How Does Faith Make Us Righteous?

Justification of the sinner is a mystery but not a paradox or fiction

Genesis 22 & Romans 4

In this week’s lectionary epistle, the apostle Paul cites Genesis 22, which is also assigned for the Second Sunday of Lent. Recalling the Lord’s summons upon Abraham, Paul arrives at this critical if often confused conclusion:

“Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

Romans 4.22-25

Note, the words translated alternatively into English as “righteousness” and “justification” are the same root word in Greek. Thus, Jesus was raised for our righteousness.”

This passage from Romans is important source material for the Reformation slogan, "justification by faith apart from works.” While I fear a good many contemporary Protestants have unconsciously adopted a different slogan altogether (justification by works apart from faith), those who still affirm the original maxim nevertheless often go astray with it.

Just so, the question:

How does faith make us righteous?

Many answers will fix upon that word in the lectionary text reckoned and align it with a word which the apostle does not use, despite. In other words, many Christians will respond to the question by insisting that faith makes us righteous in that the Father credits the Son’s atoning work to those in whom he finds faith; that is, despite what God sees when he regards a sinner, for Christ’s sake God credits you as what you are not, righteous.

The language of the financial ledger (credits) is both intentional and incomplete.

True, God creates ex nihilo by his word; the Lord’s speaking makes it so. Therefore, we must agree that what God declares to be righteous is, in fact, righteous, all appearances to the contrary perhaps. Just as God says light and there was light, God looks at you in your faith and declares “righteous!” and, presto, there is righteous you. Any further answer to the how question, we might conclude, is the stuff of mystery. Indeed were it not a mystery we would quickly move to mechanize the process. This, I think, is exactly what they who quietly abide the alternate slogan (justification by works apart from faith) do.

As Robert Jenson notes, although preachers often credit Martin Luther with the above juridical account of how faith makes us righteous— awkwardly— this is not how Luther actually understands the means by which the Lord makes us righteous.

Our righteousness, that is, is not a legal fiction.

In The Freedom of the Christian, Luther says that when we have faith— itself a gift— then we simultaneously possess, and truly so, all the salvific gifts of God, which of course includes his righteousness along with love and joy and so forth. Once again, how does this become our possession? How does faith makes us righteous?

Luther offers two ways God justifies through faith.

The Answer from the Law

Luther notes that placing our trust in God is the highest honor we can bestow upon God; in fact, belief in the true God just is obedience to the first table of the Decalogue. Faith is not an ideal to which creatures can aspire; faith is called out of us by the first commandment. Just as your obedience to the other commandments is moot if you do not obey the first commandment by believing in the true God, so also your obedience to the first commandment results, however slowly and stubbornly, in obeying the subsequent commandments.

From obedience to the first table of the law, obedience to the second table surely follows; therein, we become righteous like the Giver of the tables. As Luther writes, “If we trust God, then we will seek to fulfill his stated will.” And this is the same logic Luther uses in his catechism for children, “We should fear and love God, so that we…”

The Answer from the Gospel

Using Aristotle, Luther argues that hearing the gospel itself makes us righteous— really righteous not merely reckoned so. We become what we are hearkened to. When we hear the Word of God, we are shaped by the address and conformed to its content. The Word communicates its properties such as love and peace and generosity.

As Jenson puts it,

“Thus when God declares those who hearken to the gospel righteous, this is a judgment of fact. When the sinner Jones is grasped by the gospel, “Jones is righteous” is straightforwardly true; the puny sins with which Jones still tries to shape his life cannot stand against God’s righteousness inhabiting him. Justification of the sinner is a mystery but not a paradox or fiction.”

The Answer to How is Who

The answer to the how question may still not be explicit.

Simply, the gospel makes righteous those who hearken to it because the gospel is a word in which Christ gives himself to us.

It is a rule of theology that God’s attributes and God himself are the selfsame reality. They cannot be separated. You cannot possess Christ’s righteousness apart from Christ. Faith makes the believer righteous because faith comes by the gospel which is the word that gives us Christ.

Luther states it according to the principle:

“Faith makes us personally and actually righteous because faith is a transforming and ruling presence in us of the righteous one himself.”

Of course, this is nothing other than the New Testament’s teaching about good fruit flowering from a vibrant vine or a healthy tree.

Once you understand that the gospel is God’s means to elicit faith through which Jesus Christ, will inhabit and shape your soul, then you can begin to see why it’s a thoroughly silly question to ask, “Well, isn’t there something we need to do now that we have faith?” That question presumes you’re still in charge of the you you call you.

How does faith make us righteous? It gifts us the Righteous One.

And this is the point the Reformation was always after.

Jesus is the active agent disguised behind the word faith.

This is why apart from works is so essential to the formula.

Christ is the one who makes us righteous.

(“Slave Preacher, Harper’s Magazine, 1855)