Welcome to a Reformed Church: A Guide for Pilgrims by Daniel R. Hyde

Author:Daniel R. Hyde
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub, pdf
Tags: Protestant, Christianity, Religion, Reformed Church - Doctrines, Christian Theology, Reformed Church, Ecclesiology
ISBN: 9781567692037
Publisher: Reformation Trust Publishing
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

FAITH ALONE

The only means by which sinners receive this grace of God so that they can be justified is faith. In order to make Christ's work our work, we must have faith in Christ.

The Holy Spirit

We cannot believe in Christ and receive grace in our naturally sinful state. We first need the sovereign Holy Spirit to give us new birth (John 3:1-8). Because of this, we confess "the Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him" (BC, Art. 22). This is what Paul meant when he said it is "by grace" that we are saved and that it is "through faith."

Furthermore, this faith "is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8-9). As Paul says elsewhere: "It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should ... believe in him" (Phil. 1:29). Our justification is so much by grace alone that even the means by which we receive it is given to us by the grace of God. The Canons of Dort explain that faith is not regarded as a gift "on account of its being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure." Neither is it a gift "because it is in reality conferred, breathed, and infused into him; nor even because God bestows the power or ability to believe, and then expects that man should, by the exercise of his own free will, consent to the terms of salvation, and actually believe in Christ." Rather, it is a gift "because he who works in man both to will and to do, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also" (CD, 3/4.14).

Without Works

Because we receive Christ by the faith that the Holy Spirit gives us, we "say with Paul, that we are justified by faith alone, or by faith without works" (BC, Art. 22). This is the language of Scripture. For example, Paul says of the gospel of Jesus Christ, "in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, `The righteous shall live by faith"' (Rom. 1:17; cf. Hab. 2:4). This faith is contrasted with works throughout the New Testament to clearly teach us that justification is God's work, not ours. For instance: "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law ... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ ... whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith ... so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:21, 22, 25, 26).

It is important to note that faith itself does not justify us. Contrary to popular expression, we do not believe we are saved by faith. We believe we are saved by God's grace and that our faith, being a gift of God, "is only an instrument with which we embrace Christ our Righteousness.

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