Feb
1
Using the Manual
Just to clarify up front, the titular “manual” is the Bible, and the excerpt below is from The Roman Catholic Controversy by James R. White. (My readers may remember that this book was among those listed in my recent “Five Non-Fiction Books I Enjoyed Reading in 2025” post.)
The doctrine of justification is central to the book, so White dedicates two chapters to it alone: “Justified Before God: Rome’s View” and “Justified Before God: By Grace Through Faith Alone”. In the latter chapter, White explains,
“The Protestant, biblical doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic view in four foundational aspects:
(1) We differ on the meaning and extent of the term ‘justification.’
(2) We differ on the meaning of the term ‘impute’ or ‘imputation.’
(3) We differ on the means by which justification takes place. Is it faith alone, or faith plus works?
(4) Finally, we differ on the grounds or basis upon which sinful people can be justified.”
After spending some time defining terms, White brings us to a section on “The Freedom of Grace”.
“The Bible teaches that salvation is based on God’s grace. Grace is not simply an aid that helps us to do certain things. Grace is free — absolutely free, completely based on the will and mercy of God, not on any action on our part….
We see that the Bible speaks of our justification by grace [Titus 3:5-7], our justification by the blood of Christ [Rom. 5:9], and our justification by faith [Rom. 5:1]. Are these three different things, or three aspects of one thing? …”
Before I get further sidetracked on the doctrines of grace, faith, and justification, allow me to return to “the manual”. In fact, this is precisely when White takes a couple pages to remind us how we should approach our biblical, exegetical study of such matters, which is the main point of this post:
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How we interpret the Bible affects our understanding of justification. At this point I am not referring to the role tradition plays in the Roman Catholic reading of Scripture. My point is rather the fact that many times people build an entire theology on the minority of references to a subject while ignoring the majority.
Take for an example a person who wishes to learn about the headlights on his car. That person may pick up the owner’s manual and begin looking through the information provided. Now, he may find a passing reference to the headlights under the topic of the “battery,” and he may find something about them under “maintenance,” and something else under “safety inspections.” But if he really wants to know about the headlights, he will first look under the all-important topic “headlights.” If he neglects to look there first, he may end up with an unusual understanding of headlights by drawing conclusions only from passing references found in sections dedicated to other topics.
While this scenario seems rather obvious to us, it is amazing how often such a simple truth is ignored when it comes to interpreting the Bible. Rather than going to the primary passages that specifically discuss a given topic, many people build their entire theology on a passing reference to a term or concept in passages that are not specifically about the belief under discussion. If you wish to know about the qualifications of the officers of the Church, for example, you go to the Pastoral Epistles, where Paul provides specific, direct instruction about elders and deacons. If you ignore those passages and attempt to draw together various references to elders and deacons from other sources, you run the danger of ending up with an unbalanced understanding of what the Bible, as a whole revelation, teaches on the topic. Surely it is true that once those primary passages are consulted, you can derive additional information from other sources. But to ignore the primary places of exposition and the primary expositors of a given belief is to mistreat the Bible and end up with a false understanding and a faulty theology.
This is especially true regarding the doctrine of justification. The family of terms that make up the concept of “justification” (the verb “to justify”, the noun “justification”, and the adjective “just”) are used in many ways throughout the Bible. Yet God has provided specific passages containing particular, direct, unquestionable discussion of exactly how a sinner is made just in God’s sight. To build a theology from other references to these terms — and then try to import this into the primary passages — is to go at the subject backward. Instead, we must allow the primary expositor of this issue, in this case, the Apostle Paul, to speak first; his epistles to the Romans and the Galatians must define the issues, for it is in them that we have direct discussions of exactly how justification takes place. Once we have consulted these sources, we can then move on to garner other elements of the biblical revelation that are found in tangential ways elsewhere.
A frequent objection to this assertion goes along these lines: “You are making Paul a higher authority than Jesus or Peter or anyone else.” This is simply not the case, however. The Lord Jesus did not choose to address every issue that His Church would need to know or understand. He left many things for his Apostles to address under the direction of the Holy Spirit. For example, Jesus almost never speaks directly of the Church — He leaves that for the Apostles to discuss and explain. Does this mean that the revelation given through the Apostles is somehow “less inspired” than that given by the Lord Jesus? Of course not. God has simply chosen different means of revealing His truth. We would have a lopsided view of things if we held only to the four Gospels. God has given us more than the four Gospels, and we dare not think that He did so without reason. It is not as if the Lord Jesus did not discuss the issue of how we are saved. He surely did. But He did not deem it proper to discuss the specifics of the issues prior to Calvary. In His sovereign will He left that to the Apostle Paul, who undertook that task with great energy and clarity in his epistle to the Romans and his epistle to the Galatians.
One other item needs to be addressed to avoid confusion. I have often asked classes, “What is the biblical difference between the terms ‘righteousness’ and ‘justification’?” Often the responses center on seeing “righteousness” as a moral attribute, and “justification” as a legal thing. In reality, there is absolutely no difference at all between the two words as they are used in the Bible. In fact, there are not two different terms in the New Testament that are translated as the two words “righteousness” and “justification”. There is only one term which is translated by both of these words. To be righteous is to be justified; to make righteous is to make just, and so on.
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Great advice, Dr. White. Thank you!
