Justification by Grace Through Faith
Edward Vick in his book Justification by Grace Through Faith insists that this formulation is critical:
The stress must be laid upon the priority of God’s grace. Justification, acceptance of man by God, has its basis in the grace of God and hence grace must be the primary term all the time. The doctrine of justification by faith is not primarily concerned with faith, but with grace. The source and thus the resting point of justification is outside of ourselves. God in Jesus Christ is the source of faith and he is gracious quite apart from my attitude toward him. Thus the expression ‘by faith’ might be misleading. For faith has its source in grace. It derives from God. So we will go badly wrong if we should say ‘by my faith’ and not ‘by God’s grace’. Faith by its very nature directs us away from ourselves outward toward God the source of all good, and the fountain of all forgiveness. We would do better to use the preposition ‘through’ rather than ‘by’ in describing the experience of acceptance with God. We would then talk of justification through faith. For indeed the clause is an abbreviation of the longer and clearer one: Justification by Grace through faith. Faith is the instrument through which grace flows to man, the channel cut by the flow of that grace, so to speak. Thus faith is directed away from itself towards its source in God. So the preposition of instrumentality, in Greek dia, German durch, and English through is appropriately used to qualify ‘faith’. Not ‘by faith’ but ‘through faith’ is the correct way to speak. But if we understand that this is what the expression ‘by faith’ means then its familiarity need not mislead us.
If all is of God, we must insist upon the fact that faith is the instrumental reality. We must insist upon it so strongly that we modify the slogan, ‘justification by faith’, so as to correct a misinterpretation which would shift the centre of Christianity away from its source in Jesus Christ.
Edward W. H. Vick, Justification by Grace Through Faith, 90-91
