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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
THE JUSTIFYING MERIT OF CHRIST
PART
ONE
By A. Prentice
Scripture references are to the King
James (Authorised) Version, unless noted
otherwise.
– Galatians 3: 11 –
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THE DOCTRINE OF justification by faith alone through Christ alone sits at the heart of biblical theology. This declaration by St. Paul in Galatians became the guiding theme of Martin Luther's powerful reformatory work of the sixteenth century. It is the fundamental truth that makes Protestantism Protestant. It is at once an assertion of and a rationale for the saving power of Christ's death on the Cross: the how and the why of salvation.
Faith In General
Along with the ubiquitous quality of Love, Faith is designated by the Apostle as one of the three chief graces, the other being Hope (1 Cor. 13: 13).(*)
In the English language, Love is employed in a wide variety of senses, ranging from an intense liking for things animate or inanimate, to the noblest expression of affection. Thus one might love one's dog, a pizza, one's job, or one's wife, the application in each case being understood and ranked accordingly.
The core meaning of Faith is assurance or trust, and contemporary usage more or less retains this application: one might, for example, have faith that the sun will rise the next day or have faith in one's ability to accomplish a certain task.
Existent But Unseen
Hebrews 11: 1 proclaims that Faith ʻis the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seenʼ. The NIV-UK renders this as, ʻfaith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not seeʼ (italics added). In both translations, Faith is the ability to understand and believe in things which by their essence are not visible to sight.
Although Faith of one sort or another is native to the human constitution, time and cultural changes have played upon and devalued the more important definition. Faith has become a catch-all for credulity; that is, a belief that something is true without solid evidence that it is: a conviction of mind exercised against contradictory facts. Scoffing atheists often equate an intelligent, thoughtful and practical Faith with belief in a tooth-fairy.
Invisibility
is not a sufficient reason to discount the reality of anything which can
otherwise be demonstrated as real. Indeed, material reality is itself composed of elements invisible to
sight:
When we . . . enter the world of the atom, we are confronted with . . . [a] scientifically confirmed picture of our universe. First we discover that solid matter, the floor upon which we stand and the foundation that bears the weight of a skyscraper, is actually empty space. If we could scale the centre of an atom, the nucleus, up to four inches, the surrounding electron cloud would extend to four miles away and essentially all the breach between would be marvellously empty. The solidity of iron is actually 99.999999999999 percent startlingly vacuous space made to feel solid by ethereal fields of force having no material reality at all.
– Gerald L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God (New York: The Free Press; 2001), p. 4.
Atheism asserts that as the invisible atomic structure of matter, remarkable as it is, has been verified by objective examination confirmed by science it has nothing to do with Faith. But the argument is deficient. For the very existence of the atomic structure offers teasing evidence of a pre-existing, invisible power, and comes within the scope of Heb. 11: 1, cited above.
Unlike the tooth-fairy, manifestly a benign invention of childhood, the nature of the universe shouts out for an explanation that probes beyond the mere material (visible or not). But here the method of scientific investigation is assumed to fail, the assertion of atheism being that no objective demonstration of an invisible Designer is possible another way of saying that Faith has no connection with a concrete world.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
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Distilling Faith to its purest and particular application, it is primarily a religious faculty, succinctly defined as mental appreciation of and heart's reliance upon God.
The Requirement For Faith
The requirement, or necessity, for Faith can be traced back to the fall of Man into sin and away from the fellowship of his Creator. Adam, the first man, had no doubt about the existence of God (Gen 3: 8), but he did need to exercise heart's reliance that aspect of Faith which trusts the integrity and dependability of the One who made him.
Consequent on Adam's fall into sin, which affected every one of his offspring the entire human race to the present day God withdrew His fellowship. Mankind was now a dying creature, thrust into a hostile and increasingly dangerous environment. Over succeeding generations, as deaths and dangers accumulated, fear and doubt set in, and the ideal certainty of a benign God receded. The benevolent Creator was increasingly viewed with suspicion and disdain by those whom He had made, and humanity was at length separated from Him by a chasm too wide to bridge by synthetic theology.
The Persistence Of Faith
Although God had cursed and rejected humanity, He had not altogether abandoned it, as emphasised by St. Paul in Rom. 8: 20, 21 (NIV-UK):
[Mankind] was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
From this we learn that although God hid His face of favour from the human family, He nonetheless imbued them with the compensating quality of Hope an essential ingredient of Faith.
But if Faith is native to the human constitution, so is Doubt. In other words, unbelief is natural in a fallen, imperfect world. This irony is a necessary factor in the exercise of free will and the permission of evil, as we shall see. Indeed, the tension between belief and unbelief helps to explain the durable nature of Faith itself.
However, a blanket, undefined belief cannot meet mankind's eternal needs nor shrink the gap of alienation which separates the human family from God. Without a justifying, biblical Faith, salvation is impossible.
To
be continued
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* In the KJV of 1.Cor. 13: 13, the listing reads ʻfaith, hope and charityʼ. The list may be rendered from the Greek as ʻbelief, expectation, and loveʼ. Though the wider meaning of the noun ʻcharityʼ has narrowed over the centuries and today usually refers to a voluntary, beneficial organisation, its related adjective ʻcharitableʼ retains the clear intimation of compassionate love.
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