Justification by Faith: Teaching of Jesus or Modern Invention?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

If we were to choose among the theological phrases that have most shaped Christian thought and sparked debate through the ages, “justification by faith” would rate highly. For centuries, Christians have wrestled with what it means to be “justified,” how justification happens, and what role, if any, human action plays in the process.

In this article, I’ll unpack the layers beneath the phrase “justification by faith,” tracing its development from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament, through the teachings of Jesus, and finally into the controversial insights of Martin Luther.

The Meaning of “Justification by Faith”

Let’s start with the meaning of the word justification. When we use the word “justify” in modern English, we normally mean defending an action by showing that it was the right thing to do. We might ask someone who did something wrong “How can you justify what you did?” However, in theology, justification has a different meaning. In the biblical context, the word “justification” means “to be made just or righteous.” It is the divine process by which sinful people can be made righteous or just.

Before I go on, let me tell you something about the words “justice” and “righteousness” that affect how biblical texts are translated into English. Looking purely at dictionary definitions, the words “righteous” and “just” are two slightly different ideas. “Righteous” describes a person or behavior that is morally right, especially in a religious context. It tends to describe individuals or individual actions: “Jim is a righteous person because he helps the poor.”

“Just,” on the other hand, while it contains the meaning of morally right, tends to be used more in a legal sense: think of “a just society,” that is, a society in which people are treated in a morally correct and fair way. So “justice” and “righteousness” are not entirely different. However, we tend to use them in different contexts. Here’s the problem, though: In both Greek and Hebrew, there is only one word for both (Greek: dikaiós, Hebrew: wə·ṣad·dîq).

This can cause some confusion in translations of the Bible into English. Take a look at Matthew 6:33, for example:

The meaning here is that one seeks the kingdom of God by being or behaving righteously as an individual. However, what if we translated it like this?

This translation is just as correct as the first one, but feels a little different. It feels like Jesus is telling people to pursue a just society in order to find the kingdom of God. Since both English terms are translated from one Greek word, it could mean both.

Understanding this, we can now start to parse the meaning of the phrase “justification by faith.” It’s the theological idea that humans can be made just/righteous only by having faith in Christ and not through their own actions.

Having established this, let’s examine the meaning of “justification by faith” in the Bible and see where the idea appears.

Justification by Faith in the Hebrew Bible

In a couple of NT passages (Romans 4:1-8, Galatians 3:6-9), the apostle Paul refers to the Jewish patriarch Abraham to make his point about justification. So, was justification by faith a theological idea in Judaism before the advent of Christianity? Let’s take a look at the passage Paul refers to and see. In Genesis 15:5-6, Abraham and God are conversing:

Notice that God makes a promise to Abraham, and because Abraham believes (or trusts) that promise, God counts this belief/trust as righteousness. However, it doesn’t say “the Lord justified Abraham because he believed.” God merely counted Abraham’s trust as a righteous act. As we’ll see, though, that’s not how Paul interpreted this text.

As to the question of whether justification by faith was a component of ancient Judaism, I’d have to say no. Judaism required (and still requires) righteous action. In fact, atonement for sins, apart from sacrifices in ancient times, required genuine repentance, prayer, and moral deeds. While Judaism has certainly changed and evolved over the millennia, the requirement of good works is still important (see Deuteronomy 15:11, Isaiah 1:17).

This means that the whole notion of justification by faith begins with the advent of Christianity. Let’s look at a few verses where the idea and/or the phrase itself are found.

Justification by Faith in the Gospels?

Was justification by faith taught by Jesus or did Paul originate the idea himself? While the phrase itself is not found in any of the Gospels, there are some verses in which Jesus could be indicating it. For example, in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector found in Luke 18:9-14, Jesus says

Some have read this story as an inference that the good deeds of the Pharisee did not make him righteous, while the tax collector was justified by his faith. That’s not a universal interpretation, but it has been stated. For example, Protestant theologian R.C. Sproul said this about the parable in a sermon:

There is also Luke 7:50, in which Jesus tells a sinful woman “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Does this indicate justification by faith? Maybe, but overall the idea is far from certain in the teachings of Jesus, especially since there are so many injunctions to do good to others in the Sermon on the Mount.

However, in the letters of Paul, we see the likely origin of justification by faith. By the way, if you’re interested in how the teachings of Jesus and Paul differ, check out Bart Ehrman’s online course “Paul and Jesus: the Great Divide.”

Justification by Faith in Paul’s Letters

As I said earlier, Paul uses the story of Abraham’s conversation with God from Genesis 15 to explain why faith is so important for salvation. Here is his explanation in Roman 4:3-5:

Paul seems to extend the meaning of the Genesis verse from belief/trust in God as one righteous act to belief/trust as ultimately justifying. Elsewhere, in Galatians 2:16, Paul writes

There are two problems, though, with making a proper interpretation of this verse. The first problem is one of translation. Paul says here that a person is justified “through faith in Jesus Christ.” The Greek phrase for “faith in Jesus Christ” is pisteōs Christou Iēsou. The problem is that this phrase can also be translated as “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.” In other words, rather than faith in Christ’s saving action on the cross, it could mean Jesus’ faithfulness in voluntarily going to the cross. This would mean that we are saved by Jesus’ action, not by believing in it. In Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle, Pamela Eisenbaum explains this further:

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The second problem with interpreting Galatians 2:16 involves the phrase “works of the law.” What does Paul mean here? According to many interpretations of justification by faith, “works of the law” simply means any good work (more on this later). But that’s not what Paul is talking about. As Bart Ehrman puts it in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings,

The issue for Paul in Galatians was that his Gentile converts believed that they had to be circumcised before joining the Jesus movement. Paul was adamantly against this, arguing instead that the Gentiles would become justified not by being circumcised or eating kosher, but by Jesus’ faithfulness through his death on the cross. Additionally, Paul actually says that followers of Christ should do good works in Galatians 6:9-10:

In addition, a different author in James 2:14-17 states that both faith and good works (not “works of the law”) are necessary for salvation:

Again, it’s important to remember that while Paul is talking about how Gentiles don’t have to follow the Torah’s precepts to be saved, the author of James is talking about how good works —giving alms, being kind — are as important for salvation as faith. It would appear that the Bible does not authorize faith apart from good deeds as the way to salvation. So where did the idea of salvation by faith alone come from?

Martin Luther and Justification by Faith

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German theologian, and reformer whose Ninety-Five Theses would later challenge Catholic authority and spark the Protestant Reformation. But right now, we’re concerned with his time as a Catholic monk at the Augustinian monastery in the city of Erfurt. That’s where he had the insight that would change his life, and Christianity, forever.

As a young monk, Luther became overwhelmed by a sense of his own sinfulness and the feeling that he was not doing enough to be saved. In The Story of Christianity: Volume 2: The Reformation to the Present Day, Justo Gonzalez notes that Catholic teachings insisted that along with God’s grace, confession, penance, and good works were required for justification. However, Luther became obsessed with the feeling that he had committed too many sins to ever be able to confess them all. He was going to hell.

In a panicky state, he approached the superior of the monastery who made a surprising move: he told Luther to begin teaching Bible classes at the University of Wittenberg. For someone with so many doubts, this was surely upsetting. However, it ultimately led him to a theological discovery he hadn’t expected.

While preparing for his lectures, Luther started reading the Bible more carefully. He knew Greek well enough to look to the Greek version of the New Testament as well. In 1515, he began a lecture series on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Romans 1:17, he read this:

Paul here is quoting from the OT book of Habakkuk. Oddly enough, the passage in Hebrew probably means “The one who is righteous will live by faithfulness,” meaning faithfulness to God. However, when Luther looked at Paul’s original writing in Greek, he realized you could translate it a slightly different way: “The one who is righteous by faith will live.” In other words, those who had faith would be justified by God. As Gonzalez explains it,

For Luther, this meant that any good works that one did were merely the natural products of living by faith. If one had faith, one would be justified by God and thus automatically do good works. Justification was the product of faith and grace. But good works themselves were not required, since all the saving action belonged to God — humans contributed nothing but faith. This would establish a longstanding debate, faith vs. works, in Christian theology. Luther’s new interpretation changed his entire perspective, and in the preface to a collection of his writings, he wrote

This would start the Protestant Reformation, a breaking away from the Catholic Church and the founding of a new denomination which spread across Europe over the next few centuries. In fact, most Protestant denominations still hold tight to Luther’s notion of sola fide, Latin for “faith alone.” Luther even included it in his German translation of the Bible, changing the original verse of Romans 1:17 to “The one who is righteous will live by faith alone.” This was not an accurate translation, of course — the word alone is not present in the original — but Luther felt that it was warranted.

So, does every Christian today believe in justification by faith alone? In a word, no. Let’s look at two Christian denominations that never believed it and still don’t believe it. For them, there is no choice between faith vs. works: both are necessary.

Justification in Catholicism and Orthodoxy

Since Luther effectively abandoned the Catholic Church, he’s understandably not popular in Catholic circles. However, Catholics also disagree with Luther’s doctrine of sola fide. In Did the Reformers Misread Paul?: A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective, Aaron O’Kelley writes that for Catholics,

In other words, while God is certainly the one who justifies a person, that person must also take advantage of the Church’s sacraments to show God her willingness to participate in God’s grace. Furthermore, the website Catholic Answers notes that “we Catholics insist that James 2:14-26 shows that works are more than mere evidence of faith. Works actually justify.”

Orthodox Christianity has a somewhat similar perspective. In “God’s ‘Righteousness,’” Fr. John Beck writes

Both these traditions, in other words, say that while faith is a necessary element in salvation, faith is more than mere belief. Following the Book of James, faith must be active in doing good works to the extent of one’s ability as well.

Conclusion: What Is the Meaning of Justification by Faith?

Justification by faith has long been a thorny theological issue. It involves contested biblical translations and interpretations, arguments on the nature of God and the nature of human interaction with God. Can humans do anything active to bring about their salvation? Or is mere belief in the saving action of Christ’s death and resurrection enough to invoke God’s saving grace?

Different answers to this question have emerged throughout Christian history. While Paul cites the example of Abraham’s faith to shore up his argument, it’s all but certain that early Judaism did not hold justification by faith as a tenet. Instead, Judaism required fidelity to the requirements of the Torah, the Jewish Law, in order to demonstrate one’s faithfulness to God.

Many Christians have read justification by faith into the Gospels, although it’s far from clear that this was one of Jesus’ teachings. Paul, however, seems to be the first biblical author to focus so intently on justification. While many have read Paul as saying that faith alone justifies a person and not good works, Paul’s real meaning appears to be that Gentiles did not have to follow the injunctions of the Torah — circumcision, kosher eating, etc. — to be justified. This doesn’t mean that he believed that good works in general were not important.

Finally, Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation really brought the notion of justification by faith alone to the forefront. With an unusual reading of Romans, Luther started a revolution that rocked Christianity and ushered in whole new ways of thinking about the relationship between God and humans. This doesn’t mean, however, that everyone agrees; many Christians still believe that “faith without works is dead.”