Justification by Faith Alone Q&A with Dr. James White

James 2 and Romans 4: Dead Faith and Justifying Faith

Well, I just want to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Jeremiah Nortier, and I serve as a pastor and elder here at Twelve Five Church. And Dr. White, I have a lot of love and appreciation for apologetics, so you've been very influential in my life.

And so the book you mentioned earlier, The God Who Justifies, I was able to read this in preparation for one of my debates a couple years ago against a Greek Orthodox. I know they have a little bit different view than Roman Catholics.

But your chapter on Romans chapter four really emphasized that double imputation, and who is the blessed man whom God will not impute sin? You really brought out the fact that, and God will never impute that sin to you.

This double emphatic negation, that was very impactful. And so with that, we also had a debate that we hosted here at Twelve Five just a couple weeks ago. Brother Adam Carmichael, he debated a church of Christ.

And so I want to tell you a little bit about our community here in Jonesboro. The church of Christ are everywhere, and my heart is to evangelize the church of Christ because they vehemently oppose justification by faith alone.

Now, something you said over and over again is we believe in justification by faith. And they will say yes all day long to that, but there's a redefining of what faith actually.

Is.

And so one of the common objections, especially that came out in Adam's debate, was, well, James 2 talks about faith only is a dead faith. And so I believe it was chapter 20 in your book that talked about, well, hey, yeah, James does address an empty kind of faith.

But I wanted you to speak to that a little bit, because I would really like for somebody that said the church of Christ conviction to hear this properly articulated, how James 2 and Romans 4 are actually compatible.

So what is that dead faith that James 2 is talking about?

I think it's really important, and we have to be very brief. And so I've done entire sermons on this, entire presentations on this. I think the last time I did it was in London. It was a fairly lengthy discussion.

So you might be able to track some of those things down. Who knows what's posted out there these days? But I think it's really important to recognize that James is most definitely speaking of a dead faith when he says in James 2 .20, do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless, or there is a textual variant there in the Greek, dead, without worth.

And then he uses Abraham as our example. And a lot of people will go to that and say, see, well, first of all, a lot of people go to that and say, this is James disagreeing with Paul. So you just need to be aware if you go looking at commentaries and stuff like that.

There are a lot of people who teach in seminaries and things like that that do not believe in the consistency of the New Testament or of the Bible as a whole or doctrines like that. If you believe that the Bible as a whole is a consistent testimony from God, you're in a small minority worldwide.

You really are. You just need to be... That will help you to understand when you read the tweets from the quote-unquote progressivists and you go, where did they come from? Well, they don't believe that the Bible actually tells you what you would need to know and it's in a consistent fashion.

And once you realize that, then you start going, oh, okay, now I get it. But when we look at James 2, you have to go back to verse 14, you have to get context. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? Can that faith save him? It is a said faith. It is a faith that makes claims. But then when you look for evidence of its existence, all it is is it exists in word. And we aren't saying, and this is important, well, this is important for me, but this is where...

Watch your toes, okay? Because I'm about to step on a few of them, all right? Not yours, honey. I would never step on your toes. I would never do that. But I'm going to step on some other toes. If you don't believe...

If in the first written debate of the Reformation, which was between Martin Luther and the Dutch humanist scholar, Roman Catholic priest, Desiderius Erasmus, now Erasmus was a great guy. I'm thinking we're going to see Erasmus in heaven.

But he was very much still a part of that mindset. You know what the first debate of the Reformation was on? The freedom of the will. Erasmus defended the freedom of the will. Luther defended the bondage of the will.

And from that came the emphasis, which is found in Scripture, that saving faith is the work of the Spirit of God in his elect people. So, the faith that saves is a supernatural faith. The faith that saves is the work of the Spirit of God, who raises us to spiritual life, and in the words of the Old Testament prophet, takes out the heart of stone, and what?

Gives you a heart of flesh, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. That picture is used more than once. And by the way, there has never been a stony heart that wanted to be taken out. That is a radical action of grace by God, to raise us to spiritual life, take out that heart of stone, and give us a heart of flesh.

So the faith that saves is a Spirit-born faith. And the reason it perseveres is because Christ said, that I have come down from heaven, not through my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He's given me, I lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.

If you don't believe that God can save perfectly in and of Himself, you don't believe what Jesus said in John 6 .39. You just don't. If you have a synergistic position, it doesn't matter whether you're Church of Christ or a Southern Baptist, if you have a synergistic view, you are standing on the other side of the Tiber River, arguing against Martin Luther, and I would say you're arguing against the Apostle Paul.

And so when we talk about James 2, when he says, can that faith save him? We say, nope, because it's a said faith. It has no reality to it. It's not the result of the supernatural work of the Spirit of God in a person's life.

And so as far as I know, the only people who can give a balanced understanding of Romans 5, justified by faith, peace with God, Romans 8, we have a mediator that stands in the presence of the Father, and therefore no one can bring a charge against us.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? If Christ is standing in the presence of the Father in my place, who can make a charge stick against me when Jesus says, I've paid it all? No one. No one. But if you don't believe that Christ has a special people, if you don't believe that a special people, not because of anything in them, but because of God's mercy has been given by the Father to the Son, and the Father says to the Son, you will be their perfect Savior.

My will for you is that you save every last one of them. That means Jesus has to be a perfect Savior. He has to have the capacity and ability in and of himself to save perfectly. That's the Savior I need, because I'm going to tell you something.

If it's a cooperative effort between me and Jesus, and He's dependent upon me, I'm doomed, and so are you.

Justification, Sanctification, and the Order of Salvation

Well, thank you for sharing all that, because verse 18, you spend a lot of time in your book, James 2, 18, talks about, show me, demonstrate that faith.

But we're not in Missouri anymore.

We're not in Missouri. It's the show me state.

It's not that far away. It's not that far away. I crossed the state line today.

So you're saying it's not a mere said faith, because a mere said faith is what a dead faith actually is, but the justified by faith also live that faith out, and that's what James 2 is talking about. The world will see this true living faith put on display, right?

And so you spend a lot of time in the book, and I definitely recommend the God who justifies. So we want to transition now. If you have questions, please make your way to this microphone, and we're going to do that now.

So please don't be scared. This is your maybe one shot to be able to...

That microphone's right next to me. I can stare at anyone who has...

Yes.

Oh, we're done, huh? Okay.

So I have another question for you.

We have one victim... I mean, one person coming up from the back.

Yeah, we got a couple. And so as the line continues to grow, because this takes a second, I want to ask you another question, Dr. White. Not only are the Church of Christ in Jonesboro, but we have a lot of the evangelical churches.

You already started alluding to this. I'm talking about the churches that are very synergistic, Arminian leaning. And so you just got done talking about the perfect righteousness of Christ being imputed to our account.

Now, these systems kind of see, well, I've got to walk that aisle, I have to pray a certain.

Prayer.

I need to help God finish his plan of redemption. And so my question is, are these types of evangelical churches able to be consistent with justification by faith alone?

Well, that's the problem. As soon as you walk away from the foundational reality that salvation is of the Lord, that Christ is a powerful Savior, every place where you look in Scripture to look for assurance, what do you find?

Even in Hebrews 6. You know, Hebrews 6 is a place where people go, see, there you've got apostasy. You know, they did all these things, and then they fell away, and there's no way to renew them again to repentance.

You go to the end of that, first of all, not only does the author say, we are convinced of better things concerning you, things accompanying salvation. But the end of that chapter, you have one of the most astonishing pictures where Christ has gone into the holy place, in our place.

He is our anchor in the holy place, that line that goes right into the presence of God that keeps us, and it's in Christ. As long as we look to ourselves, we will never have assurance, because we're not the ones who save ourselves.

When you look to the passages about Christ, what does it say in Hebrews 7? Because Christ has unceasing life, because He never dies, and because He's in the presence of the Father, He is able to save to the uttermost.

He is able, not we enable Him. There is a vast difference between saying, Christ makes salvation possible, and saying Christ actually saves. And if you listen to much of the preaching, I was in a church, big, massive, Southern Baptist Church, 20 ,000 members.

We could ever find more than 7 ,000 at a time, but there were 20 ,000 people on the rolls. And even at the time, we joked that to get off the rolls of that church, you had to present your own death certificate in triplicate.

But I remember clearly, hearing from the pulpit, you want to know how to understand the doctrine.

Of election?

Here it is. God votes for you, the devil votes against you, and you've got the tie-breaking vote. Think about that for a second. Is that found anywhere in Scripture? Is that, does that have any, you walk through Ephesians 1, Romans 9, you're going to get.

That?

No.

It's a way to get around the reality that God the Father has given a people to the Son. And John 6 says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

Because see, there's a lot of people that go, oh yes, we've got to be drawn by the Father. You bet, sure, fine. But what is actually said there is, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

All who are drawn by the Father to the Son are raised up by the Son. So, you don't run off to another chapter and go, well, God draws everyone, because that's not even what the other chapter is talking about in John 12, 32.

So, the answer is, can they consistently do so? And the answer is no. And partly because what you have in a synergistic system is an attempt to bridge that gap. Luther said to Erasmus when he wrote his On the Bondage of the Will, you of all my opponents have put your finger upon the hinge upon which all this turns.

Luther recognized the Reformation was about this, and yet most of the people who call themselves Protestants today actually disagree with Luther and agree with the Roman Catholics on this subject.

So.

The Role of Repentance and Sanctification in Salvation

I forgot I was up here. I thought I was listening to another Radio Free Geneva, so thank you for that fire, Dr. White. So, we're going to do the audience Q &A, and so how we're going to do this is, please don't preach a sermon.

Just ask a simple question. We have muting power, right, back there, so if we need to mute you, we will. And we strategically placed Adam Carmichael to assist you back to your seat if we need.

To.

So, hopefully we won't have to.

And you may actually just fly back to your seat, not ever touching the floor.

It's great. Yes.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I'd like to hear you expound upon something. So, you mentioned...

Need you to get a little closer?

No.

I'd like to hear you expound upon something. So, you were reading from Romans 4 about he that works, what he gets his wage, it's not grace. So, a lot of the, what they call anti-lordship salvation people, you know, the Stephen Anderson type and the pre-grace, now they'll use that text.

Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't try to connect poor old Stephen Anderson to the... I mean, I've debated Robert Wilkins. Let's just use him because attaching Stephen Anderson to almost anybody is a little bit of an insult for everybody.

So, some of you who don't know who we're talking about, just go to YouTube and you'll go, okay, yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, yeah. No, he's definitely on the fringe. But there is this anti-lordship salvation segment. And so, their idea is if we're justified by faith alone, they would say, well, that means not even repentance is required.

You don't have to do anything. In fact, you could be an atheist after being a Christian. So, I'd like for you to elaborate on your position versus theirs, if you would.

Yeah.

For a much fuller discussion, like I said, I did debate Robert Wilkins in 2009, 2010, somewhere around in there, on this very issue, on that very subject. So, it's available on YouTube. It was a frustrating debate, but at least the issues would be laid out.

But again, the only balanced way to do so is from the Reformed understanding of the fact that saving faith is the gift of God and it is not alone in what is given to the individual. So, the issue is what brings about justification?

What brings about justification is faith and faith alone, but is justification all that happens within us in the plan of God? Because when you read Ephesians 1 and you hear about the eternal predestination of people and the fact that they are to be adopted into the family of God and you look at Romans 8 and the great golden chain of redemption, what's the purpose of all that?

That we might be conformed to the image of Christ. And so, to be conformed to the image of Christ is going to involve all that sanctification, all that work within ourselves, but that's not what justifies us.

What normally happens is that people think of, and I was raised this way, I wasn't introduced to the language that helped me to understand what we call the ordo salutis, the order of salvation. The fact, in my mind, justification was the same thing as just being saved, but sanctification was the same thing as being saved and adopted the same thing as being saved.

The fact is, Scripture distinguishes between these things. And so, when we talk about justification, we're talking about that act whereby upon our regeneration, we are given the gift of faith. We believe in Christ.

We continue to believe in Christ. We continue to be looking at Him because we've been made new creatures. And as a result of that faith that does not bring anything in its hand, we are declared.

Right.

I didn't have time to do it, but if you really want another, just, if you want to see how to connect these things together, Romans 8, after the golden chain of redemption, you have the picture of the law court.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God's the one who justifies. Who's the one who condemns? Jesus Christ who died, yea, rather, who was raised. He intercedes in our behalf before the Father.

So who can bring a charge against God's elect? No one can. There's no grounds to do so. The Father has declared us righteous. The Son has died in our place and intercedes in our place. What more do you need?

Why would you think that your puny work's going to add to that? But that doesn't change the fact that the purpose of all this is that we might be made conformed to the image of His beloved Son. He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren.

And that means there's a whole lot more the Holy Spirit of God does amongst us. And so those people that say, you just get your ticket punched, you go to heaven, become an atheist, do anything else, have completely missed that the whole reason that saving faith is given to anyone is so that they might be made like Jesus.

And it's a lifelong process. However long God gives you, it's a lifelong process. And that's why we're still here. Otherwise, God could just simply save us and then take us off the planet. That would be the easiest way to do it, but that's not how He does it.

Yes. Thank you for that question.

Yeah. I'm in agreement, you know, that we're justified before God at the point of faith, that James is the demonstration, the outward demonstration before man of that faith. I just would like your commentary on how would you respond?

One of the passages that makes me kind of toss around in my head and just kind of, okay, what's being said here, what's going on here is Cornelius. So Cornelius is told by the angel, your prayers and your alms have come up as a memorial before God and to send men to Joppa and that you're going to receive basically words by which you and your family will be saved.

I couldn't get my Bible up. There's no service here. But anyway, something like that. So I just wanted your commentary on that passage. Sure.

Well, there's a number of things in the Book of Acts. For example, you have in those early periods, you have people who do not receive the Holy Spirit until the apostles come down and lay hands upon them.

That's not how it happened in Corinth. That's not how it happened during the rest of Paul's missionary. So what's going on there? Those very, very early chapters are establishing the very boundary markers of what the church is going to look like.

And with Cornelius, you're dealing with God-fearers that interestingly existed all across the Roman Empire, thanks to the Jews establishing synagogues in many places. And they were people who didn't become circumcised and didn't become part of the congregation, but they were attracted to the morality, the monotheism, et cetera.

And obviously, that became a very fertile field for the early Christians to bring the gospel to. But the point is that part of the reason that Cornelius has to do what Cornelius has to do is so Peter has to do what Peter has to do.

In other words, why is Peter up on the housetop and has to be called down and immediately have an application, the vision he had? So part of it is just the unique situation that you're still dealing with a Peter who still got very strong Jewish traditions, that even though he walked with Jesus and heard all this stuff, still had to have his head beaten around with a fry pan a few times before he figured all these things out.

And we still don't even know, in fact, I think we probably do know, that Peter still withdrew table fellowship from the Gentiles in Antioch, and Paul had to face him face-to-face, Galatians chapter 2.

So part of it was not so much for him, but for Peter. But the other aspect is, if you've ever read Spurgeon's discussion of his conversion, there was a lengthy period of time when God was dealing with him before he feels that he was actually brought to regeneration.

And so the American experience often is sudden conversion on a certain day, boom, and that's what most people's normative experience is. But there are others that that's not their experience at all. And so when we see God working with someone and then using means to bring the message of the gospel and stuff, we're like, well, that's not the normative way.

Well, Acts up through about 14 isn't normative. And then once you get the establishment of churches, you start seeing things changing. I'm not sure if anyone's ever noticed, but there's a whole lot more miraculous at the beginning of Acts than there is at the end of Acts.

And in fact, once you get into the epistles, it should strike all of us as a little strange. You've got the situation with Paul's traveling companion who has fallen ill and Paul leaves him behind. Well, Paul, why didn't you just heal him like you used to do?

Well, because there's a transition taking place. And so I guess the fundamental commentary is making the experiences in the first half of Acts normative for the rest doesn't even work with Acts, let alone with the rest of the epistles.

So that's how I'd answer it.

And I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I believe Calvin, but he wants to ask a question. Calvin made the case that Cornelius was regenerate under Old Testament standards. And so I didn't know if you could maybe speak to that or how he developed.

I've not read what Calvin said about that John Calvin stuff.

So as long as there's no rules against it, I'll do this Ligonier Q &A style and I'll stay.

Here.

What's wrong with the answer?

But so you kind of touched on debating Catholic priests who seems to hold to Scripture, to the authority of Scripture a little bit.

Well, you mean Mitch Pacwa?

Well, just in general, you said you have Catholic priest friends.

Mitch Pacwa is about the only Jesuit that I know of who actually believes that the Scripture has authority in and of itself. So yeah, that was unusual.

On a normal scale, I've had Catholic friends, Catholic co-workers, and such that don't hold to the authority of Scripture. So as far as the imputation of sin and the imputation of Christ.

They're not even an Orthodox Catholic if that's the case. I mean, look, Roman Catholicism has everything in it. They have just as wide a range of viewpoints as Protestantism does. But the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church do fundamentally subjugate Scripture to tradition.

But to be an Orthodox Roman Catholic, you cannot question the supernatural nature of Scripture and its authority. I know that Roman Catholic priests and things do that. That's one of my arguments I say to Roman Catholics.

When you guys start kicking the people out of your church that don't believe the things you actually teach in your dogmatic statements, then I might start taking you seriously. But you don't do that. And right now, how can you?

Your pope doesn't believe a lot of those things. So that's the real problem with that point. But I think it's important that we recognize that the Roman Catholic dogmatic statements is that Scripture is inspired and authoritative.

And it wasn't until Vatican II that you start getting wishy-washy about that kind of stuff. You look at the papal biblical commission, and it's filled with leftist progressivists. It really is. That's what's made me laugh over the years.

Sorry to do this. But I did a debate with Jerry Matiticks on the papacy, actually two debates, when the pope came to World Youth Day in 1993 in Denver. And Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid of Catholic Answers, the night I was debating Jerry Matiticks at Denver Seminary, did a debate with two fundamentalists.

And they just wiped him out, just wiped him off the planet. It was just terrible. But one of the questions they asked was, how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew? And the fundamentalists responded, because in the King James Bible, it says the gospel according to Matthew, which isn't really a good answer.

But I would have loved to have been able to be there, because most of the people in the papal biblical commission don't believe Matthew wrote Matthew. So there have been changes in Roman Catholicism. So you have to differentiate between the dogmatic teachings, which would still affirm, at least dogmatically, the inspiration of scripture, versus what you're experiencing.

And that is, man, there's just, you can find anything amongst Roman Catholics, especially amongst Jesuits.

Yeah.

So it's mostly just a lack of being able to answer something is what I'm more getting.

Towards.

So would you have any pointers to somebody, that individual who does not hold, when you present scripture to them, and they're like, well, I don't believe that sin was imputated to Mary. They believe that Mary was sinless.

You point out that, okay, for all of sin fallen short of the glory of God, there are none who please Him, there are none who are righteous. How do you work with somebody like that who doesn't hold to that?

But even as a Roman Catholic, they believe that Adam's sin is imputed to them. So I don't, okay, they can say there's an exception to Mary. We can get into Mary on all sorts of other grounds. I wrote a book called Mary, Another Redeemer.

It's on Kindle. It's available in various places. But from a Roman Catholic perspective, that's not relevant to them. Adam's sin has been imputed to them, so they still have to deal with it. So it almost sounds like you're dealing with people that just pick and choose.

They call themselves Roman Catholics, but they're picking and choosing. And even Pope John Paul II spoke against cafeteria-style Catholicism, where you pick and choose what you want to believe. So they're being an inconsistent Roman Catholic, and they may not care about that.

In our day, where truth is just whatever you want to make it to be, it can be very difficult to deal with that, just like with a secularist. And so at that point, you're really just dealing with a lost person, and as you're dealing with secular lost people, you press the image of God upon them.

You press them for consistency, and that's the same thing you do with an atheist or anybody.

Else. Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Acts 2:38, Baptism, and the Promise to Israel

Acts 238.

Oh, my.

Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. The word for is often disputed in regards to what exactly that word means in that verse. So is there anything in the immediate context that would just help our case to, that would help us understand that it means because of, just in the immediate context?

Well, I would like to say that anybody who can do three nights of debate on one verse probably isn't actually dealing with the text anymore but their own traditions. And the reality is, the key thing to keep in mind in Acts 2 is that you're dealing with Peter's first presentation of the gospel to the Jews.

And he has just said to the Jews, you crucified by the hands of the Gentiles, your Messiah. And what normally gets lost, especially, I don't know that I've, to be honest, it's not like I've spent a whole lot of time reading them, but I've never heard in these never-ending debates, the Church of Christ folks in Acts 238, a recognition of what's actually going on in a covenantal context because they don't have a covenantal theology, they don't know what covenants are, they don't understand the language that's being used.

And so Peter has demonstrated, for David did not ascend, for David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit by my hand until I make your footstool. Again, God's favorite Bible verse because he keeps repeating it.

From Psalm 110, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.

Why?

You crucified your Messiah. And they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Who's the we? See, almost all the time, the conversation is, you know, this is general means of salvation for everybody is to be baptized, so on and so forth.

These are Jews saying to fellow Jews, because they call them men and brethren, we've crucified our Messiah. Is there any hope for us? Is there any hope for us? That's the context. If that's not central right at the beginning, then we're not actually dealing with the text to begin with.

And so the answer has to be understood. And I don't think that it is a matter of dealing just with Greek prepositions, because repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

What was that saying to Jews who are literally staying there going, we're toast. There is no hope for us. We could never be saved. There may have been people standing there who had yelled out, crucify him.

But they certainly recognized that at least the federal principle that their leaders had crucified the Messiah, and therefore they stand guilty of what their leaders have done in their place as their representative.

So they're thinking, I have no hope. And Peter says, actually, you do. Repent. And to be baptized as a Jew is to do what? That is a public proclamation of your identification with Jesus, not only as the Messiah, but what is the method of, what's the baptismal formula?

Baptized into the name, singular, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That's recognizing that Jesus is more than merely a prophet or anything like that. That's identifying him with divinity.

So to be baptized in that way, what we're saying to you, brothers, is that you can have salvation, but it's only in Jesus Christ and it's no half-hearted commitment. This is just addressed to the Jews as to what they can do.

This isn't a discussion of the mechanism. You want the mechanism? Go to the places where Peter and Paul lay out how salvation takes place. This is dealing with a single question, a single historical context, and that is the people who are going, oh no, we are hopeless.

Nope, actually, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah. We think Christ is Jesus' last name. It's not. I think it's much better to render that as Jesus the Messiah, because that is a statement of confession, for the forgiveness of your sins.

They needed to have forgiveness of sins, and they're not going to get it from the temple. Once you know who Jesus is, those sacrifices do nothing. You go to Christ, you repent, you be baptized, every single one of you, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

They are sitting there going, we're doomed, and in one sentence, you will receive God's gift of the Holy Spirit. The way is still open for you, for, this gets skipped, the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, who?