We Attain Heaven Through Faith Alone (Part 2)

by on May 11, 2026 | Comment

What Is Salvation?

In order to understand the biblical teaching we must first ask what is salvation? From what must we be saved? To what is salvation? Scripture is abundantly clear. The thing from which we must be saved is God’s holy justice and wrath in hell. The thing to which we must be saved is eternal fellowship with God heaven.

There are two great paradigmatic episodes in salvation history that help orient us to the question: the flood and the Exodus. In Genesis chapters 6–9 Noah is portrayed to us as a believing sinner who was not only justified sola gratia, sola fide but saved from the wrath of God, which wrath was represented by the flood waters (1 Pet 2:5; 3:18–22; 4:17; 2 Pet 3:7). Was Noah saved through works or through faith? Hebrews says through faith alone.

By faith (πίστει) Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes according to faith (κατὰ πίστιν). Heb 11:7 (emphasis added)

The instrument through which Noah was saved was faith. That is the intent behind the author’s use of the dative case. We may fairly translate that form with our English phrase “through faith.” Where the Scriptures speak unequivocally to an issue, it is imperative that we allow Scripture to control our conception. In Genesis, Moses portrays Noah as a believing sinner who acted in faith by building the ark, but the writer to the Hebrews wrote what he did precisely to preclude the very inference under dispute. The writer says “by faith” (or through faith) and “according to faith” to emphasize the instrument of faith in salvation and justification. The first category he invoked was salvation (σωτηρίαν). This is deliverance from the judgment waters. The second category he invoked was righteousness (δικαιοσύνη). The pastor to the Hebrew Christians did not allow them to distinguish justification and salvation as if one is sola fide and the other is not. He muddied the distinction between justification and salvation.

The other paradigmatic episode in the history of redemption that should control our conception of salvation is the Red Sea. Scripture says: “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to Yahweh” (Exod 14:10). The Israelites were helpless and hopeless. Their backs were against the sea and death was upon them. We know that they were saved by grace alone—that is, by God’s sovereign favor, conditioned by nothing in them or done by them—but through what instrument were they saved? We might think that they were saved by walking through the Red Sea, but that is not how Holy Scripture speaks: “By faith (πίστει) the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned” (Heb 11:29). This is the same instrumental dative that we saw above in reference to Noah. The same argument applies.

What About Sanctification?

The question comes: “If salvation is sola gratia, sola fide, where does our free cooperation with grace fit? After all, does not sanctification entail genuine effort? Surely it does, but once again Scripture gives us the way to think and speak about the relationship between our effort in sanctification and our salvation. The Reformed churches say: “Sanctification is the work of God’s grace.” That is the language of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q. 35 What is sanctification?

A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

We need to distinguish between sanctification and its fruits. The genuine effort that we freely exert toward sanctity is the result of God’s gracious sanctifying work in us. In other words, sanctification is not by works. It too is by grace. To put it in Paul’s terms, we did not receive the Spirit (of sanctification) by “works of the law” but rather through “hearing with faith” (Gal 3:2). According to Paul, sanctification is not a mechanical process that begins like dominoes, whereby the Spirit pushes the first and we take care of the rest. No, sanctification is, to borrow a phrase, a “gospel mystery.” It is by grace alone, through faith alone from start to finish. This is why Paul declared, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Even sanctification is by faith (ἐν πίστει). Paul, like the pastor to the Hebrew Christians, used the dative case to signal the instrumental function of faith. The Spirit unites us to Christ by faith (instrument). We remain in communion with the risen Christ by faith (instrument). It is in union and communion with Christ that we grow in sanctity, that he enables us to put to death the old man and to be made alive in the new.

This is why Heidelberg Catechism 65 says that we have Christ and all his benefits by faith alone.

Good Works Are the Fruit of Sanctification

Good works are the logically necessary fruit and evidence of salvation (deliverance from judgment) and justification (declaration of righteousness). This is why the Apostle Paul makes faith the instrument of salvation in Romans 1:16–17:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation (εἰς σωτηρίαν) to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith unto faith (ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν), as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith (ἐκ πίστεως).” (emphasis added)

First we must notice that Paul’s concern here is broader than justification, the declaration of righteousness on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed. His concern is salvation from the wrath to come. He sketches the crisis faced by sinners before the wrath of a holy God in Romans 1–3. Yes, he is concerned about justification, but he is concerned about the whole complex. In that sense, he does not distinguish them. He does not set up a system whereby were are justified in this life but somehow our future inheritance of glory is contingent upon or through our performance or our cooperation with grace. This is why he says that salvation is “of faith unto faith.” In other words, it is by faith and through faith from beginning to end. It is true that we are saved “unto works” (εἰς ἔργον; Eph 4:12) but not by them nor through them. Good works are the fruit, the outcome, the result of God’s saving, justifying, and sanctifying grace. Good works are not instrumental in our salvation. As I wrote elsewhere,

The Christian’s shield in spiritual warfare is not his good works. It would not be possible to substitute “good works” for faith. They are not interchangeable. Faith looks to and rests in another, Christ. Good works are the fruit of that faith and evidence of its reality but they do not protect us from the assault of the Devil because our good works are always broken, always stained, always imperfect. In the hour of trial they cannot sustain or protect us. That’s why Paul says that it is faith that extinguishes the darts (the lies, the accusations, the temptations) thrown by the Evil One. Faith has an object: Christ. Faith is as good as its object. That’s why it is a shield. Good works have no such object.

The question as it comes to us uses the verb “to attain.” A rich young ruler (Luke 18:18) asked our Lord what he needed to do (ποιήσας) in order “to inherit” (κληρονομήσω) eternal life. This seems a fair equivalent of the verb “to attain.” Did our Lord say, “trust and obey”? No. He preached the law to him in order to teach him the greatness of his sin and misery, to teach that he could not “do” anything. What he needed to do was to recognize his need and to turn to Christ as his Savior from the wrath to come. This was Calvin’s interpretation of the episode. When the Philippian jailer asked, “What must I do (ποιεῖν) to be saved (σωθῶ)?” the Apostle Paul’s answered, “Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your whole household” (Acts 16:30–31). The question here concerns more than justification. It is about salvation from divine judgment. Both Paul and the jailer use the verb “to save” not the term “to justify.” There are two potential instruments by which he can receive salvation: doing or believing. Paul says “believe” (πίστευσον). The jailer asks about “doing” and Paul preaches “believing,” as it were. The jailer assumes salvation is conditioned upon his performance and Paul replies that Christ has already met the condition for our salvation. We receive it freely, through faith alone.

Conclusions and Pastoral Advice

As much as anyone else my heart is grieved by the public moral failures of Christian leaders. I understand that there is great concern about sanctification in the Reformed churches and among those broader evangelicals who identify with some aspects of Reformed theology. I have had conversations with pastors who report that they have members in their congregations who defiantly announce that they need not pursue sanctification vigorously, that they need not deny themselves or confess their sin because of grace.

The correct answer, however, to antinomianism has never been to suspend either our justification or our salvation upon our performance, even if we characterize that performance as cooperation with grace. To affirm salvation through faith and works is to nullify justification sola fide. Salvation through faith and works makes our affirmation of justification sola fide a mere formality. The very same problems that plague the doctrine of justification through faithfulness plagues the doctrine of salvation through faithfulness. We have essentially changed the definition of saving, true faith. Where Heidelberg Catechism 21 (and 65) defines true faith as a certain knowledge and a hearty trust in Christ, salvation through faithfulness changes the object of our faith from Christ to my performance. How am I doing? Am I faithful enough to meet the conditions for salvation? These questions plague the Christian’s assurance of faith and salvation.

John Piper gives a different answer to the Philippian jailer’s question. He says that we begin with faith but we continue unto salvation by our cooperation with grace and good works. In such a view we have drawn perilously close to the Romanist definition of faith in salvation as “faith formed by love” (fides formata caritate). By turning to such a formulation of salvation we shall have turned back to the very sort of uncertainty from which the Reformation rescued us. Further, however useful that uncertainty might seem toward promoting sanctity, history tells us that it does not work.

Though we may worry justly about “easy believism,” salvation through faithfulness falls into what my friend Darryl Hart calls “easy obey-ism.” It was against this very sort of “easy obey-ism” or salvation through faith and works that Machen warned in 1923, in Christianity and Liberalism. The liberals were talking about “salvation” but they had immanentized it—that is, they had made it this worldly. Real, salvation, Machen taught, is salvation not from poverty but from the wrath to come, and that is sola gratia, sola fide.

If salvation is through faith and works then we have conceded a major point to the Arminians. Remember that the fifth head of doctrine in the Canons of Dort is about perseverance. After considering the grievous and real effects of sin on our Christian pilgrimage, the Synod declared (art. 9): “Of this preservation of the elect to salvation and of their perseverance in the faith, true believers themselves may and do obtain assurance according to the measure of their faith, whereby they surely believe that they are and ever will continue true and living members of the Church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and life eternal.” We have assurance precisely because our preservation is sola gratia, sola fide. This is why, against the Remonstrant doctrine, Berkhof taught that our perseverance is by grace alone, through faith alone.

Making salvation by grace and works or by grace and faithfulness necessarily turns our eyes back upon our own performance and the quality of our faith and the quality of our sanctification. That is a spiritual dead end. Suspending our future salvation upon our present performance has never and can never be good news for sinners. None of us meets the test. None of our good works are inherently perfect, but it is not the “hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13). Our works are all, in themselves, corrupted with sin. This reality pushes nomists to resurrect the doctrine of congruent merit—that is, that God imputes perfection to our best efforts unto final justification and salvation—and a two-stage justification and salvation. According to the Reformed churches, this view makes Jesus but half a Savior and this scheme turns the covenant of grace into a covenant of works.

Christians must obey God’s law and struggle manfully against sin. We must seek to put the old man to death and to be made alive in the new, but we do so only by virtue of our union and communion with Christ, by grace alone, through faith alone. Justification sola fide is stunning indeed, but it is not stunning enough if, after justification, we are sentenced to salvation through works. No, we sinners need a truly and thoroughly stunning gospel of justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Editor’s Note: A version of this essay was first published in 2015 and appears here significantly revised and enlarged.

Part 1

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    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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