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The doctrine of justification by faith helps us maintain “pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). Holding to justification by faith keeps us from falling for the lie that we can earn heaven. There is no ritual, no sacrament, no deed that can make us worthy of the righteousness of Christ.
The doctrine of justification by faith is the heart of the gospel. And it goes like this: the righteousness required for our justification, for our right standing and our righteousness before God, is not a righteousness we perform, even by the grace of God.
The doctrine of justification concerns God’s gracious judicial verdict in advance of the day of judgment, pronouncing guilty sinners, who turn in self-despairing trust to Jesus Christ, forgiven, acquitted of all charges and declared morally upright in God’s sight.
The doctrine of justification by faith excludes our works of obedience to the law as a means or cause of our justification before God. But it also affirms that acts of love and good works necessarily follow from our faith as the fruit of our faith.
The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is, and has always been, the number one target of the enemy's attack. It provides the foundation of the bridge that reconciles God and man—without that key doctrine, Christianity falls.
Justification is forensic, which means that it is legal. We are declared just in God's courtroom because Jesus lived an obedient life and paid the penalty for our sins. We receive this justification by faith alone, because there are no good deeds we can do to earn it.
Schreiner provides a theological, historical, and exegetical survey of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. He argues that the traditional, Reformed interpretation of justification is
Martin Luther and other Reformers considered the doctrine of justification by faith alone the article on which the church stands or falls. It is at the core of the gospel, and the church needs to embrace it as such.
The New Testament includes well-reasoned defenses of the doctrine of justification from the attacks of false teachers. In church history, the doctrine of justification by faith alone was central to the Protestant Reformers in their refutation of the false gospel of Roman Catholicism.
It is astonishing that the Biblical gospel of justification by faith alone answers these three human failures: the hopelessness of unbelievers, the feeling of futility from falling down, and the fear of making global claims for Christ.