By Jack Wilkie
I’ve always cringed when hearing someone say that they’re saved by faith alone. When they say that they mean that they don’t have to be baptized, a clear contradiction of Scripture. But as I debated the importance of baptism with someone recently, it hit me – I believe in salvation by faith alone. I’ll explain, but let’s start with the term’s history.
The Reformation movement at the middle of the last millennium was made up of a number of people who disagreed on a number of doctrines but found common ground on a few foundational principles. Those foundational principles are known as the “solas” from the Latin word for “alone,” and the list has generally been narrowed down to five of these solas: By Scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, and glory to God alone. Keep in mind that their primary target was the Catholic church’s glorification of man through the papacy and works-based salvation.
While the reformers misstepped on a number of critical doctrines in various ways, they got these five right. On most of these there’s little disagreement today, as we all believe that God only speaks through the Scriptures, we are only saved by grace as a gift of God, Christ is the only way to salvation, and the purpose of the church and our lives is to bring glory to God and not some human leader or prophet. Those are rarely debated – if ever.
The difficulty, of course, comes when we get to “by faith alone.” When this particular doctrine comes up, members of nearly every single one of the denominations claim that all you have to do to be saved is believe. Members of the churches of Christ, however, hold that baptism is necessary for salvation (citing Acts 2:38 and 1 Peter 3:21, among others), leading many of them to deny salvation by faith.
Here’s the problem: today’s “faith only” proponents are creating a false, unbiblical definition of faith, and those who argue against them are accepting that faulty premise. In its original premise, salvation by faith alone is a perfectly valid biblical argument. Salvation by faith alone doesn’t preclude baptism – it demands it. And, conversely, baptism doesn’t undermine salvation by faith alone – it confirms it.
There isn’t anyone who endorses a faith only doctrine of salvation who thinks that repentance or confession are unnecessary. Why not? Because they are acts of faith. That’s where we have a disconnect. Baptism is just as much of an act of faith as repentance or confession. Faith is believing that what God says can save you from your sins, and someone who denies or ignores His commandments when confronted with them isn’t living by faith. Unfortunately, we fall into their trap of defining baptism as something separate from faith, something that relies solely on us. If you think about it, there’s really no such thing as a baptism that is separate from faith. If baptism could take place in a way that isn’t an act of faith, then every kid who was shoved underwater by a friend at the swimming pool last summer was baptized.
But why does it matter? Aren’t we just splitting hairs, arguing over semantics? Here’s why it’s important that we define faith correctly on both sides of the discussion.
For those who make faith only mean non-baptism for salvation, they must be shown that they aren’t acting in faith. They go to Romans 10:9-10 and Ephesians 2:8-10 to assert that they are saved by confessing their faith, and those verses are both true… but they are only part of the picture. Just as one can’t deny that repentance is a part of coming to God in faith, so must he accept that baptism is part of God’s plan, as well. If they think we are arguing for faith plus baptism, they won’t listen. But if we can show them that anyone who picks and chooses which verses he wants to follow isn’t holding to “faith alone,” but rather relying on himself to determine which commandments God deems important, then we might be able to find common ground.
For those who fight against salvation by faith alone, we have to embrace the true biblical definition of faith, namely that the believing includes the doing (John 3:36) and that saying we’re saved by faith includes an entire lifestyle. The original meaning the reformers intended was to say that we are saved by faith in God rather than by the goodness of our works, and it’s critical that we grasp that. Too often we get it the other way around, and so we have to be careful to avoid that works-based salvation. It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between working to be saved and working because you’re saved, but Romans 4:2-3 shows us that it’s a distinction that comes with eternal weight. You aren’t saved because you’re getting everything right. You’re saved because you’ve realized all your goodness amounts to nothing, and so you’ve put your faith in God and are constantly being conformed to His Word. You are baptized because of this faith. You study the Word because of this faith. You do good to others (the true contextual meaning of faith and works in James 2) because of this faith. You obey His commandments – even the ones you don’t like – because of this faith.
No, I’m not saved by faith alone in the way the religious world defines the term, but yes, I can say I have been saved by faith alone because I believe in the saving work of Jesus Christ and have repented, confessed, been baptized, and am striving to walk with Him because of that faith. In fighting against those who have misdefined faith to mean what they want it to, we have to be careful not to take faith out of the equation or reduce it to have the insignificance we’ve often assigned to it. Faith encompasses everything we do, and it’s impossible to over-emphasize its importance.