There is no doubt that words mutate in their meaning over time and there are also others that are forgotten due to disuse. For example, among the first we have the word “semaphore”, used in the mid-nineteenth century to represent the “genus of lepidopterous insects of the nocturnal family”. It was not until 1970 that this word changed to refer to the “electric device for light signals to regulate circulation” (RAE).
In the second group we find, for example, the words “floppy disk” (diskette) or “cassette” (cassette), which were one of the words most used by youth between the mid-sixties and the late eighties. The first stored only 1.44 Mb of digital information and the second stored music for up to ninety minutes. The advancement of technology made both objects obsolete, so the words disappeared from the general vocabulary.
The word “faith” has also undergone changes over time. It still maintains the idea of the “set of beliefs of a religion” (RAE), but it has mutated in different directions that are now very popular. These directions either have a rather self-confident connotation (“I have faith in myself”) or refer to some potentized longing or good wish for a reality to come true in some way (“Have faith that this will pass.”) »). In both cases, “faith” is like a virtue or capacity of personal manufacture without much content.
Contemporary Christians are not without significant changes to the word “faith.” Christian “faith” has also taken on a life of its own and has become for many a kind of independent spiritual force that is “activated” from within the person and even has the power to move God in a certain direction.
All these different and popular definitions make me wonder if you could listen to the reformers of the 16th century and understand what they mean when they use the term “faith alone.” Luther even said that single fide «It is the article with which the Church rises and without it falls». His concern, however, was not that Christians without “faith” would not live without spiritual power or achieve divine blessings, peace of mind, and personal development. Instead, his concern had to do with a central and most important aspect, because the relationship with God and the difference between life and death depend on this truth. It was not a trivial matter.
Luther and single fide
The reformers returned to the Scriptures and were able to understand the reality of the condemnation of the human being, his absolute separation from God and his total inability to achieve salvation through his own means, be they moral or religious. In the case of Luther, the awareness that he experienced of his own damnation, from before he was used to initiate the Reformation, led him to feel deeply hopeless despite his efforts to maintain a strong religiosity and morality. In his own words,
Although he lived as a blameless monk, he felt that he was a sinner before God with a very troubled conscience. He couldn’t believe my satisfaction would appease him. He did not love; yes, he hated the just God who punishes sinners, and secretly, though not blasphemously, certainly murmuring a lot, he was angry with God…
Luther knew that he was lost, dead in trespasses and sins, that he was a child of disobedience, living and satisfying the passions of the flesh; a son of wrath like all the rest (Eph 2:1-3). His intense religiosity did not provide him with the inner peace that he sought so much to appease God’s justice.
Justification by faith alone is one of the fundamental pillars of Reformed theology.
Luther was a consecrated monk and a university professor of theology. His desire to please God was immense, but he found no rest for his soul. During a visit to Rome in 1511, he was struck by the immensely pompous religiosity of the age, full of ritual and architectural majesty but lacking in heartfelt spirituality. Pope Julius II was spending a fortune remodeling the colossal St. Peter’s Basilica, so it may be possible that Martin perceived the visible contradiction between the vows of poverty assumed as a monk and all the luxury displayed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The lightness with which the Catholic Church treated the issue of forgiveness before God also caused enormous conflict for Luther. During his visit to Rome he witnessed the many sacred relics that were displayed in different churches. In the Middle Ages, the church acquired a series of objects, among them the skeletal remains of martyrs, presumed nails or splinters from the cross of Christ, and many other objects that supposedly belonged to saints, to be exhibited in churches. Luther wondered if they were really important to the relationship with God and to enjoy his forgiveness. When he visited Pilate’s famous steps, where Jesus supposedly walked at his trial, he couldn’t bear to see pilgrims kneeling up the stairs without wondering, “Who knows if this is really true?”
Later, in his famous 95 theses of 1517, Luther reacted to the sale of indulgences for the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica, opposing the way in which the Church sold divine forgiveness and liberation from purgatory as a papal prerogative. He declared:
Christians must be taught that if the pope knew the extortions of the pardon preachers, he would rather see the church of St. Peter burn to the ground than be built with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep…
The assurance of salvation through letters of pardon is vain, even if the commissioner, even more so, the pope himself, risked his soul for it.
They are enemies of Christ and of the Pope, those who in some churches ask the Word of God to be silent, so that in others pardons may be preached.
Everything mentioned so far allows us to put into context the depth of the exposition of the alone during the Reformation. The biblical faith referred to by Luther in the Reformation had to do with the way in which human beings could relate to a thrice holy God who was impossible to please by religious or moral means. Luther explains it this way in his testimony:
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I paid attention to the context of the words, namely, “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed by faith and to faith, as it is written: But the just by faith will live.” There I began to understand that God’s righteousness is that by which the just live by a gift of God, that is, by faith.
And this is the meaning: the justice of God is revealed by the gospel, that is, the passive justice with which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: “But the just shall live by faith.” Here I felt that he had been born again and that he had entered into paradise itself through the open gates. There I was shown a totally different face of all Scripture. So I went over the scriptures from memory. I also find an analogy in other terms, such as the work of God; that is what God does in us; the power of God, with which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.
What the Holy Spirit revealed to Luther by grace alone, through the Scriptures, was that God’s justice is satisfied in Christ through justification by faith alone. Theologian RC Sproul explains the importance of this: “The doctrine of justification deals with what may be the deepest existential problem a human being could face: How can a sinner, an unjust person, ever bear the judgment of a holy and just God?».
The answer is at the very heart of the gospel; that is, in that “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk 19:10). The glorious confirmation that Christ found us and saved us is that, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained entrance by faith into this grace in which we stand firm and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:1-2).
single fide summarizes the truth that faith in Jesus Christ as the only and sufficient Savior, without the need for merits or works on our part, is the only means by which we are forgiven and declared righteous by the three times holy God.
The nature of faith
There is an important point that we must clarify in order to place faith in its correct place within God’s plan. When we speak of “faith alone,” we are not referring to it as an end in itself for our salvation. Theologian AW Pink explains it this way: “Faith is not the basis or substance of our justification, but simply the receiving hand of the divine gift offered to us in the gospel.” Exemplifying faith as a “receiving hand” allows us to recognize that we do not have “faith in faith”, since it does not possess any merit by itself, but that this “hand” must be filled with the knowledge of the revelation offered by the God’s word. Using the same illustration of the hand, Charles Spurgeon says, “Faith is the grasping hand. When our hand grasps something, it does just what faith does when it appropriates Christ and the blessings of redemption from him.”
A faith disconnected from the Word of God is like a glass without water. Will never quench thirst
What the Bible clearly says about faith is that it is not something we can produce or take from within. Instead, it is a “gift of God; not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9). Nor are we owners of our faith because in reality “Jesus the author and finisher of faith” (Heb 12:2). All the great holy witnesses of old, mentioned in the Bible in the letter to the Hebrews, are a powerful testimony of a God-provided faith that led them to live lives worthy of imitation, while waiting by that same faith for the great promise of redemption in Jesus Christ (ch. 11). The call to fix our eyes on Jesus is to recognize that our faith depends on Him from beginning to end because Jesus Christ is “the author of salvation” (Heb 2:10).
In another passage of Scripture, the Apostle Paul presents a startling truth: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom 10:13; see Joel 2:32). It is incredible to read Paul affirming that there will be no distinction of people because the Lord abounds in riches for all who call on him. However, he then asks some questions that return us to our fallen human reality and separated from God: «How, then, will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how will they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how will they believe without someone to preach to them? And how will they preach if they are not sent? (Rom 10:14-15a). Human beings cannot call on the Lord and achieve salvation on their own, without God’s supernatural help.
Because faith is presented as an absolute gift of…