On Sunday morning, Reverend James MacIver continued his series on the Reformation solas with a sermon entitled 'Faith Alone'.

He began by retelling the incident recorded in Acts, where Paul and Silas are in a Philippian jail, and an earthquake has freed all the prisoners from their chains. Terrified, the pagan jailer throws himself at Paul's feet and asks what he must do to be saved. The apostle responds, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus'.

Implicit in this response is a need for the sinner to be set right with God. The theme of the sermon, therefore, is justification, and its requirement of faith on our part. That is the great burden of the first three chapters of Romans: we cannot appreciate grace until it is shown up against the dark background of sin and Paul spends the first part of the epistle, up to 3:20, showing us what we are as sinners.

The apostle makes it clear that righteousness is not something we are capable of earning for ourselves. However, later in chapter 3, he also shows that it is not necessary for us to expend our spiritual energy in the futile effort of making ourselves righteous. He supplies the answer to the question of how we are indeed justified, in verse 26.

God justifies believers, not at the expense of His own righteousness, but in perfect accord with it.

It is crucial to understand that justification is not something which takes place within us. Rather, it is God's judicial statement regarding us. While we are in sin, the verdict recorded by our name is 'guilty'; when we are justified by faith in Christ, that verdict is irrevocably altered to 'righteous'. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to us as though it were our own.

There is an important distinction, therefore, between merely being forgiven and being justified; in the first case, your sins are unpunished, but in the second, it is as though they never were.

Mr MacIver quoted here from the Larger Catechism's Question 70 - What is Justification?

A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his sight; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Justification is, therefore, based entirely upon Jesus Christ, who was a means of diverting God's wrath away from us as sinners who deserved to feel it's full impact - hence the sola, 'Christ alone'.

Indeed, Scripture reflects this in numerous references to the exclusivity of Christ's office - e.g. 'no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved' Acts 4:12. As Paul himself made clear, we have no righteousness of our own; Jesus is the only one who can supply that.

The relationship between faith and justification is explained quite comprehensively in question 72 of the Larger Catechism:

A. Justifying faith is a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby he, being convinced of his sin and misery, and of the disability in himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assents to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receives and rests upon Christ and his righteousness, therein held forth, for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation.

In other words, we are justified through the faith that we exercise. While justification is the external fact of God declaring us righteous, this is arrived at through faith, which Mr MacIver described as 'a product of the creative power of the Spirit of God'. Faith, wrought in our hearts by the Spirit, manifests as a reaching out for Jesus in trust.

There are three elements of the Catechism answer which are worthy of further consideration in connection with this.

First of all, there is knowledge. Contrary to the typical unbeliever's view of faith, the Christian does not take a leap in the dark towards something they wish to be true. Instead, he comes to know of his own sin, misery, and utter incapability to lift himself out of that state. In actual fact, there is a lot of knowledge involved: knowing one's own sin, and knowing Christ's sufficiency to meet it.

Secondly, there is assent. You believe that the gospel is true, that the promise of salvation is certain and you accept that.

Thirdly , there is trust which receives and rests upon the righteousness of Christ.

So, the believer knows Christ, accepts His promise and comes to rest - not in the church, or even the Bible - but on the person of Jesus Christ. This involves a willing surrender to Jesus and a denial of oneself. Dying to self is what was Christ himself meant when He told His followers to take up their cross. It is an integral part of the fullness of trusting Him, that we are willing to let self be crucified.

Addressing the congregation, Mr MacIver said that though we may have acquired knowledge of Christ and even assisted to the truth of His promise, the crucial issue is whether we have yet come to place our trust in Him, placing everything connected with self in His hands.

Finally, the doctrine of faith by justification matters for the following reasons:

- For Christ's glory, because any alternatives to this truth rob Him of some of the glory and honour which is His due.

- For the purity of the gospel - as Paul teaches in Galatians 1:8-9, anyone teaching an alternative means of salvation is accursed. To depart from this truth is to be led dangerously astray.

- For personal salvation - no other doctrine so clearly and uncompromisingly sets out the depravity of sin and our inability to escape it, as against the hope and freedom of justification by faith in Christ.

- For security and assurance - justification is accomplished the moment God declares a person righteous. This status will not change because it is external to us, and not dependent on anything we do.

This pattern is laid out most clearly for us in the unbreakable chain of Romans 8 and verse 30: Predestined, called, justified, glorified.

We are to begin by asking whether we truly believe in Christ, whether we see in Him all that we need.