Justification by Faith
In the doctrines of the Faith in the Orthodox Church, we teach and believe that we are Justified by the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. In our common Faith in these sacred mysteries of Our Lord’s kenotic plan for our Salvation, we believe that we are Justified by Faith in these mysteries which brought about and will bring us to Salvation. We read in the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans that we are Justified by Faith through Baptism as Faithful members of the Body of Christ. Paul likewise mentions the great Faith of Abraham and how he was justified by God for his obedience and faithfulness to the laws of God. “The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of Faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, Faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore, since we are justified by Faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have obtained access to this Grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the Glory of God.” (RSV Romans 4:13-15 & 5:1-2)
It is noteworthy to mention the Faith of Abraham because we call him, ‘Our Father in the Faith’, the Faith in God that Abraham possessed which was a Faith before the Law of Moses, and likewise our Faith is after the Law of Moses, thus both are linked by righteousness and by grace. Both Abraham and those of us who are members of the Church are recipients of a gift that God has freely given to us, for God is able by his nature to justify the ungodly. In this case, both parties are uncircumcised and do not follow the Jewish Law because Abraham was called by God before the Law, and we are called by God as members of His Holy Church after the Law. “Drawing upon Genesis 15:16 Paul notes: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Rom 4:3). Abraham hadn’t undergone the rite of circumcision when he believed (Gen 17). Nor was he being rewarded for having offered gracious and generous hospitality to strangers (Gen 18). He had not yet been obedient to God in his willingness to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, the carrier of God’s praises (Gen 22). Abraham was the recipient of a gift (Rom 4:4) Why did God do this? The reason is found in God’s nature: God justifies the ungodly (4:5).” (New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament; Daniel Durken, pg. 452.) The argument here is simple, God is the God of both the Jews and the Gentiles, and the principle of Faith in God is more important than the Law, for Almighty God is One and He will justify the Jews who are circumcised on the basis of Faith, and the Gentiles who are uncircumcised through Faith. We are not annulling the Law, we are supporting the Law, for Jesus Christ came to fulfill both the Law and the Prophets and His Church is the New Israel.
Many if not all of the mainline protestants hold to the heretical dictum of “Once saved always saved,” when it comes to Faith in Christ or the Church. There is a great emphasis placed on conversion experiences or “Jesus Moments” when they either went to up to the altar call or accepted in their hearts Jesus, as their ‘personal’ Lord and Savior. This was all started back in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation with the notorious German Augustinian Monk Martin Luther and his 95 theses of protest against the heretical and corrupt Roman Catholic Church. In the mainline Protestant Denominations, Justification by Faith and Good Works are, to say the least, opposites of one another. Starting with the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther who coined the term Sola Fide, meaning by Faith alone, we have a whole doctrine of Salvation and being saved, being formed around this singular topic. Luther’s doctrine of Sola Fide asserts God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and received through faith alone, and this pardon is excluding all works that may be produced by Faith. According to this doctrine, all mankind is fallen and sinful under the curse of God and incapable of saving themselves from God's wrath, punishment, and a curse. God the Father, on the basis of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ alone or Solus Christus, another Lutheran coined term; grants sinners judicial pardon, or justification, which is received solely through Faith. The righteousness of Jesus Christ, according to the followers of Sola Fide, is imputed or attributed by God to the believing sinner, as opposed to infused or imparted, so that the divine verdict and pardon of the believing sinner is based not upon anything that the sinner does, but upon Jesus Christ and his righteousness alone, which are received through faith alone. Justification is by faith alone and is distinguished from the other graces of Salvation. (Christian Theologies of Scripture; Justin S. Holcomb, pgs. 106-108.) This doctrine of Sola Fide is completely crushed by the Epistle of Saint James, that is why Luther calls it the ‘straw epistle’ because Saint James in the opening of chapter two teaches that Faith without Good Works is dead.
In the Orthodox Church, we are both Justified by Faith and Good Works which prove and display our Faith in Christ and His Church to the world. According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church; We are Saved, We are being Saved, and We will be Saved, this past, present, and future reality is so because Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He is the One who saves not we ourselves. This is the process of Theosis in this past, present, and future reality of being Saved, we must freely choose to have a synergic relationship with Jesus Christ so that He may deify us through the Holy Spirit working in the Sacred Mysteries of the Church. This process of the Theosis likewise happens through our active participation in the Life of the Church through prayer, worship, and partaking of the Holy Mysteries. As Saint Paul says in Colossians 3:4; “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory,” this is the finality of our process of Theosis which is our Salvation, for we will be with Christ in his Glory. In Romans 5:6-11; While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.” We are all saved by the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross who reconciled us with Himself and paid the penalty of righteous to God His Father for us, something that we could never pay on our own, taking away all of the sins of mankind. We must see that Jesus is the Christ or we will have no life in us as Saint John tells us from his Gospel, for we are being saved, so we are able to workout our Salvation with much effort and in cooperation with God’s Divine Grace. Our Faith in Christ can only be judged by Christ Himself, for He requires of us that we put our best effort forward in our process of Theosis, and His Grace will fill in what we are lacking. We hope in our Salvation and we must have Faith and Good Works for without one the other is fruitless. We can see clearly from the above-quoted passage from Romans that our Salvation was enacted and began on Great Friday when our Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross, we must have Faith that our sins are taken away by the blood of Christ. God will not force His Salvation on us for it is a free gift of Faith. For in our Baptism we each experienced our own personal Golgotha in our dying and rising with Christ. We are saved by the waters of Baptism, but we must work at our Salvation throughout our whole lives by living ethical, virtuously, and by practicing Good Works which is our witness to our Faith in Jesus Christ.
We must constantly strive for Theosis for we are called to be like the Saints of the Church who experienced God with their entire being. We are to live as Saint Peter speaks about in the first chapter of his second letter, we are to become partakers of the Divine Nature of God. The putting on of Christ is the encapsulation of the Orthodox Christian Life which is the Divine encounter-ment with Almighty God on all the levels of our life. All of our life must be lived in the Love of God, for this is the purpose of Faith and Good Works to show forth our love for God and our neighbor. But, we must bear in mind that we are to do our Good Works out of love and not because of pride or self-seeking, because the merits of Good Works cannot buy our Salvation. For we are God’s Workman as Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter two, and we were created in Jesus Christ to do Good Works especially those that build up the Body of Christ and lead others to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are to cooperate with God’s gift of Grace that through Good Works and Faith in Him we will grow in God’s love which leads to communion with Him. In the Holy Mysteries of the Church we actualize our relationship with the Holy Trinity and through the Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation we are regenerated “saved” and are made into a new creation by the Grace of God. This regeneration in the Holy Spirit strengths the Christian to both live their Faith and to practice Good Works, which adds to their personal growth in Holiness and Righteousness. As long as we stay in the process of Deification (Theosis) “being saved” and struggle against the demons who try to lead us away from God, we can have a sure and certain hope that Almighty God will bring us to Salvation and “Save” us. We have this hope of Salvation because the Holy Spirit has been given to us from the Father through Christ as a pledge of the Good things that will come, which is our Salvation in the Heavenly Kingdom.
In regards to Faith and Good Works, Saint James tells us that where there are no Good Works there is no Faith, this is plain and simple one cannot exist without the other. This is so because our Good Works are the manifestation of our Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and by His working, with the Holy Spirit in “economia” we are saved. We can clearly see in the following passage from the Epistle of Saint James that Faith without Good Works is lifeless and dead. Faith without Good Works is a Faith that is bound up in the mind and remains in the so-called educated man’s intellect, thus remaining simply an idea of the Good and it does not produce any good in and of itself. Just like Saint James proclaims at the end of the following passage if our Faith has no Good Works it is the same as our bodies not having a soul to animate them, therefore, they become lifeless and dead. Saint James tells us; “What does it profit, my brethren if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no work is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.” (RSV James 2:14-19 & 24-26)
Saint James is likewise speaking about the Salvation of our Souls through these Good Works which manifest to the world our Faith in Jesus Christ and His Holy Orthodox Church. Our Lord makes this clear in the Gospel of Saint Matthew that we will be judged at the Parousia on the basis of the Good Works we have done to the least of our brothers and sisters, for they are the representatives of the person of Jesus Christ because they are created in His image and likeness. “What the Saint is teaching us is that the two, faith and works, cannot be separated and that neither can they be opposed one to the other. The Lord Himself, speaking of the soul’s salvation asked, “For what is a man profited (opheleitai, opheleo) if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:2.6). The last question, “can faith save him?” indicates that the Saint is speaking also of Salvation. Following His question, the Lord continues, “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works” (Matthew 16:27). The Lord’s word translated in the KJV “works” is praxin, praxis, “acts,” “what one does”; St. James’ “and have not works,” has erga, ergon. Thus, we see that the Saint has not introduced some novel teaching. St. Paul stresses the same point, speaking of the righteous judgment of God, “who will render to every man according to his deeds” Romans 2:6, in which “deeds” in the KJV is used to translate erga.” (The Epistle of Saint James; Archbishop Dmitri Royster; pgs. 54-55.)
