If I could by work or merit love the Son of God and come to Him, why should He have sacrificed Himself for me? This shows how the papists ignore the Scriptures, particularly the doctrine of faith. If they had paid any attention at all to these words, that it was absolutely necessary for the Son of God to be given into death for me, they would never have invented so many hideous heresies. - Martin Luther, The Epistle to the Galatians1
Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life. - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion vol. 1, 725.
This Catholic view of justification suggests then that the conversion to belief in Christ by the grace of faith is fundamental to justification, but is not the whole picture. We cannot be “simul justus et peccator” in the words of Luther: simultaneously just and sinners. Yes, human frailties and tendencies toward sin remain in the faithful until death and must be struggled against. But if a Christian commits a serious sin (fornication, neglect of the weekly and daily worship of God, grave damage done to the reputation of another) then the person loses teh grace of jsutification in charity. He may possess the grace of faith, but it is now in a weakened state, a state of wounded or lifeless faith. - Thomas Joseph White, The Light of Christ, 199.
Scripture also teaches that we are justified before God through faith in Christ, when we believe that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. Now if the Mass take away the sins of the living and the dead by the outward act justification comes of the work of Masses, and not of faith, which Scripture does not allow. - The Augsburg Confession
Saving faith is the belief, on God’s authority, of whatsoever is revealed in His Word concerning Christ; accepting and resting upon Him alone for justification and eternal life. It is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and is accompanied by all other saving graces, and leads to a life of holiness. - The Abstract of Principles
“But We also Believe that We Are Saved by Faith.”
In his section on Justification in his book The Light of Christ, Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Joseph White writes the following:
The grace of inward righteousness or "justification” is that which makes us adoptive children of God in Christ. It is the grace that stabilizes us, so to speak, in turning us toward God in an integral and authentic way. If prevenient grace is like the dawning of light, justification is like the kindling of a living flame, a fire of faith and love that burns steadily in the human heart. The Catholic Church teaches that justification occurs in a human person by grace alone and not by any natural moral agency or works of self-righteousness. This is not a subject of contention between Catholics and Protestants, at least so long as the true teaching of the Catholic Church is accurately understood!2
If we stopped here, I’d probably respond, “That’s it! I’m done with this Reformation stuff. We are no different from Roman Catholic Theology in terms of justification. We can finally stop disagreeing.” In my conversations with my Catholic friends, I’ve received remarks to the point of the following: “We too believe that God’s grace saves us through faith. We believe that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ. There is no difference between us.”
But sadly, White and our Catholic friend don’t stop here. He continues:
This Catholic view of justification suggests then that the conversion to belief in Christ by the grace of faith is fundamental to justification, but is not the whole picture. We cannot be “simul justus et peccator” in the words of Luther: simultaneously just and sinners. Yes, human frailties and tendencies toward sin remain in the faithful until death and must be struggled against. But if a Christian commits a serious sin (fornication, neglect of teh weekly and daily worship of God, grave damage done to the reputation of another) then the person loses the grace of justifciation in charity. He may possess the grace of faith, but it is now in a weakened state, a state of wounded or lifeless faith. . . . This does not mean that we can merit salvation by our own powers. It means that works of charity (themselves a grace) are the living form of faith, and without them our faith beomes inert, and in that sense dead.3
According to Roman Catholic theology, Christians can lose their righteous standing before God due to committing serious sins, but good works (the sacraments) can restore them to that status.4 As White writes later:
This is why the Church also rightly insists on the importance of regular sacramental confession and absolution: the grace of the sacrament of reconciliation acts, among other things, to restore the penitent to a state of grace, by infused charity poured anew into the heart. The life of charity is a precious gift given in baptism that should be protected, but if it is lost, the life of grace can be restored by the sacramental forgiveness of sins. Of course God can do this by his own initiative outside the sacrament of confession, but he has promised to do so always and everywhere in the sacrament, and so recourse to the sacrament gives the repentant soul freedom from incertitude and a way of assurance so as to regularly encounter and be touched by the mercy and greace of God. This vision of justification affords great hope. Little by little Chrsitains who regularly go to confession and communion can live lives free from grave sin, and can begin a process of deeper conversion: toward sanctifciation in Christ.5
So are Catholics and Protestants together of the gospel? Sadly, the answer is no because the question determining whether the Gospel is truly good news is this, “Can someone stand truly righteous before the infinite, holy God?”
For Roman Catholics, the answer is essentially, “You can’t know for sure.”
For Protestants, the answer is “Yes! By faith in Jesus!”
Welcome to Sola Fide.
Cutting Straight to the Essence of Faith
Sola Fide or “Faith Alone” can be defined as follows:
We are declared righteous in God’s sight through faith alone in Christ. Faith alone—not by our works, efforts, sacraments, or any infusion of merit—is the only instrument for receiving God’s saving grace.
This idea of being “declared righteous” or “Justification” can be defined 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.”6 I want to unpack Sola Fide for us in several ways to flesh out the magnitude of its impact on our understanding of salvation and the Christian life.
First, Sola Fide means that we cannot be righteous in God’s judgment by our own means or efforts. Biblically, we recognize that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), but then Paul states that all who are sinners can be “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). More on Jesus’ role in justification later, but no one can stand before God blameless on their own account because none are righteous before him (Rom. 3:10-11; Ps. 14:1-3; 53:1-3). Sinners cannot stand before God blameless and completely aligned with his glory and thus deserve death which is the wage for our sin (Rom. 6:23). We need to realize that “the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due” (Rom. 4:4) and thus we “have something to boast about” which is being “justified by works” (Rom. 4:2), but we can’t be declared righteous by our efforts because we are spiritually dead before God in our sins (Eph. 2:1). As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 130:3, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
Second, Sola Fide means that God freely and graciously declares us righteous before him. So how can we be declared righteous before God when we are dead in our sins and cannot measure up before the perfect, holy, and righteous God? By Sola Gratia or “by God’s grace alone.” Paul writes this good news, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). God alone can declare or count sinners righteous before him not because they deserve it but because he freely gives as a gift. It is by God’s grace alone that we are saved “through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). To be justified is to be clothed in God’s righteousness “manifested apart from the law . . . the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3:21). So God “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7).
Third, Sola Fide means that faith alone is the instrument that receives God’s saving grace for justification. Did you catch the emphasis on faith in the previous Bible passages? Faith does not save us as if it has the power to save us. Instead, it is the conduit, connection, or channel by which we receive God’s saving grace to be declared righteous. In fact, this faith or belief in Jesus is that of looking or turning our eyes to focus on something. Charles Spurgeon recalls how at his conversion he heard a preacher call out using Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (KJV). He recounts:
Then, lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodist could do, “Young man, looked to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and to live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said,—I did not take much notice of it,—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word is seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him.7
We can’t work to obtain the right standing before God since that would mean our works justify us. No one can boast that we are saved by God by our works (Eph. 2:9) because all stand in sinful rebellion before a perfectly holy God. Instead, as Romans 3:21-22, by faith in Jesus Christ, we have received God’s righteousness not by trying to meet God’s standard by our efforts, rule-keeping, and merit but by faith in Jesus Christ. This leads us to the last point.
Fourth, Sola Fide means that the sole object of Christian faith is in Christ alone who accomplished our salvation and is our righteousness by union with him. The reason why we are justified by faith alone is not because of the intensity of our faith but the object of our faith: Jesus Christ alone (Solus Christus).8 There are several facets to this wonderful reality. First, we receive Christ’s propitiation of our sins by faith. Propitiation is defined as “the satisfaction and appeasement of God’s wrath.”9 In Romans 3:24-25, Paul states that Christians receive by faith Jesus who is the propitiation for all our sins by his blood which accomplished our redemption. It is by his work of redemption that God’s grace justifies us. Second, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and our sin is imputed to him. J. V. Fesko summarizes that “The doctrine of imputation teaches that in the doctrine of justification, God imputes or accredits the righteousness and suffering of Jesus to those who are in him and, conversely, imputes the sins of those redeemed to Christ. . . . Martin Luther . . . called this double imputation the ‘glorious exchange.’ What is ours becomes Christ’s and what is Christ’s becomes ours.”10 In Romans 5:18-19, Paul states “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Therefore, all Christians “must consider [themselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).
Have You Done Enough to Stay Righteous?
Let’s cut straight to the issue with the Roman Catholic understanding of salvation that Sola Fide rightly slams against: You will never stand righteous before God if justification is the infusion of righteousness through sacraments not the imputation of righteousness by faith in Christ. As mentioned before by White and others, Justification is not seen as God’s declaration of righteousness on sinners who trust in Christ alone but instead, as a righteousness that can be lost due to sins that must be restored by works that infuse grace into oneself. In essence, Roman Catholic theology conflates both justification and sanctification into one thing by stating that a person is made righteous at baptism yet also must maintain or restore that status by receiving Christ’s merit through the sacraments.11 In short, justification is determined by our cooperation with God by our works of infusing Christ’s charity, not solely by us receiving by faith God’s righteous declaration based on Christ’s finished work for us.
Therefore, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has doctrinally rejected and historically anathematized the principles of Sola Fide by denouncing faith as the only instrument of receiving God’s grace and the imputation of Christ’s merit and righteousness to our account. This rejection is shown as follows:
Justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.12
If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.13
If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.14
If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema.15
If any one saith, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified, by the good works which he performs through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life,-if so be, however, that he depart in grace,-and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema.16
But here is the question behind the question regarding not just justification about also our entire salvation, “How can you know you have infused enough merit? Alongside this, another question is “How can your capacity of infused righteousness stand before the infinitely and perfectly righteous God, your judge?” If our justification before God is not only the remission of sins but also “sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man” which is accomplished by our cooperation and collaboration with God’s grace to infuse merit into us, how can we truly know we have enough merit infused in us? How can we know we have covered every sin with merit? And if we are talking about living coram Deo or “before the face of God,” how can I even think I have absolved myself of every speck of sin with enough merit before the One who “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand” (Ps. 130:3). Although the RCC states that we are not saved by our works, any ounce of human cooperation with God’s grace for our justification means that it ultimately depends on us, and how can we truly know we are at peace with the holy God? It turns the Christian’s life not one of freedom in Christ but of bondage to never being enough.
But praise be to God because God is not only just but also “the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26), and “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Gregg Allison states that “As God declares the ungodly ‘not guilt’ but ‘righteous’ instead, their eternal life is based not on this gracious act of God plus their own effort (even effort prompted and stead by divine grace), but on God’s declaration alone received by faith alone. They are reckoned completely righteous because God has imputed the perfect righteousness of Christ to them by faith. What could they possibly add to this salvation? Nothing at all. how could they possibly merit eternal life? They cannot.”17 Instead, Christ is enough and his perfect righteousness and merit are not infused into me by my efforts but credited to me by faith in him to save me to the uttermost.
My Righteousness is Jesus’ Life
Although much more can be said, what Sola Fide is getting at is that faith alone is that sole connection that unites us to Christ, thus, why Christians receive an imputed and alien righteousness that is not their own. Thomas Schreiner writes that “faith counts as our righteousness because it unites us with Jesus Christ in his death and Resurrection (Rom 3:21-26; 4:25). Pual emphasizes that the faith that justifies is apart from works and that faith justifies the ungodly (4:1-8). There is nothing in the human subject that brings justification. . . . What saves believers is not ultimately their faith but the object of their faith. They believe in the God who has given over his Son to death and raised him from the dead (4:25). Faith saves, faith alone saves, because Christ as the crucified and risen one saves.”18
Thus, life is no longer one of trying to weigh uncertain moral scales to see if we have done enough to maintain a good relationship with God. Instead, by faith alone in Christ, the Christian life is one that lives from God’s favor, not for God’s favor. The Christian can say along with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Justification by faith alone unites the Christian to the indelible righteousness and love of Christ that will never change because Christ dwells in and with believers by the Holy Spirit “who has been give to us” (Rom. 5:5; see also Gal. 4:6). Therefore, Christ is our righteousness, and we can be not like the Pharisee who boast in his own status and pedigree of self-righteousness but like the tax collector who after saying “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” Jesus concluded his parable by saying “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:13-14).
No humble dress, no fervent prayer,
No lifted hands, no tearful song,
No recitation of the truth
Can justify a single wrong.
My righteousness is Jesus' life,
My debt was paid by Jesus' death,
My weary load was borne by Him
And he alone can give me rest.
- Eric Schumacher & David L. Ward, “Not In Me”
I will be referencing this work from this online source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1549/1549-h/1549-h.htm#link2HCH0002
Thomas Joseph White, The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 198.
Ibid., 199
Ibid., 199; Tim Staples, "Mortal and Venial Sin," Catholic Answers, https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/mortal-and-venial-sin; Jimmy Akin, "Can Salvation Be Lost," Catholic Answers, https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-salvation-be-lost.
White, The Light of Christ, 199-200.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 727.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Autobiography of C.H. Spurgeon, Volume I (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1897), 106.
Christopher W. Morgan and Thomas R. Schreiner, Salvation (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 176. See also my article on Propitiation here.
J. V. Fesko, "The Doctrine of Imputation," The Gospel Coalition, accessed October 1, 2024, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-doctrine-of-imputation/.
White, The Light of Christ, 199; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), accessed September 29, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM, 1987, 93, 2019-27.
CCC, 2019.
Council of Trent, session 6, Canon IX, https://www.papalencyclicals.net//councils/trent/sixth-session.htm.
Ibid., Canon XI.
Ibid., Canon XIV.
Ibid., Canon XXXII.
Gregg R. Allison, 40 Questions About Roman Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2021), 237.
Thomas R. Schreiner, Faith Alone: The Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 185.