Common Objections to Justification by Faith Alone

Justification by faith alone is on hard times among the Anabaptists. Some set it aside because they think it is evangelical or Reformed. Others hesitate to accept it because they think that emphasizing the sinner’s righteousness in Christ encourages people to remain comfortable in their sin. After all, if we are accepted by God because of what Christ has done — and not because of our obedience — does it really matter how we live?

As I hope to show you, this second concern is built on faulty assumptions. First, it assumes that the Bible does not teach this doctrine, and second, it assumes that justification by faith alone is an obstacle to obedience. As I hope to show, the Bible clearly teaches justification by faith, and it consistently connects justification by faith with changed living, so it is wrong to conclude that emphasizing imputed righteousness minimizes or removes the requirement of Christian obedience.

What is justification by faith alone? It is the Bible’s answer to the question, “How can a sinner be reconciled to God?” The Bible tells us that we are sinners by nature (Rom. 5) and by choice (John 3). We willfully reject God and serve ourselves, earning eternal judgment from our Maker and Judge. But God, in grace, provided salvation through Christ. We receive that salvation through faith. Those who turn from themselves to Christ in faith are accounted righteous before God. He counts Christ’s obedience as theirs, and Christ bears their sin. Put another way, justification is God making us acceptable through Christ. We are saved, not because of any good deed we do, but because of what Christ has done for us.

To be sure, justification is not the sum total of the gospel. But it is the ground of every other aspect. Every obedience follows justification. Are we right to maintain that obedience is necessary for every Christian. Of course. How could it be otherwise? Would God declare a sinner righteous but leave him to his sinful pursuits? No. He never declares a sinner to be righteous (justification) without beginning to make him righteous (sanctification). But the fact that works are essential to Christian living does not make them essential to the initial work of justification. In fact, they cannot be, else the gospel would not be a “gift of God, not of works” (Eph. 2:8-9).

With this basic sketch in view, let’s turn to the concerns which keep some people from accepting this truth.

The Bible Teaches Justification by Faith

The first thing to address is whether the Bible teaches that God considers us righteous simply because we have put our faith in Christ. Is it clear in Scripture, or was it read into the text by the Reformers and American evangelicals? If the Bible teaches justification by faith alone, we must believe it, whether or not we like the implications. The teaching of the text must govern our beliefs.

So, does the Bible teach justification by faith? The letter to the Romans is the place to start. In chapters 1-3, Paul describes our sinful condition; it is universal, total, and damnable. “Both Jews and Greeks…are under sin” (3:9). Since “Greeks” is a general reference to non-Jews, Paul encompasses every single person — you and I included. In verse 19 he says that the “whole world” is “guilty before God” and in verse 20 he says, “by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight.” We are all born sinners on our way to hell, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

But God wants to save sinners, so He sent Jesus to take our sins on Himself on the cross. He offers grace “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood…” (3:25). Because Christ killed our sin through His death on the cross, we can be freed from sin and from the judgment we deserve because of it. We are made righteous in Christ. He obeyed in our place, securing the Father’s blessing, and He died in our place, freeing us from condemnation.

Which leads to a crucial question. Who experiences this salvation? Is it given de-facto to all people, or is it only given to some? Since the Bible frequently talks of a final judgment and two eternal destinations, it seems clear that not all will be saved. So then, what determines who will be saved? Obedience? Sincerity? Ancestry? A covenant ritual? No, none of these. Rather, those who are justified are saved by faith.

Having said that “a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (3:28), Paul spends an entire chapter explaining what that faith is — and isn’t. In chapter 4, he says that the faith which justifies does not include works (vv1-8), does not require the covenant sign (vv9-12), and is not limited to those who possess the Mosaic law (vv13-22). That is, we are not justified based on general goodness, nor on a particular act, nor by being Jewish. Rather, we are justified when we entrust ourselves to Christ. “It was not written for Abraham’s sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead” (v23-24). Justification is by faith, not by works.

Paul’s teaching here in Romans is consistent with what we find in his other epistles (1 Cor. 1:26-31, 2 Cor. 5:18-21, Gal. 2:11-21, Eph. 2:1-10, Phil. 3:1-11, Col. 1:19-23, Titus 3:1-7), as well as what Jesus taught (John 3, Luke 18:9-14, Matt. 5:20), what Peter taught (1 Peter 1:3-9, 3:18), what James taught (James 1:16-18, 2:10-12), and what John taught (1 John 4:9-10, 5:11-12).

I pile on the verses simply to show that justification by faith is not merely a Pauline doctrine. It is New Testament Christianity. If we reject it, we reject the true gospel. I would hesitate to be so blunt except that Paul himself said that anyone who teaches another gospel is “accursed” (Gal. 1:6-9). He was even willing to risk his relationship with Peter over it (Gal. 2:11-21). And it was the reason for the Jerusalem counsel in Acts 15. If we lose this doctrine, the rest of the gospel disintegrates.

We have only begun to unearth the biblical teaching, but it will have to suffice. I am convinced that this brief sketch is consistent with what is taught throughout Scripture. The Bible teaches that sinners can be saved from judgment and accepted by God simply by putting their faith in Christ. He has done everything necessary for us to be saved; we receive that salvation when we surrender to Him in faith.

The Bible Connects Justification to Obedience

So then, should we conclude that we can live however we want now that we are justified by faith? If we are accepted because of what Jesus has done, does it matter what we do?

The Bible answers this question for us too. Actually, some of the strongest commands to obey God follow sections which teach that we are not justified based on our obedience. The New Testament authors frequently move from teaching justification by faith alone to reminding us that obedience is necessary. This means that, when we realize we do not need to obey God to be accepted by God, we are most motivated to obey Him. Grace, truly experienced, does not free us to be as un-like God as possible. Rather, it makes us want to be like Him more than we want anything else. And that means obedience.

The Bible has several ways of connecting justification by faith to our obedience. There are myriad texts, and they explain this connection in several ways. For simplicity, I’ve divided them into three groups:

• Obedience is the logical implication of justification (Titus 3:8, 1 Peter 4:1, Rom. 12:1)
• Obedience is the visible evidence of who is justified (Matt. 7:15-20, John 13:35, 14:15, 15:1-8, Rom. 6:1-14, 2 Cor. 5:17, Col. 3:1-4, James 2:14-26, 1 John 2:3-6, 5:1-3)
• Obedience is God’s intended aim in justifying us (Gal. 5:1, 5:13, Eph. 2:10, 2 Cor. 5:14-15)

Let’s take each of these in turn.

Obedience is the logical implication of justification

The Bible says that obedience is the “reasonable” (Rom. 12:1) response to God’s justifying us in Christ. Contra those who say justification by pure faith frees people to live sinfully, the Bible says that justification by faith alone is the primary motivation for obedience. The key to joyful obedience is realizing that Christ has freed us from torment by atoning for our sins on the cross (see 1 John 5:3, 4:18, and 4:10). Those who take Christ’s free righteousness as a license to live sinful lives do not have too large a view of grace; theirs is too small. If they understood God’s love for them in Christ, they would abandon everything that displeased Him — not for duty or for fear, but for love. Understanding grace leads us to want to serve God.

Peter says in his first letter that we should be willing to suffer as Christians because Christ suffered for us. This is in chapter 4, immediately after he describes Christ’s substitutionary death (“the just for the unjust,” 3:18) by which we are justified. Christ gave His life for us, sparing nothing in His love, so we should arm ourselves “with the same mind.” We are compelled to live all-out for God because God, in Christ, lived all-out for us. Substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone are the ground of our persistent, suffering obedience.

Paul uses a similar logic in his letter to Titus. Toward the end of the letter he reminds Titus that “those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works” (3:8). Christians must obey God’s commands; that much is clear. But this is not an isolated statement. He begins verse 8 by saying, “These things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.” Notice the “that” in the middle. Something must be constantly affirmed so that Christians will be careful to do good works.

What are those things? Paul is thinking of the things he just wrote about, that the “kindness and love of God…appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (vv4-5). Salvation is not something we experience because of what we have done, but “according to His mercy.” And then Paul uses the language of justification: “having been justified by His grace we [have] become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (v7) This is justification by faith alone. And it is the ground of Christian obedience.

So then, notice how Paul thinks about this doctrine. He moves from a compact explication of the gospel of grace to a command to teach these things so that God’s people will be obedient. Paul does not think justification by faith alone impedes obedience; he says it is the very reason we obey.

Obedience is the visible evidence of who is justified

The Bible also teaches us that those who are justified may be identified by their lives. If someone has true faith, and is therefore justified, he will obey God. To reverse it: those who ignore or dismiss God’s commands have no warrant to claim that they are justified. Scripture is clear. Those who have been justified by grace through faith will show their authenticity by an obedient life.

This is the most common connection between justification and obedience in the New Testament. Time and again, we find that a person’s life is the best way to know whether his profession of faith is real. True Christians are known, not by their clothes, nor by their traditions, nor by whether they prayed a prayer or can recite true theology, but by their obedience to God’s word. Their obedience will not be perfect, but it will be true.

Here’s a sampling of some of the Scriptures which teach this:

• Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. …Therefore by their fruits you will know them. – Matthew 7:16-20
• By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. – John 13:35
• If you love Me, keep My commandments. – John 14:15
• He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. – John 15:5
• Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? – Romans 6:1-2
• If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. – 2 Corinthians 5:17
• If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. – Colossians 3:1
• Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. – James 2:17
• By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments – 1 John 2:3
• He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar. – 1 John 2:4
• If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? – 1 John 4:20
• By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments – 1 John 5:2
• For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. – 1 John 5:3

Notice that each connects obedience to authenticity without making obedience the basis of a person’s justification. Obedience results when someone is truly justified, so much so that there can be no claim to be justified when one’s life is unchanged. Yet obedience is not the way we access justification, else the Bible is wrong to promise salvation to those who simply believe.

Many people who reject justification by faith alone do so on the basis of James 2, so we need to address that passage directly. Usually, they go straight to verse 21: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?” and say, “Look, Abraham was justified by works. Justification by faith alone is unbiblical!”

This is an error, for several reasons. First of all, as outlined above, Scripture is clear in many passages that justification is by faith alone. Since Scripture is written by one Author, it must agree with itself. That doesn’t mean that we defer to other passages and ignore the particularities of this passage, but it does mean that whatever we conclude from James needs to square with what other texts permit us to conclude. Since other passages offer much more detailed explanations of justification by faith alone, it is good to allow them to be the primary witness.

On a similar point, Paul explicitly says in Galatians 2 that seventeen years after he was converted he went to Jerusalem to consult with the other apostles, and they “added nothing to me.” Paul’s gospel was the same as Peter’s, James’s, and John’s. And, lest we think this is just general agreement, remember that justification by faith alone is the primary theme of Galatians, and that Paul later will say that to accept the work of circumcision — the God-ordained consecration rite of the Old Testament Jews — is to abandon the gospel entirely. Peter, James, John, and Paul all agreed that justification is by faith alone.

Also, to think James is teaching justification by faith and works fails to observe that he, just a few verses later, quotes the same passage that Paul uses in Romans 4: “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” James knows that Abraham was justified by faith, not by works. He tells us what he means when he says that Abraham was “justified by works.” “By works faith was made perfect. And the Scripture was fulfilled…” His obedience demonstrated the authenticity of his faith, showing that it was real. His faith was true faith because it led to obedience.

This is the reason James talks about Abraham here. He is rebuking his readers for boasting of their faith but failing to live it out. It’s not that works are essential to justification, but rather that works demonstrate whether someone’s profession is authentic. James makes works the inevitable fruit of faith, but he does not intend to make works a part of the root of faith. His point is the same as John’s in 1 John 2: “By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.”

Finally, we need to be aware that “justified” does not always mean the same thing. The word itself doesn’t change meaning, but its import does. “Justify” means to consider righteous. It does not tell us who is considering a person righteous, nor does it tell us the basis of that assessment. So when Luke 7:29 says, “even the tax collectors justified God,” it does not mean that they made God righteous. They had no capacity to add anything to God’s character. Instead, they recognized His righteousness based on His actions. They considered Him righteous because that’s what He was.

But when Paul speaks of justification (in Romans 3, for example), He is saying that God considers us righteous based on Christ’s actions. The basic meaning of “justified” remains the same, but the overall meaning changes based on the agent, the recipient, and the basis of the justification. As compared to Luke, God is the agent (not the tax collectors), believers are the recipients (not God), and Christ is the basis of justification (not God’s actions). 

When James speaks of Abraham being justified, I don’t think he is using the term to describe imputed righteousness (as Paul does in Romans or as Jesus does in Luke 18:9-14 — “the tax collector went down to his house justified”). Rather, he’s saying that Abraham’s claim to belong to God was proven authentic because he obeyed God. His faith was shown by his works (cf. 2:18), so he could justifiably claim to be justified. His claim to be God’s child was proven true by his obedience. His faith was justified by his works.

This may feel technical, but it makes all the difference to the right understanding of the gospel, which is, of course, essential to a deep relationship with God. If you slip off one side and require works before someone can be justified, you have become a legalist. If you slip off the other side and do not require works as a true and necessary result of justification, you have become an anti-nomian (against-law). Biblical precision requires us to make works the necessary result of all true faith without making them essential to that faith.

So then, justification by faith alone is not an obstacle to obedience because the Bible makes obedience the visible evidence in the lives of those who are justified.

Obedience is God’s intended aim in justifying us

Third and finally, the Bible teaches that God justified us in order to make our obedience possible.

In Ephesians 2 the apostle Paul writes that we have been saved “by grace…through faith.” This salvation is God’s gift, not of works. This is nothing less than the doctrine of justification by faith alone. God’s grace does not come to us because of our works, but rather through our faith because of Jesus.

But Paul ends the paragraph by speaking of what we do — our works. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (v10, italics mine). God saved us by grace and recreated us in Christ so that we would live holy lives which glorify Him. He justifies us for the purpose of our obedience.

Similarly, Paul tells the Galatians to “stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (5:1). This yoke, as he makes clear elsewhere in the letter, is believing that Christians must obey part of the Mosaic law in order to be justified. Christ has set us free so that we do not have to work for God’s favor. God loves us because of Christ. Full stop.

But why did God give us this liberty? So we could be freed to love. A free person — a justified person — is not someone who lives for himself. He lives for God and for others. Though we have been “called to liberty,” we must not “use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh” (5:13). Instead, we serve each other in love. God justified us so that we would be freed to obey Him.

We find the same motif in 2 Corinthians: “The love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again” (5:14-15). Again, notice the “that.” Why did Jesus die for us? So we would not live for ourselves, but for Him. He justified us through His death, covering our sins, to enable our obedience.

Justification by faith alone does not hinder obedience because our obedience is the very reason Christ died.

Conclusion

I’m aware that many people, even Anabaptists, have used this doctrine to excuse their sin. That behavior is biblically indefensible. But the misuse of a thing does not negate its proper use. When we neglect to teach justification by faith alone, we neglect the gospel. Justification by faith is a central tenet of the gospel, thus the gospel call is continually—“believe, and you will be saved.” The evangelistic offer of free grace to anyone who believes is nothing but a mirage if justification by faith is a myth. Justification is more than a biblical doctrine; it is essential to the biblical gospel.