I remember hearing in my 20’s that some churches teach you are not saved if you don’t speak in tongues. Oneness Pentecostals, for example, believe this. When I heard that I remembered what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12: “Do all speak with tongues?” No. I also remember hearing some say that you must be baptized in order to be saved. That’s called “baptismal regeneration,” and it is taught by the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, some Lutheran churches, and the non-instrumental Church of Christ denomination. My first thought was, “Surely Jesus did not lie to the thief on the cross!” This man believed in his final hours, and Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” I also believe what I see in the Word: baptism is a response that follows, not a cause that creates, salvation. In each of these cases, whole denominations are guilty of leading people into a false gospel, teaching that faith in Jesus is simply not enough. Teaching that you must add something to your faith, in order to be saved. Which means that not only is your faith not enough, but it means that Jesus is not enough. That struggle started as early as the first few decades of the church. And that struggle prompted Paul to write the letter to the Galatians.
In the churches in the first century, there were false converts who were whispering into the ears of church members that they were not really saved. The gospel Paul preached, they were saying, is not enough. You must believe in Christ, but you must also keep the traditions and the customs of the Jews. These false brothers, Paul said, “slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus.” Why would they do that? Paul continues, “so they might bring us into slavery.” It is a reminder that not all who gather in a physical church building are believers. There are “false brothers and sisters” that may enter a church with the desire to bring people into bondage. They want to show us important traditions and works and regulations that they believe we must keep in order to be saved. That is the very definition of legalism. Anything added as necessary for salvation beyond grace through faith is a false gospel. How do we respond? Paul writes that we must not “yield in submission (to them) even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved.”
In his book, What It Means to Be Protestant, Gavin Ortlund writes a great deal about the Reformation that took place in the 1500’s. “The heart of Protestant identity lies in two affirmations: justification is by faith alone (sola fide), and Holy Scripture is the only infallible rule for the church’s faith and practice (sola Scriptura). The first of these represents a material component of the apostolic deposit recovered by the Reformation; the second represents a formal principle by which we remain accountable to that apostolic deposit. The way I like to put it is that sola fide is the ‘what’ of the Reformation; sola Scriptura is the ‘how.’ The first is an object, the second a method. The first is a precious jewel; the second, the safe that protects it.”
Sola fide eliminates the possibility for works-righteousness.
We could argue that in the book of Galatians, Paul was doing a strike not only against the works-righteousness of the false teachers in the early church, but a pre-emptive strike against all churches and all denominations in future centuries who would elevate tradition and ceremony and works of any kind to the level of sola fide. To do so, Paul would say, is to invite people out of freedom and into bondage.
What do we do when such teaching creeps into the church? Paul shows us by example: “to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment.” The saying goes that if you let the camel’s nose into the tent, his body is sure to follow. Don’t even let the nose of “works-righteousness” in.
J. Mark Fox 