Faith and Works

In The Moral Teaching of Christ we saw that each of the four Gospels presents Christ as teaching — clearly, repeatedly, and without apology — that God opposes all sin and shows favor only to those who obey his commands. And we saw that Paul echoes that same point with equal clarity and force. Yet we also saw something else: both Christ and Paul say, just as plainly, that God welcomes into his favor as heirs of eternal life all who believe the good news Christ announces. Put side by side, those statements can sound like a contradiction — and that tension is what we need to face now.

Because the New Testament teaches both truths so strongly, we cannot accept any “solution” that weakens either one. The first claim is demanded by the supreme authority of the moral law, which will not tolerate any violation of its rights. The second is just as necessary, because only full pardon can meet the deep need of guilty and helpless humanity. So we now look for the underlying harmony between the claims of justice and the message of mercy.

That harmony appears when we look closely at what saving faith is about—that is, the nature of the “good news” God requires us to believe as a condition of his favor. As we have already seen, the gospel is not merely a statement about God; it is an announcement of what God will do for those who believe. In other words, saving faith is not mainly believing a doctrine, but trusting a remarkable promise. And that truth gives us the solution we need.

Christ’s moral teaching forces us to this conclusion: God favors only those who obey his commands. If that is true, then it is psychologically impossible to believe that God receives us into his favor while we are still holding on to sin — or to believe that he smiles on us while we are content to keep doing what he condemns. No one, after all, can be saved against his will. So the law that speaks with unquestionable authority — “the soul that sins will die” — makes saving faith impossible for anyone who is unwilling to give up sin. At the same time, experience has taught us how unable we are to offer the obedience God requires. That is why the promise that God will welcome all who believe the gospel necessarily includes the promise that he will produce in them the obedience he requires. Justifying faith, then, is confidence not only that God now receives into his favor those who believe this good news of salvation, but also that from the moment we believe he will give us power to conquer sin. And it is equally clear that we cannot keep exercising saving faith unless we actually turn away from sin—because we cannot believe that God smiles on us while we keep doing what he frowns upon.

At a future time, I hope to show that Christ claims the active and unreserved devotion of everyone he rescues from the penalty of past sins. If that is understood, then believing the good news Christ announces includes a readiness to give him the homage he demands — and that homage requires abandoning all sin.

So now we can see how Christ’s moral teaching — repeated by the law written on every human heart — protects the gospel from being twisted. It does this by making faith (a condition of salvation) impossible for anyone who does not intend to forsake sin, and making lasting faith impossible for anyone who does not actually overcome sin. In other words, the moral law forces those who love sin to refuse God’s promise, and so it keeps them outside the people for whom the gospel announces salvation. It shuts every door to forgiveness except the one that leads away from all sin.

In Righteousness Through Faith we saw that Paul’s basic gospel is summed up in the words, “a man is justified by faith apart from works of law” (Rom. 3:28, 30; Gal. 2:16 twice). And yet, in Rom. 2:13 he also says, “not the hearers of law are righteous with God; but the doers of law will be justified.” Closely matching this, we read in Matt. 12:37, in connection with the day of judgment, “by thy words thou wilt be justified and by thy words thou wilt be condemned.” And James 2:21 asks, “was not Abraham justified by works when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” Taken together, these point to a present and preliminary justification through faith, and a final justification by works.

These two justifications are not at odds; they fit together and are tightly linked. Present justification by faith would be meaningless if it were not a real anticipation of the final verdict of the great Judge. And that final approval is conditional (see Rom. 2:7) on continuing in good works. Moreover, as I hope to show later, through faith we receive not only God’s present favor but also power to walk in the path of obedience. So the two justifications simply reflect the two lines of teaching we have been tracing.

In the New Testament these two strands — the safeguard and the doctrine being safeguarded — are woven together very closely, especially in Paul. After stating in Rom. 1:16–17 his central message of righteousness through faith, he immediately adds (in 2:2–13) the moral safeguard just described, before he goes on to expound in full (3:21–4:25) his main doctrine. In the same way, after asserting and defending that doctrine in Gal. 2:16–5:12, he adds in 5:13–6:10 a clear statement of inevitable and exact moral retribution. And the strongly evangelical teaching of the Fourth Gospel has its moral counterpart not only in the conspicuous moral teaching of the First Gospel, but also in the plain and strong teaching of I John 2:29–3:10.

Already in Universal Sin and Moral Ruin we saw that both Christ and Paul assume all people have sinned and are now, unless saved by Christ, walking a path of sin. And from God’s anger against sin we have now inferred that no one enjoys his favor except those who turn from sin and serve God. This turning—from sin to God—is described in the Revised Version of Psalm 51:13, Acts 15:3, and James 5:19–20 as conversion (or being converted). The words (שׁוּב, ἐπιστροφή, ἐπιστρέφω) translated that way are often presented as a condition of salvation. So, Isa. 55:7: “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return (יָשֹׁ֤ב) to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” And Jeremiah 3:12, 22; 4:1; 18:11; 24:7; 35:15; 36:3, 7; and many other places. Also Matt. 13:15: “lest they should turn-again (ἐπιστρέψωσιν) and I should heal them;” and Acts 3:19; 9:35; 11:21; 14:15; 15:19; 26:18, 20, with phrases like “repent and turn-again,” “turn from these vain things to God,” and “turn them from darkness to light.” So too, I Thess. 1:9: “how ye turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God;” and I Peter 2:25. In Gal. 4:9 we even find a backward turning — to the weak and poor elements of the world.

Closely linked with this word ἐπιστρέφω for turn-again (or return, or be-converted), and with forgiveness of sins, we also find in Acts 3:9; 26:20; Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; 24:47; and Acts 5:31 a Greek word that is always translated repent: μετανοέω. It is paired with “faith” in Mark 1:15 (“repent and believe in the Gospel”) and in Acts 20:21. And it is presented very plainly as a condition of salvation in Luke 13:3, 5: “except ye repent, ye shall all in like manner perish.” This word now calls for our attention.

From its form, the Greek word translated repent μετανοέω means an afterthought — a change of mind. In that sense it is sometimes used in classical Greek and in the Septuagint. So in I Sam. 15:29, speaking of God, “He will not turn nor repent, because He is not a man that He should repent;” and in Jer. 4:28, “I have spoken and I will not repent, I have sworn and I will not turn away from it.” Yet in Jer. 18:8 we read, “If that nation concerning which I have spoken turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil which I thought to do to them;” and similarly in verse 10, “I will repent of the good wherewith I said that I would benefit them.” Nearly the same language appears in Jonah 3:10; 4:2 (compare Joel 2:13–14). The seeming contradiction is easy to explain: since all God’s purposes are good, he cannot change them the way humans do. But to say as strongly as possible that God’s treatment of people is conditioned by their own actions, Jeremiah represents God as saying that if people will turn from sin, he will turn from his purpose to punish them.

The same word can also mean a moral change of mind (Wisdom 11:24; 12:10, 19; Sirach 44:6). And in that sense it is used in Matt. 3:2; Mark 6:12; Luke 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; and Rom. 2:4 — often without added explanation, suggesting the word itself is definite enough. In Acts 8:22; Heb. 6:1; Rev. 2:21–22; 9:20–21; 16:11 (and in 2 Cor. 12:21) we are told what sins people did or did not turn away from in mind. Elsewhere, we are told the aim of repentance: in Matt. 12:41 and Luke 11:32, (“to the preaching of Jonah,” meaning to do what he told them); in Acts 11:18, “repentance to life;” in 20:21, “towards God;” in 2 Cor. 7:10, “repentance for salvation;” and in 2 Tim. 2:25, “for knowledge of the truth.”

Since the word translated repent etymologically means a change of mind — and that meaning fits its use everywhere — while the word translated turn-again (or return, or be-converted) describes a turning around toward some definite object, it is best to take that latter word as covering the whole inward-and-outward change God requires, and to take repent as naming the inward turning to God. If so, we may define REPENTANCE, as the New Testament uses the word, as a sinner’s purpose to forsake sin and serve God.

Repentance, understood in this way, is stated or implied as a condition of salvation in the passages already quoted. And even if we set those texts aside, the entire moral teaching of the Bible implies repentance is absolutely necessary. For if (as we are compelled to believe) God smiles only on those who do right, and if (as Paul assumes and our hearts confirm) apart from Christ all people are pursuing a wrong path, then God’s present favor can be received only by those who deliberately resolve to forsake sin and from now on obey God. In fact, without that resolve, the law written on the heart forbids us to believe that we have his favor. It is psychologically impossible to believe that God smiles on us while we keep walking a path he forbids. So without repentance there can be no genuine faith, and therefore no justification. In that sense, repentance is not a second condition added alongside faith; it is already included in what faith truly is. That is why the texts above can speak of repentance as essential, while faith is still more often named as the single condition.

In Rom. 2:4 Paul rebukes an imagined objector for not recognizing that God is leading him to repentance. Yet, despite that divine leading, the person still has (verse 5) an “impenitent heart.” In Greek idiom, this means God is truly exerting an influence aimed at repentance, but because the person resists, the influence produces no result. Paul’s general statement, and the appeal he builds on it, imply that God is exerting this influence on all people — because if there were an exception, it could be the very person Paul is addressing. And Christ teaches that apart from such divine influence, repentance is impossible: in John 6:44, “no one can come to me except the Father . . . draw him,” and again in verse 65, “no one can come to me except it be given to him from the Father.” On this teaching, repentance is God’s work and gift. So, 2 Tim. 2:25: “if peradventure God may give them repentance.” And similarly Acts 5:31: “to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins;” and 11:18: “to the Gentiles God has given repentance to life.”

All this implies that God is at work on all people, pressing on them an influence that urges them to resolve to forsake sin and from now on serve him; and, that without this divine influence no one will or can — even in the heart — turn to God; but that what the influence actually accomplishes depends on whether a person surrenders to it. In short, repentance is God’s work in a human being; but impenitence is entirely the result of a person resisting divine persuasion.

In line with this, Paul writes in Phil. 1:6, “He who has begun in you a good work will complete it,” and in 2:3, “it is God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure.” The whole New Testament teaches or assumes that from the earliest desire for better things to final victory over the last enemy, salvation is entirely God’s gift and God’s work — his influences acting on people and in people, and on all people — yet the actual outcome of those influences depends completely on a person’s free surrender to them.

At a future time, I hope to show that salvation at every stage is the outworking of a deliberate and eternal purpose of God.

It should now be clear that the announcement of forgiveness which we have traced back to Christ’s own words does not clash with the demands of the moral law. At some point in the future we shall see that this announcement actually helps fulfill the law’s commands in a way so striking that it reveals the common source of both the law and the gospel.

 

 

 

 

 

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This post is based upon Lecture XIV from J. A. Beet's book Through Christ to God: A Study in Scientific Theology (1893), re-written with the assistance of Microslop CoPilot. The original text may be found at the Internet Archive here: Through Christ to God.