Sola Series: Sola Fide (Faith Alone)

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. - Ephesians 2:8-9

Last week we discussed the first of the five Solas, Sola Gratia, meaning grace alone.  This week we turn to the next sola, Sola Fide, or faith alone.  To define faith simply, we could say that it is complete trust and/or confidence in someone or something.  For our purposes in this article, we will be discussing faith in someone, namely Christ, but we will cover that in detail in the next sola, Solus Christus. Oftentimes, faith in the religious sense is considered to be blind.  The Bible, salvation, and so on are things that Christians believe, and hope is true, but they don’t really have assurance of that.  In many cases, our faith is mocked, even, because it denies evidence or reality or something along those lines.  If you’re reading this and you believe Christians have blind faith, I assure you, we do not.  Our faith is based on biblical evidence, and the Bible is a historically accurate collection of books written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses that stands the test of historicity and the science of textual criticism and is, therefore, trustworthy.  It is this Bible that teaches us about the concept of faith alone, so let us examine what it says on the matter.

Justified by Faith

One of the earliest articles I wrote was on the doctrine of justification, whereby we are counted to be righteous on account of Christ’s righteousness being imputed (counted) to us as being our own.  This is why we can be considered righteous even though we sin, or as Martin Luther explained it, simul justus et peccator: at the same time righteous and a sinner.  Sola Fide is how this happens.  We put our faith in Christ and His atoning work and at this moment, our sins are transferred to Him and His righteousness is transferred to us.  Paul summarizes this in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

Returning to our definition of faith above, those who are in Christ have put their faith, or complete trust and confidence in Him and His atoning work.  We believe and trust that when God says there is no condemnation for those in Christ, this is true, and on the grounds of our faith, God counts us as being righteous in His eyes and forgiven of all sins past, present, and future.  Because Christ himself stated that the work needed to accomplish our salvation was finished (John 19:30), we not only believe but have complete confidence in the fact that those in Christ will not be lost.  Our salvation is eternally secure because Christ secures it. The righteousness of Christ is counted as ours by faith and nothing else.

Not by Works

We need to take note of v. 9 where Paul says that salvation is by faith and not works.  By this, he means that there is nothing we could do apart from faith in Christ that will save us.  Remember, the work is done; we can add nothing to it.  Sadly, however, there are a lot of people who are relying on their “goodness” to save them.  The thought process goes something like this, “I don’t believe a loving God would send a good person to hell, and I am basically good.  I do a lot of good things and I’m always kind to others, so I’m fairly confident God will not send me to hell.”  There are a lot of problems with this thought process, but I want to examine just a few.  First, how do you know you’ve done enough good to warrant your being saved?  What is the threshold?  What if you die and you were one good deed short?  There is no assurance in this.  Secondly, God doesn’t send good people to hell.  That much is true since there was only one good person, and He is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us.  Thirdly, God doesn’t send people to hell.  Since we are born into a sinful nature and we continually sin against God, we are already well on our way to condemnation.  It is God through Christ who saves us from that, not us. 

This brings up the last problem, we could not save ourselves if we wanted to, because our works have to saving merit.  No amount of charity, goodwill, kindness, or anything along those lines accounts for the fact that we have sinned against an eternally holy God who is justified in His anger against sin. This holy God must punish sin, or He is not holy.  Of course, this does not nullify the importance of good works.  In fact, James says these works will be justifying evidence that we have put our faith in Christ (James 2:26).  As John Calvin explained it, “Faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.”  Think of it this way, works are the result of salvation, but they are never the cause of it.

Simply put, we can offer no remedy whatsoever for the fact that we are all, without exception, guilty of sin.  Romans 3:23-24, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” In these verses, we have the bad news (we’re sinners), and the good news (we’re saved by Christ). Remember that grace is unmerited favor, meaning we didn’t earn it and we didn’t deserve it; so, if we think that we can work our way into God’s favor, we are eternally wrong. Our faith has to be in the only work that saves, the work Christ accomplished on the cross.

Summary

Sola Fide teaches us that our salvation comes not through works or any other means, it is by faith alone.  But as we saw with the definition of faith, it also needs an object.  There needs someone to put our faith in.  Next week we will see that the object of our faith is Christ, and that is why we can be confident of our salvation.

Soli Deo Gloria