JUSTIFIED BY FAITH ALONE

R. C. SPROUL

WHEATON, ILLINOIS

Justified by Faith Alone

Copyright © 2010 by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.

Cover design: Dual Identity inc.

Cover photo: iStock

First printing, 2010

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-1556-9

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1557-6

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1558-3

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2483-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sproul, R. C. (Robert Charles), 1939–

Justified by faith alone / R.C. Sproul.

p. cm. — (Today’s issues)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-078-5

ISBN 10: 1-58134-078-8 (booklet)

1. Justification—History of doctrines. 2. Faith.  I. Title.

BT764.2.S673 1999

234′.7—dc21

99-12506

CONTENTS

Preface

1 What Was Wrong with Luther?

2 The Roman Catholic Doctrine

3 The Evangelical Doctrine

4 The Nature and Role of Saving Faith

5 Faith and Works

For Further Reading

PREFACE

These are not good days for the evangelical church, and anyone who steps back from what is going on for a moment to try to evaluate our life and times will understand that.

In the last few years a number of important books have been published all trying to understand what is happening, and they are saying much the same thing even though the authors come from fairly different backgrounds and are doing different work. One is by David F. Wells, a theology professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. It is called No Place for Truth. A second is by Michael Scott Horton, vice president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. His book is called Power Religion. The third is by the well-known pastor of Grace Community Church in California, John F. MacArthur. It is called Ashamed of the Gospel. Each of these authors is writing about the evangelical church, not the liberal church, and a person can get an idea of what each is saying from the titles alone.

Yet the subtitles are even more revealing. The subtitle of Wells’s book reads Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? The subtitle of Horton’s book is The Selling Out of ...