Editor’s Note: An evaluation of a scholar like Dr. Matthew Bates might seem out of place in an Anabaptist publication. However, Dr. Bates’ work has been featured by multiple Anabaptist groups, prompting this brief examination of his work. Dr. Paul Lamicela, an Anabaptist scholar, has produced a simple yet clear evaluation of the problems present in Dr. Bates’ redefinition of “gospel” and “faith”.
New Testament scholar Dr. Matthew Bates has published a number of books calling Christians to go back to Scripture and allow it to correct our understanding of “faith” and the “gospel.” These include Salvation by Allegiance Alone (2017), Gospel Allegiance (2019), and Beyond the Salvation Wars (2025). For Bates, the Greek word (pistis) translated “faith” should in most cases be rendered as “allegiance” or “loyalty.” This would mean that our justification before God is based on more than simply “trust”; it is based on a person’s faithful allegiance to Jesus manifested in their works. This redefinition of “faith” is part of Bates’s larger rethinking of the contents of the “gospel” message in the NT. For Bates, the gospel is primarily a “royal proclamation” about how Jesus is the “saving king.” The gospel is the announcement of the key events of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection, and ascension; it is not a “four spiritual laws”-style presentation focusing on individualistic “justification by faith.”
Anabaptists may be drawn to Bates’s conclusions, since we, like him, want to emphasize the necessity of discipleship and obedience for final salvation. We, like him, are rightly very leery of any “easy believism.” We should always be open to reassessing our assumptions based on Scripture, and Bates does offer helpful nudges to all of us. But I want to show in this article that Bates’s redefinition of “faith” is faulty, and that while he is right that the gospel is much larger than our individual justification by faith, the gospel does and must include that message.
Points of Appreciation
Before critiquing Bates’s reading of “faith” and of the gospel, a few points of appreciation must be noted. First, Bates’s reexamination of these key doctrinal terms in light of the NT reminds us of the Reformation principle known in Latin as semper reformanda—“always reforming.” The Anabaptist movement began in much the same way: a group of young Swiss folks studying Scripture and realizing that even the Reformers hadn’t reformed enough. Even when we disagree with the conclusions—as we will with Bates—we ought not to disparage the attempt. Bates has in good faith done what we all ought to be doing: seeking to read Scripture carefully and make it our final arbiter.
Second, Bates’s articulation of the gospel is a helpful corrective to common presentations of the gospel that are abstracted from the big story of the Bible, “commercialized,” and that have little to do with how we are to live our lives. The gospel is not the message that if you pray a prayer and ask Jesus into your life, he’ll be your friend and you get to go to heaven. It is a much grander message. It is free, but also costly. It is not about Jesus saving a collection of isolated individuals but a people, a bride. Bates and others like him who pull us upward to see a bigger sweep of the story are to be commended for this.
I’m about to argue that Bates’s proposals have significant flaws; but I do so while respecting ways his work has been positive.
What Is Faith?
For us as evangelical / Anabaptist Christians, “faith” is central to our understanding of salvation. We speak of “justification by faith,” the doctrine that God forgives our sins and deems us righteous when we trust in Christ. The gospel message is something we receive with “faith,” and indeed the message itself contains the promise of “justification by faith.” If salvation were a house and faith were a part of it, it wouldn’t be the trim—it’d be part of the foundation! This is why it’s important to think carefully about Dr. Bates’s understanding of “faith” language in the NT. These discussions can get slightly technical, but I’ll try to keep it simple. In this discussion I’ll be focusing on Paul’s letters, since this is where the majority of the debate lies.
In Greek, the noun pistis can mean either “faith” or “faithfulness.” In fact, “faithfulness” is a fairly common meaning of the word in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT). Even in the NT, there are a number of clear instances of pistis meaning “faithfulness” rather than “faith” (Matt 23:23, Rom 3:3, Gal 5:22). Like any word, though, it can’t mean both things at the same time. Each use has either one meaning or the other. Context is what decides.
Bates believes that the word pistis has the meaning of “faithfulness” in the NT far more often than we’ve traditionally thought. A primary reason is that the word “gospel” (euangelion, “good news”) was sometimes used in the ancient world for royal proclamations (for example, the enthronement of a new emperor). Royal “gospels” are messages that call for allegiance/faithfulness more than “faith/trust.” The NT likewise has a royal setting, with the gospel announcing that Jesus is the King of Israel and the world. The NT calls all people to give allegiance to this king (e.g. Rom 1:1–5). Thus, it would seem natural for pistis to mean “faithfulness” in the NT, especially in contexts about the gospel.
But there are a couple of serious problems with this line of reasoning. Remember, just because a word can mean something doesn’t mean it does. Context is king (no pun intended). And it’s safer to rely on closer context (the wording immediately before and after) than on big-picture ideas when defining the meaning of a word’s usage. Bates has failed to adequately account for two major pieces of data in Paul’s letters: the verb form of pistis (pisteuo), and the example of Abraham.
“Faith” and the Verb “to Believe”
Bear with me for a minute while I get just slightly technical: I said earlier that the noun pistis in Greek can mean either “faith” or “faithfulness,” depending on the context. But there are a couple other words that are part of the same word family. (You can’t see this as clearly in English, unless you use the “trust” word family: the noun “trust” or “trustworthiness,” the verb “to trust,” and the adjective “trustworthy.”) There’s the adjective pistos, which usually means “faithful” (though it can also mean “believing”). So for example, Jesus speaks of “faithful” servants (Matt 24:45, 25:21–23); Paul speaks of God as “faithful” (2 Cor 1:18, 1 Thess 5:24), and of himself and others as “faithful” (1 Cor 7:25; Col 1:7, 4:7–9; 1 Tim 1:12). But then there’s the verb, pisteuo, which means “to believe/trust.” What’s really important for our purposes is that the verb pisteuo does not mean “to be faithful.” (This is true in Greek both inside and outside the NT.) It always means something like “to believe/trust/entrust/have confidence in.” So what we need to do is to see how Paul uses the verb, and that will help clarify what he means by the noun pistis, which on its own can sometimes go either way. Here are several passages where the verb and noun are used together in parallel with each other:
- Rom 4:5: “And to the one who does not work but believes [verb] in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith [noun] is counted as righteousness.”
- Rom 4:11: “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith [noun] while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe [verb] without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.”
- Rom 3:22: “…the righteousness of God through faith [noun] in Jesus Christ for all who believe [verb].”
- 2 Cor 4:13: “Since we have the same spirit of faith [noun] according to what has been written, ‘I believed [verb], and so I spoke,’ we also believe [verb], and so we also speak.”
- Gal 2:16: “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith [noun] in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed [verb] in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith [noun] in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”
- Gal 3:22: “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith [noun] in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe [verb].”
Notice here in each case, the verb pisteuo seems to mean exactly the same thing as the noun pistis. These passages are very strong evidence that Paul tends to be using pistis to refer not to faithfulness, but to believing/trusting.
Making this even clearer is that the noun pistis itself in some cases has to mean “faith” and not “faithfulness.” Look at these examples where Paul writes about faith “in” or faith “that”:
- Rom 4:20–21: “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”
- Eph 1:15: “…because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints..”
- Col 2:5: “…rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.”
When pistis is followed by the word “in” or “that,” it’s talking not about faithfulness but about a person you believe in, or something that you believe to be true.
To sum up this more detailed bit: the noun pistis can mean faithfulness, but the verb pisteuo cannot mean “faithful”; it only means “to believe/trust/etc.” In the NT, though, pistis is often used right alongside the verb “to believe,” clearly referring to the same thing. All of these cases clarify that pistis (in those instances at least, and most likely in similar ones) does not carry the meaning “faithfulness.” It rather means “faith” or as we prefer to say, “trust.”
Abraham’s Faith in God’s Promise
There is one more key piece of evidence that Paul does intend to teach justification by “faith,” not justification by “faithfulness.” That is his use of the Abraham story. In both Romans 4 and Galatians 3, Abraham’s story plays a central role as Paul explains how God in Christ is “justifying the ungodly.” Abraham’s pistis is said to be the same thing that people now must have in order to be forgiven and put into right standing with God (4:11–12). So what is this pistis? Is Paul thinking of Abraham’s life of faithfulness?
The answer is clear: Abraham’s pistis is his faith / trust in God’s promise. While Abraham was (sometimes) faithful to God, Paul is looking squarely at the story in Genesis 15: God promised Abraham offspring like the stars, and Abraham “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). The moment the narrative calls Abraham “righteous” is not the moment of his leaving Ur or sacrificing Isaac but believing (pisteuo) God’s promise to him. He, like we, are those who do “not work but believe in him who justifies the ungodly” (Rom 4:5). Paul does insist that faith must “work by love” (Gal 5:6) and produce “faithfulness” (Gal 5:22), much as James does when he looks at Abraham’s life (James 2:14–26). But when Paul is speaking of justification by faith in these passages, he draws the line firmly before Abraham’s “embodied loyalty.” It is not when Abraham obeys but when he believes God’s promise that he is justified.
And the fact that it is a promise that Abraham believes is crucial. Bates is fond of calling the gospel a “royal proclamation.” He thinks that the royal announcement of Jesus’ kingship makes the call to “allegiance”/faithfulness particularly fitting. But for Paul, the gospel must also be thought of as a promise. It is, in fact, God making good on his promise to Abraham, and promising to us that he receives all who entrust themselves to the Promiser (Rom 4:16, Gal 3:5–9). As a promise, the natural response to the gospel is less “allegiance” than trust—deeming the promise reliable and the Promise-giver trustworthy, and entrusting oneself to it and him.
Bates is right to insist that God requires “allegiance”/faithfulness for final salvation. Paul too insists on this in his letters (Rom 2:6–29, Gal 6:7–9). But for Paul, these are the fruit of the Spirit’s work in the lives of already justified believers. Abraham’s story underscores the conclusion that we are justified by faith/trust in God and his promise. This is why one reviewer of Bates’s work rightly summed up Bates’s reading of pistis as “a faith unlike Abraham’s.”[^1]
Is Justification by Faith Part of the Gospel?
We can conclude that “justification by faith” should not be redefined as “justification by allegiance/faithfulness.” But one additional question should be briefly addressed before concluding: Is justification by faith part of the gospel message?
Dr. Bates works through various passages in the NT and defines the content of the gospel as a list of ten key Christ-events. He writes:
“The gospel is that Jesus the king
- preexisted as God the Son,
- was sent by the Father as promised,
- took on human flesh in fulfillment of God’s promises to David,
- died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
- was buried,
- was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
- appeared to many witnesses,
- is enthroned at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ, [emphasis original]
- has sent the Holy Spirit to his people to effect his rule, and
- Will come again as final judge to rule.”[^2]
You’ll notice that the call to repentance and faith, and the message of justification by faith, aren’t included in this list. In a few cases Bates says that the “offer” or “promise” of justification by pistis (for him, faithfulness) is part of the gospel message, but most of the time he considers it to be not a part of the gospel message itself but rather the required response to the gospel.
Bates wants to avoid individualistic, truncated presentations of the gospel, and his definition of the gospel can offer helpful pushback to those who think of the gospel as little more than justification by faith. But Bates has swung too far in the other direction when he excludes justification-by-faith from the gospel’s core content.
There’s one passage I will point to here: Galatians 1:6–9. In Galatians, Paul goes after false teachers who denied the message of justification by faith by their insistence that justification comes through Christ plus Torah observance. His warning is stark: “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:9). Here’s the problem for Bates: The false teachers agreed with all ten of the events that make up Bates’s gospel definition. For Bates, then, they agreed with Paul on the gospel though they went fatally astray on vital matters like the gospel’s response. But notice that Paul anathematizes them not for wrongly responding to the gospel but for proclaiming a different, false one. Paul’s gospel must include something more than Bates’s list of ten events.
Indeed, Paul’s gospel must include the thing that the false teachers denied: justification by faith. Paul makes this clear in Galatians 2, when he writes that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” and concludes that “if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal 2:16, 21). For Paul, insisting on Torah observance for justification denied the gospel truth that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3).
While justification by faith is not the entirety of the gospel, it is a crucial part of it.
Conclusion
Dr. Matthew Bates has pushed Christians to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about “faith” and the “gospel.” I’ve argued that Bates’s redefinition of pistis as “faithfulness” is faulty and should be rejected. Paul uses pistis in parallel with the verb “to believe,” and he defines pistis in light of Abraham’s faith in God’s promise. Likewise, I’ve argued that justification by faith should not lose its status as a key part of the gospel message.
Part of the reason this issue matters is that it is part of what gives us Christians a sense of wonder, humility, and confidence in our standing before God. Christians who care about discipleship and obedience can sometimes start losing their sense of awe that God accepts them through no merit of their own. The doctrine of justification by faith is a lodestar that keeps us on the path of wonder. It also gives us humility, since we cannot measure ourselves based on how much better we’re doing than others. And it allows us to stand with confidence, knowing that our shortcomings and continued fight against sin do not change our relationship to God as his forgiven, righteous people.
We conclude that Christians—including us as Anabaptists—should keep the beautiful and startling doctrine of justification by “faith,” that is by trust in God’s promise. But we should also, following Bates’s nudging, ensure that the doctrine of justification by faith is not the entirety of our gospel or our understanding of salvation. The gospel is a grand, multifaceted message that announces the fulfillment of all of God’s promises through Christ, and that calls us to trust and to be transformed.