The Reformed confession is a catholic confession—that is, it is rooted in the Scriptures as interpreted by the church and confessed in the ancient, ecumenical creeds, but it is also a Reformation confession. Where the medieval church taught justification and salvation by grace and cooperation with grace (i.e., good works), the Reformation, both in the Lutheran and Reformed churches, was clear that we are saved (i.e., justified, sanctified, and glorified) by grace alone, through faith alone. In Belgic Confession (1561) [BC] 16 we confess:
We believe that—all Adam’s descendants having thus fallen into perdition and ruin by the sin of the first man—God showed himself to be as he is: merciful and just. He is merciful in withdrawing and saving from this perdition those whom he, in his eternal and unchangeable counsel, has elected and chosen in Jesus Christ our Lord by his pure goodness, without any consideration of their works.
Please notice the subject of the verbs. We are the sinners; God, in Christ, is the Savior. In our Heidelberg Catechism (1563) [HC] we call Christ our “faithful Savior” who
with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me, that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.
Again, Christ is the subject of the verb “to save.” He saves, he redeems, he preserves. The Holy Spirit assures and sanctifies. The word we use to characterize this view is monergism. The prefix mon signals that there is one doing something. The rest of the word, –ergism, is related to words for working. We use this root in words such as ergonomic.
The Reformed churches confess our monergistic view of salvation this way:
For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ or, if all is in him, then he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. Therefore, to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God—for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. (BC 22)
Salvation By Grace Alone
God has saved us and not we ourselves. Paul wrote, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). To the Ephesians he declared,
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:8–10)
Salvation is God’s work. The church learned this in the Exodus: When rebellious and sinful, the church had her back to the Red Sea and Pharaoh and his armies were pursuing her (Exod 14:9). They were literally pressed on all sides and utterly incapable of saving themselves (Exod 14:10–12). God’s servant Moses said,
“Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Exod 14:13–14)
As we follow the narrative it becomes utterly clear that it was the Lord who saved his people. It was he who drove the sea back by a strong east wind (Exod 14:21). It was he who made the dry land for the church to cross (Exod 14:22, 29). It was he who “threw the Egyptian forces into a panic” (Exod 14:24). Even the pagan Egyptians could see “the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians” (Exod 14:25b). It was the Lord who immersed the Egyptians in the Red Sea (Exod 14:27–28). In case we missed it, the Holy Spirit made it plain who did the saving: “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore” (Exod 14:30).
Paul explained it to the Corinthian church this way:
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Cor 10:1–4)
In case this is not enough, listen to how Jude explained the Exodus: “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (Jude 5). Jesus saved his church out of Egypt. This is basic biblical teaching on the doctrine of salvation: “Salvation belongs to the LORD” (Ps 3:8a. Compare Jonah 2:9; Rev 7:10).
One of our early theologians, Caspar Olevianus (1536–87) captured the Reformation doctrine of salvation:
Because it contains promises of salvation, it is called the gospel of salvation, a word of salvation, and a power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16). Of course the law leads us by the hand, as it were, to this doctrine. For after we are convicted of our unrighteousness and smitten with the awareness of eternal death, the law teaches us not to seek salvation in ourselves but to accept by faith the salvation offered us outside of ourselves in the gospel.1
This passage could have been written by Martin Luther (1483–1547) or John Calvin (1509–64). The medieval church had come to make our good works not merely the fruit and evidence of our faith (Jas 2:14). Rather, she had come to make our sanctification (godliness) and good works part of the ground and basis of justification and salvation. By contrast, the Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof (1873–1957) explained what we think about good works:
[Good works] cannot be regarded as necessary to merit salvation, nor as a means to retain a hold on salvation, nor even as the only way along which to proceed to eternal glory, for children enter salvation without having done any good works. The Bible does not teach that no one can be saved apart from good works. At the same time good works necessarily follow from the union of believers with Christ.2
Notes
- Caspar Olevianus, A Firm Foundation: An Aid to Interpreting the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Paternoster Press; Baker Books, 1995), 7–8.
- Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1938), 543.
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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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