After Darkness, Light

Before Martin Luther became known for challenging Rome, he was a monk who struggled to find peace with God. He knew he was a sinner, and his religious efforts could not quiet his conscience. He feared the judgment of the God he was trying so hard to please.

As Luther studied Romans, he began to understand that God justifies sinners by faith. The righteousness he needed was God’s gift. He later recalled, “I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates.”¹ God freely gives us the righteousness of Christ, received through faith (Philippians 3:9).

We can know that truth and still struggle with assurance. After a hard day at work, we may find ourselves replaying the sharp words we spoke to a coworker. Or the children are finally asleep, and we wish we’d been more patient with them. In the quiet, we remember the resentment we’ve held against someone or the sin we’ve confessed before and committed again.

We ask God for forgiveness, yet wonder whether we’ve finally exhausted his patience. We know we need his mercy. But how can sinful people like us be accepted by a holy God?

That question brings us to justification by faith alone (Romans 3:28). Justification is God’s declaration that a sinner is righteous in his sight because of Christ (Romans 3:24-26). We receive Christ and his righteousness through faith (Philippians 3:9). Our obedience contributes nothing to that verdict (Romans 4:5).

The Reformation’s familiar phrase, Post Tenebras Lux, means “After darkness, light.” Its enduring value lies in the gospel it calls us to remember. On Reformation Day, we have good reason to return to Paul’s teaching that a sinner’s acceptance before God rests entirely on Christ.

The Righteousness We Receive

Paul states the matter directly: “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). In the next chapter, he distinguishes a worker receiving wages from a sinner receiving a gift. Abraham had no achievement to present as the ground of his acceptance before God (Romans 4:1-5).

This is what the Reformed doctrine of imputation means: God counts Christ’s righteousness as ours (Romans 4:6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). He forgives our sins and accepts us because Christ has obeyed and suffered for us (Romans 5:9, 19). John Calvin gives both parts of the doctrine together:

“Thus we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ”²

John CalvinInstitutes of the Christian Religion 3.11.2

Calvin’s language concerns our standing before God. Justification does not mean that God mistakes us for people who have never sinned. Christ has answered for our guilt, and his righteousness is sufficient for our acceptance. The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question in personal terms:

“How art thou righteous before God?

Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that, though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed any sin; yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me, inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.”

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 60

We may read that answer while remembering the very sins our conscience keeps bringing against us. The catechism doesn’t ask us to minimize those sins. It directs us to Christ’s perfect obedience, credited to us through faith. We can confess our guilt honestly because our acceptance rests on him.

Why the Reformers Would Not Yield

For the Reformers, this doctrine concerned the sufficiency of Christ’s saving work and the peace of the believer’s conscience. Martin Luther gave it a central place in the Smalcald Articles:

“And upon this article all things depend which we teach and practice in opposition to the Pope, the devil, and the [whole] world.”³

Martin LutherSmalcald Articles, Part II, Article I

That conviction helps explain why justification deserved such careful defense. If our acceptance before God depends partly on our own righteousness, we’ll always have reason to wonder: Have I repented sincerely enough? Have I obeyed faithfully enough? The gospel directs us to Christ’s obedience and sacrifice as the sufficient ground of our acceptance. Our distinction between law and gospel helps us keep that promise clear.

Paul’s Warning to the Galatians

The controversy began long before the sixteenth century. In the apostolic church, some teachers insisted that Gentile believers had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses (Acts 15:1-5). Paul recognized that making obedience part of the ground of justification would change the gospel itself.

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4).

Paul’s warning reaches us whenever we begin treating our obedience as something we must add to Christ’s righteousness. However sincere our efforts may be, they cannot become the ground of our acceptance before God. In Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen identifies what is at stake:

“If Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin.”⁴

J. Gresham MachenChristianity and Liberalism

This warning applies whenever our obedience is made part of the righteousness by which God accepts us. We may be tempted to think that praying more faithfully, reading our Bibles more consistently, or sinning less will make us more acceptable to God. These are good things, but they cannot add to Christ’s finished work. Our acceptance rests entirely on what he has done for us.

The Disagreement with Rome

A fair account of the dispute must acknowledge that the Council of Trent also spoke of grace and denied that works preceding justification could merit it. The disagreement concerns what justification is and whether Christ’s righteousness, received through faith, is its sufficient ground. Trent’s eleventh canon states:

“If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.”⁵

Council of TrentSession VI, Canon 11

Here, anathema expresses a formal condemnation. Trent includes inward grace and love within its account of justification. Reformed theology distinguishes justification from sanctification, the work by which God makes us holy. Both are gifts of Christ, and everyone whom God justifies he also renews. Yet our renewal supplies no part of the righteousness on which his justifying verdict rests.

This distinction protects both God’s free acceptance and the necessity of a changed life. Our Reformed confessions on justification help us state it carefully, including when the disagreement arises among Protestants.

Faith That Bears Fruit

The exclusion of works from justification does not make obedience optional. Ephesians 2:8-10 places salvation by grace through faith alongside the good works for which God creates us in Christ. Good works follow from his saving grace. They never become a contribution to Christ’s righteousness.

The Westminster Confession states the relationship precisely:

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

Westminster Confession of Faith 11.2

Resting in Christ doesn’t excuse the harsh word we spoke to our spouse or the resentment we’ve held against a neighbor. We still need to confess, seek forgiveness, and turn from sin. But we do so as people whom God has accepted in Christ. Our repentance and obedience are fruits of his grace, not payments toward his acceptance. That is why union with Christ gives us reason for assurance and a life of grateful obedience.

Peace for an Accusing Conscience

When we fall again into a sin we thought we had overcome, we should confess it honestly and seek help in putting it to death. We don’t have to wait until we’ve improved before coming to God for mercy. Christ’s righteousness remains the ground of our acceptance, even when our failures are painfully clear.

We don’t honor the Reformation merely by remembering its disputes. We honor its recovery of the gospel by receiving Christ as he is offered to us. His finished work gives guilty people a sure ground for peace with God, and his Spirit teaches those forgiven people to walk in obedience. After darkness, light.

Footnotes