The formula is “justification by grace through faith,” which is, as many have said, the article upon which the church stands of falls.
Some people accent the last part of the formula, which is faith. They might say: “We’re saved by grace, but you have to have faith in order to get it.” Others accent the first part of the formula which says that justification is by grace. We are justified—made “right” with God—by God’s free gift. We respond to God’s grace through faith, which is our participation in God’s gracious reality.
The Greek word which means faith is pisteuein. It’s a verb. Normally we would translate it as “faithing,” as in “faithing in Christ.” This sounds funny in English so we quite often translate pisteuein as “believe.”
Unfortunately, this tends to give the impression that faith means believing things about Jesus. It gives the impression that faith is about intellectually understanding and accepting the “correct doctrine” about him.
This misses the point of the original Greek. Faith is not so much a head trip about Jesus, but rather a “radical trust” in Jesus. Faith is a total orientation of one’s heart, mind, and spirit.
Put that way, we must also recognize that we fail at faith. We do not trust in Christ with our heart, mind, and spirit. We do not have “radical trust.” In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus often says that the disciples—that’s us—have “little faith.” Luther said that we should never forget that we are “weak in faith, cold in love, faint in hope.”
Therefore, our only hope is in God’s grace and mercy, which, the “grace people” argue, is precisely where we all end up. Whether we “faith” or not, we are all finally reliant upon the grace of Christ. Therefore, grace is the absolute bottom line.
I asked this of Dr. Tim Lull before his untimely death in 2002. Dr. Lull was President of Pacific Lutheran Theology Seminary in Berkeley and the editor of Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, now required reading at many of our seminaries.
Lull was one of that small company of persons in the whole world who could be said to be experts on Martin Luther. Some years ago now, he was a presenter at one of our church conventions which was held at Colorado State University. Their student union has a pub in the basement, a very appropriate venue for an exploration of Luther’s theology. Lull had everyone’s attention as he “played” Martin Luther. People would ask him various questions, and he would hold forth in the way he thought Luther would hold forth.
I asked, “So which is it? Faith? Or grace? What’s the bottom line?” He said something about the “faith party” and their point of view, and the “grace party” and their point of view—stalling for time, it seemed to me, while he thought of a way out of this particular theological thicket, which he did quite well when he said that he thought Luther would answer that the “bottom line” is Christ. We are utterly reliant upon Christ.
Which was a good answer, and true, but it kind of dodged the question, so I posed it again about a year later over lunch. Which is it, Dr. Lull, faith or grace? He said that he thought Luther would say faith, but that he personally thought it was grace. Grace is the absolute bottom line.
One of my seminary classmates, Larry Lutey, once asked Dr. Duane Priebe something like the same question. It was right at the end of a class period in which we were discussing grace. As everybody was walking out, Larry asked, “Yes, but don’t we have to have faith?” to which Priebe responded, “When you’re resurrected, you’ll have faith.”
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