Justification by Faith Alone

By S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. *

An Exposition of Galatians 2:15-21 [1]

Introduction

Martin Luther called justification by faith alone “the article of a standing or falling church” (articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae). [2] He meant by that statement that it was the fundamental article of the faith of the church and determined whether the church would stand or fall. If the biblical doctrine of justification was received and taught, the church would stand. If the doctrine were abandoned, the church would fall. It is as simple as that.

G. C. Berkouwer, the eminent Dutch theologian, once said something very similar. In one of his works he wrote, “The confession of divine justification touches man’s life at its heart, at the point of its relationship to God (italics mine). It defines the preaching of the Church, the existence and progress of the life of faith, the root of human security, and man’s perspective of the future.” [3]

It is clear that J. I. Packer, one of the leading contemporary theologians, would agree. Dr. Packer, an Anglican, has written, “For the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. It bears a whole world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of God the Saviour. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments, are all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith, for this is how the Bible views them.” [4] Later on in this series we shall develop the relationship between justification and the other doctrines. It is enough now to note the dependence of them upon a proper understanding of justification by grace through faith.

Finally, Luther also said in his exposition of Galatians, “It [the gospel of justification by faith] is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually. For as it is very tender, so it is soon their hurt.” [5]

We say all of this because in the passage before us we meet for the first time in this letter the word to justify (δικαιόω, dikaioō). It occurs three times in verse sixteen, once again in verse seventeen, while the noun justification (δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē, KJV, “righteousness”) occurs in verse twenty-one.

The apostle, having narrated the incident of “The Great Confrontation,” when it was necessary for him to withstand Peter publicly in the church at Antioch and to contend for the grace of the gospel, continues his letter with a fuller discussion of the gospel that he proclaimed. There is no indication in the text itself that the following verses were not part of his contention with Peter. In fact, the words of Galatians 3:1, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” might seem to support the view that the remainder of chapter two was addressed to Peter and the church at Antioch. Whether this is true or not, it no doubt is true to say that Paul had the Antioch situation in mind in writing the section. His argument is an appeal to the course that he and Peter had taken in receiving justification. They had both confessed the insufficiency of law-works to justify.

After this he raises questions that others had offered concerning his position. He denies that his premises, involving abandonment of righteousness by Law, logically make Christ a minister of sin (he makes Paul a Law-breaker and, thus, a sinner by disavowal of the Law). He further points out that he had died to the Law in Christ, and that he now lives in Christ and by Christ, his life being sustained by trust in the Son of God. In fact, if one contends, he concludes, that the Law is a means of justification, then the death of Christ is made useless and unnecessary. How can a believer affirm that? [6]

The Declaration: Justification is by Faith

The Proposition, verses 15-16b

We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law.

It might help to begin the exposition with The Westminster Confession of Faith’s first two paragraphs on justification. The Confession says:

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God 

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. [7]

The citation supports the biblical doctrine that justification is by Christ alone and by faith alone. The word, to justify, does not mean to make righteous, but to declare righteous. The declaration is based upon the imputation of the merits of Christ’s death to elect believers. Having had their debts to God fully discharged by Christ’s satisfaction on the cross, they are declared righteous before God. Justification is the opposite of condemnation, and is a legal term taken from the law courts. To be condemned is to be declared guilty (cf. Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15; Rom 8:33–34). To be justified is to be declared righteous (cf. Rom. 2:13; 3:4). [8]

In the opening two verses of the section the apostle writes that, although “we” (does he have Peter and himself in mind?) possess all the advantages of Jewish birth and of the achieving of righteousness by the keeping of the Mosaic Law, nevertheless we were justified only by faith. They had, by the Spirit, been brought to the place where they knew “that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus.” Three times in the sixteenth verse he states that a man is not justified by “the works of the Law.” The emphasis is intended to rule out all possibility of confusion on the point. In the phrase “by the works of the Law” (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, ex ergōn nomō), there are no articles, the two nouns being used qualitatively. By legal-works is the sense, and the phrases not only rule out justification by the Mosaic Law, but also by any other merit system.

Men in their lost and depraved condition seek to justify themselves because in doing so they flatter themselves. It is the religion of the man in the street, or every natural man, that they are seeking to establish their own righteousness by their good works. It is, however, a dreadful delusion to think that by pulling on our bootstraps a little bit harder we may gain life by a merit system, such as the Law of Moses. No one, outside of Jesus Christ, has ever kept that Law. It cannot be kept by men who stand in Adam, condemned and corrupt. A careful glance into the human heart would settle the matter, and it is astonishing, a testimony to the dense darkness of the human heart, that anyone could ever think that he would attain to the perfect standards of a holy God by failing, faltering, human attempts to keep the Law.

The proposition, then, that Paul sets forth so emphatically, is that a man is justified by faith, a trust in the merits of Christ for him, not by law-works of any kind.

The Proof, verse 16c

Since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

The proof of the proposition is found in Scripture. The final clause of verse sixteen, the causal clause, confirms what has been said twice by the authority of the Word of God. The words “no flesh will be justified” are from Psalm 143:2, which reads, “And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight no man living is righteous.” The words say, as Paul’s use of them here indicates, that no man can stand before God on the basis of merit, that is, on the basis of law-works.

The Interrogation: Does Faith-Justification Make Christ the Minister of Sin?

The Problem, verse 17a-c

But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin?

Paul answers an argument from one of his critics here, as he often does in his writing. The argument goes something like this: If Peter and I, disregarding the statutes of the Law concerning the eating of clean and unclean meats, have become violators of the Law by seeking to be justified in Christ, is Christ then one who ministers to, or promotes, sin? The apostle accepts the premise, but denies the conclusion his enemies derive from it. He admits that they become violators of the Law concerning meats through justification in Christ. They are sinners only in that sense. It should be remembered, of course, that the words are to be understood in the context of what happened atAntioch. The apostles were free to observe the Mosaic Law regarding meats, if they wished,or to not observe it, if they wished. But they could not observe the Law if it was understood thereby that observance was necessary for salvation. That would be to turn the Law into a means of salvation, and the grace principle would be violated.

The Rebuttal, verses 17d-18

May it never be! For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor.

The rebuttal by Paul is a characteristic, “May it never be!” The NIV has, “absolutely not.” Certainly Christ is not the promoter of human sin.

In the eighteenth verse he further explains his reasoning and defends his abrupt denial of the charge against Christ and the gospel. He writes, “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor.” The point the apostle makes is simply this: I do not commit sin by violating the legal statutes when I seek justification in Christ. As a matter of fact, it is when I build up again those statutes, which have been done away with by his death, that I show myself to be a transgressor. That is what Peter was doing by his vacillating conduct, his erecting again the barriers between Jew and Gentile. “What I have once destroyed” is, then, a reference to the Levitical prescriptions regarding meats, made null and void by the death of Christ.

The Exposition: Justification and Paul’s Own Experience

The Mosaic Law and Life, verse 19

For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God.

The opening “for” (γάρ, gar) of verse nineteen indicates that this verse is a further explanation of the preceding one. The “I” (ἐγώ, egō) is emphatic in the original text, for Paul is contrasting what he had done with the Law with what Peter had done. In effect, Paul is saying, “I have used the Law to become dead to it.” Poor Peter, however, is still “alive” apparently, because he is going back to it.

The phrase, “through the law,” refers to the truths the apostle emphasizes in passages such as Romans 7:7–12. It is “through the law,” that is, through its convicting power that brings us to a consciousness of our sin and condemnation, that we are brought to the knowledge of Christ’s provision in his representative death for us under the judgment of the Law (cf. Rom. 3:20; 7:7–12; 1 Cor. 15:56, etc.). The Law has not died, but he has died to it in the death of his substitute. “The servitude ‘under law’ is ended. No master is able to give orders to a dead slave.” [9]

In the last clause it is stated that life comes by death to the Law. It would seem to be a reasonable inference from this verse that the Law actually comes between the soul and God, making it difficult to enter into life. It is surely a fact that many have made the Law a stumbling block, being misled by it into the embracing of a theology of justification by law-keeping.

The Mosaic Law, the Cross, and Life, verse 20

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

The thought of participation with Christ, his representative, in the redemptive acts, comes to the fore here, suggested by the preceding verse concerning death to the Law. The “life unto God” receives a much fuller interpretation here.

The opening clause (really a part of verse nineteen in critical Greek texts) is very important: “I have been crucified with Christ.” The tense of the Greek verb for co-crucifixion is perfect (συνεσταύρωμαι, synestaurōmai), and the NASB rendering is to be preferred to the KJV’s “I am crucified with Christ.” Paul is not speaking of a present experience; he refers to a past event. That it cannot refer to a physical death with Christ is obvious. It therefore refers to a spiritual death by identification with him. He is Paul’s (and our) representative, who has borne the penalty of God’s Law in our place. In this death with him, then, we and Paul are freed from the reign of the Law (cf. Matt. 27:51; Rom. 7:1–6). The perfect tense, which includes an emphasis upon the abiding results of an action, stresses the fact that his death and our death with him have abiding results.

The next words are well translated in the NASB, “and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” “The order of the Greek,” Burton points out, “is very expressive even when reproduced in English: ‘and live no longer I, but [lives] in me Christ.’” [10]

The identity of the “I” in the clause, “and it is no longer I who live,” is a reference to the inmost personality, but looked at as under the dominion of sin. Just as in Romans 7:14–25, where the apostle uses “I” in a comprehensive sense, the person as actuated by the new principle of holiness, which has become dominant in the new man, and by the old principle of evil, or the flesh. In Romans “I” is used in a limited sense also, that is, the person as actuated by the new principle of holiness (cf. Rom. 7:17, 20). In Galatians 2:20 we have a reference to the “I” in the limited sense also, but in this case the person in view is the person as dominated by the evil principle of sin, or the flesh. This last sense is the meaning here, in the clause, “and it is no longer I who live.” This is the “I” as under the domination of the sin principle.

The apostle hastens to add, “but Christ lives in me” (the “me” being the comprehensive “I”). It is in the same person who was formerly dominated by the sin principle that Christ lives by the Spirit. But the person has undergone a radical change of direction and domination (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17), with new motivation and new desires now implanted by the Spirit through regeneration. The whole tenor of the life has been transformed. The present tense of the verb “lives” (ζῇ, zē) stresses that he will never leave us.

The words of the NASB, “and the life which I now live in the flesh,” emphasize the principle of the new life, but the Greek text reads literally, “and that which I now live in the flesh” (ὅ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ho de nyn zō en sarki). Emphasis is placed on the life in all of its practical manifestations day by day. This life is lived by faith in the Son of God, that is, by counting upon the One who lives within.

But, do we have good reasons to rest in him? The final words of verse twenty supply ample grounds. Our faith is in “the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (cf. 1:4). All of the essentials of the atonement are found here. His redemptive work is grounded in the love that expressed itself in the cross, the word “loved” (ἀγαπήσαντός, agapēsantos) being aorist in tense and referring to the event of the cross as the issue of eternal, electing love (cf. Eph. 1:3–6; 2:4, etc.). The participle “gave” (παραδόντος, paradontos) means to hand over, to deliver over (cf. Rom. 4:25; 8:32; Eph. 5:2). In this context it suggests these important things:

1. First, Christ’s death was voluntary. He gave himself.
2. Second, his death was a penal sacrifice, for he had to deliver himself over to the cross. The aorist of the participle παραδόντος (“gave”) again points to the cross as the event at which the delivering took place. And it was a delivering of himself over to the divine penalty for sin. He was, thus, a sacrifice.
3. Third, his death was substitutionary. It was “for me,” Paul says, a personal reference that is expanded to all the elect in other places in his writings (cf. Gal. 1:4: Eph. 5:2). The use of the first person here “indicates the deep personal feeling with which the apostle writes,” Burton believes.11 Incidentally, it is never said in the New Testament that Christ loves the world. He loves the Church, and he loves me; the special relation that he bears to his own is the New Testament stress (cf. Rev. 1:5).

The apostle has set forth for us the secret of true life. It is found in the voluntary, penal, substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God who, uniting us with himself, has died our death under judgment and has raised us up with him in his resurrection to enjoy forever his life beyond the sphere of the Mosaic Law. I no longer have to struggle hopelessly to keep the Law but can confidently trust in the Lawgiver himself, who lives his life out within me and through me. Can I not count on him who “loved me” in all my sin and iniquity and, in spite of that, “gave Himself up for me”? (cf. Rom. 5:9–10; 8:32).

The Mosaic Law and Grace, verse 21

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.

An objector might say at this point, “Paul, was it not a special grace of God that he gave us the Law? By your doctrine of justification apart from Law-works, are you not making this grace of no effect?” Paul’s words effectively shut the objector’s mouth. If justification were through the legal principle, then Christ died needlessly. The cross would then be the greatest blunder of the history of the universe, and God would be the blunderer! If righteousness could be obtained by works, then to plan and consummate the death of the Son of God would be to engage in absurdity.

Conclusion

1. First, then, the apostle has made it plain that justification is not by the works of the Law; it is by faith and through grace. We rest, not on our efforts, but on what the Son of God has done for us.
2. Second, to refuse to cast off all confidence in our works and to rest only in him and his merit is to insult the grace of God and to defame the cross. It is to declare his work a futile and unnecessary endeavor which we do not need. May the Lord deliver us from such blindness.

* Lewis Johnson regularly ministered the Word at Believers Chapel in Dallas for more than thirty years. During his academic career he held professorships in New Testament and systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is currently Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Dallas Seminary.

Notes

1. This is article six in a sixteen-part series, “Expositional Studies in the Epistle to the Galatians.”
2. J. I. Packer, “Introductory Essay,” to James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification (1867; reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1961), 1. [Editor’s note: While precursors of the phrase are found in Luther, the precise statement was not used until sometime later. A similar phrase was used in 1618 by the Reformed theologian J. H. Alsted, and the exact phrase became common among Lutheran writers in the eighteenth century. Cf. Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2:1, 193, n. 3].
3. G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 17.
4. J. I. Packer, “Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification,” in Soli Deo Gloria: Essays in Reformed Theology, ed. R. C. Sproul (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976), 14.
5. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, ed. Philip S. Watson (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1953), 101. [Editor’s note: The final sentence, “For as it is very tender, so it is soon their hurt,” is elsewhere translated, “For it is delicate and is easily bruised.” Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, Chapters 1–4, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia: 1963), 91].
6. Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921.), 117–18. There is a good, succinct statement of the argument of the section on these pages.
7. The Westminster Confession of Faith 11.1-2, in The Creeds of Christendom, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Harper, 1877), 626.
8. Editor’s note: To be justified is to be acquitted or declared not guilty.
9. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, and to the Philippians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1937), 114.
10. Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 136–37.
11. Ibid., 139.