For several decades now the doctrine of justification has been a topic of debate among Evangelicals, even among some in the Reformed tradition. That may seem disheartening, but there is a bright side to it all. As in all controversies in this one also the biblical teaching is necessarily re-examined and hammered out with freshness, with new warmth and appreciation, and very often with new or at least sharpened insights. And surely every generation of believers deserves a clear, informed, and contemporary exposition of this so very important doctrine of justification.
This is what Dr. Brian Vickers (professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology, SBTS) has provided in his Justification By Grace Through Faith: Finding Freedom from Legalism, Lawlessness, Pride, and Despair, and he is here to speaks with us about it today.
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel)
Hi! This is Fred Zaspel with Books at a Glance. We’re talking today with Dr. Brian Vickers about the doctrine of justification and about his book—very helpful book—entitled Justification By Grace Through Faith: Finding Freedom From Legalism, Lawlessness, Pride, and Despair. Dr. Vickers is Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It is great to have him with us. Brian, thanks for coming.
Dr. Brian Vickers
Oh, Fred, thanks for having me. I’m glad to be able to talk to you.
Zaspel
All right. Let’s talk about the doctrine and about your book. First off, though, since this is your first time with us, maybe you could introduce yourself to our listeners. Tell us about yourself, your background, how long you’ve been at Southern, what route you took to get there?
Vickers
The route—that’s a completely different interview. In fact, that’s probably a multi-part interview. Long story short, I was raised in a Baptist home—not a Southern Baptist home. I didn’t come to faith until later, actually until college. I was very much in conscious rebellion for a long time. But after God saved me, I ended up, through a series of things, doing a pastoral internship, first in England for a while and then in Charleston, West Virginia, with a guy named Tom Smith. You might know who—
Zaspel
Yeah, I know Tom.
Vickers
Of course you do. Then from there, I went to Wheaton, where I did an MA. This version is so fast, I barely recognize it. Near the beginning of my second year, I started poking around at the idea of a Ph.D, and it started to look like school was never going to stop for me—
Zaspel
Oh, I know that feeling.
Vickers
So I started looking around, and this was around about the time that some people started coming to Southern Seminary that I was really interested in studying with, most of all Tom Schreiner. I got the word from a professor of mine at Wheaton named Scott Hafemann that Tom Schreiner was coming to Southern. I’d never met Tom before, but I had read his book on the Law. I think I’d read every article I could find by him. I had never met him, but I knew people who knew him. Scott knew him personally. I found out he was coming here, and it took my wife and I about twenty-four hours to change our plans and reroute what we were doing. I came to Southern wholly to study with Tom. I showed up in his office the first day and said, “My name is Brian, and I came to study with you. I have to finish up this M.Div, and hopefully do a Ph.D with you.” He was very nice, and said, “Well, I hope that works out,” and he gave me a book, and the rest is history.
Zaspel
That’s neat. I didn’t know that story. I knew you were from West Virginia, but I didn’t know the rest of that story.
Vickers
I was born in West Virginia. As I was finishing up my Ph.D, I was doing some adjunct teaching, and then in God’s providence, a professor here at the time named Bob Stein, well-known, was retiring, and another professor, John Paul Hill, was semi-retiring. Just the way God worked it out—I never would have taken the steps and the breaks and the fits and starts if I had planned it out. But the way things ended up in the providence of God I was teaching and here, and Russ Moore, my good friend who used to be the dean here, called me one day, and I had an interview here, and about half a year later I was on the faculty here. I’ve been here teaching now—this is my eleventh, or beginning my twelfth year.
Zaspel
Wow, I didn’t know it had been that long.
Vickers
Yeah, well, that would include also teaching adjunct. So eleven full years.
Zaspel
Great story. Okay, let’s begin with the basics. Let’s talk about the book itself in broad strokes. What do you hope to accomplish with the book? Who is your intended audience? What kind of contribution are you hoping to make with it?
Vickers
Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you—it is kind of ambitious, I think. I had studied justification and related things for a long time, going way back to my years at Wheaton as a master’s student. I did my dissertation on the doctrine of imputation. One of the things I always wanted to do was to write a book, basically: here is what I think about justification, not that it is groundbreaking or nobody has ever thought it before. Here is what I think about justification as it unfolds in the Bible, but not presented in sort of a polemic way in the midst of all the various modern debates about justification, which are important. It is important to have those debates, obviously. It is vital that we have those debates and that we understand other people’s positions and understand our positions in relation to those positions. That’s vital. But what I wanted to do was write a book—it is not at all above debate. Certainly, I knew this when I wrote the introduction, but as I’ve looked at the book since—if you’re familiar with the justification debates, they are not far under the surface. It’s just, I wanted to write a book where somebody didn’t have to have read N.T. Wright. They didn’t have to have read—they didn’t even maybe have to have read a lot in the traditional vein of justification. But traditional, that’s a big word.
Zaspel
So you’re aiming at more of a popular audience?
Vickers
Yeah, yeah, more of a popular audience, and just a foot in the door. So, if somebody would come and say as sometimes students would say, “I’m just hearing about everything that’s going on with justification. Where do I begin?” My answer has always been, don’t begin with the debates. Begin with trying to understand what justification is itself. So I wanted to write a book, and Robert Peterson at PNR was behind this idea completely. I wanted to write a book that would kind of get your foot in the door, like, “Here’s the trajectories of justification in the Bible,” and it is kind of a place to begin.
Zaspel
Well, give us an overview. How do you approach the doctrine? What’s the layout in the book? How do you progress?
Vickers
The book moves forward and backward at the same time. It kind of moves forward in circles, if that makes any sense. What I mean is, the book is basically set up—I begin with a discussion of Adam in Genesis. From there, I move to Jesus the second and true Adam, not only Romans 5 because I see that as foundational. Then I move back to Abraham, and then from Abraham forward to the central texts about Abraham, say, Romans 4, for instance. Not only Romans 4. Then back again to the Old Testament to Moses and the Law, and then forward to texts like 2nd Corinthians 5:21, 1st Corinthians 1:30, those sorts of texts, having established righteousness and what it means in the Law, what it means to be right with God, and then sort of parallel ideas in texts in the New Testament. That’s kind of how I do that part of the book. Then there’s a chapter devoted to James and Paul, or at least most of a chapter anyway, how we understand them together. Then basically an application chapter or two, and then a conclusion.
Zaspel
All right. Well, again, back to basics. What is the doctrine of justification? State that for us. What do we mean when the Scripture says we’re justified? What does that mean?
Vickers
I think the most basic way, and I’ll just try to keep it at that—the most basic way to talk about or to describe how Scripture teaches justification or what it says—I think justification is a declaration, first of all, a declaration from God that declares that we are in fact before Him in His eyes standing before Him righteous. That is, we stand before Him as those who are not just not guilty, but as those who have done everything that is pleasing to Him, have accomplished all things, whatever they may be, that would go into being righteous. In other words, it is not just that we haven’t sinned. We’ve also positively done those things, because when somebody is called righteous in the Bible, it is connected to things—usually, anyway—connected to things that are done. So God declares us to be that, not on the basis of our works, but solely on the basis of faith in the finished work of Jesus and His death and resurrection. So God looks at us and declares—and this is not a fiction, not some kind of legal fiction—God declares to be right by faith in Jesus to be right before His eyes, in His eyes.
Zaspel
I remember hearing in Sunday School the definition that I’m sure everybody has heard, that justification means, “just as if I’d never sinned.” What about that is good? What about it might be inadequate? What do you think?
Vickers
Yeah. I think it is, well, you know, it is one of those things. It is true, of course. It is an easy way for people to remember something about what the Bible says about our salvation, at least that part of salvation, anyway. We’re probably getting ready to talk and think more about this than is intended just from that little phrase. But I like the idea in the phrase, because, the Bible has more explicit things to say about forgiveness than anything else. It doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. But the Bible can sometimes speak of forgiveness in terms of the whole thing. Salvation can be, in certain places, like Romans 4, for instance—John Murray and no less than Calvin, read Romans 4 and say, “In this place, Paul means ‘nothing less than the forgiveness of sins.’” That’s a big statement.
Zaspel
Yeah, or I’ve seen, “justification consists in the forgiveness of sins.”
Vickers
Yeah. It does consist in it. The thing is, I don’t think that to be justified is limited or stopped—we have to be careful how we say this. One of the things that happens is, we don’t want to relegate forgiveness to just, “Of course I’m forgiven,” but the important part is xyz, when the Bible puts so much explicit emphasis on forgiveness. We want to be careful that we don’t downplay it. I would just say this—is that justification, being declared to be right before God, is not only about forgiveness…. It is not just that we haven’t sinned. We’re not kind of in neutral. We are declared to have the status before God and it is not just “not guilty.” It is “righteous, acceptable in every way.” But, you know, there are broad perspective ways, and you can find texts like this in the Bible where we can say “forgiveness,” and everything I just said is included. It just depends.
Zaspel
You mentioned earlier the doctrine of imputation, and that was your thesis that you did. Let’s talk about the [inaudible] side of things now. Give us a sample from the New Testament that affirms the doctrine that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. Help us understand that clearly.
Vickers
Sure. As I’ve said in the book, and I think I’ve said this in my imputation book, too—sometimes people will make imputation and justification synonymous. I’ve even heard people, probably not on purpose, basically make imputation and the Gospel synonymous. The first thing is wrong, to say that justification and imputation are synonymous. I can understand it, but it is wrong. The second thing is not even really on the verge of being right, because it just doesn’t say enough. There is more to the Gospel than imputation, without at all denigrating imputation. We just need to be careful. This is one of the things that happens as a result of debates. We can go overboard. So we might say something like, “you can’t have the Gospel without imputation.” That’s one thing. It is another thing to say the Gospel is imputation. That’s going overboard. So backing up—what is imputation? One of the most common texts that in the discussion of imputation where it is explicit, is in fact Romans 4, which quotes Genesis 15, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited (or counted, which is where we get our word “imputation”) to him as righteousness.” And so there, what counts as righteousness comes to us through faith and not by works. That’s what Paul goes on to say. Paul contrasts faith and works in Romans 4 and says it’s not from working, because when you get something from working, it is called, as we all know, a wage. You work, you do your work, and you get a wage for what you’ve done. Not so in the case of Abraham, who receives righteousness, not by working. It is not compensation. He receives it through true faith. So, in the doctrine of imputation—which, by the way, I thoroughly believe has to be built through the study of various texts. I don’t believe that there is any one single text in the Bible that gives us a full doctrine of imputation. Imputation is a doctrine that rests on the interpretation of several texts read together, the main texts being Romans 4, as I just said, Romans 5:12-21, particularly 18-19 with the language of “being made righteous,” 2nd Corinthians 5:21 (“God made Him since who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”), other texts—
Zaspel
Philippians 3?
Vickers
Philippians 3:9 is a good example, yeah. 1st Corinthians 1:30 is important, but it is also important that we understand that it is righteousness there, that He becomes our righteousness.
Zaspel
That raises another question. I think this has been a puzzle to a lot of people. It is Christ’s righteousness that is imputed to us, or put to our account, and you deal with that in your book. How are we to understand statements like in Romans 4:5, where it says that faith is imputed as righteousness? What’s going on there? That’s been a puzzle.
Vickers
Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s an ongoing question. I think it is a question that people are always going to have. I think what we have to do is look at what the nature of what faith is in the Bible. What determines our righteousness is not our faith itself. Faith, in the Bible, has an object. It is not just our faith. That’s why I’m always sort of gun shy of being called a “person of faith.” I mean, anybody can be a person of faith. What’s important is what that faith is in, because typically, a lot of times when a person says they are a person of faith, if you keep chipping away at it, it turns out it is a sort of faith in themselves or something. But the righteousness comes from our object, because we’re united with the object of our righteousness, that is Jesus. It is His righteousness and we’re connected to Him by faith. I get this from all the language of “through faith,” “by faith,” “in faith,” to where the Bible—
Zaspel
Which makes it very puzzling, then. Why is it said as it is in Romans 5 that faith is imputed, but then it’s “unto righteousness”? Faith cannot be righteousness and the instrument by which righteousness is received. Making sense of that is—
Vickers
I think that the Bible—we have to look at two different things. One is that Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. But we also have to look at, how does the Bible speak of faith? In terms of texts that are about salvation or some aspect of salvation, faith is spoken of largely as instrumental. That is, it is the means by which, so faith is the means by which we are united. So we have to look at two things. It is not enough just to look at the quote from Genesis 15:6, because then what we have to ask ourselves is, “Okay, so Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. What is the ‘it’?” It is his belief in God’s promise, because God makes him a promise and Abraham believes in that promise. Then we have to say, “How the Bible speaks of faith?” Does the Bible speak of faith being the thing that is our righteousness? As we look and study how the Bible speaks of faith in God—especially you see this in Paul, and this is where a lot of this takes place—it is “by faith, through faith, in faith,” not faith itself as some kind of New Covenant work. It is faith that unites us with the object of it, and the object of it is Jesus. So that’s where it is sort of putting those two things together. It’s asking the second question—how does the Bible talk about faith—that helps us understand the language of Genesis 15:6, and then the quote of it in Romans 4.
Zaspel
Good. Moving on. What’s the relation of works to justification? You’ve already mentioned in Romans 4 the argument that Paul makes that it is not by works. God doesn’t owe man anything. What is the relation of works?
Vickers
Well, first of all, in terms of our justification of being declared by God, it is in no way by the basis of our works. Our works don’t contribute to that declaration. There is a work involved. It is not ours, though. It is the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, and so it is not as though God just said—that’s why I militate a little bit against any ideas of it being legal fiction. On occasion I’ve even heard some traditional-type people say, “Well, there is a sense in which it is a legal fiction.” No, you can’t. No, it isn’t, because if it is, we’re sunk. Now, what you have—it opens up the door to so many things. For one, a God that can just be arbitrary, who can say A one day and say B the next, so whatever.
Zaspel
If we have a substitute who has truly taken our place and provided the righteousness for us that God requires for us, then there’s nothing fictional about it.
Vickers
Right. Of course, the fictional part means it always remains—it is language that never needs to be used. What it’s trying to say is, it is a bad way of trying to say that the righteousness that is ours is never ours. It is always the righteousness of Jesus that makes us right before God. In the old days, people spoke of, and still today, of alien righteousness, which makes sense. It is a righteousness that comes from outside of us. It’s alien to us. Now, the thing is, as long as we’re talking about this, or as long as I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about it—I think living in the 21st century with most people, if they don’t have any church background, or if they have church background but no theological background, if they hear alien righteousness—we can explain to them later what it means, I guess, but what they hear is extraterrestrial.
Zaspel
Substitute righteousness is all we mean.
Vickers
Yeah. Righteousness that is not mine, that comes from somewhere else.
Zaspel
Luther’s big thing is that righteousness is outside of us.
Vickers
If you look at the Bible, it makes sense that way, because God creates us to begin with so that we will look outside of ourselves by believing and obeying Him and living for others. It begins with Adam and Eve. We’re created not to be self-sufficient. We’re created to be dependent. It is the best thing, because we’re dependent on an infinite God that gives to us infinitely. Then we’re freed up so that we can live for other people. We’re actually created to look outside of ourselves. We’re created not to be self-reliant. That’s just the way we are, the way God created us. Of course we’ve rebelled against that. This isn’t really part of your question, but one of the things that a sound doctrine of justification does is that it shows that God is in the business of remaking us to be people who say everything I have is a gift, and I’m free now to live for God.
Vickers
Now we’re free. We’re free before God. There’s nothing hanging over us, so we’re free to live for Him and depend on Him and we’re free to live for others and not for ourselves.
Zaspel
Justification is a declarative act, a legal act, but it is also is the beginning of this restorative process.
Vickers
Can I say one more thing about the imputation thing?
Zaspel
Yeah.
Vickers
Inevitably, people will talk about the imputation of Jesus’ active and passive obedience and those sorts of things. I understand that as a theological distinction. But one thing we can be sure of is that if there’s any obedience, it is both active and passive, because it has to be. So we don’t have to say Jesus’ active obedience, that is His obedience in life and passive obedience in the cross. Jesus Himself says that, “No one takes it from Me—that is, my life. I lay it down of my own accord. This command I have from my Father.” So even Jesus’ death—it is passive—
Zaspel
Active obedience.
Vickers
Yeah. Because the fact of the matter is that, Fred, every obedience, any obedience—if my daughter obeys me, whenever I used to obey (both my parents are passed away) but growing up, if I would obey my parents, it always involved submitting to the person you are obeying to, and then doing, or not doing, the thing that they are telling you to do or not to do. So we have it all. So I understand about breaking it down. I just say that it is obedience, and all obedience is active and passive. You can’t separate. You get it both. It is obedience.
Zaspel
Very good. I think I pulled you away a little from the question—and this is very good—but I started the discussion by asking what’s the relation of works to justification. So if it’s not the ground of our justification, what is it?
Vickers
Works, I think, are the fruit of our justification, in the sense that having been justified by faith, now we have peace with God (Romans 5:1), it makes us free. So we’re free now to do what we could never do before, and that is live for God, because we can’t forget in this whole thing that’s taking place there’s also the gift of the Spirit, a transformation, a new heart, we’re cleansed, all these things are taking place. So all these things take place. So we’re now free to do those works, to live. We’re free now to live according to the will of the one who declares us to be righteous. So we’re free to do righteousness now. But from a New Covenant perspective, or a Christian perspective, it is not works toward something, it is works from something.
Zaspel
So it is the old thing that works are not the root, but the fruit?
Vickers
Yeah. You can say these things and people sort of roll their eyes, but it is actually right. It is true that the people of God, and this goes back to things God says to Abraham in Genesis 18, and 17-19, that God says that, “I have chosen Abraham, and he’s going to be a great nation, and I’ve chosen him so he’ll teach his children to do justice and righteousness so that I’ll do what I said to Abraham.” So the people of God are going to look like and act like and sound like the people of God. That’s the relationship. I just describe it in the book that now we’re free to obey, so we’re going from a position of freedom, and that’s what the obedience flows from that.
Zaspel
All right, my next question—and if this is too big to handle briefly, you just tell me and we’ll move on, and it just may be. But there’s just an enormous amount of debate over the last couple of decades over the new perspective on justification. You clearly hold a more traditional Reformation view. Is there a brief way to answer—is there anything about the new perspective that you appreciate that you can mention, and then where do you find its most significant flaws? Can you summarize that?
Vickers
Yeah, I can, to a more or less satisfactory conclusion. Positive things: I think one of the things that the new perspective—it is not as if nobody knew this ever before. The new perspective has helped us to see, or reminded us anyway, that when we speak of Judaism in the first century, it is not just one thing. To speak of Judaism in the first century, there are many different sorts of Judaisms. It is varied. It is not like anybody truly forgot that. Ironically, if we can even talk about people in the new perspective, it has been since the 70s now. I mean, a few years later James Dunn coins the new perspective on Paul, reflecting back on Sanders’ work in ’77. That had been a long time, right? There’s been lots of different trajectories of that. Ironically, it seems like to me that some people, at least, in the broad tent called the new perspective have replaced all that varied Judaism with another single Judaism, in that is a Judaism where everybody believes in what they call covenantal nomism, that is it is law keeping within a covenant to maintain the covenant. I don’t want to get too technical with that. There is also, this happens and this should happen, is that the new perspective has caused us to go back and refine some of the things that we say. This happens over the course of debate. I think it has made us in some ways more careful.
Zaspel
Debates always do that.
Vickers
That’s what debates do if people join them in the right way. Sometimes that means that we have to come up with new ways to say things. I didn’t mean to, but I’ve sort of rubbed people the wrong way by saying things like “the word alien is misleading” or the word probation, if you talk about Adam under probation—the thing is that for people living in our day, probation means that you’ve already done something wrong, and you’re out on probation, and now we’re going to see if you do better.
Zaspel
Which is not at all what we mean by that.
Vickers
But that is almost 100% what we think. You have to be pretty refined theologically and also use words in ways that the majority of people surrounding us don’t use them to say that probation also means a trial period. It does, but it hardly means that now. But our opponents—they can pick up on that language too. So not only can it be confusing to believers. It can also be something that our opponents can pick up and say, come on, this isn’t even biblical. And people can hear that and say “Yeah, those traditional people—” And so it has helped us focus. Let me summarize what I think is the chief shortcoming, and that is—without getting into all the details, let me talk about a practical negative result, and that is a shift of emphasis, I think. Now, there are some people who are associated with the new perspective who’s say absolutely not, that this is not intended, that this is not even personally what I do, but now I am trying to speak as a group, or as a movement. You have a shift of emphasis, I think, that takes some of the emphasis away from the individual standing before God, guilty of sin and condemned and needing to be saved, needing to be forgiven, needing to have righteous standing before God as a person, an individual—
Zaspel
It necessarily takes away, shifts the emphasis away from that.
Vickers
Yes, it shifts some emphasis away from the person to the community. We could even say, look, that can also help us, to understand that we have been too consumed with just “it is me and Jesus,” and the community is secondary, the church is secondary. But it isn’t. But I think it is swung too far the other way in the new perspective. But having said that, that’s not new. I mean, Bultmann, who everybody would admit predates the new perspective, early on in his New Testament theology, early on talks about righteousness being focused not so much on the individual but on the community. It is not new in that sense. It is a shift in emphasis, and I think that’s practically where it has made some inroads, I think negative inroads. It can become, practically speaking, more about taking part in the community, being on a journey, these kind of things. I am not, of course, saying—if there was a third person on this phone conversation and they were relayed the new perspective, they would hear me and say they don’t say that at all. I admit that. I’m just talking about that practical knock-on effect you find in the church.
Zaspel
I think that’s helpful. My next question you’ve already touched on, so you may want to be brief with this. Your subtitle suggests that a right understanding of justification should free us from legalism, lawlessness, pride, and despair. You don’t want to rewrite the book here, but can you give us a little teaser in that regard? How does the doctrine of justification help us in all those ways?
Vickers
As you know, Fred, being an author involves some give and take. That is, you have publishers and editors and things like that. Now that is not the subtitle I came up with. But let me say this. I’m happy with that subtitle because all those words in the subtitle are taken directly from basically headings and subheadings and things that I address near the end of the book. The way I end up applying justification at the end of the book, and hopefully not just at the end, is that it does a lot of things. One, it puts to death the idea of works righteousness. But it also can kill despair and morbid introspection and this sort of choking, debilitating guilt that we can carry around. There’s plenty of people out there, and we’re all this way at times, who believe that, “Sure, He could forgive me, but he’s not going to, because I’ve done this, I’ve done xyz, I’ve done it again, I keep doing it. I’m not saying sin isn’t a big deal or anything like that, but they sort of practically believe that they’re too far gone. The doctrine of justification comes and says no—the doctrine of justification treats all people alike, and that is as sinners in need of the saving work of Jesus and in need of a declaration, and that we can believe that what God says is true. If God declares us to be true, then by faith we can believe that, “I have these voices in my head saying this or that, but do I believe what God is saying (this is where faith comes in), or am I going to believe what I’m saying? I haven’t been a very trustworthy guide along the way, so am I going to believe myself, or the lies of the devil or the lies of whoever, or am I going to trust what God is saying? Again, it just comes back to the idea of being reoriented away from ourselves.
Zaspel
Very good. Well, I’ve got several more questions, but I think I’ll just settle for one before we go. Can we have full assurance that we are justified before God pronounce that final verdict?
Vickers
Yeah, I think we can, as long as we understand that full assurance is by faith. That is—and I think this is extraordinarily important, actually—we do have full assurance but we have it by faith. Now I want to be clear, and I say this in the book, I believe that we have by faith where we live in the present based on God’s perfect track record in the past, so that confirms and guarantees that what He says about the future is true, so I have faith today to live for God and to believe what He says and to have assurance that He is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do. Now, that doesn’t mean tomorrow is up in the air. It just means that, in my life and in my experience of living, I’m living right now today, and I can be confident that when I wake up tomorrow, all the things I just said will be true tomorrow, too. So we always have assurance. We just have to be careful that we don’t confuse assurance with presumption.
Zaspel
Well, you know the Roman Catholic doctrine I think is to that effect, that to say that you are saved now and justified now before that eschatological verdict would be presumption, and I think, whether they’re Roman Catholic or not, a lot of people have sort of assumed that kind of a thing, and that’s why I’ve asked the question.
Vickers
I do talk about this in the book. At one point I say that I want to be clear, if you said to Paul, “Are you justified?” He would never say, “Yeah, for now. But I’ve got to do the whole thing over again.” Then he’ll be like, “I have to believe again tomorrow and be re-justified again or something.” I’ve even heard people say this, that for all intents and purposes you have to be re-justified every day. Now that is going way overboard and beyond the Bible in an effort to try to say that faith is active—of course, it is passive and active, and I don’t want to get into that whole discussion—but faith is something that we have, and our assurance is connected to our faith. But we just have to understand that our assurance is never even about our own assessment of our assurance, if that makes any sense. Our assurance is never based on our assessment of our works, or our own assessment of how well we’ve done. Our assurance can only be on one thing, and that is no matter what is happening, whether it is height or depth or angels or principalities or powers or anything in all of creation, to shorten all that list, that we are clinging on to Jesus alone for everything. I think we just need to be careful. Obviously we have to test ourselves, and the Bible is filled of these things. But our assurance is based on whether or not we believe that if God says that we are right before His eyes, that we are.
Zaspel
Yeah, and all of life from beginning to end is just like at the first. We go to God believing His promise that He will receive us because of Christ, and resting in Him, we trust Him for it. Amen, amen. Well, great subject, great book. I appreciate your time with us, Brian. Thanks a lot. And I encourage you all again to get the book, Justification By Grace Through Faith: Finding Freedom From Legalism, Lawlessness, Pride, and Despair.
Vickers
There are all those words.
Zaspel
Yes, that’s right. Thanks a lot, Brian. I appreciate it.
Vickers
Thanks, Fred. It has been a joy and a privilege, and I’m really glad we had a chance to talk today.
Zaspel
Great. Thanks a lot.
Vickers
Oh, you’re welcome. All right, bye.
Zaspel
Goodbye.
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Justification By Grace Through Faith: Finding Freedom From Legalism, Pride, And Despair