"Justification by Faith: From Wittenberg to Rwanda!" by Dr Mike Bird

Ever since Reformation, the doctrine of "justification by faith" has been judged to be the criteria by which the church stands or falls. Specifically, the notion that God justifies the ungodly and not the righteous, is a cornerstone of the gospel.  God does not announce that the righteous are truly righteous, rather, on the basis of Jesus' atoning death and glorious resurrection, and through the instrument of faith, sinful men and women are incorporated into the new redemptive moment God reveals in his Son. We become right with God because we are clothed with Christ. We are not in the process of becoming righteous, because we are identified with and participate in the Righteous One, we cannot be any more righter than we are.

Although the Protestant conception of justification was forged in a debate with the synergistic sacramentalism of Medieval Catholicism, St. Paul's own formulation of justification by faith was spawned out of his own intrepid debates with Jewish Christian missionaries who believed that Jesus just topped up the Mosaic dispensation. These Jewish Christian missionaries who made their way to Galatia even troubled Paul's Gentile converts by teaching them that they must be circumcised just like Abraham in order to be true children of Abraham. When Paul heard about this he did protest mucheth! For Paul, this was a compromise on what the Jerusalem council agreed (Acts 15) and more heinously, it was a direct affront to the gospel that both he and Peter preached (see Galatians 2). The Jewish Christian missionaries were basically advocating that you have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Paul's response was an emphatic, "No!" by pointing out that Abraham was right with God before he was circumcised.

Abraham is not the exemplary proselyte, but the exemplary man of faith (see Galatians 3 and Romans 4). But note that while St. Paul is attacking something we might call broadly "legalism," in another sense he was attacking a view that was ethnocentric. Paul's interlocutors believed that ethnic Israel was the locus of salvation and beyond the ethnicity, ethics, and ethos of Israel there was no salvation. While Paul agrees that salvation is "Israel-shaped," nonetheless, he recognized that God's intention was always to reach the world through Israel, so that the Gentiles might share in the blessings of Abraham (see Rom 15:8-9).

Thus, Paul's teaching about justification is really a great doctrine for the unity of the church, for unity among Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female, where Christ is worshipped by people of every tribe, tongue, and nation. What is more, what binds them together in Christ is infinitely stronger than anything that can rip them apart. Ethnicity, race, and colour are no longer a barrier to fellowship. For we are all "one" in Christ Jesus, as the Keswick Conventions rightly advocate. This point was driven home to me when I read about the tragic story of a church in Rwanda during the genocide that took place in the early 1990's. Here Hutus and Tutsi tribesmen were killing each other in an appalling state of affairs. But one church refused to be drawn into the violent tribalism. Here is the story:

The history of the church provides numerous impressive testimonies of the power of the gospel to break down the wall of separation between different races and cultures. One of the most remarkable stories of this kind from recent history, emerged from the bloody conflict in Rwanda, where in 1994 members of the Hutu tribe carried out mass murders of the Tutsi tribes. At the town of Ruhanga, fifteen kilometers outside Kigali, a group of 13,500 Christians had gathered for refuge. They were of various denominations: Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, and others. According to the account of a witness to the scene, “When the militias came, they ordered the Hutus and Tutsis to separate themselves by tribe. The people refused and declared that they were all one in Christ, and for that they were all killed,” gunned down en masse and dumped into mass graves. It is a disturbing story, but it is also a compelling witness to the power of the gospel to overcome ethnic division. Paul would have regarded these Rwanda martyrs as faithful witnesses to the truth of the gospel. Having been ‘crucified with Christ,’ they preferred to die rather than to deny the grace of God that had made them one in Christ.”
Cited in Richard Hays, “Galatians,” in New Interpreters Bible, 11:248 from E. Thomas, “Can These Bones Live?” SOMA (Sharing of Ministries Abroad) Newsletter (Oct 15, 1996): 1-15.

If we are to ask what "justification by faith" looks like in our churches today, it would be a church that announces that "God justifies the ungodly" and "we are all one in Christ Jesus"! May it be so!!