Since justification entails a right standing with God, it is necessary that sin be forgiven and that one be made righteous. Just as Christ bore our sin at the Cross (whereby we have pardon), so also when we believe in Christ, His righteousness is credited to us. We did not accomplish or earn the righteousness ourselves, it is a righteousness that has been freely given to us.

For three years running, I’ve asked James Ritchey to write a guest post for Reformation Day. Each year, he takes a theme of the Reformation and gives us an encouragement from God’s word. So in preparation for Reformation Day, give this a read, and be encouraged that God’s way of salvation is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

At the core of Reformation theology is the reclamation of the biblical position that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. The Protestant Reformation was a recovery of many biblical truths that had been forgotten. One of those truths was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is sometimes thought that in the Old Testament, people were saved by works, but in the New Testament people are saved by grace. What I hope to demonstrate is that justification by faith alone is taught in the Old and New Testament. To demonstrate this, we will look at three men: Adam, Abraham, and Joshua, the high priest.

Adam

Let’s go back all the way to the Garden of Eden before the fall. God gave Adam in the Garden all that he needed. Adam and Eve even walked in fellowship with God, and they had an entire garden in all its perfection to tend and to keep. They could eat from any tree in the garden except for one: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). Adam was under what theologians call a covenant of works. If he was to keep the covenant and to obey God perfectly, then he would have been given eternal life for himself and all his posterity (Romans 5:12-21). Of course, Adam failed to keep this covenant, and he sinned. In this act, mankind was plunged into “an estate of sin and misery” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 17).

Sin brought judgment, not only for Adam, but now we are born in sin. Apart from Christ, we are justly under the judgment and condemnation of God. But the amazing thing is that right after the fall of man, in which Adam broke the covenant of works, God institutes another covenant, the covenant of grace. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15).

In this word, God promises that there is one who will come to crush the head of the serpent. This would be the Deliverer, Jesus Christ, who would come to redeem His people. By His work on the Cross, He would bear the sin of God’s people. Though Jesus was innocent, and though He would keep the conditions of the covenant of works in the place of His people, He would also bear its penalty by bearing His people’s sin and the just wrath of God for their sin. At the resurrection, God vindicated His Son and we see the completeness and perfection of His atonement. Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus triumphed over sin, death, and Satan. That is what is promised and will come to fruition, and we read of this in the pages of the New Testament. But the Old Testament itself is an unfolding of this promise of God; we gain greater understanding as we read it. And even in the Old Testament, God’s people were justified by grace through faith in Christ.

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