Faith and Justification

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. ROMANS 3:28

This is the chapter in which Baxter must be read most carefully, because it deals with the point on which most of his own party judged him to have gone wrong. It would be easy to leave it out. It is left out of most popular treatments of him. But a book that presented Baxter’s pastoral genius while quietly omitting the doctrine that made him a byword for controversy would not be honest, and the reader would meet it eventually anyway.

What he was reacting against

Baxter’s position was formed in the army, and that matters. As a chaplain in the New Model Army in the mid-1640s he encountered opinions that horrified him — among them a species of Antinomianism which held that since the believer is justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ, his own conduct is in no way a condition of anything. Baxter saw men drawing the practical conclusion, and he never forgot it. His Aphorisms of Justification, published in 1649, was written to close that door. It opened a controversy that occupied him, on and off, for the rest of his life.

What he taught

Set out as fairly as possible, his position ran roughly as follows. Christ’s death satisfied God’s justice and procured a new covenant — a covenant of grace, whose terms are faith and repentance rather than perfect obedience. The sinner is justified not by keeping the old law, which he cannot, but by meeting the conditions of the new one, which by grace he can. On this account, faith justifies as the appointed condition of the covenant rather than merely as the instrument that receives Christ’s righteousness. And Baxter spoke of a personal, evangelical righteousness — consisting in sincere faith and repentance — alongside the righteousness of Christ, which he did not deny but understood differently from his critics. He also held a modified view of the atonement, that Christ died sufficiently for all and effectually for those who believe.

His motive throughout was pastoral. He was trying to secure the necessity of holiness against men who had made grace an excuse.

Why it was resisted

The objections came quickly, from John Owen among others, and they have been repeated ever since. They deserve to be stated plainly. If faith justifies as a condition we perform, then it is difficult to see how it has not become a work — the very thing Paul excludes in the passages where the doctrine is defined.

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. ROMANS 4:5

If our sincere faith and repentance constitute a personal righteousness that contributes to our standing, then the ground of acceptance has shifted, at least partly, from Christ to us — and the believer’s assurance now depends on the adequacy of his own sincerity, which is precisely what the doctrine was meant to remove.

And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. PHILIPPIANS 3:9

And the practical effect, critics argued, is the opposite of what Baxter intended. A believer who is uncertain whether his repentance has been sincere enough cannot rest, and a religion of anxious self-inspection is not more holy than one of settled faith. It is merely more miserable. Baxter’s later followers pressed his views further than he did, and the resulting controversy over what came to be called neonomianism divided English Nonconformity for generations.

Where this book stands

It would be evasive to set out both sides and decline to say anything. The judgment of the great majority of Reformed theologians, then and since, is that Baxter erred here — that his concern to protect holiness was right, that his remedy compromised the freeness of justification, and that the New Testament secures holiness by a different route, namely union with Christ, which produces obedience as fruit rather than requiring it as a condition.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. EPHESIANS 2:8–10

Paul secures both in three verses, and the order is decisive. Works follow; they do not condition.

What is not in dispute

Having said that, three things should be added, and they matter. Baxter was not preaching salvation by works, and it is a caricature to say so. He insisted on grace, on Christ’s satisfaction, and on the impossibility of earning anything. The dispute was about the precise role of faith within a system all parties agreed was gracious. His pastoral concern was legitimate and remains so. Antinomianism is a real disease, not a bogey; every generation produces Christians who treat forgiveness as permission. And on everything else in this book — the ministry, heaven, catechising, family religion, the use of time — Baxter is a safe and superb guide. A man may be wrong at one point and reliable at fifty others, which is true of every teacher any of us has ever had.

The practical counsel is simple. On this question, follow Paul rather than Baxter. Rest your acceptance wholly on Christ’s righteousness, received by faith which is itself God’s gift, and let holiness grow from that security rather than be required as its price.

What both sides agreed

Before leaving this controversy it is worth stating what was not in dispute, because heated debates make participants sound further apart than they are. Every party held that salvation is by grace. Nobody in the argument thought a sinner could earn acceptance with God, and nobody was proposing a religion of merit. Baxter would have rejected such a suggestion as forcefully as his critics. Every party held that Christ’s death is the sole ground of forgiveness. The dispute concerned how its benefits are conveyed and what part faith plays, not whether the cross was sufficient.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all. 1 TIMOTHY 2:5–6

Every party held that faith is itself the gift of God, not a contribution the sinner produces from his own resources. And every party held that genuine faith produces holiness. Baxter’s critics were not Antinomians; they simply located the necessity of obedience elsewhere in the system than he did — as the fruit of union with Christ rather than as a condition of the covenant.

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. HEBREWS 12:14

The disagreement was real and it mattered, and this book has said where it thinks the weight of the argument lies. But it was a disagreement between men who agreed on a great deal, conducted with a sharpness that obscured the agreement — which is, as it happens, exactly what Baxter complained about when other people did it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Settle where your acceptance rests. If it depends partly on the quality of your repentance, you will never have peace. 2. Notice which error you personally drift towards — treating grace as permission, or treating faith as a performance — and correct in the other direction. 3. Read Ephesians 2:8–10 and mark the order. Works follow; they do not condition. 4. Practise holding a teacher’s error and his usefulness together. It is a skill every reader needs. 5. When assurance wobbles, look outward to Christ rather than inward to your sincerity.

A PRAYER

Father, I want to be holy, and I keep trying to secure it by making my acceptance depend on my performance — and then I have neither holiness nor peace.

Let my standing rest wholly on Christ. Not on the sincerity of my repentance, not on the strength of my faith, but on Him.

And out of that security, make me obedient. Let good works grow from what You have done rather than be demanded as the price of it.

Guard me from treating Your grace as permission. Guard me equally from treating Your gospel as a new law. Amen.