Edwards on justification by faith alone - 11 August 2009 |
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I was talking with a friend the other day about this and that, and was reminded how much I love Jonathan Edwards’s Justification by Faith Alone.
Written in 1738 to counter the growing threat of Arminianism in New England, it is a work of theological genius. It combines many of Edwards’s greatest gifts – theological precision, philosophical sophistication, thoughtful exegesis – with an additional trait not displayed in some of his other works: it’s short. Well, short-ish.
You can even read it free online at the Jonathan Edwards Center.
In this and a few future posts, we’ll be working through Edwards’s work by paraphrasing/summarising a chunk at a time. Text in quotes is taken directly from the Yale edition; page references in brackets.
Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, p. 147ff.
‘To the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness’ (Romans 4:5).
Four important things flow from this verse:
1. When God justified a person, he doesn’t have regard for any moral goodness in that person. For God ‘justifies the ungodly‘ (Romans 4:5). So, ‘immediately before’ (p. 147) God justifies us, he obviously isn’t looking at us and thinking, ‘Hey, look at how godly (s)he is!’ It’s like when God gives sight to the blind: immediately before they receive their sight, they can’t see.
2. When this verse talks about ‘the one who does not work’ (Romans 4:5), it not just talking about the ceremonial law. It’s talking about all ‘works of morality and godliness’ (p. 148), because ‘the ungodly’ and ‘the one who does not work’ clearly mean the same thing.
3. The ‘faith’ (Romans 4:5) spoken of here is not just another word for obedience. Striving for obedience in order to be justified is a very different from trusting in a God who justifies the disobedient.
4. The very fact that the justified person’s faith is ‘counted’ (Romans 4:5; i.e. ‘imputed’) ‘for righteousness’ (p. 148) demonstrates that God regards the justified person as having no righteousness in himself. Yet the consequences of this imputation for the justified person ‘are the same as if he had righteousness’ (p. 148). The context points in precisely this direction (v. 4 – the ‘gift’; v. 6 – ‘righteousness apart from works’; vv. 7-8 – ‘blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven … against whom the Lord will not count his sin’).
This all boils down to a simple one-liner: ‘We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue of goodness of our own‘ (p. 149).
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Books, Justification by Faith Alone, Minister's Blog