Calvin’s Institutes: Doctrine of Justification Pt.1

Chapter 11 of Book 3 starts the big section of justification by faith. It goes all the way to chapter 18. This was a big subject for Calvin, and all the Reformers. It’s still a big subject today. Just google justification by faith and you’ll step into a huge discussion. From N.T Wright to John Piper to Guy Waters to Pope Benedict XVI this issue is examined, reasserted, some would say being redefined.

I want to simply review what Calvin in his Institutes. I will make four posts on Chapter 11.

1. Justification by faith alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls and the article upon which the sinner stands or falls. This was both Luther and Calvin’s position.

2. The sinner partakes of Christ, not by any merit of his own, but by faith which is itself a gift of God’s grace. As Calvin writes, “Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith” (Pg., 725).

3. If the sinner is given grace to embrace Christ by faith alone, he receives a double grace, as Calvin says, “By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: first, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge an gracious Father…and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life” (Pg., 725).

4. To understand this doctrine, two terms must be understood.

First. What does it mean to be justified in God’s sight? Calvin gives the meaning. “He is said to be justified in God’s sight who is both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness” (Pg., 726). However, man is a sinner, guilty before God. God cannot accept him as righteousness simply because he is not righteous. The wrath of God is what he deserves. But if God reckons him as righteous by giving him righteousness, that sinner will stand before God, while all the others will justly fall before God. That righteousness is Christ’s righteousness imputed to the elect sinner, and is received by faith alone.

Second. Is a person justified by faith or works? It cannot be by works because a sinner cannot “meet and satisfy God’s judgment” (Pg., 726). “Justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man” (Pg., 726). All “in Christ.”

5. Calvin clearly sums up justification this way: “We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness” (Pg., 727). This is what the Bible teaches. (Gal. 3:8,26; Rom. 8:33-34; Ps. 32:1-2; 2 Cor. 5:18-20; Rom. 5:19; 4; 3:20-25)

6. In conclusion, “to justify means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him who was accused, as if his innocence were confirmed...he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of righteousness, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned as such in Christ” (Pg., 728).