Address by Rev. Dr. Simon Jooste at the conference “Justification by Faith Alone: Recovering Law and Gospel” in Cape Town, South Africa, on 21 June 2025.
Since Adam broke God’s covenant of strict justice, God has made merciful provision for humanity to live on under divine standards of justice, enforced socially through the authority of the state—as the backdrop for the unfolding of salvation in Christ. According to Romans 13, God has appointed rulers to reward good and punish evil according to the universal moral law. All people live under this law (Rom. 1-2), expressed both in Scripture and in creation, particularly in the Golden Rule of reciprocity on the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7). But this standard threatens sinners, exposing their failure before both a holy God and justice-seeking earthly neighbours (Rom. 3:20). In response, people try to escape guilt and moral accountability—whether through personal spiritual experiences, public virtue-signalling, or large-scale political ideologies. Throughout history, these evasions have taken many forms. Today, postmodern social justice—shaped by counter-Enlightenment and neo-Marxist thought—represents a new attempt to avoid ethical judgment. By denying objective truth and claiming victimhood as a path to power, this movement seeks to justify itself apart from God’s law and Gospel.
But can such movements withstand the standard of divine justice? More importantly, how do they stand when measured against the classical Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone? Paul answers in Romans 3:21-6: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
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Rev. Jooste is the pastor of Reformed Church Southern Suburbs.