Dr. Sproul discusses both Paul's concept of being justified by faith alone and James' view of being justified by both faith and works since both use Abraham to support their position. This issue has divided Roman Catholics and Protestants for centuries. In the discussion, Dr. Sproul also addresses a related issue concerning a document titled Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

We are continuing to make our way through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Tonight, we reach the fourth chapter of that epistle. I will be reading Romans 4:1–8 with no guarantees that I will be able to cover this much tonight. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.

But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”

The Word of God for the people of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Our Father, as we have another opportunity to consider the depths and riches of the gospel that has been proclaimed to us in the New Testament and has been accomplished for us by Thine only begotten Son, we ask that this evening, as we continue this contemplation of the depths and riches of that grace by which we are redeemed, we would have it confirmed in our hearts once and for all that the just shall live by faith. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Supreme Example of Justification by Faith

We recall from last week that as Paul was continuing to explain the ground of our justification, he asked the question, “Where is boasting?” His response to that question was the emphatic reply, “It is excluded.” Since our justification is by faith and by faith alone, by no merit in us nor endeavors of our works by which we earn our favor with God, there is no room whatsoever for boasting save in Christ.

In this section of the epistle, Paul will bring forth exhibit A to prove his case, not by an abstract exposition of doctrine, but by a historical reconnaissance reaching back into the Old Testament to the person of Abraham, who was known to the Jews as the father of the faithful. Paul looks to Abraham as the supreme example of how a person is justified by faith and not by works.

Before we get into this exposition, let us note at the outset how important it is for us to understand that salvation occurred in the Old Testament in exactly the manner that it is accomplished in the New Testament. When Paul speaks of Abraham’s justification being by faith, that is a shorthand statement for Abraham being justified by the righteousness of Christ.

The only difference between our justification and Abraham’s justification was that Abraham looked forward to the Promised One who would be his Redeemer. He rejoiced to see His day. He trusted in the promise of that Redeemer, whereas we look backwards to the past work of Jesus that has been accomplished. The only difference is the timeframe for the object of faith. Abraham’s faith looked forward; our faith looks backward. But the ground of Abraham’s justification was exactly the same as ours—namely, the person and work of Jesus.

This is important because the theology most dominant in our country today tends to see a strong disjunction between salvation in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. It says that the Old Testament is the age of law, the New Testament is the age of grace, and that God’s old covenant was different in terms of redeeming people than today. But Paul refutes that idea right here when he brings forward as his example of the doctrine of justification by faith someone not from the New Testament but from the Old Testament: father Abraham.

Abraham’s Righteous Belief

Paul says: “What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.” Paul is saying clearly that Abraham is also excluded from boasting, because Abraham was not justified by works, nor are we. He continues: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.”

In this text, Paul cites a statement found in Genesis 15, when God appeared to Abraham and told him that He would be his shield and his very great reward. Abraham was staggered by that announcement because Abraham was one of the wealthiest men on the face of the earth.

What do you give a man who has everything? To the Jew, you give him progeny. You give him sons. Abraham had plenty of cattle, livestock, and property, but he had no son. He asked God, “How can you be my great reward when I have no son and my heir is my servant, Eliezer of Damascus?” God answered, “No, Abraham, Eliezer your servant will not be your heir; but one coming from your own loins will be your heir.” That staggering promise God gave to Abraham in his old age resulted in the statement that Abraham believed God. He trusted the promise of God.

Abraham’s faith was not without some mixture of wavering and doubt. Abraham said to God, “How can I know for sure that you’re going to do this?” Then God put him to sleep and gave him a magnificent theophany in which God, because He could swear by nothing greater, swore by Himself in the drama of that vision.

But what we are concerned about in Genesis 15 is the statement, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—that is, Abraham was reckoned or considered by God to be righteous not because of any righteous deeds that Abraham had performed. Rather, he was counted just by God simply on the basis that he believed the promise.

James Against Paul?

What is problematic about Paul’s argument in chapter four of Romans is the way in which James deals with the question in his epistle. So, let us fast forward to a moment in the New Testament and read from James 2:14–25:

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?

You can see clearly now why in the middle of the sixteenth century, after the Protestant Reformation was in full swing, the Roman Catholic Church had its ecumenical council, known later as the Council of Trent, in the city of Trento in Italy. In the sixth session of that council, as we have already seen, Rome first set forth her doctrine of justification and then set forth several canons condemning the Protestant understanding.

With their exposition of the doctrine of justification at the Council of Trent, the council affixed biblical footnotes to texts from the Bible that would support the decrees they sent forth. Two or three times in the sixth session they quote from James 2, particularly highlighting where the text says, “A man is justified by works, and not by faith only” (James 2:24). It would seem on the surface that there could not possibly be a clearer repudiation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone than what you just heard from the pen of the Apostle James. How do we handle that?

Many look at all this and say: “I guess Luther was wrong and the Protestant church has been wrong ever since, so we need to return to Rome and say, ‘Fathers, we have sinned.’” What makes the plot more difficult is that when James makes his case that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone, his primary exhibit in the court of theological debate is none other than father Abraham.

It would be nice if we could resolve this conundrum by saying, “When James speaks about justification, he uses a different Greek word from the word Paul uses in Romans 4.” Unfortunately, things get worse when we realize that both James and Paul use exactly the same Greek term.

This is one of those occasions where my wife will comment to me afterwards: “I don’t know how you do this. You dig yourself such a hole that I don’t see how you’re ever going to get out of that hole.” I say: “Be patient, my dear. No hole is so bad that the Word of God can’t rescue us from it.” Let us look a little bit more deeply at these two appeals, one by Paul and one by James.

Some scholars have argued that Romans was written before the book of James, and James wrote to correct Paul’s error of justification by faith alone. Others argue that James was written first and that Paul gave his lengthy exposition in Romans to correct the error James was disseminating among early Christians. Others have argued that neither one of them knew about the other person’s writing and this is a plain contradiction in the Bible between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of James. When I come to a text like this, I come as one already persuaded that this is nothing less than the Word of God, and I am also persuaded that God does not speak with a forked tongue. As problematic as these texts seem on the surface, we must dig more deeply into them and see if there is a genuine basis for resolution.

You may know how Luther first sought to resolve this problem. His Roman Catholic adversaries kept rubbing his nose, as it were, into the second chapter of James until Luther, in frustration, said: “James is an epistle of straw. The epistle does not belong in the canon of the New Testament, so it does not have canonical authority.” Luther repented of that later in his life and finally acknowledged that, yes, James is part of the canon of sacred Scripture, and he had just struggled with misunderstanding it earlier in his teaching career.

James’ Question

How can we possibly resolve our text in Romans 4 with James 2? The first thing we do is examine the context in which these statements are made and ask, What question is the author trying to answer?

I began my teaching career not teaching theology, but rather teaching philosophy, which many students in college found very difficult to deal with because of its abstract contents. As students struggled to grasp the ideas bandied about by various philosophers, I tried to help them in their attempts to sort these things out. I would say, for example, “When you’re reading Descartes, let’s first ask what problem confronted Descartes and the people of his time that provoked him to undertake this deep analysis of how we know what we know.” Once the students could understand what problems the philosophers were trying to unravel, it went a long way to help them follow the thinking and reasoning process of the philosopher.

In the same manner, I would suggest to you tonight that we ask the same question with respect to James. We already know what question the Apostle Paul addresses throughout the entire book of Romans: How can an unjust person possibly stand in the final analysis in the presence of a just and holy God? That is not the question that James is addressing. What question is he addressing, then?

James 2:14 gives us the clue since James himself tells us what question he is trying to answer. He asks this question: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Then he asks the question, “Can that faith save him?”

Saving Faith

The relationship between faith and works was one of the most critical questions of the sixteenth-century Reformation. When Luther was insisting that justification was by faith alone, people heard him and gathered that all you have to do is give intellectual recognition that Jesus was the Savior of the world. It would be like asking, “Do you believe that George Washington was the first President of the United States?” Then you say, “Yes, I believe that”—that is, you grant that is a true proposition. That is not the same thing as trusting your life for eternity to George Washington. Luther was never an Apostle of what we would call “easy believism,” where people just say, “Sure, I believe,” and that’s it.

Before I was a Christian, if you would have asked me if I believed in God, I would have said yes. If you would have asked me if I believed that Jesus was the Son of God, I would have said yes. But I had no personal relationship with Christ. I had no saving faith whatsoever. This was merely an intellectual assent to an abstract proposition.

James essentially says: “You say you believe in God—big deal. All that does is qualify you to be a demon. Anyone can believe in the existence of God. Satan believes. The demons know that God exists, and they tremble, but they don’t put their trust in God for their salvation.”

Luther had to spell out the ingredients of saving faith that include not only the data, the content that you believe, but also the intellectual assent to the propositions. But if all you have is the content and the assent, you are not going to be justified. The third and most critical element Luther delineated was what he called fiducia, which is personal trust in Christ. That is what is necessary for salvation.

James Kennedy, in his Evangelism Explosion program, used the illustration of a chair. He would say to people, “Do you see that object over there?” The person would say yes. He’d ask, “Do you believe that that’s a chair?” The person would answer, “Yes, I believe that’s a chair.” He would continue, “Do you believe that if you sat in that chair that it would hold you up?” The person would look at it, and it seemed firm and well-constructed, and he would say, “Yes, I believe that chair will hold me up.” Then Dr. Kennedy would say, “Is it holding you up now?” The person would say no. Dr. Kennedy would ask, “Why not?” And the answer would come, “Because I’m not sitting in it.” You can believe that Jesus can save you without having saving faith. But to have saving faith, you must trust that He does save you and put your trust in Him alone.

Dead Faith

The heretical notion of antinomianism is that if you have faith, you can behave as badly as you want. You can sing the hymn: “Saved from the law, O blessed condition; I can sin all I want and still have remission.” That is the theme song of the antinomian, but that was not the song of the Reformers. The formula of justification by faith alone has a footnote to it. The full phrase is this: Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.

The point is, if you have true faith, that true faith will not someday begin to manifest itself, but rather it will immediately and necessarily begin to manifest itself in your changed life. If no change follows from your profession of faith, all you have is a profession of faith. You do not possess the real thing, because real faith always results in some degree of obedience. Works flow necessarily out of faith.

The point of the gospel is that the works that flow out of true faith are in no way the grounds of your justification. Before a single work flows from your faith, the moment true faith is present, God declares you just in his sight.

But James is addressing the question: “What is the profit if I say I have faith but have no works? Will that faith save me?” The answer is, “Obviously not.” No one has ever been saved by a profession of faith. If you raised your hand in an evangelistic meeting or if you walked down the aisle and professed faith, that does not save you. Rather, it is the possession of faith that justifies you, not the profession. Now, if you possess it, you should profess it. But Jesus makes it clear that people can profess it without possessing it. He said: “These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and I say: ‘You are workers of evil. I don’t even know your name.’” True faith must always manifest itself in obedience to some degree.

James’ question is, “If some says he has faith but doesn’t have works, can faith save him?” He then gives the illustration of the person who sees someone who is hungry and cold and says, “Be warm, be filled, and depart in peace.” But if you do not give that person the things that are needed, what does it profit? What good is it? What is the utility of it? Thus, here is James’ conclusion: “Faith by itself”—that is, faith in a vacuum—“if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). It is a dead faith. James is making the point that a dead faith cannot save anyone.

Luther said that justifying faith is a fides viva, a vital faith, a living faith, a faith that is alive and well. It is healthy. It brings forth the fruit of true faith. A profession of faith that produces nothing is useless. It is a faith that has no life in it. James is saying that kind of faith is a dead faith.

Faith Demonstrated

James continues: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18). Now it is show and tell time. This is important to understand. James is saying, “You say you have faith, but how can I know that profession of faith is genuine and legitimate unless you show me that faith by your works?” That is how faith is demonstrated. It is made manifest.

Let me fast forward. I said a while ago that both Paul and James use the same Greek word for justification. The word here is dikaioō*.* If you look at that word in the Greek, it has more than one use. It can mean to be justified in the sense of being declared righteous by God in the supreme sense of dikaioō, or it can mean, at an earthly level, the demonstration of the truth of an affirmation.

Jesus uses this very word in a metaphorical way when He says, “Wisdom is justified by her children” (Luke 7:35). What does that mean when Jesus says, “Wisdom is justified by her children?” He was saying to His hearers that if you want to know whether a plan is a wise plan, you have to wait until you see the consequences, the outcome. He did not mean that the abstract concept of wisdom gains entrance into heaven by having children. No, He is speaking metaphorically and saying that wisdom is demonstrated or shown to be true wisdom by its fruit or its results.

Remember, James is wrestling with the idea of someone who claims to have faith. James is saying: “Show me. The only way you can demonstrate to me that your faith is legitimate faith is by your obedience, by your behavior.” Let me ask you this: Does God have to wait to see my behavior before He knows if the faith I profess is authentic? No, God does not need to see the works. But I may need to see the works. James may need to see the works.

When James quotes Abraham, he quotes him from Genesis 22, where Abraham offers Isaac up on the altar. It is critical for us to understand that Paul has Abraham justified in the sense that Paul is using justification already in Genesis 15. The whole point that Paul is making in Romans 4, as we will see next week, is that God did not have to wait till Mount Moriah to know whether Abraham’s faith was authentic. The moment Abraham believed, God counted him righteous.

We do not know whether Abraham’s faith was authentic until we see how he responds to the test God gives him in Genesis 22. That is what James is speaking about in James 2. He is speaking about vindicating, manifesting, or demonstrating the truth of a profession of faith.

Now back to what James says:

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. (James 2:21–24)

Let me restate that: a man is vindicated by his works and not by faith alone. There is nothing in this text by which James speaks of any merit attending the obedience of Abraham. Rather, he is describing Abraham’s obedience as testimony and proof that his profession of faith was real and valid. I know that is difficult, but I think that resolves the apparent problem between the two writers of sacred Scripture.

Grace, Not Debt

Let us go back now to Romans 4, where Paul says: “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.” That is to say, if the basis, or the foundation, or what I keep calling the ground of justification were the works of Abraham, then Abraham’s justification would not be by grace.

If Abraham’s works were good enough to make him just in the sight of God, if Abraham brought merit to the table, whether meritum de congruo or de condigno, then his justification would not have been reckoned as grace but as debt. That is to say, God would owe him justification. This is the whole point that Paul is demolishing.

He continues, “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” That does not mean that your faith is the righteousness that is the grounds for your salvation. No, faith only lays hold of Christ. It is the instrument by which you are linked to Jesus. Only Christ’s righteousness is the grounds of your justification.

When God declares His legal, forensic judgment of your status in His sight, when He sees faith, He counts you righteous. Even when in and of yourself you are still ungodly, you are still a sinner. This is simul iustus et peccator, as we have already looked at, with a vengeance.

A Chocolate Chip Cookie without Chocolate Chips

Then Paul moves to David: “His faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.”

In our day, the doctrine of justification has been battled afresh within so-called evangelical circles, revealing that evangelical circles are not truly evangelical. Anyone who challenges sola fide cannot do so and legitimately be counted as an evangelical, because justification by faith alone is at the very heart of historical evangelicalism.

Be that as it may, all kinds of people call themselves evangelicals, but they call themselves evangelicals with a dead vocation. Their profession of evangelicalism is a false profession because they deny the evangel that defines evangelicalism. At the center of the debate is whether or not the aspect of imputation is crucial to justification by faith alone.

We saw the startling manifestation in the mid-1990s called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” when some leading evangelicals in our country declared to the world that they had a unity of faith in the gospel with their Roman Catholic friends, who appealed to their own orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, these so-called evangelical leaders declared that they had a union of faith in the gospel with their Roman Catholic friends.

In discussions with these evangelical leaders, I raised some questions. I said: “I know I don’t have a unity of faith with people who deny justification by faith alone and preach a different gospel from the biblical gospel. I can be friends with them. I can have a unity in concerns about abortion and a host of other things, but not in the gospel, because we don’t believe the same gospel. Here’s my problem: If you have a unity of faith in the gospel with these people, and I don’t have a unity in the faith in the gospel with them, how can I possibly have a unity of faith in the gospel with you?”

We had a series of meetings that were important, and in one meeting, I kept pressing the point to one of the leaders of this group. I said, “Do you believe that justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel?” He kept saying to me, “I think it’s central to the gospel.” I said: “That’s not what I asked you. I asked you whether it is essential. If you don’t have justification by faith alone, you don’t have the gospel.” Try as hard as I could, I could not get the man to make that assertion.

So much controversy arose out of that ECT initiative that they came out with a second document, which in my judgment was far worse than the first one, in which they said, “We together agree in the faith of the gospel because we believe that justification requires faith, and we believe that we are saying the same things that the Reformers were saying in the sixteenth century.” Then they came to me and said, “What do you think now?”

I said, “What do I think now? Like Michael Horton says, if you are making chocolate chip cookies and you get eggs, flour, milk, and sugar and you mix it all together, you have the stuff that makes up chocolate chip cookies, but there is one critical ingredient that is missing. There are no chocolate chips. Without the chocolate chips, you do not have chocolate chip cookies. Without sola fide, you do not have justification by faith alone.”

At the end of that second document, they said, “We leave the question of imputation for later discussion.” I thought: “Leave the question of imputation for later discussion? That is the chocolate chips.”

Christ’s Righteousness Counted for You

Historically, the whole issue regarding justification is about this question: How does the righteousness of Christ become mine? Is it because it is poured into me through the sacrament of baptism and later again through the sacrament of penance? Or is the righteousness of Christ imputed to me, counted for me, transferred to my account?

Here is the point of the debate in a nutshell: Is the righteousness by which I am justified a righteousness that is found in me, an inherent righteousness? The Council of Trent says you must have righteousness inhaerens. In other words, righteousness must be in you before God will ever decree that you are justified. That is why you must have the structure of purgatory and all the rest, so that you might spend millions of years there until you get enough righteousness in you before God will ever pronounce you just.

That is not gospel; that is bad news. It would leave me without hope. If I have to wait until I am inherently righteous, I am a dead man. But the gospel is that we are righteous on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus that is transferred to our account, imputed to us, what Luther called a iustitium alienum, an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is extra nos, outside of us. The righteousness by which you are justified is the righteousness that Christ manifested in His life of perfect obedience.

It is Christ’s righteousness that justifies you. All you bring to the table is your trust in Him and His righteousness. If you add one ounce of your own righteousness as your confidence in your justification, you are repudiating the gospel. That is what Paul is saying here without any ambiguity by citing David.

David described the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Do you know such blessedness? There is no greater blessedness under heaven than to have God, in His mercy and grace, transfer the righteousness of Jesus to your account.

On Christmas Eve, I told a story about a priest with dirty clothes. I did not just do that to entertain the children. That story about the priest and the dirty clothes is the story of imputation. It is the story of the gospel, the only gospel by which we stand or fall. Dear friends, imputation is what it is all about. It is Christ’s righteousness counted for you.

Can you imagine standing before God? When I stand before God, He will know everything I have ever done wrong, every evil thought, and every wicked deed I have ever performed. If He looks at me inherently, all He will see are filthy rags. But that is not how He looks at me. He looks at me and He sees Christ. He sees the covering of the righteousness of Christ, the cloak of righteousness. That is why the New Testament says that Christ is our righteousness. He is my righteousness. The only righteousness I possess is the righteousness of Christ, and I possess it by transfer, by reckoning, by imputation.

Based on that, I tell my friends in the theological world that if you negotiate imputation, you give it all away. That is the article upon which sola fide stands or falls, and sola fide is the article upon which the gospel stands or falls. The gospel is the article upon which the church stands or falls. God willing, we will continue this exposition next week. Let us pray.

Father, we do not even begin to understand how blessed we are to have Christ’s righteousness, that perfect righteousness, count for us. There is no way that we could conceivably earn it. We know that all we receive from You is not from debt but from grace, for which we will be eternally grateful. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.