New Covenant establishes worldwide family in Christ

Scott Hahn

What I discovered was that the New Covenant established a new worldwide family in which Christ shared his own divine sonship, making us children of God. As a covenant act, being justified meant sharing in the grace of Christ as God's sons and daughters; being sanctified meant sharing in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. In this light, God's grace became something much more than divine favor; it was the actual gift of God's life in divine sonship.

Luther and Calvin explained this exclusively in terms of courtroom language. But I was beginning to see that, far more than simply being a judge, God was our Father. Far more than simply being criminals, we were runaways. Far more than the New Covenant being made in a courtroom, it was fashioned by God in a family room.

Saint Paul (whom I had thought of as the first Luther) taught in Romans, Galatians and elsewhere that justification was more than a legal decree; it established us in Christ as God's children by grace alone. In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural!

I remembered how one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Gerstner, once said in class that if Protestants were wrong on sola fide—and the Catholic Church was right that justification is by faith and works—"I'd be on my knees tomorrow morning outside of the Vatican doing penance." We all knew, of course, that he said that for rhetorical effect, but it made a real impact. In fact, the whole Reformation flowed from this one difference.

Luther and Calvin often said that this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. That was why, for them, the Catholic Church fell and Protestantism rose up from the ashes. Sola fide was the material principle of the Reformation, and I was coming to the conviction that Saint Paul never taught it.

In James 2:24, the Bible teaches that "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Besides, Saint Paul said in I Corinthians 13:2, ". . . if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

This was a traumatic transformation for me to say that on this point I now thought Luther was fundamentally wrong. For seven years, Luther had been my main source of inspiration and powerful proclamation of the Word. And this doctrine had been the rationale behind the whole Protestant Reformation.