Legend has it that when Martin Luther rediscovered the doctrine that sinners are justified Sola Fide—by faith alone, apart from works of merit—the thought leaders in the Church snapped at him: You can’t preach that, Martin! If you tell people they are saved by faith apart from works … why … they’ll just start doing whatever they want! Supposedly, he answered: And so they will. Now what do you want to do?

The leaders of the Church in Luther’s day were afraid that if you taught people that they were saved Sola Fide, they would become complacent, lazy, and finally, calloused degenerates who sinned without remorse, charging it all to the tab of a Savior they didn’t actually love.

The main purpose of this post is to speak to that objection, because Luther was neither the first (St. Paul heard it in his day) or the last (we still hear it today) to encounter it.

But first, I want to point you to my response to another common objection: that Sola Fide is unbiblical. Most commonly, this is rooted in James 2:24: You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only (NKJV). I’ve written another, rather technical, post on that, which you can read here. But the TL;DR is that James is using the word justified in a different manner than Paul.

So, let’s get back to the matter at hand. If you were to ask many Christians today why Sola Fide makes them nervous, they’re going to answer the same way the leaders of the Medieval Catholic Church answered Martin Luther. They’re either going to voice concerns about nominalism (Christians who are lazy in their duties) or antinomianism (Christians who sin as much as they like, taking forgiveness for granted). Generally, they don’t know to call these things nominalism or antinomianism, so they lump it all together under terms like easy-believism or Bonhoeffer’s catch cheap grace.

I want to suggest something perhaps shocking or even downright offensive about the true nature of the easy believism objections to Sola Fide: They come from a place of deep insecurity, perhaps even projection.

To put it in less therapeutic language, They’re telling on themselves.

In other words, back of the rather sensible-sounding objection: If you teach that sinners are saved by faith alone, apart from works, they’ll just go feral; is a confession, or at least a haunting suspicion: If I believed my own works weren’t instrumental to my salvation, I would probably start getting lax in my Bible reading. Or I might skip church to go fishing or golfing or even post pictures of myself drinking a mimosa at Sunday brunch! Next thing you know, I’ll have turned into the guy from “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”

The real tragedy is, the cause of all that is never really having believed in the Gospel of Christ. You see Him as a half-Savior, or even a quarter-Savior, who makes up the difference for what is lacking in your own good works.

When you hear Him say: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew‬ ‭11‬:‭28‬ ‭NKJV‬); something in you says: Oh, He means the ones who are already out there doing the good works. They can come refresh themselves under His shade tree, He’ll give ‘em an ice cold RC Cola and send ‘em back out to work in His fields. You never seem to understand that He’s talking to people who are weary and burdened under loads of sin, misery, guilt, and shame. You know—actual sinners.

Like I said, Luther heard the same objections from the Papists in his day. And St. Paul heard it from the moralists of his generation, too. Peep Romans 5:20b – 6:2:

But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
‭‭NKJV, emphasis added

The part I have in bold italics is Paul quoting his detractors. They reasoned: If grace multiplies with sin, then why not just keep sinning? More sin, more grace! Paul shot that down right quick. Certainly not!

That’s not the only place you see evidence of that sort of accusation. Peep this from Romans 3:8: And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just (NKJV). Detractors were twisting Paul’s Gospel—For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)—to mean, essentially: Do whatever the heck you want, God will work it out. Paul said that was a slanderous accusation, and those who published it deserved condemnation.

Again, notice this from Galatians 2:17: But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! (NKJV) Again, the idea here is this: If you see me looking by faith to Christ alone as my sole salvation, and you see that I’m still a hot mess of sin, does that mean Christ is enabling my sin? Again, Paul denies this in the strongest terms possible: Certainly not!

So, what does Paul say happens in the wake of this Good News that we are saved, not by our own doings, but solely by Christ’s? What did he foresee as the outcome for those saved solely by grace, through faith? Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭10‬ ‭NKJV‬‬).

For Paul, the one saved Sola Fide was created anew in Christ Jesus, finally fit for good works.

The one who has reached out the empty hand of faith to grab hold of Christ has been given a new heart, and God’s own spirit has come to dwell in them (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Now, in light of the mercies of God, they’re apt to present [their] bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is only their reasonable service to the One who has saved them (Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). Good works begin to flow naturally from them. Paul calls this faith working through love (Galatians 5:6).

St. Augustine once prayed: Lord, give whatever You command, and then command whatever You want. The Gospel has power in it not only to create faith in a dead heart, to bid her come to Christ and make her want to; by that same power, the believer is made able and willing to do good works: for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭13‬ ‭NKJV‬‬), as St. Paul declares. Likewise, King David sings: Your people shall be volunteers in the day of Your power (Psalm 110:3 NKJV). The power of the Gospel—which can only be received by faith—makes the believer want to obey God.

They become the sort of people who wash the dishes, not to impress anyone, or because they’re afraid of getting a spanking—but simply because the dishes need washing.

Martin Luther replied to his critics in much the same manner, though he was prone to be more boisterous than St. Paul:

O it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are.

You see, over time, faith transforms what we want to do. We seek and find pleasures in more godly arenas. We discover new joys and delights. We treasure the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And over time, we actually begin to sprout new virtues. Paul calls them the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). And of course, these blossom and mature as good works. The Holy Spirit grows them in us. They don’t happen overnight.

And that’s not to say we’re not still a hot mess of sins. It’s not to say we win in our battle against the flesh more than we lose. Even as an old saint, Paul confessed: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice (Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭18‬-‭19‬ ‭NKJV‬‬).

What has changed, fundamentally, is that we want our flesh to lose. Sin tastes more bitter to us, godly living sweeter.

And we receive all of that, you understand, through faith alone! We cannot manufacture it in ourselves by our own free will. It is all of it the gift of God, which we receive in the empty hands of faith.

Who’s afraid of Sola Fide? It must be the ones who are afraid that they will grow complacent, that they will go completely rogue, if they don’t feel some external pressure to overachieve and be impressive.

Who’s afraid of Sola Fide? Also the cynics who spend their days griping about their work around the water cooler, then say: Oh snap, the boss is coming—better look busy!

Luther confronts them still, and asks: What do you want? The true answers terrify them, because what they want is what they’re projecting onto Christ’s little bent reeds and smoking wicks.

And the sad truth is, the guy from the old country song, wistfully singing: There’s nothing short of dying / Half as lonesome as the sound / Of the sleeping city sidewalk / And Sunday morning coming down—may just be light years nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven than they’ll ever be.