Faith Alone

Romans 3:28

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

Last week we began our journey toward Reformation Day by considering sola Scriptura: the conviction that Scripture alone is our final authority for what we believe and how we live. That conviction is not an end in itself. It is a means. Once we determine that the Bible alone governs the church, the next question naturally follows: what does the Bible actually say about how a sinner is made right with God?

That was no abstract question for the sixteenth century. It was the question that kept Martin Luther awake at night. Luther had been taught to see the "righteousness of God" as a standard that condemned him, a measuring rod he could never meet no matter how many hours he spent in confession. He later said that he hated that phrase. Then, as he studied Paul's letter to the Romans, he came to see that the righteousness of God is not only the righteousness by which God is just, but also the righteousness God provides in Christ for those who believe.

That discovery is what we mean by sola fide, faith alone. It is the Reformation's answer to the question of how a sinner stands before a holy God: we are justified, declared righteous, not on the basis of anything we accomplish, but through faith in Christ alone. Notice that the Reformers did not arrive at this answer by cleverness or by rebellion. They arrived at it by reading Scripture. So, this morning we will do the same. We will look at two texts, and then at one very famous, and very controversial, word.

Justified by Faith (Rom. 3:28) and the Gift of Grace (Eph. 2:8-9)

Listen first to our verse in Romans, in the English Standard Version: "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law." (3:28)

The vocabulary here is the vocabulary of the courtroom. To justify is not to make someone morally better; it is to declare someone righteous in the verdict of the judge. Paul has spent the previous two and a half chapters building the case against us. Jew and Gentile alike are under sin, every mouth is stopped, and the whole world is held accountable to God. Then, in the verses just before our text, he announces that the righteousness of God has been manifested "apart from the law," through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. The verdict is acquittal, and the ground of that verdict is not our record but Christ's work, a point Paul makes when he speaks of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation, a sacrifice that satisfies God's righteous wrath, by his blood.

So, when Paul says, "apart from works of the law," he is not qualifying the role of works. He is excluding them entirely from the ground of justification.

Now consider Paul’s declaration to the Ephesians: "For by grace you have been 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)

Here Paul moves from the language of the courtroom to the language of the gift. Now bear with me as I get a bit academic here, but careful readers have long noted that the word "this" is neuter in the Greek, while "faith" and “grace” are both feminine. A demonstrative pronoun like the word “this” would naturally be in its feminine form if it was referring to either of those individually. Instead, Paul is most likely pointing to the whole saving event: grace, salvation, and even the faith by which we receive Christ. All of it is God's gift rather than our own accomplishment. That is exactly the point. Nothing in the package originates with us. Even the hand that receives is a hand God has opened.

Now, I realize some may feel uneasy at the suggestion that faith itself is God's gift. Yet I would ask: what do you possess that you did not first receive? Was your faith the product of your intelligence, your temperament, or the circumstances of your life? If so, would we not immediately recognize those things as gifts from God's hand? Then surely, we should also give Him the glory for the faith through which we came to Christ.

Consider an illustration. Suppose you have a crushing debt, and a stranger walks into the bank with the sole intent of blessing someone. He then pays your debt in full and hands you the receipt, and he’s clearly pleased to bless you. Now, to offer the stranger a quarter toward the balance, as though to help out, would be insulting to his generosity. Nor would it make sense to walk out of the bank congratulating yourself for having accepted the receipt.

And that is why Paul adds the final clause: "so that no one may boast." If justification depended even partly on us, there would be someone in heaven with a little room to say, "Well, I did contribute my share." Paul will not allow it. If Paul is right, then heaven will be filled not with stories of human accomplishment but with praise for divine mercy.

Luther's "Alone": Why One Word Mattered

Now to the controversy. When Luther translated the New Testament into German, he rendered Romans (3:28) in a way that included a word not found in the Greek text: that a person is justified "without the works of the law, alone through faith." Luther supplied the German word allein, meaning “alone,” although no direct equivalent word appears in the Greek text. And his opponents were furious. The charge was that Luther had tampered with Scripture to prop up his own doctrine.

In 1530 Luther answered his critics in a work usually called the Open Letter on Translating. He made several points:

First, he argued that translation is about meaning, not mechanical word-matching. In German vernacular, when you wish to say that one thing is true and another is not, you naturally add the word "alone." Say "the farmer brings grain and no money," and a German speaker will say the farmer "alone brings grain." The word is not in the Latin or Greek, but it is in the sense, and a faithful translator, he said, must go to the marketplace and listen to how ordinary people speak.

Second, Luther argued that the word belongs to the sense of the text itself. Paul has just said "apart from works of the law." If a person is justified apart from works, then what remains? Faith, and only faith. The word "alone" does not add anything to Paul's meaning; it states plainly what his sentence already means. Luther also noted that earlier Christian writers had spoken of justification by faith in similar terms.

Third, and with characteristic subtlety, which is to say none at all, Luther lost his patience with his critics. He pretended to speak for himself against the whole papal establishment, in effect saying, "Doctor Martin Luther will have it so." It was sarcasm. Luther was not a man who left much room for ambiguity in his tone, and we need not defend every sentence he wrote in order to appreciate the point he was making.

It is fair to say that Luther's choice remains debated among translators, and that is why our own ESV does not include the word "alone" in Romans 3:28. But the question is not whether the English word appears in the verse. The question is whether the idea is there. And on that question, the whole sweep of Paul's argument in Romans and Galatians leaves no doubt. Faith is not one ingredient of our own among several of God’s. Christ's finished work is the entire ground of our acceptance with God.

So, what do we do with this? Let me offer two brief applications.

First, rest. If your standing before God depended on your record, you would have good reason to be anxious every single day. But Christ has already borne the penalty and supplied the righteousness. In justification, our sins are credited to Christ, who bore their penalty in His flesh on the cross, and His righteousness is credited to us. On the days when your prayers feel thin and your obedience feels thinner, your justification is no less secure, because it never rested on you.

Second, give thanks, and let that thanksgiving bear fruit. Sola fide, faith alone, is never an invitation to lazy living. Faith that receives Christ also receives the Spirit, and good works follow as the fruit of justification, not the root of it.

Next week we will continue our journey toward Reformation Day as we consider sola gratia, grace alone. From there, we will continue through the five Solae, culminating in our congregational celebration on November 1 as we give thanks for what God has done for His church through the recovery of the gospel during the Reformation.

Until then, may we hold fast to the good news that Luther rediscovered in Paul: that sinners are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

With love in Christ,

Pastor Chris