“Faith alone” is Part of the Gospel
For the past few decades an insidious movement to undermine the doctrine of “justification by grace through faith alone” has steadily penetrated evangelicalism. By “insidious” I mean on Satan’s part; not that evangelical thinkers themselves have necessarily intended to “undermine” the Gospel. Yet although the Apostle Paul says that “we are not unaware of his schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11), we’re also not immune to his schemes.
I saw this theological claim online just today (though I’ve seen it in various forms many times over the past couple of decades):
The Pauline doctrine of justification—that it is by faith and not by works, or as the Reformers put it, by faith alone—is a doctrine about the Gospel, but it is not the Gospel itself. The Gospel is Christocentric—it is about Jesus Christ. Justification by faith and not works is anthropocentric—it is about us, and how we receive the benefit of what the Gospel proclaims. To claim that justification by faith alone is itself the Gospel is to place us rather than Jesus Christ at the centre of the Gospel.
This is a false dichotomy. (a) The message that Jesus is our Savior automatically, logically implies that I cannot be my own; that I must trust Him. It logically excludes self-effort or human works. All that remains is simple trust; hence “faith alone.”
So, while this person seems to want to paint a picture of two separate messages—(i) “Here’s the Good News about Jesus” and (ii) “Here’s how you can benefit from that Good News”—the Bible effectively (by a combination of overt statements and logical implication) teaches that the “two” messages are actually one Gospel: “Here’s good news: you can be saved by Jesus through simple trust.”
(b) The message that God “justifies” us in Christ—i.e., declares us officially righteous because Jesus has paid our sin-debt—is certainly part of the Good News. How could it possibly be otherwise? Justification by faith and not works is, in fact, not “anthropocentric,” as the above theologian claims. It is just as Christocentric as any other aspect of the Gospel: inviting people to trust in Jesus . . . puts the spotlight on Jesus! It proclaims that He is the only One worth our trust.
The Apostle Paul regularly portrays justification-through-faith-alone as an aspect of the Gospel itself. For instance:
. . . I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” [Romans 1:16-17]
This is the message of faith that we proclaim . . . . But all did not obey the gospel. [Rom. 10:8, 16]
We get the same teaching in Galatians 1:6-12; 2:11-20.[See also Revelation 14:6-7, which doesn’t mention faith, but still indicates that the required human response to God’s offer of grace is part of the Gospel.] Indeed, the bulk of Romans and Galatians involves Paul’s meticulous defense of justification-by-grace-through-faith-alone—on which concept he regularly slaps the label “gospel.”
We must believe the Gospel in order to be saved. To claim (or imply) that we don’t need to believe the concept of “faith alone” because it’s “not” part of the Gospel is to implicitly suggest that maybe we can contribute some of our own works to our salvation. But embracing such a hybrid “gospel” will get a person damned.
More food for thought: