Saving Faith receives the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation and it rests in Him alone for salvation. He who has saving faith is satisfied with Christ and looks nowhere else for the way of everlasting life. Saving faith does not look to Mary or Paul or any other Christian now living or that ever has lived. Saving faith is built on nothing less and nothing else than Jesus blood and righteousness. When the bridegroom came and the virgins were called to the feast the wise virgins did not rise in shame or in fear, they rose in faith and eagerly went to the marriage feast of the lamb.

Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise…
Matthew 25:1-2 NKJV
Have you considered what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ? The word faith appears more than 200 times in the authorized version of the Bible and yet it is a word that is regularly misunderstood.
The 86th question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks this question: What is faith in Jesus Christ? If one cannot be saved without faith in Jesus Christ, surely every Christian will always have this answer in his heart. The Bible’s answer, summarized in the answer to question 86 is:
Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the gospel.
The wise virgins knew something of Jesus Christ. They knew something of His Word and His gospel. Faith begins with knowledge, with understanding. We cannot believe in Him whom we do not know. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God… The catechism addresses this aspect of faith at the conclusion of the answer even though logically it comes first. Faith comes first by hearing and therefore knowing the Word of God. But faith does not end with knowledge… even the demons have a knowledge of God.
The wise virgins went further than knowledge in their faith and so must we. They also received the Lord Jesus Christ as He is offered in the Scripture. They agreed with, believed, or assented to the Word of God concerning Jesus Christ our Lord. They didn’t just know of Him through hearing, they cried out like Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of living God”.
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Calvin’s Political Theology, authored by Matthew J. Tuininga, currently Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and the History of Christianity at Calvin Theological Seminary. Tuininga makes his objective clear from the beginning: “[Calvin’s political theological perspective] offers us the theological resources to reject the ideal of Christendom, in which all citizens are expected to worship and live as Christians, on the one hand, and to affirm the value of political liberalism and principled Christian participation in pluralistic democratic societies, on the other.1” The reaffirmation of liberalism is necessary in our time, he continues, because “prominent Christian pastors and theologians, not to mention liberal philosophers, are questioning the compatibility of orthodox Christianity with political liberalism.2 Against this skeptical attitude, Tuininga believes that “Christians cannot afford to reject liberal politics if we are to take seriously the command to love and serve our neighbors.”3

What does it look like when a defender of pluralistic liberalism critiques Christian nationalism (i.e., Christendom) without resorting to charges of racism, kinism, and so forth? Sober criticism of this sort has been scarce in the year since Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian nationalism was published. As it so happens, though, an attempt at serious engagement was made several years prior to the book’s release. This effort took the form of a book titled Calvin’s Political Theology, authored by Matthew J. Tuininga, currently Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and the History of Christianity at Calvin Theological Seminary. Tuininga makes his objective clear from the beginning:
[Calvin’s political theological perspective] offers us the theological resources to reject the ideal of Christendom, in which all citizens are expected to worship and live as Christians, on the one hand, and to affirm the value of political liberalism and principled Christian participation in pluralistic democratic societies, on the other.1
The reaffirmation of liberalism is necessary in our time, he continues, because “prominent Christian pastors and theologians, not to mention liberal philosophers, are questioning the compatibility of orthodox Christianity with political liberalism.2 Against this skeptical attitude, Tuininga believes that “Christians cannot afford to reject liberal politics if we are to take seriously the command to love and serve our neighbors.”3 His discussion of Calvin’s political theology is therefore meant to bolster contemporary liberalism, even as he recognizes that “Calvin was no liberal.”4
That said, it would be difficult for me to name another book that undercuts its own stated purpose so spectacularly as this one. To begin with, Tuininga acknowledges that most or all of the major Reformers other than Calvin believed, contrary to modern liberalism, that “government is obligated to make the truth, the honor of God, and the care of religion its chief concern.”5 Martin Luther, whatever comments he made in his earlier career, ultimately “[defended] the obligation of secular authorities to suppress…heresy, blasphemy, and sedition.”6 Likewise, Philip Melanchthon came to hold that “magistrates were obligated to enforce both tables of the Ten Commandments for the purpose of maintaining the glory of God.”7 Ulrich Zwingli “endorsed the need for the magistrate to suppress those who disturbed the church by preaching or practicing false doctrine.”8 Martin Bucer “argued that the magistrate is to preserve public order by establishing peace and godliness,” with the corollary that “false teaching should be punished with the sword.”9 Finally, Heinrich Bullinger maintained that “civil government could require outward obedience to the covenant, using capital punishment to free the commonwealth of false teachers, blasphemers, adulterers, or other offenders.”10
The fact that many prominent Reformers favored magisterial care of religion, as Tuininga demonstrates, would be enough on its own to seriously undermine any contemporary effort to baptize modern liberalism, but he further grants that Calvin, rather than departing from the other Reformers on this question, was in full accord with them. Calvin “explicitly presupposed the existence and legitimacy of Christendom.”11 He “maintained that civil government has a responsibility to protect the true religion against public offenses, enforcing outward obedience to the moral law summarized in both tables of the Ten Commandments.”12 In particular, Calvin thought it appropriate for the government to punish “whoredom and adultery, drunkenness, and blaspheming of the name of God,”13 among other things. Most famously, he “supported the death penalty for individuals guilty of notorious heresy,”14 as exemplified by his role in the execution of Michael Servetus. All of this is supported by Tuininga with copious citations from Calvin’s entire corpus, including letters, sermons, and biblical commentaries as well as various editions of his Institutes.
In light of this evidence, it is natural to wonder how a Christian proponent of modern liberalism such as Tuininga might argue that we should disregard the example of Calvin and the other Reformers, to say nothing of the wider Christian tradition. Tuininga’s justification for dismissing Calvin on this point is that his support for magisterial care of religion is primarily rooted in natural law. As he puts it, “Calvin’s arguments rely more on his interpretation of reason, experience, the laws of nations, and classic philosophy than they do on his exegesis of scripture (or even his use of the Old Testament).”15 Tuininga defends this move on the grounds that “Calvin himself distinguished between the authority of arguments drawn from natural reason (which could be challenged and rejected) and the authority of scripture (which, if interpreted correctly, could not be rejected).”16 Here Tuininga sounds a great deal like some critics of Wolfe’s book, a number of whom have objected that it relies too much on natural reason rather than Scripture. To give a couple of examples, Andrew T. Walker writes that “Wolfe may assert that ‘the government has the duty to promote true religion,’ but he never argues that point from the Bible from any clear command.”
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Having a biblical view of justification should also produce overwhelming thanksgiving. Knowing that justification by faith is apart from works, that justification is a gift of God, and that we are pardoned, declared righteous, and adopted into the family of God should generate within us a heart of eternal thankfulness. This thankfulness then translates into a life of consistent worship of the God, who, in His infinite wisdom, devised a way that depraved sinners might be accepted in the Beloved.

The Reformer John Calvin (1509–64) ardently declared the doctrine of justification by faith alone to be “the principle hinge by which [the Christian] religion is supported” (Institutes 3.11.1). Known as the material principle of the sixteenth-century Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone was at the epicenter of the battle to bring needed reform to the church. This biblical doctrine is central to preserving an accurate understanding of the gospel even as we find it so clearly taught in Paul’s letters to the churches of Rome and Galatia.

As we approach the Bible’s teaching on justification, it is vital that we comprehend the finer points of the doctrine. To put it bluntly, if we get justification wrong, we get the gospel wrong. Thankfully, we have a rich and faithful heritage of believers who have courageously upheld Scripture’s teaching on justification by faith alone. The Westminster Shorter Catechism presents a clear and succinct definition of justification:
Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of God imputed to us, and received by faith alone (WSC 33).
In other words, justification is a legal act by God, based on the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, by means of our faith (granted as a gift from God).
However, the practical nature of the doctrine of justification is often overlooked and dismissed. Sometimes doctrine can become so heavy with terms and concepts that we miss just how applicable doctrine really is. While there may be more that can be applied from an informed understanding, there are no less than four practical applications of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

The first practical application of the doctrine of justification by faith alone is assurance. Frankly, there will be days when we simply won’t feel justified, when we won’t feel like a Christian. We will have off days, down days, shaky days, sinful days, days on which the question haunts our minds, “Am I even a Christian?” The doctrine of justification by faith alone proclaims loudly, through the fog of doubt, that we have been born again and are “in Christ” (Gal. 2:20). Christ has completed His redemptive work, satisfied the justice of God the Father, and sealed us with His Holy Spirit. Justification assures us that there is never a need for re-justification. Rather, God justifies us by His grace. Before the courtroom of heaven, God has declared us, depraved sinners, to be “justified and righteous.” Paul declares, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). The doctrine of justification gives us the assurance to know that “[He is] just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (3:26).

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