.” – John Blanchard

Overview

Justification is by is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. This is the article by which the church stands or falls…There is no gospel except that of Christ’s substitution in our place whereby God imputed to him our sin and imputed to us his righteousness. Because he bore our judgment, we now walk in his grace as those who are forever pardoned, accepted and adopted as God’s children. There is no basis for our acceptance before God except in Christ’s saving work, not in our patriotism, churchly devotion or moral decency. The gospel declares what God has done for us in Christ. It is not about what we can do to reach him. We reaffirm that justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In justification Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us as the only possible satisfaction of God’s perfect justice. We deny that justification rests on any merit to be found in us, or upon the grounds of an infusion of Christ’s righteousness in us, or that an institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church. – Cambridge Declaration

“Saving faith is not a native product of the human heart, but is a spiritual grace communicated from on high.” – A.W. Pink

Faith itself is man’s act or work and is thereby excluded from being any part of his justifying righteousness. It is one thing to be justified by faith merely as an instrument b which man receives the righteousness of Christ, and another to be justified FOR faith as an act or work of the law. If a sinner, then, relies on his actings of faith or works of obedience to any of the commands of the law for a title to eternal life, he seeks to be justified by works of the law as much as if his works were perfect. If he depends either in whole or in part, on his faith and repentance for a right to any promised blessing, he thereby so annexes that promise to the commands to believe and repent as to form the for himself into a covenant of works. Building his confidence before God upon his faith, repentance and other acts of obedience, he places them in Christ’s stead as his grounds of right to the promise and so he demonstrates himself to be of the works of the law and so be under the curse. – John Colquhoun (A Treatise on Law and the Gospel)

“It is not faith the saves, but faith in Jesus Christ… It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith.” – B.B. Warfield

Articles on Justification by Faith

Is the Reformation Over – R.C. Sproul

Sermons on Justification by Faith

Sermons from Desiring God

Books on Justification by Faith

Horatius Bonar – The Everlasting Righteousness
Charles Spurgeon – Justification by Faith
D.A. Carson (ed) – Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World
James White – The God who Justifies
John Piper – The Justification of God
John Piper – Counted Righteous in Christ