How Does Faith Make Us Righteous?

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In Romans 4, Paul points back to Abraham as the archetype for God’s dealings with all, allowing the apostle to assert, “…to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Recalling that righteousness and justification are English translations of the same Greek term, we can ask an obvious if oft-neglected question.

How does faith make us righteous? How does trust justify us apart from obedience of any kind?

It is regularly supposed that, on account of Christ, God imputes to sinful believers a righteousness that they do not in fact possess. That is, God calls the ungodly good though they are not so. The Lord credits the fruits of Jesus’s obedient, atoning work to those in whom the Spirit finds faith. Despite what God sees when he looks upon sinners, for Christ’s sake the Father judiciously declares us righteous. As Robert Jenson notes, “Of course what God declares to be so is in fact so; nevertheless, this fact obtains only within the mystery marked by that “despite.”

The challenge inherent to this allegedly tradition answer is that it amounts to God calling wicked good.

Martin Luther’s treatise The Freedom of a Christian is the Protestant Reformer’s response to this question posed by Paul’s epistle; however, in it, Luther does not supply the answers so readily attributed to him.

First, Luther answers the question (How does faith make us righteous?) in a straightforward fashion. Since the gospel is a word that gives us Christ, when we believe the gospel we receive all the salvific gifts that belong to Jesus (righteousness, peace, joy, love, etc).

Still—

How does this work?

How does what belongs to Christ come to be ours as well?

Luther’s first answer to this gospel question brings us back to the law.

Namely, Luther reminds us that believing someone is the most straightforward manner to honor them. In the gospel, God promises, “In Christ, by sheer incongruous gift, I am unthwartably determined to make you my own.” Not to trust God’s commitment is to dishonor him.

To trust the Lord’s commitment to rectify us is to honor him and, just so, fulfills the first table of the law.

As Jenson writes:

“As ecumenical theology has always supposed, obeying the second table of the law is the natural result of obeying the first, however slowly or with however many setbacks this may take place. If we trust God, we will seek to fulfill his stated will.”

Just as good works are the fruit of an authentic faith, their absence is evidence that a declaration of faith is a lie. As the catechism teaches children to answer, “We should fear and love God; so that…”

Luther’s second answer to this gospel question directs us to the word of God generally.

Simply through audition, the gospel shapes us into righteous persons. Luther appropriates Aristotle’s epistemology but shifts the means of knowing from seeing to hearing. Where Aristotle said that we become what we see, Luther said that we become what we hear. According to Luther, when it comes to my righteousness, what is addressed to me. Or rather, I become more like the one who addresses me in his word.

How does faith make us righteous?

It’s about attention more so than imputation, reading over reckoning.

Faith justifies us in that faith impels us to attend to the word of God.

Summoned to the word by faith, the word communicates to us the good things that belong to Christ. Thus, justification is not a “legal fiction,” as critics sometimes charge. It’s a statement of fact.

As Jenson puts it:

“When God declares those who hearken to the gospel righteous, this is a judgment of faith. When the sinner Jones is grasped by the gospel, “Jones is righteous” is straightforwardly true; the puny sins with which Jones still tries to shape his life cannot stand against God’s righteousness inhabiting him. Justification of the sinner is a mystery but not a paradox or a fiction.”

The third step enabled by Luther’s Freedom of a Christian is a theological move.

God’s person and God’s attributes are the selfsame reality.

Therefore, to receive God’s righteousness by hearkening to the word is nothing less than “the ruling presence in the soul of God himself.”

And because the gospel is the word of God in which God gives us Christ, the believer’s soul just is the throne of Christ. Luther made it a slogan of his theology, “In ipsa fide Christus adest: “In such faith, Christ is present.”

Finally, the Reformation slogan (“We are justified by faith apart from works”) makes sense in light of the ruling presence of Christ who inhabits our souls through faithful hearkening to the gospel.

Our righteousness requires no additional works because, by faith, the Righteous One has already taken up residence within us.

We need no good deeds because Jesus has already unpacked his suitcase in our soul.

Our neighbor, however, sure needs them.

(Anselm Kiefer 'Book with Wings')

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