The Bible, Paul and Justification

Thomas a Kempis said, “Truly, at the day of judgment we shall not be examined on what we have read, but what we have done, not how well we have spoken but how religiously we have lived.” When he said this, he was not commenting on the doctrine of justification, but rather about the active life and the contemplative life. But it always gladdens my heart to see someone point out how important our actions really are. The doctrine of justification is a hot topic in the American Church these days with emotions regarding the issue being rather highly charged. I am very interested to explore the reasons for the passions behind our positions on the doctrine of justification, though, that is not what I am intending to do in this article. The quote from Thomas a Kempis just struck a chord with me because it reminds me of what the Apostle Paul says in the early part of his letter to the Church in Rome:

 “Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God.”   Romans 2:5-11

Many people assume that one of Paul’s main objectives in writing his letter to the Church in Rome is to insist on the total depravity of man and of our utter dependence on God, to the extent that we cannot choose God, only God can choose us. According to this popular understanding of Paul’s theology, “works” in the sense of doing good deeds, plays no part whatever in the declaration over a person that they are “justified” (made to be in right standing) before God.  I find it quite amazing that a passage like the one quoted above is found at the beginning of that letter. In all my life, I cannot remember a single sermon that touched on this passage from Romans, nor from the others like it (Romans 2:9-10, 2:16, and 2:26).  I am not writing this today in order to insist that we do in fact have to perform good deeds in order to “earn” our way into heaven. I don’t think any convincing argument can be made that we might be able to “earn” anything. We cannot put God in our debt, period. What I am writing to argue is that we have definitely misunderstood Paul in our eagerness to make that point. What’s more, many in our culture are eager to misunderstand Paul in order to incorporate their sin into the normal Christian life. Many of us are glad to have a face-value reading of passages of Paul, like Romans 3:28 “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law”, and we walk off smugly thinking that we have knocked home the argument with just one swing. But it isn’t quite as straight forward as all that. Paul’s understanding of “works of the Law” as well as “salvation” is a little bit different from ours. Paul is not speaking here about how an individual can know that they will wake up in heaven on the day that they die; Paul is talking about how a person can know in the present, whether Jew or Gentile, that they are part of God’s single family that will inherit the promises and the calling given to Abraham. Hence, when Paul talks about “the works of the Law”, he is not talking about good deeds which someone might do to earn their way to heaven. “The Law” here must be clearly understood to be the specific Law that the Jews used to identify themselves as God’s people. That is,