The Five SolasSýnishorn

Faith Alone 

How can a sinful human become right with God? How can a righteous God accept sinful people without staining His holy character? How can God justify sinners like us? We are justified by faith in Christ. 

The Bible says that our righteousness is filthy before God. Therefore, we can never be justified before God through our works. Our works can never merit God’s forgiveness and justification. The only way we can be justified is through the perfect righteousness of Christ on our behalf. And we access this perfect record of Christ through faith alone. God does not wait for us to be righteous to justify us. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us so we can be justified by faith in what He has done as our substitute. 

Fundamentally we long for acceptance, approval, identity and significance. And we do our best to achieve this by our own righteousness. We want to feel good through our work, success, accomplishments and good name. And throughout life, we go about building our righteousness, which can by no means justify us before a righteous and holy God. 

The gospel changes how we pursue righteousness. When we understand that we can never measure up to God’s holy standards, we can either despair and give up hope or move toward Christ, our righteousness. Jesus died so that we are not only forgiven but we are also credited His perfect record as our own. God is pleased with us because he is pleased with Jesus. 

How is this righteousness ours? God has chosen faith as the means by which this righteousness of God can become ours. If we are justified by faith alone, where is our boasting? We boast in nothing except the cross of Christ.