Transcript of an excerpt of a message by Voddie Baucham given at the 2022, Shepherd’s Conference:
I want to tell you a story. This story doesn’t originate with me. It’s a story that’s been used to sort of illustrate postmodernism, and I think if you’ll bear with me you’ll see how it relates to what we’re dealing with here tonight.
The story goes something like this: There’s a man and he’s walking with his son through a strawberry patch. He takes a strawberry, eats a strawberry, gives a strawberry to his son. The strawberry is good, beautiful, perfect, sweet. But something happens to strawberries over time. Eventually strawberries are chopped up and used in other foods. They’re put on top of cereal. Literally, strawberries are made into strawberry preserves and into strawberry jam. Eventually strawberries get messed with, processed, and put inside of things like Pop-Tarts.
Eventually you get into a laboratory where you have the essence of strawberry without strawberries. Eventually men don’t take their sons to strawberry patches anymore to give them strawberries. They go and get them strawberry slushes that don’t actually have any strawberry in them whatsoever. It’s just a combination of chemicals and colors and high fructose this and that. Then the kid loves the strawberry slush and he gets used to the strawberry slush.
One day the kid, who’s grown to love the strawberry slush that has no strawberries in it, is walking through a strawberry patch. He picks up an actual strawberry, eats it, and doesn’t like it because it doesn’t taste like the slush.
Brothers, I think that’s what we’ve seen happen to the gospel.
Christians sometimes assume that the doctrine of justification by faith alone only became clear during the Reformation. The phrase sola fide is a later Latin shorthand, but long before Luther we find early Christian writers speaking in strikingly Pauline terms about salvation as God’s gift, received by faith, not earned by works.
To be sure, later generations coined concise slogans and technical vocabulary to defend the truth more precisely. The early church writers did not use those later labels. But the underlying doctrine is the same: again and again, they deny justification by our own works and point to God’s saving initiative in Christ, received through faith.
Below are several verbatim quotations from early Christian sources (with primary citations), followed by two careful, expanded summaries (not verbatim quotations) from later patristic commentators often cited in discussions of justification.
Clement of Rome (c. AD 96–100)
“And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Source: 1 Clement 32:4 (Roberts and Donaldson translation). (ccel.org)
Polycarp (c. AD 69–155/160)
“Though ye saw Him not, ye believe with joy unutterable and full of glory; unto which joy many desire to enter in; forasmuch as ye know that it is by grace ye are saved, not of works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ.” Source: Polycarp, To the Philippians 1.3 (Lightfoot translation as reproduced online. Wording varies slightly across editions). (earlychristianwritings.com)
Epistle to Diognetus (anonymous early Christian writing, 2nd century, chapter 9)
“He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!” Source: Epistle to Diognetus 9. (newadvent.org)
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. AD 130–202)
“For faith towards God justifies a man…” Source: Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4 (section numbering can vary by edition; see the phrase in the linked online text). (newadvent.org)
Two Expanded Summaries (Not Verbatim Quotations)
The two entries below are not presented as word-for-word quotations. They are expanded summaries of the theological emphasis in context, commonly discussed in patristic studies and traced in the secondary source cited at the end.
Origen (c. AD 185–254)
Origen, commenting on Paul (especially Romans), argues that a sinner’s acceptance with God is grounded in God’s saving action in Christ and is received through faith, not achieved by works, whether moral achievement or the works of the law. He treats justification as something God grants to the one who believes, and he appeals to the thief on the cross as a vivid illustration: a man with no time to present a catalog of deeds is nevertheless received by Christ through faith. Origen also presses the justice of God, insisting that God does not simply wave away guilt, but provides a mediator who deals with sin so that God can justify sinners without compromising His righteousness.
Marius Victorinus (c. AD 290–364)
Marius Victorinus, writing as an early Latin commentator on Paul, emphasizes that righteousness and salvation do not arise from law-keeping as the ground of acceptance, but are given by God through faith in Christ. In his handling of texts like Ephesians 2, he underscores Paul’s purpose of shutting the door on boasting: salvation is God’s gift, not a human achievement. Victorinus presents faith as the means by which believers receive what God provides in Christ, and he treats good works as the fitting fruit of grace rather than the basis of justification.
Secondary Source (for the two summaries above)
Nathan Busenitz and John MacArthur, Long before Luther: Tracing the Heart of the Gospel from Christ to the Reformation (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2017), 169–171.
The gospel is… There is a God in heaven who has created you and me, and He is the authority over both of us. He is perfectly holy. “In Him is Light, and there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The problem is that if we want to have fellowship with God, we have to be light and no darkness at all. And yet here’s the problem: we are darkness. We are sinful. We’ve all broken His law. We’ve all lied, stolen, we’ve all looked with lust, we’ve all been angry with our brothers in our hearts. We’ve all fallen short of the glorious standard of perfection that God requires (Rom 3:23).
We are helpless in bringing about a remedy. No amount of works, no amount of contrition, no amount of bad feelings, no amount of church attendance, no amount of Bible reading, no amount of fasting and prayer can earn forgiveness of our sins and the righteousness which God requires (Titus 3:5).
And yet God is gracious, and He loves us, and as His creatures He wants to display His glory in us by rescuing us from that. And so He sent His Son—God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ—to be born as a helpless little baby (John 1:14; 3:16; Col 2:9). God of the universe, Sustainer of the universe, Himself being sustained in the womb of a teenage Hebrew girl, and upholding the world by the word of His power (Heb 1:3) while He is upheld by the nutrients from her own body! Unspeakable! And in great humility, He grows up with the growing pains of life in a fallen world, though He Himself never being with any sin—without sin entirely (2 Cor 5:21; 7:26).
And He lives a perfectly righteous life. The way that you and I have failed to live before God—the way that we have failed in thought, word, and deed, and fallen short of God’s glory—Christ never did. Not even a thought. He loved God, His Father, perfectly. He always walked in perfect righteousness. He lived the life that you were commanded to live, that I was commanded to live, that we failed to live. He lived that perfect life that God is worthy of.
And not only did He live for us, He died for us. He went to the cross. Our sin demanded death. Our sin demanded eternal punishment. Our sin demanded wrath—just wrath exercised on us for eternity (Rom 6:23).
But because of the infinite worth of Christ’s person, He was on that cross. And on that cross, God exercised upon Him the full fury of His own anger (Rom 3:24–26; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:10–14), that was rightly due to me and rightly due to you, and that you will experience if you don’t turn from your sin and trust in this Messiah. Christ was born, lived, died, and was raised (1 Cor 15:3–4). And He rose from the grave after being dead, demonstrating His victory over sin and death.
And now God promises that if you turn from your sin, if you repudiate all that you are and all that you were and all that you love, and you turn away from a life of pursuing sin—and if you repudiate not only your bad works but your good works, if you turn from trying to earn your salvation by all the good deeds that you might want to do as a moral person—if you turn away from all of that (Acts 17:30–31), and you trust in Christ alone for righteousness (Phil 3:7–8; cf. Rom 3:28; 10:4), God promises that He will forgive you.
He will have treated Christ on the cross as if Christ lived your life. And He will then treat you, justly and legally and righteously, as if you lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). And you can be saved to know the God you were created to love and enjoy. You can have the fullness of joy, the eternal pleasures that are at the Father’s right hand in heaven (Ps 16:11), and begin even now, because eternal life is to know God (John 17:3).
Friend, would you repent? Would you turn from your sin and trust in this perfect Savior to avail for you before God, to pay for your sin and to provide your righteousness?
