Justification

The Reformation was not a clean-up project. We are not commemorating and celebrating a call to do better. Many historians today insist that there were many “reformations” and that to label the events documented here as “The Reformation” is an unfair representation of history. This sadly misses the very heart of the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church didn’t need a shower and new clothes, she needed a new heart. The Reformation was not another one of the many campaigns for moral improvement.

It is true that many, before and during Martin Luther’s time, voiced a serious desire to “reform” the church. The grand and vital distinction, however, was that their voices and efforts were largely man-centered aims for the church to look and do better.

While all were looking to put new paint on an old pump, the Reformation was God’s work to change the source from the stale dead waters of self-merit to the living waters of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Reformation’s revolutionary idea is justification by faith alone.

For centuries, the Church had been teaching that a sinner is brought into an acceptable (“right”) standing before God through the impartation of righteousness. That through the sacraments a sinner may progressively become more and more righteous and thereby become more and more justified. It was another way of saying that you need religious works to make you a good person—you need to merit God’s acceptance in order to avoid His judgment against your sins. But this is not “good news” to be embraced by faith through hearing, it is justification by works of the law. The Scriptures plainly state, “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16). This biblical principle is what the Reformation unleased on the heavy-laden hearts of weary souls trying to work their way to God.

Essentially, this biblical principle is a forensic one, meaning that it has to do with one’s legal status, not one’s behavior chart. It is best realized in the concept of the imputation of righteousness, not impartation. This is also plainly described in Scripture, where the Apostle Paul argues that the manifest work of the Holy Spirit is not the result of our “works of the law” but rather He regenerates us and works in us “by hearing with faith—just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’” (Galatians 3:5-6). The key here is that on the account of faith alone was God’s righteousness counted—(imputed, credited, reckoned, charged, allotted)—to Abraham.