The famous Protestant reformer Martin Luther once said that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls.

And that sentiment has been echoed by countless theologians and church leaders in the centuries since.

What is the doctrine of justification? And why is it so important?

My guest today is Matthew Barrett, and in our conversation he sheds light on the meaning

of justification by faith alone, explaining why it's so central to the Christian faith.

Along the way, he engages with the claim that evangelicals often overemphasized justification

to the detriment of other doctrines,

and he explores why the book of James says that we're not justified by faith alone.

Matthew Barrett is an associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological

Seminary, as well as the founder and executive editor of CredoTO magazine and the host of the CRETO podcast.

He's the author of several books including The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls,

justification in biblical, theological, historical, and pastoral perspective from Crossway.

Let's get started.

Well, Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. Thanks for having me on. We're going to be talking about the doctrine of justification,

and it's one of those doctrines that if you've been a Christian for a long time or have studied theology to any level, you know that this is a really important doctrine for our faith as Protestant Christians.

And so we're going to get into a lot of different facets of this doctrine.

But maybe to start us off, how would you summarize the doctrine of justification if you were talking to

a non-Christian who isn't very familiar with the Christian faith? Well, I think the first thing I would say

would actually not be about justification itself. Obviously, we want to get there. But in order to get there, I think the first thing we have to talk about is God. And I think the first thing I would want to say to someone who's not a Christian is, do you understand that the God who made you in his image is a God who is absolutely perfectly, unchangeably, holy. And that means that

this God is set apart. There is a difference between you as a creature and him as the Creator.

But it also means that this God, as the God who is set apart, is a God

who's like no other. There is none like Him. And part of what that means is that His holiness

...