Justified as a Gift

As May comes to a close, we enter the season of the Church Year after Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is given through the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of sins. It is through faith in this promise that you are justified before God, and even this faith is itself the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Martin Luther writes that justification by faith alone is the article by which the Church stands or falls. In his 1535 commentary on Galatians, he says: “Consequently, if we neglect the article of justification, we will have lost all. Therefore, it is most necessary that we place it above everything else and continually drive it home.”

Why? Because when this article is lost, the Gospel itself is lost.

Our adult class recently completed a fourteen-week study of the Augsburg Confession. The reformers clearly articulated in Article IV: “Human beings cannot be justified before God by their own power, merits, or works.”

This echoes the words of St. Paul in Galatians 2: “By works of the law no one will be justified.”

Righteousness before God cannot be earned or deserved. Every attempt to make ourselves righteous before Him by what we do will fail.

“But they are justified…as a gift.”

The Latin word used in the Confession is “gratis”—a gift without payment. For free.

Justification before God can only be received, never earned.

And it is received through faith. But faith is not your work either. It is not something you produce from within yourself. Faith is trust, and even this trust is given by God. Faith itself is His gift to you, the very means by which He justifies you.

And this is not faith in just anything. Article IV clearly specifies its content: “that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by His death made satisfaction for our sins.”

The confession concludes: “God reckons this faith as righteousness.”

That is the Gospel.

And God does not leave this Gospel at a distance. He brings it to you. He causes it to be spoken aloud, so that you hear it for yourself through preaching and the sacraments.

The gift of faith is this: not only that sins are forgiven in general, but that Christ forgives your sins.

The reformers understood that the moment anything is added to this gift as necessary for salvation, certainty is lost—and with it, faith itself. But because faith is God’s gift and your justification rests entirely on Christ, your salvation is certain and sure.

Where justification by faith in Christ is taught, the Gospel remains. And where the Gospel remains, there is certainty, forgiveness, and life.

On this article, the Church stands or falls.

-Pastor Raleigh