The Southern Presbyterian Journal/Volume 13/Number 32/Justification
Articles on the Westminster Confession
by Gordon H. Clark
The Word of God (WCF 1)
Creeds
Knowledge and Ignorance
The Trinity (WCF 2)
A Hard Saying (WCF 3)
Providence (WCF 5)
Creation (WCF 4)
Healthy, Sick, or Dead? (WCF 6)
The Covenant (WCF 7)
Christ the Mediator (WCF 8)
Justification (WCF 11)
Sanctification (WCF 13)
Free Will (WCF 9)
Effectual Calling (WCF 10)
Adoption (WCF 12)
The Law of God (WCF 19)
Assurance (WCF 18)
Saving Faith (WCF 14)
Repentance (WCF 15)
Good Works (WCF 16)
Christian Liberty (WCF 20)
Perseverance (WCF 17)
Worship and Vows (WCF 21, 22)
The Sacraments (WCF 27)
Baptism (WCF 28)
The Church (WCF 25)
The Civil Magistrate (WCF 23)
The Lord's Supper (WCF 29)
Censures and Councils (WCF 30, 31)
Resurrection and Judgment (WCF 32, 33)
Do you expect to go to heaven when you die? Virtually everybody does. If you should ask a dozen different people why they expect to go to heaven, what answers do you think they would give? A Lutheran girl told me that she had behaved commendably through life and so she was sure she would go to heaven. (Luther would never have given that answer.) A doctor of no particular denomination said that although he had done a few bad things, he had done a great deal of good, and so he expected to go to heaven. And a utility repair man guessed that the Church would get him through. But these answers bring to mind the negro spiritual: "Everybody talking 'bout heaven ain't going there."
If you were an elder of a Presbyterian session, and an applicant for communicant membership gave some such answer, would you vote to receive him?
In general there are only two plans of salvation. The first plan has several varieties, but basically it is a purely human plan of salvation by works. Its sole drawback is that the works do not work. Heaven's requirements are too stringent, and we cannot make the grade. The second plan is the divine plan of justification by faith. Let us see how the Confession summarizes the Biblical teaching.
"Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience, to them as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith: which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God."
In the United States, though not in South America, Spain, and Greece, we are no longer persecuted for preaching this doctrine. But we and it are ridiculed. The imputation of our guilt to Christ and of his righteousness to us, together with his satisfying divine justice, is disparaged and belittled as a mere legal and commercial transaction. Something repulsive is supposed to attach to a "merely legal" atonement. Would an illegal atonement be more attractive? What is really repulsive about this doctrine is its view of man as a depraved sinner and of salvation as altogether by God's grace. Sinful men hate the doctrine because it reveals their sin; proud men hate it because it prevents them from earning heaven by their own merits. But repentant and humble sinners gladly accept God's gift.
If justification, acquittal, pardon, and acceptance were the last words of the Confession and of Calvinism, there might indeed be a serious objection. Someone has parodied a gospel song so as to make it say,
"Free from the law, O blessed condition,
I can sin as I please and still have remission."
And in the time of the Apostle Paul, objectors argued that justification by faith alone encouraged men to sin. That they raised this objection in Paul's day shows clearly that Paul did not teach justification by works. But in Romans VI Paul showed with equal clarity that the objection is unfounded. The Confession states it this way:
"Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love."
Justification is God's judicial act of acquittal, but acquittal never comes to a man without regeneration and effectual calling. God never pardons a man without removing his heart of stone and supplying him with a heart of flesh. Christ's perfect righteousness is never imputed without the sinner's being raised from the dead and given a new life. Faith in Christ, then, is always accompanied by other saving graces; and the second chapter after Justification in the Confession is on Sanctification. We shall come to it shortly.
But we would be in a bad way, as Luther and Calvin well knew, if we had to depend on our own merits for acquittal, pardon, and acceptance with God. For this, only Christ's righteousness is sufficient, and with Christ's righteousness we can be sure of heaven.