Okay; “if I am justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, then why should I do good works?” The answer is because I am justified by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone! The same act of faith which links us to Christ so that his merits become ours and thereby provides the basis upon which God pronounces us “not guilty,” also begins the life-long process of sanctification, in which old sinful habits begin to weaken, new Godly affections begin to grow, and we begin to obey (however, feebly), not some, but all of God’s commandments. Indeed, only justified sinners can actually do good works.
We are in that section of our confession (Articles Twenty-Two through Twenty-Four) which deals with familiar doctrines to many of us: faith, justification, and sanctification. These wonderful doctrines not only unfold throughout the pages of Holy Scripture, but the Reformed formulation of these truths, such as we find in our confession, clearly differentiate Reformed Christianity from Roman Catholicism and Anabaptism at the time our confession was written in 1561. But these doctrines also differentiate Reformed Christianity from Romanism and much of American evangelicalism today. This is why it is so important to be familiar with our confessions, so that we know what we believe and why we believe it. How can we proclaim the truth to the unbelieving world around us, if we do not know the truth?
Articles Twenty and Twenty-One of our confession summarize and describe the saving work of Jesus Christ, which provides the ground or the basis of our justification. Jesus Christ not only satisfied the wrath of God when he suffered upon the cross for us and in our place, so also he came as our high priest who represents us before God. In addition, Jesus came as the mediator of the covenant of grace, so that through his own perfect obedience to the covenant of works and the law of Moses, Jesus’ saving merits (his personal and perfect righteous) are reckoned to us through the means of faith.
To read the rest, Article 24, the Sanctification of Sinners
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