titus on Justification by Faith

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

Grace is God’s part, faith ours.

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.

But we must add at once that the pious will not cease from good works simply because it is impossible to gain any merit by them. Rather, the greater our faith, the more and greater our works…. For sin...

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

In a way, the Reformation began in one monk's overwhelming guilt. Martin Luther was riddled with guilt and filled with anxiety because he could see that he could not live up to God's standard ...

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification exc...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

In his book The Mystery of Christ , a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of unde...

The N. T. never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through his faith, or by means of his faith; faith is merely the means which the Holy Spirit uses to apply...

Evangelicals believe they are saved by grace through faith but then add a man-made waiver that you have to work as hard as you can meet middle-class behavioral patterns to hang onto it.

We shall now have a full definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, ...

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present ag...

Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit.

In his insightful book, Delighting in the Trinity , Michael Reeves shares an interesting point of connection between the Protestant understanding of sola grati discovered by Francis Xavier during...

In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight. Together we affirm that b...

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

For us, Jesus instituted two ongoing signs to confirm our confidence in the gospel of his grace, the first of which is baptism. Though simpler and less obviously supernatural than the ten plagues on E...

The solid facts about the future hope of Christians are a powerful motivation for constant faith and costly love in the present.

You don’t turn from sin to get saved. You get saved to turn from sin.

A number of you may be aware of Jerry Bridges’ series of books on holiness, and the book that maybe put him on the map was Pursuit of Holiness . Jerry’s a friend, so he’s told me these stories, and I...

Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ...

Holy Father, You are perfect and just, but we are sinful and unworthy. We intend the best in how we live our lives, Yet sin remains in us. Through Your Son, we are able to have redemption and a reconn...

Our confidence in Christ does not make us lazy, negligent or careless, but, on the contrary, it awakens us, urges us on and makes us active in living righteous lives and doing good. There is no self-c...