Justifying faith is a doctrine also referred to as saving faith or believing faith. When a sinner by the grace of God through faith believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior, God justifies the believer on the ground of Christ’s merited righteousness. Justification of the believer is an external, judicial act of God in which God deems or counts the believer as righteous (Gen. 15:6). The believer is also adopted by God who guarantees the divine inheritance to the believer with assurance of future salvation and glorification.
Justifying faith is the true, saving, justifying faith that is grounded in the heart and arises from a regenerate soul. Justifying faith is a gift of God which is a potentiality wrought by God in the sinner. The origin of faith is implanted in the soul of human beings at regeneration and only after the seed of faith is implanted can a human being exercise faith.[i]
In order to better understand justifying faith, we need to consider the different elements of faith. There are three elements of faith, 1) intellectual, 2) emotional, 3) and volitional.
The intellectual element of faith involves knowledge. This knowledge is the acceptance and recognition of God’s word “especially what He says respecting the deep depravity of man and the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”[ii] This knowledge of faith is not a full knowledge and yet it is not a mere casual knowledge of the objects of faith but it is an insightful knowledge of the truth of the Christian religion that is recognized and responded to in the heart of the sinner. Certainly, the believer must have knowledge sufficient to understand in general the object of faith, which is Christ Jesus. As the believer gains more and more knowledge, he or she will develop a stronger and deeper faith.
This intellectual knowledge is a certain knowledge. The Heidelberg Catechism describes it as a certain, confident knowledge as a result of the Holy Spirit’s workings through the gospel in the heart of the believer (HC, Q. 21). John Calvin too speaks of a certain or confident knowledge by using the term “a firm and sure knowledge.”[iii] The remission of sins, righteousness and salvation will be graciously given by God on the ground of Christ’s merited righteousness. Hebrews 11:1 states “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” So, faith makes certain the believer’s present certainty of a future reality of spiritual and eternal things that the gospel and the word of God promise. This facet of the certain knowledge of faith brings with it a conviction of the truth of the gospel and the reality of its object Jesus Christ.
There is also the emotional element of faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is the conviction that everything written in Scripture about Jesus Christ is true, that it meets an existential need in his life, and it brings with it a thirsting and hungering for it and all of this amounts to the emotional element of faith which is assent. Thus, assent is the conviction of the truth of Christ, an existential need for Christ, and a hungering and thirst for the person of Christ. As with the certain, intellectual knowledge, the emotional element involves a hearty conviction of the truth and a reality of Christ Jesus with a heartfelt interest in it.
And then there is the volitional element of faith. Faith does not only involve the intellect and the emotions but it is also a matter of the will. The will directs the soul towards Christ and appropriates Christ to the believer. This is where the believer personally trusts in Christ as his Lord and Savior and acts according to his certain knowledge and conviction by surrendering his soul to Christ and receives and appropriates Christ as the source of spiritual life. The volitional element is the element of trust and this trust brings with it assurance to the believer. “It naturally carries with it a certain feeling of safety and security, of gratitude and joy. Faith, which is in itself certainty, tends to awaken a sense of security and a feeling of assurance in the soul.”[iv] As faith grows the fruit of our faith, our assurance, also grows.
There is also the object of faith. In the general sense, the object of faith is the entire divine revelation, everything taught expressly in Scripture or which can be deduced by reasonable inference. In a more limited sense, we have justifying faith or saving faith which has as its object the person of Jesus Christ and the salvation that comes through him. Though it is true that the believer through faith believes in the promises of Christ and the facts about Christ and His works, nevertheless, it is faith in the person of Jesus Christ Himself, which results in a special oneness between Christ and the believer, that mystical union, that justifies. Becoming one in Christ through faith leads to justification and future salvation for the sinner.
Finally, there is the ground of faith. “The ultimate ground on which faith rests, lies in the veracity and faithfulness of God, in connection with the promises of the gospel… In distinction from the former, however, it might be called the proximate ground. The means by which we recognize the revelation embodied in Scripture as the very Word of God is, in the last analysis, the testimony of the Holy Spirit”[v] (1 John 5: 7).
Justifying faith is a gift of God which is a potentiality worked out by God in the sinner. The origin of justifying faith is implanted in the soul of human beings at regeneration and only after the seed of faith is implanted can a human being exercise this gift of faith.[vi] When a sinner by the grace of God through justifying faith believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior, God justifies, or counts as righteous (Gen. 15:6), the believer on the ground of Christ’s merited righteousness. Justifying faith involves the acceptance, recognition, and conviction of the truth of the gospel and the reality of its object Jesus Christ and it involves a hearty conviction of the truth and a reality of Christ Jesus with a heartfelt interest in Him. It involves the will directing the soul towards Christ and appropriating Christ to the believer. This is where the believer personally trusts in Christ as his Lord and Savior and surrenders his soul to Christ and receives and appropriates Christ as the source of spiritual life. Justifying faith consists in the knowledge and conviction of God’s divine favor toward us founded on the truth of all God has revealed to us in Scripture with a wholehearted trust, revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit “as to the truth of the gospel, and a hearty reliance (trust) on the promises of God in Christ,”[vii] whom we appropriate as Lord and Savior, in relation to our justification and salvation. Believers accept Jesus as Savior and submit to Him as Lord. If Jesus is not your Lord, He’s not your Savior; the two go together – you cannot have one without the other. The volitional element is the element of trust which brings with it assurance to the believer.
It is important to understand that trust is not a synonym for faith or belief. Trust is one element of faith along with certain knowledge and assent. Trust is acting through the will upon belief in Christ. We believe in Christ and thus we place our trust in Christ. The Christian through justifying faith has a certain knowledge of Christ and has a conviction of the truth of the gospel and God’s revelation, and with a hearty reliance (trust) on the promises of God through the instrumentality of his or her will, he or she appropriates Christ as his Lord and Savior.
There is another important issue regarding faith that I would like to add at this point and that is the role of justifying faith in justification. Charles Hodge, writes:
The first effect of faith, according to the Scriptures, is union with Christ. We are in him by faith. There is indeed a federal union between Christ and his people, founded on the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son in the councils of eternity. We are, therefore, said to be in Him before the foundation of the world… it was also… included in the stipulations of that covenant, that his people, so far as adults are concerned, should not receive the saving benefits of that covenant until they were united to Him by a voluntary act of faith… Their union is consummated by faith. To be in Christ, and to believe in Christ, are, therefore, in the Scriptures convertible forms of expression. They mean substantially the same thing… The proximate effect of this union, and, consequently, the second effect of faith, is justification.[viii] Justifying faith forms the real union (i.e., the mystical union) which unites the believer to Christ. It is this real union of uniting the believer to Christ that qualifies the believer for God’s act of creating a legal union (i.e., justification) by the imputation of
[i] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2021), 521.
[ii] Berkhof, 522.
[iii] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Trans, Henry Beveridge (Hendrickson 2008), 360.
[iv] Berkhof, 524.
[v] Berkhof, 525.
[vi] Berkhof, 521.
[vii] Berkhof, 522.
[viii] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, (Hendrickson 2016) 104-05.
