Sola Fide

Related Topic: Justification - Faith

"Grace is not a reward for faith; faith is the result of grace."
- John Blanchard

"Justification is through faith, not on account of faith."
- B. B. Warfield

"Saving faith is not a native product of the human heart, but is a spiritual grace communicated from on High."
- A.W. Pink

"It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ.... It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not int he act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith."
- B. B. Warfield

Justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. This is the article by which the church stands or falls...There is no gospel except that of Christ's substitution in our place whereby God imputed to him our sin and imputed to us his righteousness. Because he bore our judgment, we now walk in his grace as those who are forever pardoned, accepted and adopted as God's children. There is no basis for our acceptance before God except in Christ's saving work, not in our patriotism, churchly devotion or moral decency. The gospel declares what God has done for us in Christ. It is not about what we can do to reach him. We reaffirm that justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In justification Christ's righteousness is imputed to us as the only possible satisfaction of God's perfect justice. We deny that justification rests on any merit to be found in us, or upon the grounds of an infusion of Christ's righteousness in us, or that an institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church.
Cambridge Declaration

“Biblically speaking, faith is trust-filled surrender to God and His word of promise. In the new Testament, this trust involves acceptance of the apostolic witness concerning Christ and personal trust in Christ as Savior and risen, exalted Lord. In church history, however, as is the case of Rome, faith was often reduced to intellectual assent. Personal assurance was decidedly secondary and often lost altogether. For Calvin, faith was personal confidence in God’s benevolence towards us “revealed to our minds and sealed on our hearts” by the Holy Spirit. The Reformation, however, did make it clear that knowledge was not to be set aside. Knowledge and trust, intellect and will, were both included in the understanding of faith.” - Herman Bavinck

"Faith involves both a renunciation and a reliance. First, we must renounce any trust in our own performance as the basis of our acceptance before God. We trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve earned God’s acceptance by our good works. But we also trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve lost God’s acceptance by our bad works—by our sin. So we must renounce any consideration of either our bad works or our good works as the means of relating to God. Second, we must place our reliance entirely on the perfect obedience and sin-bearing death of Christ as the sole basis of our standing before God—on our best days as well as our worst ... [He goes on] renunciation and reliance. We have to first renounce all confidence in our own power and then rely entirely on the power of the Holy Spirit. We must be enabled, not merely helped. What’s the difference? The word help implies we have some ability but not enough; we need someone else to supplement our partially adequate ability. By contrast, enablement implies that we have no ability whatsoever. We’re entirely powerless. We can do nothing. But when by faith we renounce self-sufficiency and embrace reliance"
- Jerry Bridges, The Bookends of the Christian Life.