SPROUL: At the time of the Protestant Reformation,
obviously the Roman Catholic community did not roll over and play dead at the feet of Luther
and the Reformers. They had a response to the assertion that justification is by faith
alone without any reference to works, and they found their source for that in
the Scripture itself, principally in the letter from the apostle James. I will just
take a second to read a portion of chapter 2 of James, which portion was cited on more
than one occasion later on at the Council of Trent in the sixth session of Trent, in the
Roman Catholics’ response to the Protestants. We read in verse 21 of chapter 2 these
words, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his
son on the altar? Do you see then that faith was working together with his works, and by works
faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and
it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a
man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” And then in verse 25, “Was not Rahab
the harlot also justified by works when she received the strangers
and sent them out another way?” Here we have the explicit statement in sacred
Scripture that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. You would think that
that single verse would be the crushing blow to the article that Luther said was the
article upon which the church stands or falls. So, how do we reconcile what Paul teaches
in Romans with what James teaches here? Some people think that it is an impossible task,
that they are simply irreconcilable. There is a debate historically as to which epistle appeared
in print first, James or Romans. That question focused on an attempt to understand how this
difference could arise in the pristine church. Some argue that Romans appeared before James, and
James wrote his epistle to repudiate and to refute what Paul had taught. Others argue, “No,
James appeared before Paul and Paul was trying to refute James.” So, there is a divided house
on that question historically about who was trying to refute whom. But classic orthodoxy would
say that neither one of them was trying to refute the other and that the two positions are not
contradictory, though on the surface they seem to be. That is that this issue is so significant that
it is worth the philosophy of a second glance. Part of the problem is compounded by the fact
that both James and Paul use the same word here for justification, ‘dikaiosune.’ It would be nice
to see that they use different words and obviously had different ideas in mind. Unfortunately if
we are reconciling the two, they both used the same word. The matter becomes more severe when
we see that both of them have the same person that they use as exhibit A to prove their point.
Paul labors the point of Abraham’s being the father of the faithful and that he was justified
by faith and counted righteous before he had done any works, before he had been circumcised, before
he had offered Isaac on the altar. So that Paul has Abraham justified in chapter 15 of Genesis
where James does not have Abraham justified until chapter 22, which is the chapter that records
his offering of his son Isaac on the altar. In a sense the plot thickens, and this is one
of the things that made Luther question the canonicity of James, when he said at first
that James was an ‘epistle of straw’ or ‘a right strawy epistle’ is another translation,
but which he later repented of that judgment. But because he at one point challenged the
canonicity of James, a host of scholars have used that challenge as an attempt to show that Luther
did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Well, he did believe in the inherency of
Scripture. He said “The Scripture never errs,” but he was questioning whether Scripture contained
the book of James, but that is for another day. But any case we can see that in Scripture though
the same word is used both by James and by Paul here, on justification ‘dikaiosune,’ that
that term does have more than one meaning. One verse that you are familiar with I am sure is
that when Jesus in the Gospels says that “wisdom is justified by her children,” now obviously in
that particular statement the word that is used here does not mean that wisdom is reconciled
to a holy God with an imputed righteousness that wisdom gains by having babies. No, it is
simply showing that that which is a claim to be wisdom is shown to be true wisdom by its fruit,
which is a principle of wisdom found throughout the wisdom literature of Scripture. By the way,
many New Testament scholars would say that of those books that are considered wisdom literature
in the Bible, we not only have the books of the Old Testament, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
Job and so on, but they would include in that list of wisdom books the book of James in the New
Testament because so many of the literary forms that you find among the wisdom books of
the Old Testament are also found in James. Now, in the sense of the way in which Jesus
used it by saying that wisdom is justified by her children, the meaning of that term ‘justified’
there is to demonstrate or to manifest the truth of something. If I said to you that I could run
a mile in less than four minutes, I do not expect you would believe that. You would want to see it
to believe it with an accurate stopwatch in your hand. In fact, the only way I could prove to you
my statement is to demonstrate it by running the mile under four minutes. So, if I would say
to you I can run a mile under four minutes, unless I was going to come and trick there, you
would be wise not to believe my claim. In fact, if I said to you “I could run a mile, period,” I
do not think I would be able to justify that claim either. So, there is a sense in which the word ‘to
justify’ is used to prove the truth of a claim. When I used to teach philosophy in
the university, when I would teach the history of philosophy and we would come up to
various philosophers to study their thinking, it seemed like students had
to have a certain kind of mind to do well with philosophy. It was so abstract
and students would struggle, brilliant students, students that were acing other courses were having
trouble in philosophy. I tried to give them little hints to help them understand the work
of a given philosopher and I would say, “What you want to do at the beginning is ask this
question, find out the answer to this question, ‘What problem is this philosopher trying to solve
and why?’ If you know why Descartes was trying to find a clear and distinct idea, you can follow his
reasoning and come to an intelligible conclusion.” I want to apply that same principle to this thorny
question that we have of the relationship between Paul and James. To understand James in
chapter 2 we have to ask the question, “What problem is he trying to solve? What question
is he trying to answer?” And I think the answer to my question here begins in verse 14 of chapter
2 where James writes this, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but
does not have works? Can that faith save him?” So, the question he is asking is, “What
good is it to make a profession of faith if you do not have any works? What profit
is there in that?” So he is dealing with the question of people who make a profession
of faith but do not manifest any fruit of it. In our day and age, we have hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of people in America who have made professions of faith, who have never
demonstrated the reality of the faith they claim to possess. That is the question that James
is answering. It is not the same question Paul is asking. Paul is asking, “How can an unjust person
stand in the presence of a just and holy God?” His concern for justification is before God, and that
is where he says that we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law. But now James
is asking, “What about the person who professes faith but has no evidence of it?” He says, “If
someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him?” “If a brother or
sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace,
be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body,
what does it profit?” What good is that? “Thus also,” after this illustration, “faith
by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” So now, he is going to make a distinction
between a dead faith and a faith that is alive. When Luther was challenged for his doctrine of
justification by faith alone and was asked about this faith, as I said before does that mean you
can just believe and live however you want to? Well, Paul answers that same question, and
his answer is, “God forbid,” and Luther said, “Justification is by faith alone but not by
faith that is alone.” Then he went on to say that the faith that justifies, Luther said, is a
fides viva, a living faith, a faith that is alive and you know it is alive when it manifests
itself in the fruit of obedience. Now, if I tell you here in this
room today that I have saving faith, do you know for sure just because I said it that
I have it? Can anybody in here read my heart? Of course not. The only way you can
evaluate the truth of my claim is to see if I manifest it in my life. “By their
fruits you shall know them,” we are told, and even then we can fool people with
rotten fruit that is phony fruit. How long does God have to wait before He knows
whether my profession of faith is genuine? Can He read my heart? Yes, He does not have to wait a
week or two weeks or six months or five chapters to see whether the faith that I profess is
genuine. And so, I think it is critical in answering this problem here that we see that even
though both James and Paul appealed to Abraham to make their case, they appealed to
Abraham at different times in his life. Paul makes his point that we are justified
by faith apart from the works of the law by pointing to chapter 15
where Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. James
makes his case that Abraham is justified by works by pointing to chapter 22, seven chapters
difference actually, between chapter 15 and chapter 22, which is the chapter that tells
about the sacrifice of Isaac on the altar. James goes on to say that Abraham
is justified by his works. Is he talking about Abraham being
justified in the sight of God? Or is he saying that Abraham is being justified
in the sight of men, before whom he has made this profession…before whom people make their
profession. Again the question he is answering, “If a man says he has faith but has not works,
can that faith save him?” The answer he is giving here is a resounding “No!” The only kind of faith
that saves is not a dead faith but a living faith, and if it is a living faith it will certainly be
made manifest by works. So Abraham is proving, demonstrating, authenticating
his claim of faith in chapter 22. Just as we claim to have faith, we have to show
forth that faith by our works. I mentioned earlier about antinomianism that claims to have a faith
that saves without having works that follow, the whole carnal Christian concept
that we wrestle with even to this day. I hope that that brief explanation will help you
work through the problem here and understand that the men are answering two different questions
using the same word and the same example, and they show that James is speaking
of Abraham’s being vindicated by his profession of faith
with the works that follow. And if that is the way this book is understood,
you do not have a contradiction. You have a difficulty of resolution, but you
do not really have a contradiction. Now in the few moments we have left, I want
to address one other question and that is, “What is it that produces saving faith in Christ?
Where does that faith come from?” This question, probably more than any other, is what defines the
very essence of Reformed theology. If there is one phrase that captures the essence of Reformed
theology, it is the little phrase “regeneration precedes faith,” that is the power of faith, the
power of believing is a result, not of an act of our will done independently, but it is the fruit
of God’s sovereign act of changing the disposition of our hearts and giving to us the gift of faith.
It is our faith, we are that ones who believe, but we do not create that faith. Faith is borne out of
the work of the immediate supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit quickening us from spiritual death
and giving to us the gift of faith in our hearts. When we talk about the order of salvation, we talk
about the ordo salutis, we are talking not so much about the temporal order of things but rather a
logical order of things. The difference between temporal priority and logical priority is this,
when we say that justification is by faith alone we do not mean by that that a person has
faith and then five years later is justified. No, the second that you have faith you are
counted righteous by God and are covered with the robes of the righteousness of Christ and have all
the benefits of justification. There is no time lapse in there, but yet we say that justification
is by faith, meaning that faith comes logically before justification or we would say “faith is by
justification alone.” We know that justification does not precede faith, but faith precedes
justification in terms of its logical order. The vast majority of evangelical Christians, if
you ask them the question, “Which comes first, faith or rebirth?” they would say, “Faith comes
first and as a result of believing in Christ, you are reborn,” where
Reformed theologians say, “No.” Go back to chapter 3 of John where Jesus
has the conversation with Nicodemus where Jesus said, “Unless a man is born
again, he cannot even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it.” When Paul in Ephesians 2
talks about quickening or being made alive, when are we made alive unto faith and what state are
we at that time? We are still spiritually dead, and so we say that God the Holy Spirit changes
the disposition or inclination of the heart, so now what the person refused to believe
before, he now believes and embraces and loves. One of the greatest sermons ever preached by
Jonathan Edwards was “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” where he talks about this work of the Holy
Spirit, who changes our hearts and disposition, so we that not only see the truth of a proposition
but we see the sweetness of it, the loveliness of it, and the beauty of it, and the glory of it. And
so the faith that justifies is a faith that has been created in our hearts as a gift by God the
Holy Spirit so that now what we formerly refused to affirm and to follow, now that which was
odious to us in our state of spiritual death while we were still in the flesh, we now
have the nature of the Spirit. The whole rest of the Christian life is a war between
the flesh, the old man, and the Spirit, the new man who gives birth to faith, so that we
are regenerated unto faith and unto justification. When Paul gives an abbreviated list of the order
of salvation in Romans 8, he talks about those who were foreknown that He also predestined, and
those whom He predestined that He also called, and those whom He called He justified, and those
whom He justified He glorified. In that sequence it is clear that all who were in the category
of the foreknown are also in the category of the predestined. All in the category of the
predestined are in the category of the called, and all in the category of the called are in
the category of the justified. Obviously there, Paul was talking about a calling that is not
the outer call. We talk about the ‘outside call’ where we preach the gospel to people,
some respond “Yes,” some respond “No.” But in Romans 8 Paul is talking about a calling in
which all who were called in a certain sense, are justified, and calling there in that order
precedes justification. So calling is what we talk about with respect to regeneration, the effectual
inward call of God by which we are brought to a faith that is a living faith and
through which and by which we are justified.
