Sola Fide

 “Free Grace” is the designation given to those who believe that justification is by faith alone apart from works. I want to say that it is an attempt to maintain a consistent “sola fide” view about what one must do to be saved. “Sola fide” is Latin for “faith alone,” and it is understood as one of the main tenets of the Protestant Reformation.

“Free Grace” seeks to maintain Sola Fide, but with the understanding that “works” cannot be frontloaded or backloaded to that faith from which salvation results. That is, faith alone does not require good works before or after such faith that results in one being saved.

Some will seek to add turning from sins as “repentance” to such faith, or they will require some degree of moral reformation before and after such faith for salvation to be acquired. Some require a certain degree of good works, or one's faith is not legitimate or has failed and such a one has “dead” faith (James 2), and such faith cannot “save them.”

I was recently reading a book titled: “Getting the Reformation Wrong,” by James Payton, and he sets forth that the Reformers, like Luther, did not believe the faith by which we are saved is alone. The author writes that the Reformers believed that “justification is by faith alone, but faith is never alone.” The author is saying that those who hold to the view that faith alone does not require attendant works or turning from sins is not teaching the “sola fide” that the Reformers believed. And that may be very well true. The author will make reference to “easy believism,” “cheap grace,” say “the sinner's prayer,” and “walk the aisle”/ “coming to the altar” as inaccurate views of sola fide. Yet Free Grace folks often do not hold to those decisional methods of salvation. Those who do practice these methods are probably not even Free Grace folks.

Free Grace seeks to hold to a consistent view of sola fide. They believe salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. Turning from sin (whether that is repentance or not) is not required for salvation, though it may precede it and follow it. If a believer fails to do good works after salvation, their salvation does not require it or guarantee it, but probably most believers will have some good works. The book of James is addressing believers in chapter 2 where it talks about faith being dead, and it is in reference to works, but the example is about seeing a need and not fulfilling it. All believers fail at times to act consistently in their faith. One can know to do good and fail to do it. In that case, their faith is lacking vitality; it is unfulfilled. The issue in James is not whether one is really saved or not, or whether one was once alive but is now spiritually dead. What if a believer fails? Is he not saved then? Does “true” salvation automatically produce good works, or does he lose his salvation?

The Reformers may not have been consistent with their claim to “sola fide” for justification. Most Christians are probably not.