What is the one doctrine upon which the church stands or falls?

So there are a lot of doctrines in Christian theology that are really important that we might say,

if you were messing with this doctrine, you're striking at the vitals of the Christian religion.

We could bring up the doctrine of God.

You think of the Holy Trinity or the doctrine of Christ, the deity of Christ.

You can't mess with those doctrines and be within the bounds of the Christian faith.

There are other doctrines that Christians can differ on. We might differ on our understanding of baptism or our understanding of the end times eschatology, and yet we can still greet each other as brother or sister. But there was one doctrine during the time of the Protestant Reformation that the reformers said, look, this is the one

doctrine upon which the church stands and upon which the church falls. It's the doctrine of

justification. Now, justification is an act of God's free grace, whereby he pardons all of our sins,

forgives our sins, accepts us as righteous in his sight,

only for the righteousness of Christ that's given to us, imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

So let me unpack that a little bit.

We're talking about the righteousness of Christ being given to us, imputed to us.

We're talking about the importance of the forgiveness

of sins. Those are the two core elements of justification, forgiveness and imputation.

Is this biblical? Well, I think we can look at a place like Romans chapter four to establish

this doctrine. In Romans chapter four, the apostle Paul is talking about the doctrine

of justification. And he says in verse five, to the one who does not work, but believes in him,

in God, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

So you have here in justification this idea of counting righteousness.

Think of a banking metaphor, for example.

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