In this episode of A Reasonable Response, Robert Bosley examines the recent controversy surrounding John Piper's comments on faith, works, and justification. While Piper's language sparked debate across Reformed circles, Bosley argues that his teaching is thoroughly consistent with Scripture and historic Protestant theology.

Looking to James 2 and the broader witness of the New Testament, Bosley explains that genuine saving faith is never alone—it inevitably bears the fruit of good works. Faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never without obedience.

This episode calls listeners to distinguish between the root of salvation and its fruit, demonstrating that Piper's remarks stand firmly within the teaching of the Reformers, the Puritans, and, above all, Scripture.

You don't get into heaven by faith alone. You get justified by faith alone. This is not a unheard of distinction in theology even among reformed who have a very high view of obviously justification by faith alone. That's what the whole Protestant Reformation was about in one sense. Welcome to Reasonable Response.

I'm Robert Bosley, and the purpose of this podcast is to give a reasoned response to issues related to the Christian faith from a Reformed Baptist perspective. Each episode contains what we call the breakdown, where I'll respond to a video on whatever our topic at hand is. And today, that is the relationship between faith and good works. You don't get into heaven by faith alone. You get justified by faith alone.

You get into a position where God is a hundred percent for you by faith alone and in order to get into heaven that faith must bear the fruit of love. Pursue the holiness without which you will not see the Lord. Put to death the deeds of the body and you will live. This clip created a little bit of controversy on the Christian side of X with comments and responses ranging anything from this is basic reform theology to this is Roman Catholicism repackaged and everything in between. And I want to respond to the content of what Piper says and how really what he's saying is not a departure from historic confessional reform theology.

But also I want us to think through the implications of the the Firestorm that was created from this 30 second clip there's a a problem that we're prone to on social media where we will often see just a fraction of a larger message and take it out of context and blow it all out of proportion, not understanding the immediate or wider context of what is being said. And so I hope that this will encourage us not only to think about these things, particularly based on just the words that Dr. Piper says in the sermon, but also the context in which it occurs, and to be careful, be thoughtful, be reasonable in how we approach these clips and out of context citations and quotes that we see on social media all the time. In other words, just don't jump on a bandwagon. Don't just have a knee-jerk reaction to what you see or hear.

Be thoughtful, be careful. Act and think like Christians when you are on social media. So with that introduction, let's look at the first part of the clip. You don't get into heaven by faith alone. You get justified by faith alone.

So right off the bat, one of the reasons that this clip got so much attention is the very first words that you hear from Piper is, you don't get into heaven by faith alone, but you are justified by faith alone. And a lot of people have a hard time reconciling this, which is really what the rest of the clip is about. But this is not a unheard of distinction in theology, even among reformed who have a very high view of obviously justification by faith alone. That's what the whole Protestant Reformation was about in one sense. We are justified, we are declared right by God and before God on the basis of faith alone.

And the rest of this clip will explain that that declaration will have natural necessary consequences. And that's what Piper's talking about when he says that we don't get into heaven by faith alone. Going to heaven or our glorification, our enjoyment of the beatific vision and being face to face with our Savior begins with faith alone justifying us, but that faith will produce fruit. That's what Piper's saying and this is again not something that the Reformers would have disagreed with. Calvin in the Institute's for instance talks about what does it mean to actually know God.

Well to know God is more than mental ascent it's piety it is knowledge with reverence and love and this is the the heart attitude of the one who will see God or the one who will go to heaven, as Piper says. So that's the beginning and that's kind of the foundation of everything else he says in this short clip. And we need to, when we look at the last 20 seconds or so of the clip, not pretend as if he didn't just say that justification, our initial forgiveness of sins, is by faith alone. And he'll reiterate that in the beginning of the next clip, but keep that in mind, our justification is by faith alone. Everything else he says, we have to have that in mind that he's not contradicting this in the same breath.

You get into a position where God is 100% for you by faith alone, and in order to get into heaven, that faith must bear the fruit of love. So he again reiterates that by faith alone we are put in a position where God is 100% for us. This is Piper's way of describing what our confessions talk about when we have the language of an exchange of righteousness. Christ takes our sin and our unrighteousness, our guilt on Himself on the cross, and He imputes to us His righteousness so that When God looks at us as those who have repented and put their faith in Christ, he sees us as if we are his son. He sees us clothed with the righteousness of Jesus.

That's what his point is, that by faith alone, this is done. We are put in a position where God looks at us as those who have been declared right, having the very righteousness of the Son of God. Or as the Second London Confession puts it in chapter 11, paragraph 1, talking about God effectually calling and justifying that he does not impute, he's not imputing faith itself, the act of believing or any other evangelical obedience to them, to the elect as their righteousness. In other words, it's not our faith itself that saves technically. It's not our obedience that saves obviously, but by imputing Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith.

So what Christ accomplished both in his active and passive obedience, that righteousness is imputed to the Christian by faith alone. That's what it means for God to be 100% for us. In Calvin's Institutes in Book 1, he's talking about what it means to know God, and he differentiates mere assent to the facts about who God is compared to the true knowledge of God, which he kind of comes to call true piety. And he says, by piety, I mean that union of reverence and love for God, which the knowledge of his benefits inspires. And so in Calvin's thinking, true knowledge of God includes more than just mere facts and knowledge of those facts, but it's a factual knowledge combined with faith and love and even a reverential fear of who God is.

Now at the same time, later in Book 3, he very clearly distinguishes that this love itself does not justify. He's in the midst of distinguishing the reformed view of what justifying faith is compared to the Roman Catholic view of unformed and formed faith beyond the scope of our discussion today, but he says, we indeed acknowledge with Paul, and this is in the Institute's Book 3, Chapter 11, we indeed acknowledge with Paul that the only faith which justifies is that which works by love, Galatians 3.6. So the only faith that justifies is a faith that works by love. But love does not give it its justifying power. Nay, its only means of justifying consists in its bringing us into communication with the righteousness of Christ.

So understand what Calvin's saying. He's saying that true faith is a faith that results in love, love toward God and love toward others, but that love itself is not what justifies. Rather, it's faith that brings us into communication or communion with Christ and His righteousness. And so even strictly speaking, it's not faith itself that saves us. When we say we're justified by faith alone, This is really a shorthand for saying we are saved by our union with Christ and His righteousness which we receive by faith.

And this union with Christ by faith will produce love. That's Piper's point. That's what Calvin taught. That's the Reformed position and all the pop Calvinists on X that had a problem with Piper don't understand their own tradition, don't understand their own theology really, because what Piper is saying, it may be worded slightly differently, but his meaning seems to be perfectly in line with the Reformers and more importantly scripture itself. Pursue the holiness without which you will not see the Lord.

To reinforce his point, Piper quotes Hebrews 12-14 and partially quotes it, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord." And actually in Greek the holiness there is articular. It's pursue peace with all and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And I don't think we can look at this and flatten out holiness as if it's a reference to Jesus or imputation of His holiness. This is pursue peace, your attitude of peace towards other people, being in that relationship, that state of being at peace with others as much as it depends on us, but also pursue holiness, your own personal holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And this is a very straightforward command that we cannot ignore.

If you are living a life of complete godlessness, of a complete life devoid of any growth and holiness, you need to be very concerned of the state of your own soul. You can say you believe in Jesus, but what kind of a belief do you have? Is it mere intellectual assent or is it, as Calvin calls it, that true piety with that knowledge joined with reverence and love, which will produce a life of holiness without which you will not see the Lord. This is a constant refrain throughout scripture. God tells his people, be holy for I am holy.

God is fitting a holy people to be with him because if you are not growing in holiness now, you will not want to be in a place of perfect holiness with the perfectly holy God. That grace that saves is a grace that teaches us to live a godly life. And now the moment Piper says this or I say this or anyone else, and you see this in the comments on this post on X, people will then say, well, how much should I be made holy? How many good works do I need to do? It becomes a question of quantity or how can I quantify this holiness?

This is often brought up in the concept or the debate about lordship salvation. Well, how much sin needs to be repented of, how many good works need to be done before we really know if we've made Jesus our Lord or if we are really growing in holiness in the context that Piper's preaching. And I understand the desire to ask that question. The problem is it's the wrong question. There's never given a minimal threshold of this is how much holiness you need to have or how many good works you have to prove true faith.

It's the wrong question. It's like going to a tree and asking how many acorns does it need to produce before we know it's an oak tree. Well, the fact it's producing any at all tells you it's an oak tree, it's not a pine tree, it's not a maple or anything like this. The kind of fruit is what lets you know what the nature of the tree is, not how many. You go to an apple tree and you know it's an apple tree because it has apples, not because it has 20 apples or 40 apples or 100 apples.

Just as Jesus said, when his people bear fruit, some are going to bear more, some are going to bear less, but the reality is his people will bear fruit. And of course, all the what people think are exceptions will come to mind. The instance of the thief on the cross, for instance. And that's brought up again in comments here on this post. Well, the thief on the cross, he didn't bear any fruit.

He didn't have any good works. He didn't have any growth in holiness. Two thoughts. First, we shouldn't build our theology off of exceptional cases. The man who confesses Christ right before his death is justified by faith alone.

Piper is not negating that. I'm not negating that. The Reformers didn't negate that. We are justified by faith alone. Absolutely, even in your last breath, the heart that truly is repentant and has faith in Christ is declared right before God.

But also, how can you say he didn't bear any fruit, didn't have any growth in holiness? The fact that the thief on the cross rebuked the other thief who was dying, who was still mocking Christ. He rebuked him. That's an expression of true faith. That's an expression of holiness.

That is a good work. If you look in the Second London Confession, chapter 16 in paragraph 2, it talks about good works. These good works are the evidences of a true and lively faith. It doesn't say how many need to be produced, but simply the fact that these good works are produced and they are the evidence of what a true and lively or true and living faith are. And so even the thief on the cross, he showed evidence of a true and living faith by his good work of reproving the other criminal who was dying with him.

When we come to this question of what should our holiness look like, how many good works, it's the wrong question. We need to be concerned about the fact of growth, the fact of holiness, not the amount. It's not something we can really even quantify, I believe, in this life anyway. The scriptural command is to grow, to be holy, not keep a checklist or a tally mark counting of how much better you're doing today than yesterday. It misses the whole point.

Put to death the deeds of the body and you will live! Piper's second verse is Romans 8 13. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And this is in Romans chapter 8 and in this whole section where Paul is just exalting and exalting in the grace of God and the freeness of salvation and God being for us and how God is doing all these things for the Christian.

In the middle of all this Paul says, if you live according to the flesh You will die, but if you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. But this isn't by your own strength. He says if you're doing this by the Spirit. In other words, this is not the ground of your justification, which is what Calvin and all the Reformers clarified, that the ground of our justification is by faith, but real, justifying faith will invariably produce these results. We must put to death the deeds of the body.

If we live according to the flesh, you will die, because a heart that has been changed by God's grace will not live according to the flesh. It will, by God's help through His Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body." Of course, when we talk about the relationship of faith and works, especially the discussion between the Reformed or Protestants and our Roman Catholic opponents, James 2 is always brought up. It's central to the debate. And if we look at James 2, we can see that what Piper has said here is perfectly in line with what James says. James chapter 2 verse 14, what does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can faith save him, or probably better translated, can that faith save him, a faith that has no works accompanying it? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warm and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body. What does it profit? Thus faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. And And this is what we see over and over again in the scriptural teaching on what justifying faith looks like.

It is a faith that justifies by itself but that does not exist by itself. It is a faith that will produce fruit. It will produce works. It will produce love. Faith by itself, an empty, professed faith, is dead.

Not having any works that are its fruit. So in conclusion, this clip lit a little bit of a firestorm on the Reformed side of X and it really shouldn't have. What he says here is not really controversial, though he may have used some language that people aren't familiar with or maybe not comfortable. The essence of what he's teaching is perfectly consistent with the Reformers, the Puritans, and above all, Scripture. Well, that's all the time we have for today.

If you'd like to connect with me personally, I'm on X at R Bosley 1689, and if you'd like to learn more about church and family life, you can do so at churchandfamilylife.com. And remember to let your reasonableness be known to all men. Thanks. See you next time.