One of the core concepts of the Christian faith is justification. I’m sure we all know that, in general terms, being justified means to be proven right, or to show good cause for an action. So, for example, if we found out that the company we were working for was on the verge of bankruptcy, we’d be justified in looking for another job. But in Christian terms, justification is concerned with being right before God, it’s about being in a right relationship with God and it’s concerned with the process or the way that sinful human beings can enter that right relationship with God. It’s obvious then, that an understanding of justification is essential to the Christian faith.
And indeed, that’s what we find. All Christians have an understanding of justification and an idea about how human beings are justified. But, just as there are many different denominations of the Church, so there have been, and are, many different understandings of justification, different ideas about how we’re justified before God and enter into that right relationship with him. And, unsurprisingly, it’s something that Christians of different Churches and denominations have argued about over the years.
The arguments about justification are quite complicated and they all have their good points and bad points. But, essentially, certainly for the Western Church, they fall into two broad categories. Whilst virtually everyone agrees that God’s grace is essential to justification, the traditional Catholic understanding is that human beings must co-operate with God’s grace in order to be justified, sometimes spoken of as justification by works. The Reformed, or Protestant, understanding, on the other hand, is that justification comes by the grace of God alone, a gift which we receive by virtue of our faith, something known as justification by faith.
Both of these ideas have their merits, but they both have their drawbacks. If we go too far down the road of justification by works, for example, we might veer towards something called Pelagianism, the idea that we can achieve our own justification simply through living a good life. But that really makes Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross meaningless. It reduces Jesus to nothing more than a teacher who gave us instruction and an example to follow.
But if we go too far down the road of justification by faith, we might veer towards something called antinomianism, the idea that God’s grace frees human beings from any moral obligations or constraints, we’re free to do as we please, as long as we have faith. A milder form of this is something I’ve spoken about quite recently, that of people who think they’ve done enough and are right with God simply because they come to church on Sunday. But this kind of thinking, quite clearly, makes Christ’s teaching and example meaningless because, if we think like this, we don’t have to follow it.
So who’s right and who’s wrong about justification?
Well, really, both sides are right, up to a point, and both sides are wrong, up to a point. The truth is that we need both faith and works. We must have faith, that is we must believe in Jesus, so that we’ll follow his teaching and example. But we must follow his teaching and example, and that means that our faith must be accompanied by works. If we say we believe in Jesus, but we don’t follow him, then our faith is nothing but words that makes no difference whatsoever to the way we live, and where then, does that leave Jesus’ instruction that we must take up our cross and follow him? And we must have God’s grace too, so that we have the wisdom to know how to follow Jesus and the gifts, the strength and the courage to do it. We see this in the Scriptures.
This morning we heard about Abraham, a man who is revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike as our ‘father in faith’. When St Paul writes about Abraham, as he does in a number of his letters to the Churches, St Paul speaks about Abraham being ‘justified by faith’ rather than by works.
But St Paul speaks specifically about ‘works of the law’. so what he’s really driving at is that, because of Christ and through Christ, the promise that God gave to Abraham has now become available to all people, not just the Jews. In other words, non-Jews don’t have to follow the Jewish law to be justified, they have to have faith in Christ and follow his teaching and example.
And in fact, when we read Abraham’s story, we find that his faith was accompanied by works. Abraham went where God asked him to go, he did what God asked him to do, he was even prepared to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, if that’s what God asked of him. So when we speak of Abraham being justified by faith, we need to understand just what that means.
Abraham was justified by faith, he entered into a right relationship with God because of his faith, but that relationship with God was a covenant relationship. We read quite a lot about covenants in the Scriptures, but covenant relationships were common in biblical times, and they all had one thing in common; an overlord would promise to protect a smaller, weaker neighbour, in return for that neighbour’s loyalty. So, when God makes a covenant with someone, he offers to be their God, if they will be his people, and that places a responsibility of loyalty on those God makes covenants with. To be God’s people under the terms of the Mosaic covenant, for example, the people of Israel were expected to adhere to the Ten Commandments. And it was similar with Abrahamic covenant. God’s side of the covenant was the promise to make Abraham the father of many nations. Abraham’s side of the covenant was to have faith in God’s promise. So Abraham entered into a right relationship with God by faith, but it was the loyalty to God, and to doing what God asked of him, that his faith inspired, that enabled Abraham to stay in that right relationship with God and receive the reward God had promised him.
And so it is for us, as Christians. Through Christ, we’re offered the opportunity to enter into a covenant relation with God. God’s side of the covenant is the promise that he’ll raise us to eternal life. Our side of the covenant, our responsibility to God, is to have faith in his Son. But that faith can’t be in name alone, it must be accompanied by deeds or, in other words, by works. And we see this quite clearly in Jesus’ own words.
Jesus said,
““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.””
We also know from the Scriptures, that the will of the Father is that we should listen to Jesus and believe in him. And if we listen to Jesus and believe in him then we’ll do what Jesus taught us to do and live as he lived and said that we should live. How else can we make sense of Jesus’ insistence that we need to take up our cross and follow him? And we know that following Jesus requires some concrete action on our part. How else could we make sense of these words that Jesus spoke;
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’”
and that those who do not do these things,
“” …will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.””?
To enter into a covenant relationship with God always requires some action on our part. As part of our covenant with God we’re called to listen to Jesus and believe in him. And if we listen to Jesus and believe in him and in what he says, we can’t be left in any doubt that there must be more to our faith than mere words. Our faith in Jesus must be accompanied by works if we’re going to be justified, if we’re going to be in and stay in that right relationship with God that’ll bring us the promised reward of our covenant relationship with him, the resurrection to eternal life.
So how can we understand justification and what we need to do to be justified? Justification, put simply, means to be right in God’s eyes. To be justified we need to be in a right relationship with God and to be in a right relationship with God means to be in a covenant relationship with him We’re offered that relationship through Christ and as his side of it God offers us the reward of eternal life. So let’s take our side of the relationship seriously by listening to Jesus and believing in him and his words and by putting his words into action through our good works. We’ll probably never be as good as we could be or do all that we could do. But, as long as we do try to follow Jesus, then in faith, we can leave the rest to God’s grace and loving mercy.
Amen.
The Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Lent can be found here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 