Podcast: The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls (Matthew Barrett)

July 24, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

By Faith Alone

In today’s episode, Matthew Barrett sheds light on the meaning of justification by faith alone, explaining why it’s so central to the Christian faith, and he explores why the book of James says that we’re not justified by faith alone.

The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls

The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls

Matthew Barrett

This collaborative volume of 26 essays explores the doctrine of justification from the lenses of history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice—revealing the enduring significance of this pillar of Protestant theology.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:14 - Explaining the Doctrine of Justification to a Non-Christian

Matt Tully
Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Matthew Barrett
Thanks for having me on.

Matt Tully
We’re going to be talking about the doctrine of justification, and it’s one of those doctrines that if you’ve been a Christian for a long time or have studied theology to any level, you know that this is a really important doctrine for our faith as protestant Christians. We’re going to get into a lot of different facets of this doctrine, but to start us off, how would you summarize the doctrine of justification if you were talking to a non-Christian who isn’t very familiar with the Christian faith?

Matthew Barrett
Well, I think the first thing I would say would actually not be about justification itself. Obviously, we want to get there, but in order to get there, I think the first thing we have to talk about is God. I think the first thing I would want to say to someone who’s not a Christian is, Do you understand that the God who made you in his image is a God who is absolutely, perfectly, unchangeably holy? That means that this God is set apart. There is a difference between you as a creature and him as the Creator. But it also means that this God, as the God who is set apart, is a God who’s like no other. There is none like him. And part of what that means is that his holiness is a righteous holiness. We see that righteousness displayed in the law that he gave to his people. The tragedy of it all, though, is that every single one of us—no one is an exception here—has not lived in communion with God, but we have actually broken his law, and we have done so out of a heart of idolatry. And so this is not a minor thing. It’s not some cold, abstract violation of some law. When we break God’s law we are actually committing cosmic treason. We are violating the very character of God himself and all the goodness and blessedness he intended for us. And so that puts us in a terrible predicament. We stand before holy God as those who are unrighteous, as those who are transgressors, and because of our transgression, we therefore deserve condemnation. This is a legal verdict in which we are declared guilty before him, and the consequences are everlasting because he is a God who himself is eternal and infinite. So that's the terrible news. What is then the good news of the gospel? I think this is where justification starts to come in and starts to beam into this darkness. Every single one of us is a child of Adam. And so when Adam sinned in the garden, he represented us. He was our father. And that’s very hard for us to get our minds around today because we like to think of ourselves as individuals.

Matt Tully
It seems unfair.

Matthew Barrett
It seems unfair, but the Bible doesn’t entertain that type of objection. It says you are either one of two persons: you are either in Adam or you are in Christ. All of humanity is in Adam. Adam’s guilt is then imputed to all of humanity so that we stand under his legal condemnation. As a result, we also receive from Adam his corrupt, or polluted, nature, which means that we not only have this condemning legal verdict over our heads because we are children of Adam, but the very inclinations of our heart, our mind, our will—our total person, in fact—is in inclined towards evil, and our nature (to use more theological language) is corrupt. Well, the good news is that there is a second Adam who has come, and this is none other than the Son of God himself. Who could have imagined this? The father sent his only begotten Son, as maybe some have heard from childhood in John 3:16. What love is this, that the Father would give his only begotten Son to be incarnate? In John’s Gospel he uses the language of “made flesh.” To humble himself so low, to the point of death on the cross. What do we see in Christ, the second Adam? Well, he comes not only as the one who pays the penalty for our sins and suffering for our sake, but there’s also a positive side to this as well: he lives for our sake. We not only transgress the law, but we fail to keep the law. Christ, from the very beginning of his ministry, comes, and he’s very clear that he has come to fulfill all righteousness. So yes, he’s going to suffer the penalty we deserve, but he’s also going to fulfill all righteousness so that at the end of the day, by means of his life, death, and resurrection (we can’t forget the resurrection here) his righteousness, his perfect obedience to the law, that is actually counted to us. It is credited to us. It is reckoned to us so that upon faith God declares us who are ungodly, that upon faith in Christ—not in ourselves, but upon faith in Christ—we receive this amazing declaration that we are righteous in Jesus Christ, in the second Adam. This is the best news of all. We can talk more about what that means, but as you can probably tell, if we are condemned in Adam, now we are declared righteous in Christ. Not because we are actually righteous and as if our works somehow make us righteous, but rather God has declared us righteous on account of what his Son has accomplished.

07:52 - Does the Church Really Stand or Fall on This Doctrine?

Matt Tully
Martin Luther, the famous protestant Reformer who lived 500 years ago, called justification “the doctrine on which the church stands or falls.” I wonder if you could unpack for us what he meant by that when he said that. Do you agree with that sentiment, that this is how central this doctrine is to the Christian faith?

Matthew Barrett
There’s all kinds of fascinating historical discussion. Where does this language come from—the doctrine on which the church stands or falls? It seems to be the case that the actual phrase comes much, much later than the Reformation. It’s a bit more modern and contemporary. But more to your question, I think the issue of centrality is a complicated one. At first glance it might not seem so, but it is complicated, and here’s what I mean: on the one hand, we must say yes, a right understanding of justification is absolutely central. And this is what the Reformers are after because we are talking about how we are right with God. The storyline of Scripture gets right at the heart of it. That’s the type of question that, as we know, affects everything from our present status before God to our eternal destination. At the same time—and the Reformers articulated this as well—at the same time, they also understood that in order to argue for this doctrine of justification, they couldn’t just focus on soteriology or one aspect of it. Even that very brief, superficial description of justification that I gave as we started assumes a whole lot. It assumes certain things about the attributes of God. It assumes a certain Christology. And then once those things are properly in place, it then takes us to a certain understanding of how we, then, are the recipients of God’s grace. All that to say, on the one hand it is absolutely central—the doctrine in which the church stands or falls. On the other hand though, it’s not the only doctrine. And so even in soteriology we need to recognize, well, in order to have a proper understanding of justification, there are many other aspects of soteriology that we have to pay attention to and we have to get right. Everything from regeneration to sanctification. What is the difference between justification and sanctification, to adoption, and we could span this out further to talk about election and predestination to the very character of God. I just mention that because I know that sometimes Christians today, out of a good intention, can really focus on justification. But unfortunately, we sometimes do so without this broader perspective of what else is foundational so that we can even talk about it?

Matt Tully
I think that’s one critique that I’ve heard, particularly of protestants and even more specifically the Reformed ilk, is that we can be so concerned with justification as a litmus test for true, good theology. Or we can even sort of start to equate it with the gospel itself, that the doctrine of justification is the gospel or vice versa.

Matthew Barrett
Maybe we should address that. When we talk about the gospel—at least this is how I would phrase things—we have to be really careful here because the gospel is something objective. It is something that has happened in history. Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again as our Lord and as our King and as our Savior. So when we talk about the gospel, we need to be clear that we’re not talking about how I feel or how you feel, or how I reacted or how you reacted. As important as those things may be, we’re actually talking about something objective, which is the incarnation of the Son of God and all that he accomplished for our salvation and what that means for Christ as our prophet, priest, and king. There’s a lot there we can talk about in terms of gospel. When we talk about justification, we are then asking the question of, How is the grace of this gospel then ours? How do we become the recipient so that we receive this great blessing and all the riches that Christ has accomplished for us? And that’s where we move from salvation accomplished by Christ to how the Holy Spirit then works this salvation for us and within us. And that brings us not to just justification, but to a whole sweep of doctrines that we call the order of salvation—from regeneration all the way to glorification. So all that to say, sometimes when we talk about justification and the gospel, usually I know what people mean. They’re trying to say if you get justification wrong, that puts us at risk because we could then be misunderstanding the gospel. At the same time though, we just have to make sure we’re distinguishing between the two so that we don’t just collapse everything into justification itself and turn the gospel into our experience.

13:24 - What about James 2?

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful distinction there, and it does underscore in my mind the importance of these terms that we use. This is where, in my experience, good theology and good theological discussion and understanding can really help us to make these important distinctions that keep us thinking straight about some of these doctrines that are interrelated and do impact one another. So, let’s talk about the Bible’s teaching on this doctrine. I think it’s safe to say the apostle Paul has the most to say, explicitly, about the doctrine of justification in the New Testament. He uses his famous phrase that we’re justified by faith and not by works. He contrasts those two things pretty consistently throughout his epistles. But then in James 2 we read the apostle James writing that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone—a statement that actually led Martin Luther, of all people, to call the book of James “an epistle of straw.” He denigrated it and didn’t think it was as authoritative or inspired as other epistles. So, is the Bible contradictory on this doctrine?

Matthew Barrett
Well, the short answer is no.

Matt Tully
We all kind of expected that, but maybe you can help us understand why.

Matthew Barrett
We have to remember when we are talking about the Bible that yes, it is written by many human authors from very divergent backgrounds. But there is one divine author, and his divine authorial intent transcends the trees to span the whole forest in a way that gives us the ability to open the Scriptures and read the Scriptures as a unit, as a whole, as an organic whole—one in which God’s plan of redemption is seen from beginning to end. So, we have to make sure that we are reading the Bible theologically in that sense. If we throw out those basic foundational assumptions, then yes. And many scholars have done this. They will go to a book like James and say, Well, this is completely contrary to what Paul says, and they’re fine with that. That’s the first thing we need to note, that actually we can affirm a unity because of the divine author. But the second thing I would notice is that if we do good exegesis and pay attention to context, I think we see that Paul and James are not necessarily disagreeing with each other, but rather trying to address different issues in different contexts. We often do this in the church. For example, maybe you’re a new pastor and you’re inheriting an older church and you discover, after that honeymoon of pastoral bliss, you suddenly discover, Oh no! There’s actually a number of people in my congregation who think they can live however they want, because at some point in time, maybe a long time ago, they said a sinner’s prayer or they walked an aisle or they confess faith in Christ, or whatever they did, and they see no conflict at all with living in a very ungodly way*. Well, something’s gone wrong. No one can relate to this today, right? Not that that’s the same context that we see in the book of James, but the point is James is very concerned, in his context, that some assume that works are completely irrelevant to what it means to be a Christian and to follow Christ. And this is very disturbing to James. And so he’s going to use very strong language. I think understood rightly, James is not trying to say you are right with God on the basis of your works. I think what he’s trying to say is if you have actually been declared right with God, then the fruit that absolutely and necessarily comes out of that new standing is the fruit of good works. In other words, I think James is saying to them that if you really are a new creation in Christ, why would you not live like Christ? This is no different than what the Reformers actually said. Isn’t it interesting that when they defended the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they had to turn right around and clarify we are not actually denying the fruit of justification, which is good works, but we need to understand it in its proper place—not as the basis or means to justification, but as a fruit of justification, apart from which someone like James in his context has every right to question the validity of their faith to begin with.

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful reminder that as we come to Scripture to read and interpret what it says, we do need to come with that confidence in its inspiration and inerrancy, and also with the commitment to letting Scripture help us to understand other parts of Scripture, to holding it all together. I think some people might hear that explanation and say it makes sense, but they maybe still wonder and have questions in their mind like, *Why would God, especially for a doctrine like justification that is so central to our understanding of how it is that we are saved—that core focus of the Bible—why would God choose to have two different authors express different facets of the same doctrine, or of the broader salvation that we’re experiencing, in such similar and yet seemingly contradictory ways? I know that’s kind of a speculative question, but have you ever wrestled with that? Why would he even have James use essentially the same phrase that Paul uses—“justified by faith”—and say no, it’s not just that when Paul has already said yes, it is just that? Any thoughts on that?

Matthew Barrett
In one sense, the perspective we take is quite crucial, because we could also look at it as God’s gracious accommodation to his church. What do I mean? In Paul, we see someone who has given his background. God has well-equipped him. He knows the law like none other. And so God has well-equipped him to be confrontational. When you have this very volatile period in which Jews are coming to very disagreeable opinions over whether works of the law play a part in justification, Paul is well-equipped at that point. God has prepared him to answer that question, and so he can speak without reservation and without hesitation and say, No, absolutely not. You cannot be justified by works of the law—which is going to really offend those who are clinging to the law in some way. At the same time, God is very gracious in the context of James to give us a different individual to address a different situation. Sometimes we can miss this because we just open our Bibles and just read right through them and we forget that some of these apostles, or some of these authors, are living in different contexts and they’re writing letters to different churches at points. So we need to keep that in mind because if we keep that in mind, then we realize oh, God is actually quite gracious here to raise up a James to say to these Christians, You cannot live like the world and claim that you are right with God. If you do so, then we’re going to get at the very heart of this. And yet James is going to use the language of works to do that. So, all that to say I completely understand how it can feel like, Why couldn't God just kept the same tone or the same vocabulary throughout? A minute ago we emphasized the unity of Scripture, and at the same time, if we understand its diversity in terms of the church spread globally and the way that Jesus’s disciples are trying to reach different pockets of the church with different challenges, well then we realize this is actually a gracious gift of God. I would say to our listeners that God may do this with you too. There may come a moment in your ministry with one church in which they are clinging to their works as if those works then, perhaps in part, justify them before God, and you will need to speak in a very Paul-like way. And then in twenty years, you may be at a different church and realize that these people have a vain confidence in their faith, when they claim to be right with God but meanwhile, they are indulging in all kinds of immorality. How am I going to address them? Well, I would encourage you to read the book of James.

23:23 - Why Isn’t Faith Considered a Work?

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful reminder because as we hold to Scripture’s inerrancy and authority and unity, as you’ve already said, we can sometimes almost go too far and start to treat it like a theology textbook with constraints and rules that we might impose on a systematic theology today. And that isn’t necessarily how the Bible is trying to operate. Maybe another question about the Bible. We’ve already mentioned the passage where Paul, in Romans 3:28, teaches that Christians are justified by faith and not by works of the law. A question I think that many Christians eventually come to as they think about this more deeply is, Why isn’t faith considered a work? Maybe the impression can be that faith is that one thing that we do that actually does lead to our justification that we are allowed to do. It’s the one work that’s approved and for some reason not considered a work even though we’re doing it. So how would you answer that question?

Matthew Barrett
I think this is where systematic theology can be so helpful to us, and it can actually save us from a lot of pain, a lot of misconceptions, and a lot of missteps. When we talk about justification, we need to understand that the basis on which we are justified—in which we are declared right by a holy God—is external to us. It is found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And so this is why we can waive that banner of solus Christus and say it’s in Christ alone. This goes back to our earlier conversation of are we in Adam or are we in Christ Jesus? So, that said, when we talk about justification, I know sometimes we use the more colloquial language of “we are justified by faith.” I think I understand what people mean by that. But if we want to be more accurate, we might say we are justified by grace. How’s that? Well, we are justified by grace because we’re justified on the basis of the whole work of Christ. If that’s the case, well then faith isn’t the basis on which we are justified, as if faith itself becomes some type of work. Rather, faith is instrumental. It’s through faith in Christ that we are then right with God. In other words, if the righteousness is not our own, as if even our own faith is a type of righteousness, but if the righteousness is external to us, if it is Christ himself and his perfect work, if that’s the case, then our faith is the means by which we then receive. And that’s a key word. This is not a type of merit but a reception of Christ’s perfect righteousness. And so this is why when we talk about justification we might be a little bit more technical and say we are justified by grace alone on the basis of the work of Christ alone, through faith alone. And so this is why many of the protestants of the past have said faith doesn’t become a work itself, but it is the instrumental cause through which God declares his right with him. This is really important because I think that this became a very defining feature of a Reformed soteriology. And so the Reformed tradition entered into a lot of controversy over this point, to say that faith should be instrumental rather than turning faith into a type of work by which we are justified.

27:14 - Is Justifying the Unrighteous Actually Just?

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful and such a great illustration of the value of some of the theological precision that can come as we study these things, as we take the time to invest in learning about how Christians through the centuries have helped to think about and articulate the truths that Scripture teaches us. Let’s take a big step back and ask a foundational question: How is justification just? How is it right and just for God who, as we’ve already established is a holy, righteous God who reigns over all things, how is it right for him to declare us, those who are unrighteous, to just say that we are righteous, even though he hasn’t actually changed us inside yet? He will, but he’s not doing that, as you’ve already said, on the basis of some change that he’s actually worked in us; it’s based on Jesus—something that someone else did. How is that, fundamentally, a just thing for God to do?

Matthew Barrett
I really like the question and appreciate it because this is the very question I think Paul has in his mind in Romans 3. I think today we often come to this doctrine very entitled. Maybe we don’t want to admit it, but we think, Of course God would be so gracious to justify us! We are so entitled, as if it’s something God must do or would have to do. We have to remember, as uncomfortable as it may be to hear this, we have to remember God is absolutely holy, and if he saved nobody he would remain just, because we are the ones who are our sinners. We are the ones who are in Adam. Every one of us—as the Psalm says, “No one is righteous. No, not one.” When we think of it from that perspective, well then the question of how is God just is a real question. How can God remain just and accept condemned, guilty sinners like us? That seems like that would actually violate his very character. And Paul addresses this in Romans 3, and he goes right to where we just were when he says to look at Christ. He is the propitiation for your sins. And Paul says at one point that all have sinned. All fall short of the glory of God. But all are justified by his grace as a gift. And then he says, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” But then Paul, and you can see the nagging question lingering in his mind, but then he raises this issue. In his mind he’s wondering, How can God be just to do this? And he says, “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” What is Paul saying? I think what Paul is saying here is that apart from Jesus Christ, apart from his propitiation, as Paul says, his atoning work, the problem remains. How can God then be just to then justify the ungodly? But if Christ substitutes himself and becomes that propitiation by his own blood, now there is a basis on which God can declare us right with him. And at the same time, he remains just. Perhaps we could even put it stronger than that to say God’s justice justness itself is accentuated and highlighted and brought to the front of our minds by means of the blood of his own Son. So, this is one of the reasons why, when we look at Jesus Christ, there’s that famous painting in which Luther is standing in the pulpit and the people are on the other side and he’s pointing them to the cross as Christ is crucified. Well, that’s a beautiful picture because it’s on the basis of the cross that we see God’s righteousness and everlasting mercy kiss one another. Rather than there being a conflict, in Christ we can actually be received into the very presence of God who remains just and yet is gracious towards us in the righteousness of his own Son.

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful explanation. I do wonder, though, someone might hear all of that and, maybe if we were to transpose this into a human courtroom that we might be familiar with, we would think of God as the judge there. I think to us, if there was a person on the stand who was declared guilty—found guilty in a court of law—and then someone from the crowd said, Wait! I volunteer! I’ll take his punishment! If the judge were to say, Sure, we can do that. You can take his punishment, and then he’s going to go free, I think we would all pretty rightly stand up and object and say, That’s not justice. That’s not right. Someone else can’t bear the penalty that man deserved; otherwise, justice has not been done. So how is it different? What’s different about what we’re seeing at the cross with Jesus that makes that a just transaction?

Matthew Barrett
That type of objection is not one that doesn’t resonate with folks today. You think of the rise of the New Perspective on Paul. N. T. Wright is very famous, or maybe infamous, for voicing that type of objection, saying it’s just like a courtroom and you can’t have the judge doing that. And then he’s been also very critical of the doctrine of imputation, portraying this as if this is some type of gas that’s floating through the courtroom—that type of caricature, I would argue. And so there’s been many objections at this point. What do we say? How do we respond? Does this undermine God as just or the justification of the ungodly? Well, I think the first thing we have to understand is this is no ordinary courtroom. Certainly, there are parallels so that we can understand it compared to our experience of a human courtroom in which there’s a judge and there’s a guilty person and so on. But we also have to remember this is God we are talking about. And so this is a type of heavenly courtroom that is incomparable, in a sense. Now, if that’s the case, then things look very differently. On what basis can the judge declare us just? Well, like you mentioned, it is on the basis of someone substituting, but it’s not just anyone substituting themselves, because you’re right. This gets at the problem of the storyline of the Bible. You hear this longing in the Old Testament of, Who is going to come? Who can possibly come and be our representative, be our new Adam? And I think we begin to see, to the point where we are fatigued, that whether it’s Moses or whether it’s David, they, too, are not the man. They are not the savior to do it. All that to say, when we come to Jesus Christ, I can’t help but think of Athanasius in his little book called On the Incarnation—what a great book this is! What a classic! Because when we come to Jesus Christ, we see someone who actually meets the very qualifications needed to make this great, happy exchange possible. And what are those? Well, on the one hand, this is the very mystery of the incarnation. On the one hand, this is the only begotten Son of God. As the Nicaean Creed says, he is “true God of true God.” And how necessary that is, because if he’s not, then on what basis can he actually accomplish for us an everlasting, eternal life in God? He can’t. And at the same time, he’s not only true God of true God, but he is true man. In other words, in the language of John’s Gospel, he’s been made flesh. And we don’t have to get into all of the intricacies of how to articulate that with the hypostatic union, but the point is that we now actually have a savior who represents us. In this person he not only is true God but he’s true man. Therefore, he is our second Adam. He can substitute himself in a way that represents us. That being said, now all of a sudden we have a very different scenario. This is not just anyone. No one else could do this but him. The very righteousness by which he lives and dies and rises from the grave, now that can be imputed to us so that God can count us justified with him. And, like you mentioned a minute ago, that then has so many implications for what it means to be in Christ. Not only are we justified so that our status is righteous in Christ, but we also then, upon faith in Christ, we also then are being ushered into sanctification, so that the Holy Spirit is then conforming us into the image of Christ. So not only do we go from being condemned to declared righteous, but we also go from having a corrupt nature to being regenerated and then sanctified so that we are actually being conformed in our person to Christ Jesus. So all that to say, it is an extraordinary event, one that is unlike any other. And so we can’t simply apply the same rules to it. If we could, then it wouldn’t be extraordinary and we wouldn’t have the type of justification that we have—the type that Scripture describes.

Matt Tully
Matthew, thank you so much for helping us today to do that a little bit better, as we’ve talked about this important doctrine of justification. We appreciate you taking the time.

Matthew Barrett
Thanks for having me. Grateful for all you guys do.

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