Since it’ll largely be overlooked by other Christian outlets, I wanted to add one further point to the recent debate between Anglican minister Mark Leach and Edward Schuller—one that goes to the heart of the question of how a sinner can be made right with God.
Jesus was unequivocal: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).
The question, then, is obvious: How does a sinner obtain the righteousness necessary to enter God’s kingdom?
Moses presents two possible grounds on which a person might seek righteousness before God: righteousness based on obedience to the law, and righteousness based on faith.
The first, however, is a dead end for fallen sinners.
The law demands perfect obedience. It doesn’t grade on a curve. It doesn’t offer us a pass based on our ethnicity and bloodline. It doesn’t overlook some sins because we have done enough good deeds to compensate for them. And because we are sinners in Adam, none of us has kept God’s law perfectly.
That’s precisely why the law cannot be the means by which sinners establish their own righteousness. Its purpose is to expose our unrighteousness.
Paul explains that “whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” He then adds: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:19–20).
The law shuts every sinner’s mouth.
It leaves us guilty.
It strips away every claim to self-righteousness.
And, having shown us that we cannot achieve righteousness by our own obedience, it drives us to the only other ground of righteousness: faith in God’s promise.
And that promise ultimately centres on a person—the promised Seed, Jesus Christ.
This is not a new doctrine introduced in the New Testament. It is the consistent way God has justified sinners throughout redemptive history.
The Old Testament saints were justified by faith in the promised Seed who was still to come. The New Testament saints are justified by faith in the promised Seed who has now come.
Abraham is the clearest example. God promised, and “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3).
Notice what Abraham did not do. He did not present God with a record of sufficient moral achievement. He believed God’s promise, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness.
Paul makes the principle explicit: “The righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17).
And this is why the gospel is not simply that salvation is somehow through Christ. The biblical gospel is that sinners are justified through faith in Christ.
Those are not interchangeable statements.
Christ is the ground of our salvation. His righteousness, death and resurrection are the basis upon which God justifies the ungodly. But that righteousness is received by faith—not by ancestry, ethnicity, law-keeping, religious affiliation, or any other human qualification.
There is therefore no righteousness apart from faith in God’s promise, and no justification apart from faith in Christ.
That leaves no room for the idea that someone can be saved through Christ while simultaneously rejecting faith in Christ. Christ does not save people apart from Himself, and faith does not bypass Christ. The promised righteousness is received through faith in the promised Redeemer.
This is why Paul can say that there is “no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all” and that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:12–13).
There is no ethnic exemption from the universal problem of sin.
And there is no ethnic exemption from the universal remedy of faith.
The law cannot save the sinner because the sinner cannot perfectly keep the law. The law instead exposes our guilt and points beyond ourselves to the righteousness God provides.
That righteousness is found in Christ.
And it is received by faith.
No faith, no righteousness.
No righteousness, no access to the Father
No access to the Father, no eternal life.