Is Faith a Meritorious Work?

"I may say also that Scott doesn't even discuss the point that some Protestants infelicitously express justification in a way that makes it sound as if the justification comes on the merit of  faith. Again, I have been saying for at least 50 years that it is incorrect to say the Bible and reformed theology teach that justification is based upon the merits of the believer's faith. Protestants are not saying that one act of Protestant faith can do what all the works of the Roman Catholic cannot do. Now if faith were viewed as a work, it would be teaching the same thing Rome is teaching, only in a form so diminished that it is more atrocious than the Roman Catholic doctrine could ever be. This would mean that one act of ours is so meritorious that it redeems us from sin and entitles us to heaven forever. When we talk about justification by faith alone as the Bible talks about it, we refer to faith alone as coming to Jesus, resting in Jesus, and being identified with Jesus. Because we are one with Jesus, all that Jesus has done for us is ours in the experience. Nothing in our hands we bring. Simply to His cross we cling. But clinging to Him does not save us. Coming to Him does not save us. Trusting in Him does not save us. He ALONE saves us."

According to the Reformed faith (again, the historical Protestant faith) Christ even produces in us the spirit of faith, which we exercise non-meritoriously... I stressed the fact that so far from faith being a meritorious work, it is itself a gift of God..."

-- JOHN GERSTNER

an Appendix titled Rome NOT Home (A Response to Rome Sweet Home, by Scott and Kimberly Hahn)

in Justification by Faith Alone

Justification and Nature Change

"Justification in the narrow sense refers strictly to God's forensic declaration. But the complex of justification in the wider sense involves other elements. This is important lest we fall into the antinomian error of assuming that God justifies people who are and remained unchanged. All who are justified possess faith. Faith abides as a necessary condition for justification. All who have faith are regenerate. Reformed theology sees regeneration as a necessary condition for faith. All who are regenerated are changed in their natures.

It is not the change in our nature wrought by regeneration or our faith that flows from it that is the ground of our justification. That remains solely the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. But that righteousness is not imputed to unbelieving or unregenerate persons. The change from the state of unregenerate to regenerate is a real and vital change in the nature of the person. The change from unbelief to belief is a result of a crucial change in the believer."

R.C. Sproul

The Forensic Nature of Justification,

in Justification by Faith ALONE, pp. 44-45

SDG Publications 1995