"Am I OK?"

Take a look at America's self-esteem curriculum or just watch "Oprah" once in a while and you'll see that deep down we're not so sure we are OK. At the very least, most of us need some convincing.

As a minister, I've witnessed the worry and doubt firsthand. A mother of young children wonders if her house is clean enough and if she'll ever measure up. A cancer patient isn't sure if he prays and loves God as much as he should. A young man struggles to feel like a good person again after his affair. At the bottom of all these fears and anxieties, they are asking the same question.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Most of us are desperate for reassurance, yet today a large and growing number of Americans are looking for answers to their deepest questions outside the church. Churches across the country are struggling to define their purpose in this postmodern and increasingly secular age. Many are de-emphasizing the Gospel and emphasizing social issues. Others are attracting crowds with self-help messages. And some are swimming with the cultural current, embracing doubt itself as a narrative.

The problem today is that the "good news" is often replaced with good advice and good causes. Churches that should be talking about the work of Christ on the cross and the grace of God for sinners are stuck on recycled pop psychology, moral exhortation, or entertainment. But these fail to speak to the eternal question that haunts all of us: How do I know that I'm OK? We all want to know we are justified.

And for the billions of Christians around the world, the most important approval we need – really the only one that matters – is God's approval.

The theological word for this is justification. Justification is God's declaration that we, though guilty sinners, are righteous in God's eyes.

Heated debate over an old issue

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther's view on justification – we are saved by faith alone, apart from meritorious works – divided Europe, started a century of conflict, and became the heartbeat of the Protestant Reformation. A decade ago, Lutherans and Roman Catholics signed a landmark agreement that some hoped would put the issue to rest.

It didn't. Today, the controversy over how we get right with God is as tempestuous as ever – and much of the dispute is within Protestant circles. Thankfully, no lives have been threatened this time around. But just about everything else has been. The debate over justification has spilled over into churches, schools, campus ministries, conferences, and personal relationships.

Take a casual stroll around a Christian bookstore, not to mention the hotheaded blogosphere, and you'll find Christians passionately divided over justification. Two leading figures, John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, have written books criticizing each other's views.

The stakes couldn't be higher

All of this may seem like petty squabbling over a trivial issue, but Protestant consensus on justification should matter to everyone.

Christians should care because it is ultimately a matter of life and death. Others should care because it's a doctrine that defines – or at least should define – the core belief of 600 million people globally, shaping how they engage with the world around them. As justification goes, so goes the church. A muddied view of justification could muddy the Protestant fountainhead, limiting its effort to quench the thirst for acceptance that we all feel deep down.

For Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation, justification was an intensely personal question. As a monk and devout Catholic, Luther had tried everything to assuage his guilt and get right with God. But he was still tormented by feelings of unworthiness and terrified by God's righteous wrath.

Until he understood that the righteous shall live by faith (Rom. 1:16-17).

Like millions of Christians after him, Luther took solace in the good news that if we believe in Jesus Christ, God will count our faith as righteousness. We are not declared innocent and righteous in God's sight by works, not even by our best moral efforts. We are justified by faith alone.

Faith alone?

Of all the points of contention between the early Reformers and the Catholic Church, disagreement over justification was sharpest. Luther himself said that it was "the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls." The crux of the debate was this: What, if any, role do our own actions play in being justified?

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