Quotes & Sayings About Justification By Faith Alone

Stressing the necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification by faith alone. The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness. Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit. God declares us just solely on account of the righteousness of Christ credited (imputed) to us (2 Cor. 5:21). Our innocence in God's sight is in no way grounded in works of love or acts of charity. Whereas a Catholic might answer the question "What must I do to be saved?" by saying, "Repent, believe, and live in charity,"7 the apostle Paul answers the same exact question with, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31). Getting right with God is entirely and only dependent upon faith.8 — Kevin DeYoung

justification by faith alone frees me to love my neighbor disinterestedly, for his or her own sake, as my sister or brother, not as the calculated means to my own desired ends. — Timothy George

A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. To be good for nothing is just that. If a virtue has been thought a virtue long enough, it must be assumed to have practical justification - though the very longevity that proves its practicality may obscure it. That seems to be what happened with the idea of fidelity ...
Our age could be characterized as a manifold experiment in faithlessness, and if it has as yet produced no effective understanding of the practicalities of faith, it has certainly produced massive evidence of the damage and disorder of its absence.
(pg.115-116, "The Body and the Earth") — Wendell Berry

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace. — Charles Spurgeon

problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I 'do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe 'how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate 'work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone 'performs' as a kind of initiation test. — N. T. Wright

Antinomianism and legalism conspire in forcing us to make a false choice: Is salvation a matter of God's forgiveness or is it moral transformation? This is a trick question from the Reformers' point of view. Calvin reasons, "Surely those things which are connected do not destroy one another!" Forensic justification through faith alone is not the enemy but the basis of sanctification. — Michael S. Horton

To have a proper understanding of the gospel, we must recognise that we need to lean entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his mercy alone as our only hope of salvation ... No one can be justified by the law; justification is through faith alone. — John Calvin

It was only by faith in Christ that they could secure pardon of sin and receive strength to obey God's law. They must cease to rely upon their own efforts for salvation, they must trust wholly in the merits of the promised Saviour, if they would be accepted of God. — Ellen G. White

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification except faith alone. — Kevin DeYoung

Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. — R.C. Sproul

Justification by faith alone, is the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns — Charles Simeon

Mankind could point with pride to this fine flower of the human spirit--if it were not for one thing: namely that God is God and grace is grace. At this point begins the destruction of our illusions and of our cultural enthusiasm, the great destruction which God himself effects, and which the ancient myth of the tower of Babel typifies. 'And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' Our way to the eternal is interrupted and we are plunged back into the depths from which we came, with out philosophy and art, our morality and religion. For another way now opens, the way of God to man, the way of revelation and grace, the way of Christ, the way of justification by faith alone. 'My ways are not your ways,' that is the answer now. It is not we who go to God, but God who comes to us. It is not religion that sets us right with God, for God alone can do this; it is his action on which we must depend. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die. — R.C. Sproul

If a preacher is cultured, gentle, earnest, intellectual, and broadly tolerant, the sheep of God run after him. He, of course, speaks beautifully about Christ, and uses the old words redemption, the cross, even sacrifice and atonement-but what is his Gospel? That is the crucial question. Is salvation, perfect, entire, eternal,-justification, sanctification, glory,-the alone work of Christ, and the free gift of God to faith alone? — C.I. Scofield

The genius of the Reformation lay in the fact that human beings were made free under God. Justification "by faith alone" cut away the bureaucratic jungle of human authorities and subservience. But where this liberty was not balanced by responsibility, the Reformation made human beings so free under God that it was only a short step to their being free from God. We might say that the despair of existentialism is simply the logic of atheism, but this is true only insofar as atheism itself is the logic of ungrateful Protestantism. — Os Guinness