[BBC List] minimizing Christ's obedience. a lesson in history

[Mike Abendroth]

Calvin on the "Pernicious Hypocrisy" of Justification by Faith and Works

Robert L. Reymond

That some serious slippage has occurred away from the classical Protestant
doctrine of justification sola fide has been well documented in many
religious publications. Certain teachers — Douglas Wilson, Steve Schlissel,
and Steve Wilkins,1 to name only three — have risen within confessing
Reformed communions who, in concert with the errant teaching of Norman
Shepherd,2 do not endorse the doctrine of justification as enunciated by
their historic church confessions and, instead of doing the honorable thing
and leaving their communions,3 are corrupting the one true law-free Gospel4
and causing division within their communions with their teaching that the
Christian's justification is not by faith alone in the all-sufficient work
of Jesus Christ but is rather the eschatological end result of the
believer's faithfulness to Christ, which faithfulness includes his imperfect
works of obedience.

These teachers have rejected the clear Pauline teaching that justification
is an act of God's free grace alone by which the moment a penitent sinner
places his faith in Christ God forgives him of all of his sins forever and
imputes to him and hence also to his weak and imperfect “good works”5 the
perfection of the obedience of his Son Jesus Christ (see Acts 13:38-39;
Galatians 2:16; Romans 1:16-17; 3:21-22, 28; 4:4-15; 2 Corinthians 5:21;
Ephesians 2:8-10), thereby constituting and declaring him righteous in his
sight. These teachers, either minimizing or denying altogether the
imputation of Christ's active obedience to the believer, teach that
justification is not a purely forensic declaration but a transforming
activity in which the believer's obedience also plays a significant role in
his justification. This corrupted doctrine of justification includes within
it the lie of Satan that Christ's righteousness is not enough in itself to
justify and that obedience on the part of the believer is also necessary for
his full and final justification before God. It ignores Westminster Larger
Catechism, Question 73, which states:

Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other
graces which do always accompany it, or of good works that are the fruits of
it, nor as if the grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him
for justification, but only as it is an instrument by which he receives and
applies Christ and his righteousness.

More tragically, it ignores the Apostle Paul's inspired warning that those
who to any degree intermingle with their faith in Christ and his obedience
their own obedience as the ground of their final justification before God

• stand under apostolic condemnation (Galatians 1:8-9);

• have made Christ's cross-work of no value to them (Galatians 5:2);

• have alienated themselves from Christ (Galatians 5:4a);

• have set aside (Galatians 2:21) and have fallen away from grace (in the
sense that they have placed themselves once again under the Law as the way
of salvation [Galatians 3:10; 5:4b]); and

• have abolished the offense of the cross (Galatians 5:11) because they are
trusting in a “different gospel [from Paul's] that is no gospel at all”
(Galatians 1:6-7); indeed, their false “gospel” requires them to “continue
to do everything written in the Book of the Law” (Galatians 3:10) perfectly
as the ground of their justification before God.

While multitudes of voices and myriads of letters and essays have attempted
to call these erring teachers back to the “old way,” so far no one has been
able to convince them that their position is flawed and dangerous to their
own spiritual health and well-being and the spiritual health and well-being
of those who follow them. But I have thought for some time now that perhaps
a “pen from the past” — the pen of the one who knew better than any man of
his time the errors of the Roman Catholic view of justification, which view
these contemporary teachers are now in essence inculcating and propagating —
might induce them to rethink their position and repent of it.

In the sixteenth century John Calvin termed the doctrine of justification by
faith alone in Jesus Christ “the main hinge on which religion turns”
(Institutes, 3.11.1), “the sum of all piety” (Institutes, 3.15.7), and “the
first and keenest subject of controversy” between Rome and the Reformation
(“Reply to Sadoleto”). He treats justification by faith in his Institutes,
Book 3, Chapters 11-19. Here Calvin first defines what he means by
justification:

...he is justified who is reckoned in the condition not of a sinner, but of
a righteous man; and for that reason, he stands firm before God's judgment
seat while all sinners fall. If an innocent accused person be summoned
before the judgment seat of a fair judge, where he will be judged according
to his innocence, he is said to be “justified” before the judge. Thus,
justified before God is the man who, freed from the company of sinners, has
God to witness and affirm his righteousness [Institutes, 3.11.2];

...justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works,
grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears
in God's sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man [Institutes, 3.11.2].

He then declares that the ground of our justification is Christ's
righteousness alone:

Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God
receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in
the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness
[Institutes, 3.11.2];

...since God justifies us by the intercession of Christ, he absolves us not
by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of
righteousness, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned
as such in Christ [Institutes, 3.11.3].

...the best passage of all on this matter [2 Corinthians 5:18-21] is the one
in which [Paul] teaches that the sum of the Gospel embassy is to reconcile
us to God, since God is willing to receive us into grace through Christ, not
counting our sins against us. Let my readers carefully ponder the whole
passage. For a little later Paul adds by way of explanation: “Christ, who
was without sin, was made sin for us,” to designate the means of
reconciliation. Doubtless he means by the word “reconciled” nothing but
“justified.” And surely, what he teaches elsewhere — that “we are made
righteous by Christ's obedience” — could not stand unless we are reckoned
righteous before God in Christ and apart from ourselves [Institutes, 3.11.4,
emphasis supplied].

Calvin then addresses the error of virtually all of professing Christendom,
namely, the “pernicious hypocrisy” that we obtain righteousness before God
by faith in Christ plus our own works of righteousness:

...a great part of mankind imagine that righteousness is composed of faith
and works [but according to Philippians 3:8-9] a man who wishes to obtain
Christ's righteousness must abandon his own righteousness.... From this it
follows that so long as any particle of works-righteousness remains some
occasion for boasting remains with us [Institutes, 3.11.13].

...according to [the Sophists, that is, the medieval Schoolmen of the
Sorbonne, the theological faculty of the University of Paris], man is
justified by both faith and works provided they are not his own works but
the gifts of Christ and the fruit of regeneration. [But] all works are
excluded, whatever title may grace them... [Institutes, 3.11.14].

...Scripture, when it speaks of faith-righteousness, leads us...to turn
aside from the contemplation of our own works and look solely upon God's
mercy and Christ's perfection [Institutes, 3.11.16].

[The Sophists] cavil against our doctrine when we say that man is justified
by faith alone. They dare not deny that man is justified by faith because it
recurs so often in Scripture. But since the word “alone” is nowhere
expressed, they do not allow this addition to be made. Is it so? But what
will they reply to these words of Paul where he contends that righteousness
cannot be of faith unless it be free? How will a free gift agree with works?
With what chicaneries will they elude what he says in another passage, that
God's righteousness is revealed in the Gospel? If righteousness is revealed
in the Gospel, surely no mutilated or half-righteousness but a full and
perfect righteousness is contained there. The law therefore has no place in
it. Not only by a false but an obviously ridiculous shift they insist upon
excluding this adjective. Does not he who takes everything from works firmly
enough ascribe everything to faith alone? What, I pray, do these expressions
mean: “His righteousness has been manifested apart from the law”; and, “Man
is freely justified”; and, “Apart from the works of the law?” [Institutes,
3.11.19]

As we were made sinners by one man's disobedience, so we have been justified
by one man's obedience. To declare that by him alone we are accounted
righteous, what else is this but to lodge our righteousness in Christ's
obedience, because the obedience of Christ is reckoned to us as if it were
our own [Institutes, 3.11.23].

These contemporary teachers seem to have forgotten the nature of the Judge
and the nature of the Final Judgment to which Calvin then quite properly
calls our attention in Institutes 3.12 — one of the most powerful and
awesome chapters in the entire Institutes. We must never forget, Calvin
writes, that the doctrine of justification is

...concerned with the justice not of a human court but of a heavenly
tribunal, lest we measure by our own small measure the integrity of works
needed to satisfy the divine judgment.... [T]here are none who more
confidently, and as people say, boisterously chatter over the righteousness
of works than they who are monstrously plagued with manifest diseases, or
creak with defects beneath the skin.... [God's justice is] so perfect that
nothing can be admitted except what is in every part whole and complete and
undefiled by any corruption. Such was never found in any man and never will
be. In the shady cloisters of the schools anyone can easily and readily
prattle about the value of works in justifying men. But when we come before
the presence of God we must put away such amusements! For there we deal with
a serious matter, and do not engage in frivolous word battles. To this
question, I insist, we must apply our minds if we would profitably inquire
concerning true righteousness: How shall we reply to the Heavenly Judge when
he calls us to account? Let us envisage for ourselves that Judge, not as our
minds naturally imagine him, but as he is depicted for us in Scripture: by
whose brightness the stars are darkened; by whose strength the mountains are
melted; by whose wrath the Earth is shaken; whose wisdom catches the wise in
their craftiness; beside whose purity all things are defiled; whose
righteousness not even the [holy] angels can bear; who makes not the guilty
man innocent; whose vengeance when once kindled penetrates to the depths of
Hell. Let us behold him, I say, sitting in judgment to examine the deeds of
men: Who will stand confident before his throne? “Who...can dwell with the
devouring fire?”...”Who...can dwell with everlasting burnings? He who walks
righteously and speaks the truth.” But let such a one, whoever he is, come
forward. Nay, that response causes no one to come forward. For, on the
contrary, a terrible voice resounds: “If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark
iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?” [Institutes, 3.12.1].

And our own consciences, Calvin observes, will someday bear witness to the
truth of the exceeding sinfulness of our works and our inability to
contribute to our justification before God by anything we do:

...if the stars, which seem so very bright at night, lose their brilliance
in the light of the Sun, what do we think will happen even to the rarest
innocence of man when it is compared with God's purity? For it will be a
very severe test, which will penetrate to the most hidden thoughts of the
heart.... This will compel the lurking and lagging conscience to utter all
things that have now even been forgotten.... Outward parade of good
works...will be of no benefit there; purity of will alone will be demanded
of us. And therefore hypocrisy shall fall down confounded, even as it now
vaunts itself with drunken boldness.... They who do not direct their
attention to such a spectacle can, indeed, for the moment pleasantly and
peacefully construct a righteousness for themselves, but one that will soon
in God's judgment be shaken from them, just as great riches heaped up in a
dream vanish upon awakening. But they who seriously, and as in God's sight,
will seek after the true rule of righteousness, will certainly find that all
human works, if judged according to their own worth, are nothing but filth
and defilement. And what is commonly reckoned righteousness is before God
sheer iniquity; what is adjudged uprightness, pollution; what is accounted
glory, ignominy [Institutes, 3.12.4, emphasis supplied].

Let us not be ashamed to descend from this contemplation of divine
perfection to look upon ourselves, without flattery and without being
affected by blind self-love. For...while man flatters himself on account of
the outward mask of righteousness that he wears, the Lord meanwhile weighs
in his scales the secret impurity of the heart. Since, therefore, a man is
far from being benefited by such flatteries, let us not, to our ruin,
willingly delude ourselves. In order that we may rightly examine ourselves,
our consciences must necessarily be called before God's judgment seat. For
there is need to strip entirely bare in its light the secret places of our
depravity, which otherwise are too deeply hidden. Then only will we clearly
see the value of these words: “Man is far from being justified before God,
man who is rottenness and a worm,” “abominable and empty, who drinks
iniquity like water.”...[T]he rigor of this examination ought to proceed to
the extent of casting us down into complete consternation, and in this way
preparing us to receive Christ's grace [Institutes, 3.12.5].

What we need to exhibit before God's judgment seat, Calvin avers, is true
humility, not the insistence of false teachers that in addition to Christ's
perfect obedience our imperfect works are necessary for our final
justification before God:

...what way do we have to humble ourselves except that, wholly poor and
destitute, we yield to God's mercy. For if we think that we have anything
left to ourselves, I do not call it humility. And those who have hitherto
joined these two things together — namely, that we must think humbly
concerning ourselves before God and must reckon our righteousness to be of
some value — have taught a pernicious hypocrisy.... If you would, according
to God's judgment, be exalted with the humble, your heart ought to be
wounded with...contrition. If that does not happen, you will be humbled by
God's powerful hand to your shame and disgrace [Institutes, 3.12.6, emphasis
supplied].

The burning question in the sixteenth century for the Reformers was “How can
I find a gracious God?,” or as Job asks: “...how can a mortal be righteous
before God” (Job 9:2; see also Job 25:4). The Church of the Medieval Age had
taught for centuries that right standing before God was achieved through the
Spirit's inward work of grace in the human heart. More specifically, it
taught that men achieve Heaven through the sacrament of baptism that removes
original sin and regenerates, then through inner renewal by works of penance
that address post-baptismal sins, and then by the grace of sanctification
that is never complete in this life, which necessitates that Christians go
to purgatory after death to make expiation for their sins. That Church,
including the deliverances of Vatican I and II, is still with us today, with
no change in its false soteriology6 from that time to our own, declaring
again as recently as its 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church that
“justification is...the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.” And
now an essentially similar soteriology has begun to make its appearance
within conservative Protestantism.

The proponents of this “neonomism” within Protestantism should take
seriously what Calvin (as did all the sixteenth-century magisterial
Reformers) came to understand from his careful study of Scripture, namely,
that

• the only man with whom the infinitely holy God can have direct fellowship
is the perfect God-man, the only mediator “between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), and that it is only as sinful people place
their trust in Christ's saving work and are thereby regarded by God as “in
Christ” that the triune God can have any fellowship with them;

• the only way to protect the solus Christus (“Christ alone”) of salvation
is to insist upon the sola fide (“faith alone”) of justification, and the
only way to protect the sola fide of justification is to insist upon the
solus Christus of salvation;

• saving faith is to be directed to the doing and dying of Christ alone and
never and in no sense to the so-called good works or inner experience of the
believer;

• the Christian's righteousness before God today is in Heaven at the right
hand of God in Jesus Christ, and not on Earth within the believer;

• the ground of our justification is the vicarious work of Christ for us,
not the gracious work of the Spirit in us;

• the faith-righteousness of justification is not personal but vicarious,
not infused but imputed, not experiential but forensic, not psychological
but legal, not our own but a righteousness alien to us, and not earned but
graciously given through faith in Christ, which faith is itself a gift of
grace;

• all which means that justification by faith is to be set off over against
justification by any and all of our works, for justification is grounded in
Christ's alien preceptive and penal obedience in our stead, and we receive
by faith alone his perfect obedience.

My intention in this essay has been to let Calvin speak to the contemporary
Reformed community as if he were still alive. I trust that I have done that.
I trust also that most, if not all, of my readers already believe that
“justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our
sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of
Christ, imputed to us, and received by faith alone” (Westminster Shorter
Catechism, Question 33), but I would urge all my readers — including Norman
Shepherd, Steve Schlissel, Steve Wilkins, Douglas Wilson, N. T. Wright, et
al. — to re-examine themselves with respect to whether they are trusting
solely in the preceptive and penal obedience of the only righteous One, even
Jesus Christ, for their forgiveness and needed righteousness before God. For
make no mistake about it: The Day will come, as Calvin reminded us, when all
of us will stand naked before God, and in that Great Day of his Assize in
whom or in what we trusted for our salvation will be all-important. Unable
to “answer him once in a thousand times” all of us in that Day will be
stripped of all the things in which we may have placed our confidence in
this world. We will stand before the Throne of God in that Day in utter
poverty in ourselves — without title, without money, without property,
without reputation, without personal prestige, without meritorious works of
our own. And unless we have been forgiven of our sins by faith alone in
Christ and have been enrobed solely in his imputed righteousness, God will
consign us to eternal perdition for our sins. In other words, unless we have
completely repudiated all of our own efforts at salvation and have totally
trusted the Savior's righteous life and sacrificial death alone for our
salvation, we will be condemned. For by no works of righteousness that we
will ever do will we be justified before God (see Titus 3:5). Our so-called
works of righteousness simply will not cut it! Christ's perfect obedience
alone is our only hope for Heaven. It alone is enough. We must trust him if
we would be justified, for it is by faith alone in Christ's obedient doing
and dying that sinners are justified freely before the high tribunal of
Heaven. Every other way of salvation, however well-intended, will fail, and
those who trust in any other way will be cast into Hell forever.

April 2006 

   _____  

1 Steve Wilkins is the pastor of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church (PCA)
in Monroe, Louisiana. The 2002 General Assembly of the Reformed Presbyterian
Church (RPCUS) denounced as heresy the teachings of the Auburn Avenue
Theology as well as the theology of Norm Shepherd and the “New Perspective”
on Paul.

2 The Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) at its 258th Synod found
without dissent on May 13, 2004, the teachings of Norman Shepherd on
justification to be “another gospel” and called upon him “to repent of his
grievous errors.”

3 Douglas Wilson is the exception here, having started his own denomination,
the Confederation of Reformed and Evangelical Churches (CREC). 

4 By the term “law-free Gospel” I intend that “a man is justified by faith
apart from observing the law” (Romans 3:28) and that a “man is not justified
by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ...because by observing
the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16). I do not intend by the
term “law-free Gospel” that the Gospel delivers the Christian from the
obligation to obey God's moral law as that law comes to expression in the
Ten Commandments, in their summary in the two love commandments of Holy
Scripture, and in Christ's pattern of life.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, XI.2 states: “Faith, thus receiving and
resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of
justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever
accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by
love.” Clearly the Christian lives under the law of God as the covenant way
of life. But just as clearly his obedience to God's law is no part of the
ground of his justification; Christ's obedience alone is the ground of his
justification. 

5 Westminster Confession of Faith, XVI. 5, 6 (emphasis supplied) states:
“...as [our best works] are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with
so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of
God's judgment. Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted
through Christ, their good works also are accepted in him; not as though
they were wholly unblamable and unreprovable in God's sight; but that he,
looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is
sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.

6 Roman Catholicism declares, because it holds to the early ecumenical
creeds, that it is an orthodox church and should be viewed as such by all.
The problem here is that these early creeds (Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed,
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Definition of Chalcedon, and Athanasian
Creed) are not evangelical creeds, that is, creeds that explicate soteric
matters. They were all framed in the context of the Trinitarian debates in
the fourth and fifth centuries and are underdeveloped respecting and
virtually silent on matters of soteriology. Herman Bavinck in The Doctrine
of God, (Baker, 1951), 285, notes: “...the Reformation has brought to light
that not the mere historical belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, no
matter how pure, is sufficient unto salvation, but only the true heart-born
confidence that rests in God himself, who in Christ has revealed himself as
the triune God.” That is to say, there is no saving value in holding to an
orthodox view of God as Trinity if one is at the same time also holding to
an unorthodox view of the saving work of the Trinity.

Consequently, when the counter-Reformation Council of Trent by its Decrees
and Canons rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone and
anathematized those who believe this doctrine, Rome in effect formally
declared its own apostasy from the apostolic Gospel. Rome has never to this
day repudiated Trent; to the contrary, it has time and again reaffirmed
Trent. So by no stretch of the imagination are the core beliefs of Roman
Catholicism and Reformation theology on the Gospel, that is, on the doctrine
of justification by faith alone, the same today. They differ radically on
the Gospel itself with Roman Catholicism teaching the heresy of
justification by faith plus works and Reformation theology teaching the
Biblical truth of justification by faith alone in Christ's perfect
obedience, which justifying faith will be accompanied, as James 2:14-26
teach, by good works that form no part of the ground of justification but
are “the fruits and evidence of a true and lively faith” (Westminster
Confession of Faith, XVI.2).


 

 


 

 

 

 

Charis, 
  
Mike Abendroth 
  
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."

 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer 

 

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org 
  

 


-- 
Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.0/352 - Release Date: 5/30/2006
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bbcchurch.org/pipermail/bbc_list/attachments/20060608/b97628b3/attachment.htm