What does it mean that salvation is by faith alone? - Podcast Episode 156

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Welcome to the got questions podcast. This is part two of our series where we're basically going through three of the major alone's in Scripture, we believe this

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Salvation is by grace alone, which we covered in the previous episode By faith alone, which we'll be talking about today in Christ alone so topic today again is salvation by faith alone one of the

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Rallying cries if not the primary rallying cry of the Reformation One of the truly the most important questions in all of Christian theology

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Joining me today is Kevin the managing editor of got questions ministries I and Jeff the administrator of Bible ref comm so hello

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Jeff once you start us off when someone says Salvation is by faith alone

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Um What exactly does that mean? faith alone is something that's very easy to misunderstand and that's good that we start with that definition because a lot of times when when people want to object to The idea that we're saved by faith alone what they're really objecting to is something that Biblical Christians don't believe either and there's a lot of things that people think of as the faith

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That we're talking about that are not sometimes. It's something like just agreement Something as simple as saying well

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I just I said a prayer or I was raised as a Christian or I think Jesus is good and Yeah, I believe that he'll save me something very sort of shallow and indistinct like that That's really not the faith that we're talking about and we're gonna get into the idea that faith does not involve our personal efforts

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It doesn't involve works and rituals and things like that but the Bible expresses real saving faith as when a person is is beyond intellectual

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Agreement that they have this submissive repentant trust in Jesus Christ That means that you you have to have a position where you agree with God About your sin and what your sin is and that you you are going to rely on him

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For that it doesn't just mean saying oh, well somebody said I was supposed to check this box.

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So I checked this box That's not saving faith so when Christians talk about the idea that we're saved by faith alone

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We are not saying that it's just some random meaningless agreement with God and it's difficult for us to gauge that and this is also a place where we get where we get confused when we talk about How do we judge whether or not we are saved or whether another person is saved the

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Bible tells us that you can't really know What's going on in another person's heart? So it's very very difficult dangerous even

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For us to assume that we know what's happening in somebody else The point is not that we're supposed to say this person is acting speaking behaving in a certain way

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So I am sure I am a hundred percent Certain that that person is or is not a believer that doesn't work because I'm not

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God But what we can do is we can say God tells us we're supposed to test ourselves

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He does give us reasons to to look so there are reasons for us to examine and say is the faith that I have

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Actual saving faith or is it not actual saving faith? And the thing that that's important is that we have to have saving faith repentant submissive trust in Jesus Christ That is the faith that we say is required for salvation and it is the only kind of faith that brings us to salvation

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It is not some other kind of faith, but it's also not anything that includes things We do or things we say or rituals that we participate in Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9 is kind of the go -to passage when we talk about this whole idea of Faith having faith for salvation for by grace.

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Are you saved through faith that scripture says? Not of works. So there's a contrast there between the the faith and the not of works lest any man should boast and One of one of the places that we can go to in scripture to get some lessons on faith

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It's actually the the miracles of Jesus They illustrate the the necessity of faith so well and how faith works with What Jesus does?

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They as the as faith and Jesus connect as it were and then we have these miracles that happen

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Charles Ryrie wrote a book called the miracles of our Lord and in it he said this quote the main purpose of the miracles was to teach to reveal but Miracles also remind us of the consequences of sin sickness blindness death and of the power of the

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Lord To do something about those consequences That is why many of his physical cures illustrate so well the spiritual salvation

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Secured when he died and rose from the dead end of quote. So often in Jesus miracles.

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We see that he is commending faith those who were healed had faith and Jesus identifies their faith as the means of their deliverance

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I'd like to take a look very briefly here at Mark chapter 5 There are two miracles that are recorded here and both of them involve the faith of the one who was healed

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The one is the healing of the woman who had the issue of blood for 12 years and the other is the raising of Jairus's daughter

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Who was 12 years old? I'll start reading here in verse 22 as Jairus has come to the to the

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Lord and he He falls down at his feet and he worships him and we read this one of the synagogue leaders named

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Jairus came and when he Saw Jesus he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him.

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My little daughter is dying Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and lived so Jesus went with him obviously

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Jairus had faith in Jesus as he came to Jesus specifically and asked him to Heal his daughter of this illness on their way.

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There's an interruption verse 24 a large crowd Followed and pressed around him and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years

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She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had

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Yet instead of getting better she grew worse when she heard about Jesus She came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak

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Because she thought if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering at once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him he turned around in the crowd and asked who touched my clothes and At this point the disciples are all are wondering why he's asking this because the crowd is so great and everybody's jostling everybody

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But the woman comes forward and identifies herself and then in verse 34 Jesus says this to her daughter

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Your faith has healed you Go in peace and be freed from your suffering

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Literal translation of that of that verse would be your faith has saved you before Your faith has healed you literally your faith has saved you

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So it was the faith of the woman that saved her not the physical touch and Jesus Goes out of his way to to make sure that she knows this

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That it was not simply her hand that was touching his clothes wasn't the physical touch

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It was her faith that was reaching out to Jesus and that is what healed her literally saved her

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The faith that he that she placed in in Jesus her hand was simply the contact point

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Between her faith and the person of Jesus Christ and anytime you have those two things coming together faith and Jesus Wonderful things happen.

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We see that all the way through Scripture well After she is healed then we continue with the story of Jairus verse 35 of Mark chapter 5 while Jesus was still speaking some people came from the house of Jairus the synagogue leader

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Your daughter is dead. They said why bother the teacher anymore over hearing what they said

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Jesus told him don't be afraid Just believe so again. We have an emphasis on faith.

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Jesus says just believe or I guess we could phrase it this way Faith alone

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Don't be afraid Jairus have faith alone Because there was nothing else for Jairus to do.

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What else could he do? His daughter was dead So even if you were wondering, you know, maybe there's some kind of a potion we can mix

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Maybe there's some kind of a ritual that we can rely on. Maybe there's a ceremony we can perform

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Maybe there's a prayer we can recite Jesus says no. No a thousand times.

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No Just believe have faith alone So many of Jesus miracles can be illustrations of our salvation

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I mean we know what happens in the story of Jairus Jesus goes to the house goes to the room where His the body of his daughter is lying and he he raises her from the dead it's the power of Christ coupled with the faith of Jairus and So we have

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Jesus physical miracles here in this world reversing the effects of sin in the physical world but that's a wonderful illustration of How Jesus salvation reverses the effects of sin in the heart in fact removes the sin from the heart

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So Jairus daughter is is raised from the dead and in a very similar way

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Ephesians chapter 2 We who were dead in our trespasses and sins have been raised by faith in Jesus Christ I remember

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Struggling with this the whole faith alone is our our natural inclination is to want to do something

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To somehow earn it to contribute and that's what we talked a lot about last week. But this is

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Kevin described with the woman who was healed Or Jairus nothing that they did it wasn't her touching him it wasn't

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Jairus coming to Jesus that it was their faith in him that Resulted in Christ performing the miracles that he did and similarly, it's not as if our

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Faith somehow makes us worthy of salvation. It's it's an act of receiving

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It's an act of trust to me the best illustration I've heard and no illustration is perfect The illustration of using a chair that you look over at a chair you look at it say wow

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That looks like a chair that if I sit in it would hold me up well, that's more of like an intellectual

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Sam like Jeff was talking about at the beginning that's just I Intellectually acknowledge that that is a chair that looks sturdy enough to hold me

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Biblical faith when we're talking about the faith on is actually sitting in that chair It's relying on that chair to hold you up So it's not as if our sitting in the chair makes the chair hold us up.

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No, it's recognizing That that chair is capable of holding us similarly Trusting in Christ.

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It's not our trust that does anything. It's our trust that Relies on what

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Christ has already done his full provision of salvation It's that faithful reliance it's that is

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Jeff described repentant Submission to God's plan of salvation recognizing.

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There's nothing that we can do you can make us worthy of it Rather God offers.

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It is a gift that we receive by faith I look at like a verse like Acts 16 31 where the flipping in jail are

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Asked the Apostle Paul like sir What must I do to be saved and Paul responds not with a long list of works

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We have to do this says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Amen There's a the perhaps the clearest description of here's a question.

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How can I be saved and Paul's response Believe and you'll be saved trust in Christ alone rely on his provision of salvation and you'll be saved

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No works. We were going to discuss The role that works play because that's what makes this so controversial, but the act of receiving

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Salvation is an act of faith trust Jesus you've done the work.

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I am trusting you and you alone to save me. That's what faith alone is There's a lot that goes into the idea of faith alone

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In far as what it implies and Kevin you were talking about the woman who you know had had the the issue and there's a there's a part in that where it talks about her not being able to Stand up I believe or there's a woman that Jesus heals in the book of Luke and it mentions that she can't straighten her back

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She's just not able to stand up and it's it's an interesting little Tidbit in here that in Greek that woman that Jesus healed who couldn't stand up It describes what she couldn't do with her back and it uses a word that means completely it means that she couldn't completely

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Stand up and straighten her back and then in Hebrews 7 25 that exact same word is used to describe

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The way Christ saves us where it says that he can save to the uttermost or he saves completely

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So when when Jesus heals this woman in Luke, he heals her so that she can now completely

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Perfectly exactly as intended Straighten her back. That's the way the Christ saves us and faith alone.

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That is very very different from saying Christ saves us most of the way and Then I have to do the rest or I have to work to earn the rest or I have to complete the process and Things like that faith alone means that we are not doing anything.

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We are not accomplishing anything For the sake of our salvation. We're trusting we're accepting we're receiving but there is no work.

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There's no effort. There's no merit There's no anything that we're doing that brings that and then that implies other things about our salvation

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It implies things about whether or not it's possible for a person to lose Their salvation it implies a lot of things about whether or not a person can

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Demonstrate their salvation to people in a meaningful way or whether they can't whether or not I can If I'm gonna do something bad enough to lose my salvation.

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What does that mean? Am I saved completely am I not saved? Completely so faith alone comes into more than just the idea of how do we get there?

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It also has implications for what does it mean? What does it look like? Whether or not we can keep our salvation and those are all things again

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The people get confused with when we talk about faith alone that we get we need to clarify Yeah, I think the the very phrase faith alone

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Carries with it the implication that it's not by works, you know, we we aren't adding anything to faith

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We we come to Christ empty -handed and we come with just Trusting in him having that full assurance and confidence in him

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There is only one reason why we're going to be in heaven someday and that is because of God's gracious salvation through Christ and we place our faith our trust in him and in him alone, but it's it's the faith is the means by which

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God has Ordained that we will come to Christ and we really can't add anything to it a few years ago,

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I went to a museum to take a look at traveling display that they had there on the impressionist painters and so Let's say that while I was there at the museum let's just say that this happened that I was standing before a masterpiece of Monet but I had brought with me to the museum a

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Little paintbrush and a can of paint and so as I stand there before the

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Monet I Take out my paintbrush and I dip it in the paint and I say, you know what?

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This painting is great, but Let me just add a couple little brushstrokes to this painting.

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Well Immediately the museum guards would be tackling me from every direction.

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It would knock the brush out of my hand They would put me in handcuffs. They would lead me away and lock me up and probably throw away the key why because That work of art they would say is perfect the way it is

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It's finished. There's nothing more that needs to be done with it and I can argue

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I can argue all I want Yeah, it's it's it's very nice, but I think that I can improve on the water lilies

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I think that a little bit of my work will actually improve things and They would lock me up because I would be exactly wrong.

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I cannot add to that masterpiece Without subtracting from it.

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It's paradoxical, but it's true. You cannot add to a masterpiece without actually

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Subtracting it or subtracting from it you subtract from its value you subtract from its worth and It's the same way with with Christ Jesus Salvation is a masterpiece.

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It is the master work of God. It is his masterpiece of grace and Anytime that I might say well,

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I think that what Jesus did there was very good I like what

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Jesus did but let me just add a few strokes of my own good works to this

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God says no It's finished the way it is it is perfect in the truest sense of the word

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Jesus Sacrifice on the cross is perfect. It covered sin atoned for sin

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Perfectly, in fact on the cross Jesus said it is finished Masterpiece is done.

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We don't add anything to it If we try with our good works to add to our salvation to help us, you know

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Earn salvation. We're actually subtracting from the sacrifice of Christ God's gracious salvation

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That's another area where the implications mean something if the sacrifice that Christ made is perfect if it's finished if it saves to the uttermost then that that raises a lot of questions about the idea that I could somehow do something say something or Act in such a way that that salvation would no longer apply and this is the concept that we talked about with eternal security and here again is where Saving faith comes in a lot of people who object to eternal security

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Object because their perspective is well if a person Doesn't ever really follow Christ doesn't really love

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God and and just walks away from the faith. What does that really mean? Well, let's drive back to the definition that we started with in the beginning actual saving faith this repentance submissive transforming faith that Is something that applies that blood of Christ and if that's true

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Then we should be leaning on verses like John 10 28 that says nobody can take these people from me

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Nobody can pull them out of my hand. So faith alone comes along with these other

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Ideas if I believe that it's possible for me to behave in such a way that I'm no longer saved or that God's going to abandon me then

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I am Functionally saying that I believe that my salvation is in part dependent on my actions

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My good behavior my good deeds and that's a difficult thing to square with the idea of being

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Faith alone and then that whole idea is hard to square with what scripture says about the fact that it's

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God who accomplishes this it's Christ who accomplishes this. I'm not working for it.

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I'm not obtaining it I'm just accepting it and that's a big difference when you think about how it all works out in practice

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Jeff that's an excellent point. I mean while this is not an episode on eternal security Eternal security is an excellent way of really studying

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What a person believes about salvation because if they believe the salvation can be lost that does impact what do you believe about how salvation is received and you often find it a

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Correlation there that if you're believing that you must do certain things to maintain your salvation Are you really believing your salvation was received by faith?

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but um this whole conversation like we talked about the faith alone being the rallying cry of the

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Reformation and that that was the The many other solos like alones the

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Martin Luther and other reformers emphasized that faith alone was the biggest because the The Catholic Church had added so many things you had to do rituals.

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You had to observe Acts you had to do good works you had to do in order to maintain your salvation in order to be saved that Salvation by faith had been lost let alone

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Salvation by faith alone had been lost but salvation by faith period had been lost it had become a

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If I obey the teachings of the church all these teachings. I have a chance of being saved it reached that desperate a

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Rejection of what the Bible actually teaches so since then there's been a continued divide between Protestants evangelicals and Catholics about what exactly faith alone means and Catholics will respond with you're saying that God does not require good works that good works are completely rebel

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What's what what's the point of being saved if it doesn't like change your life and like well, hold on That's not what faith alone means

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Faith alone means you are saved by faith alone by receiving the perfect and complete sacrifice of Christ.

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You're saved by that alone But it's also important to teach that that salvation will never be alone the salvation will

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Inevitably result in good works now, we're not here to say how much good works how much of a changed life

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That's there's so many things that that is dependent on is the person being discipled.

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It's person being taught Does the person have access to God's word? there's so many things that play into a role of how much our life changes, but to say

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The salvation is by faith alone is not the same thing as saying that salvation Will be alone you go to James 2 which talks about the faith that works is dead saying that a faith in Christ trusting him alone for salvation will result in Changes first Corinthians 5 17 says we're a new creation.

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So again not getting into how much works how quickly these changes occur and those sorts of things but Saying that salvation is by faith alone

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Is not equivalent to saying that salvation will be alone or that salvation will be void of good works and life change

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Going back to what Jesus told Jairus and Mark chapter 5 Jesus said

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Don't be afraid only believe and sometimes I think that is like the hardest command of all

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I mean don't be afraid and then just believe Let go of your own efforts your own attempts to be worthy in God's sight and just trust

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Jesus without fear But what does John 3 16 say for God?

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So loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life and What's that verse saying other than just believe?

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Whoever believes Will have eternal life. I think really when we come down to brass tacks.

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There's a couple places that this is It's got significant implications and we've we've had articles podcasts all sorts of discussion on these there's discussions about how

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God's sovereignty Interacts with this idea because if we say that we are saved by faith alone.

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There's the question of how much of that is our Responsibility how much of that is God's and there's a lot of different systems that try to Figure that out.

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We know the Bible says that we have a responsibility and that God is completely in control and completely in charge

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We have the definition of what faith really is that we have to be careful about saying we're talking saving faith

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We're not just talking about intellectual belief or assent and then we have the idea of what does that mean in in? practice and the idea that our

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Faith is not alone it's what saves but it does not come all by itself is

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Definitely something that's controversial a lot of people struggle with that. They have a very hard time separating the idea of a person who is saved and saved only by faith and Then in addition to that that saving faith already completed already saved already done

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Being something that's going to naturally lead to a person Responding to God's will in a certain way

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There's a lot of people who as soon as you start to say this person does not speak act think behave in an even remotely

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Christian manner and they think that somehow what you're doing is you are turning away from grace. You're turning away from Faith alone, and that's that's not the case.

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The Bible actually says it's possible for people to deceive Themselves about the relationship with Christ Jesus makes a point of saying they're gonna people who are gonna look at him at the end and Say but but didn't

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I do this and didn't I say this and and wasn't I really a believer and he's gonna go No, because I never knew you

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So it's okay for us to say that faith alone is the thing that saves

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But it's also very reasonable and important that the Bible points out that we're supposed to examine ourselves

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Test ourselves see if you are in the faith So we don't ever want to take faith alone to be an excuse to say

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I can just be casual about my relationship With God, that's one extreme.

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The other extreme is to say that I need to be so obsessed and paranoid about Earning it or deserving it that I stopped trusting

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God and I start trying to do things Myself there's there's really those two sides to those that we have to Be careful of and either one of them is dangerous because both of them misunderstand what grace is really all about absolutely, and We've mentioned eternal security a couple times.

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The biggest objection is always well If eternal security is true, that means you can live your life

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However, you want and still be saved and that's a similar argument to faith alone Like well, if you're saying all we have to do is receive

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Salvation gift that Christ offers. Doesn't that mean we could live however we want and Ultimately Probably gonna get in trouble for saying is ultimately.

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Yes, that is what it believes If Christ has truly done all the work, we are saved the moment we receive that but with that said, let me be very clear

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That salvation we receive Will have an impact it will Transform us it will change us.

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It will result in good works. It will result in increased obedience to God and his word

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Those changes are and like use the word inevitable This is

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God doing that work It's God who saves us and is God who continues the process of sanctifying us of making us more like Christ and all of that is dependent on Christ but Salvation is by faith alone

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But that faith that results in a new creation Will never be alone.

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I cannot emphasize that is the proper perspective Salvation by faith alone that faith

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Will not be alone. I really like to emphasize the idea of Symptoms just as a way to help make that clear and to make that understood it is possible for a person to actually have certain conditions or Certain diseases or whatever else and not demonstrate symptoms that anybody else can see that is possible

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So when we look at the fact that we are saved by faith alone It is possible that in a given moment or over a given period of time that in theory a person could show

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No evidence whatsoever that they've actually been saved that could be because of spiritual immaturity

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It could be because of a little bit of hard -headedness It could be all sorts of different reasons. It's possible that's a separate question from whether or not it's

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Reasonable for that person or other people to believe that that person is legitimately saved

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That's where the difference comes in. We can accept the idea that I as a human being a limited person can't

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Perfectly judge another person's salvation. I can't look at somebody and say nope. That's too much.

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That's too far I know that that person's Not saved likewise, I can't presume to say oh they seem like a really really

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Christian person They must be a believer. I can accept that there's limitations there

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But scripture also tells us Paul tells us that when people behave in heinously sinful ways and Claim to be

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Christians We're not even supposed to eat With those people Paul says you're supposed to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith

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James says don't just be a hearer of the word be a doer as Well, so when we talk about that issue and faith alone and then what does that mean as far as a person's

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Lifestyle is concerned. That's really where the difference is. It just comes down to how reasonable is it for a person to Actually think that someone's a believer in theory any person

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Could be a believer in Christ. God's gonna separate the tares and the wheat. That's his responsibility

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That's not mine But that doesn't mean that we should be careless or we should be casual and say well it doesn't matter there's nothing

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I can do There's nothing I can see there's nothing I can look at because if you don't show any symptoms at all

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Then it's not reasonable to believe that you have that saving faith that we talked about before Well said

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Jeff Close this episode with again Believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved By grace are you saved through faith not of works?

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That's our emphasis here salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone

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So Jeff Kevin, thank you for joining me today for excellent and vitally important conversation.

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And again questions related to salvation are by far Favorite so to speak questions to answer is they get to the heart of the matter they get to a person's

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Eternal destiny and there's related to salvation It's perhaps no more important question than how salvation is actually received and we believe the consistent message of Scripture The salvation is by faith alone