We are continuing in our series through the five solas and let's see if I can get this started here. We are in week four actually of this series through the five solas and just to remind you it's been a couple of weeks. Our goal in this is to kind of clarify the essentials behind the church plant. We want to consider how the five solas of the Reformation relate to the local church. What do the five solas have to do with our purpose and reason for even being here as a church plant? We've considered already the first two in this. Sola Scriptura, scripture alone. Sola Christus, Christ alone. And so today we're going to go to move on to Soligratia, grace alone. But let me start with a little bit of review here so that we can remember kind of where we come from, where we're going in this. The five solos of course, the five solos of the Reformation, they are the foundation of the Protestant Reformation. And I guess in the most broad sense they're also kind of our convictions here as a church plant. They are doctrinal convictions upon which we are planting this church. They, at its most broad and basic level, define who we are as CRBC, what our goal is in ministry, in church planting, in evangelism, in preaching and teaching, and all of these things. They really kind of underlie our core convictions about what the Word of God teaches. So in this, we considered sola scriptura, We defined it as Scripture alone is our ultimate authority when it comes to matters of faith and practice. Right? Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has an opinion about the Gospel, the Christian life, how a church should be run, what we should be doing when we get together. Everyone has an opinion, and some people elevate their opinion, like consider the Pope, right? The Pope says, I have the authority to declare what is true and what is false, what you should do and what you should not do. Well, the Reformers came back to Scripture as our ultimate authority when it comes to faith and practice. When we talked about this two weeks ago, We talked about how the issue in Protestantism today isn't so much about authority, right? I mean, if you go around and you ask the churches, if you ask people, especially here in the South, right? You know, what's the final authority? Most people are going to say, the Bible is God's Word. We're not going to deny that. As good Americans, we claim no allegiance to the king, and many of us, especially in the South, also have difficulty with swearing allegiance to the Pope as well. We want to be our own authority, and we'll give lip service to the authority of Scripture. So we consider that the issue isn't so much authority in our day, but sufficiency. What does it mean that the Bible is sufficient? What does it mean? Anyone remember what we talked about? Zach? It means that it's all that we need for life and godliness. Excellent. Yes, the Bible is sufficient, Scripture is sufficient to inform our evangelism. Our sanctification, our Christian growth. How are we to impact the culture? For lack of a better term, social impact. Ministry, that's what we talked about, that scripture is sufficient for these things. That we don't need to go outside of it, that God doesn't just throw it back on us and say, you figure the rest of it out on your own. Scripture is sufficient. And then two weeks ago, we talked about Solus Christus. Christ alone. Defined it kind of as Jesus Christ as our Savior has accomplished everything necessary for our salvation. We consider here that adding to Christ's work is a perversion of the gospel and indeed it's no gospel at all. We talked about how The Roman Catholic Church said, okay, yes, you do need Christ, but you also need these things as well. You need these good works. You need this merit. You can pray to Mary, you can pray to the saints, you can look to them for help in completing your salvation. We look at the Galatian heresy in the book of Galatians where Judaizers were saying, yes, Jesus Christ is great, but you also have to be circumcised and you have to follow some of the laws in the Old Testament if you really want to be saved. We talked about how this can creep into churches today as well. Jesus is fine and good, but what you really need for the higher life, for the good life, are these additional principles and steps. And we talk about how so often in our worship, churches in general, the focus shifts from Christ and Him crucified to more about us. My felt needs. My need for inspiration. Give me something practical so that I can get out and it can make a real difference in my life. Give me something that I can put into use today and right now. Everybody knows about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Let's go on to bigger and better things. And so we talked about how Christ alone in our day touches on every area of faith and practice. Our Christian life, sanctification, our worship, Our church life. Solus Christus means that Christ is central to our justification, how we are converted and brought into a right standing with God. Christ is also central to our sanctification as well, how we continue to grow and mature as Christians. We never go beyond the gospel, for lack of a better term. And it's central to the life and ministry and calling of the church. Christ and Him crucified encapsulates everything about why we're here today on Sunday morning and what we do here as a church. Courtney, would you make sure the heat is turned up, please? Alright, so that's a review. Any questions? Any comments? Thoughts? Objections? Before we move on? Yes, Cody, of course. Just kidding, just kidding. Well, you and I were talking a couple weeks ago about ourselves versus, and she brought up a good point that in Protestantism today, Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. The sufficiency of Christ, just like the sufficiency of Scripture. It's almost as if we get bored with it, or we think that it's not enough, that we think instinctively that we need something more. There's a great book on that. Ordinary by Mike Horton, right? There's this need to, this feeling we get that we need to be radical, that we need something extravagant in our Christian life when it's really more about the simple things that God has freely given us in the gospel and in the scriptures. I actually got some really helpful feedback from a number of you last week or two weeks ago on Christ alone and how it applies and some great stuff and I'm like where was this during the Sunday school hour like you guys didn't talk at all so don't let that happen again. Alright today we're going to talk about grace alone and we have a lot to cover so I don't think, I'm not sure we're going to get through it all. This is really central and I just put together a bunch of material and I didn't really feel like, you know, choosing what needed to be edited and so I just left it all in there. If we don't get through it, We'll pick it back up next week. But our goal today, here's the outline for today. We are going to talk about historically, what does grace alone, what did it mean in regards to the Protestant Reformation? We're going to look at it doctrinally. Does scripture actually teach this and where? And we're going to talk practically as well. Why does it still matter in relation to the Christian life and the Christian church? So, before we begin, let's define grace. Grace alone. What is grace? Our definition of it is actually very, very important here. What is grace? Who can offer some suggestions? There's no right or wrong answers here. Zack. Unmerited favor. Favor from who? From who? Say what? Okay, but in relation to what we're talking about here, favor from God. Yeah, I could show, yeah, I could show you grace, you know, it would be favor from me in that sense, but unmerited favor in relation to what we're talking about today is favor from God. People, you guys agree with that? Oscar? Yes, yeah, I'm going to talk about that in just a second, actually. G-R-A-C-E. God's riches at Christ's expense. So, what do I have? Well, a simple definition from the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Grace is unmerited benevolence. Zach? Unearned, unmerited favor from God. And it's God's riches, it's Christ's expense. You guys are mind readers, apparently. The only caveat with this second one is that some argue that God shows grace, at least in some respect, to all humanity. God gives the blessings of life and happiness to all people, whether they're Christians or not. So the question is whether He does so on the basis of His inherent nature and goodness towards all men as a Creator and Father, or because of Christ. And that's where there's a debate. God's riches at Christ's expense won't please everybody, but I think it definitely gives us a good idea of what grace is. It's not something that God gives to us because we deserve it, because we do anything to earn it, because we're worthy of it. Cody? Well, I know it's a small thing, but I think it's important. Would it not be better to say that it's ill merit? Yes. Yeah, it's not what you're saying is it's not only that we haven't done something to deserve it, but we've actually done something to deserve the opposite, right? Yeah. That's a good way. Actually, I'm going to talk about that in a different respect at the end. Sophie? We're going to talk about it in regards to saving grace, not general blessing. But the term is elastic in some sense. And again, some people really deny common grace. Well, grace is only salvific. I disagree with that because I think that common grace, there is such a thing as common grace, that God does show favor, unmerited goodness, demerited goodness and favor towards the unregenerate, the unbelievers. But it's really a quibble over terms, whether we should call that grace or maybe we should call it mercy. That's a whole nother discussion. I actually talked about that when we went through the covenants a few months ago. And I talked about the Noahic covenant. And I argued for it being a covenant of common grace. But that's a little bit off topic. Today we're talking about it in relation to salvation, just to be clear. So, here we go. more specifically in relation to salvation. I'm searching for a definition of grace here. This is a working definition. Gratia, kris in the Greek, is the divine operation by which the sinful heart and mind are regenerated and the continuing divine power or operation that cleanses, strengthens, and sanctifies the regenerate. This is from Mueller's Dictionary of Greek and Latin terms from Scholastic Theology, an excellent resource. But think about this. Grace is divine operation. That means it's divine work. It's God's power, God's work in us And what does that work do? It regenerates, that brings new life, right? To justify, to save, to put us in a right standing with God so that we're not objects of His wrath, but we have salvation and eternal life. And also it's divine work, divine operation that sanctifies, cleanses us. leads us to greater holiness, and of course, glorifies us as well. And this is really important as we understand grace in this respect. Because the essence of it is that sinful man cannot do these things in and of himself. And every single tradition in Christian history agrees with that. Even the Roman Catholic Church. This is God's work in us. The Roman Catholic Church will definitely say, for you to be saved, you need divine operation inside of you. You need God's work to regenerate and to save. Everybody agrees with that. Unless you're a pagan, which is, a pagan, sorry, a Pelagian, same difference, right? Ooh, I'm gonna get in trouble for that one. Unless you are a Pelagian, which argues that man is inherently good and can accomplish salvation all on his own, it is a heresy that has been denounced in more church councils than any other heresy, including by the Roman Catholic Church. Unless you're a Pelagian, you recognize that grace, divine operation, is necessary for salvation. And even Pelagius himself would say, well, grace does have a role in that. So it will be clear on the definition of grace before we get started. God divinely working inside of us to save and sanctify. Any questions here? As I said before, everybody sees the need for grace. Everybody. But in the Protestant Reformation, what exactly it accomplishes, and how it actually is obtained, how grace comes to us, was essential debate. James Montgomery Boyce said that grace was the material cause of the Reformation. This was the big issue. It kind of underlined everything. So again, everybody agrees that God's grace is necessary for salvation, that salvation is by grace, but the Reformers, of course, stress the idea of grace alone. It is grace alone. So let's historically here consider Roman Catholicism in relation to grace. In Roman Catholicism, grace, God's divine favor in working within you, can be earned or received through their seven sacraments, which I covered a few weeks ago, by performing good works, By purchasing indulgences, you could actually buy grace. You know, that's crazy, but it's true. In Roman Catholicism, if you made a donation to the building of the Vatican, you could get grace. Suffering in purgatory is a way that you can earn or receive grace. even at the discretion of the Pope. The Pope can unilaterally just decide to say, I give you this measure of grace. So here in Roman Catholicism, saints are enabled to, by grace, complete their salvation. In other words, grace is that divine operation that works within you so that you can complete what is necessary for your salvation. Does that make sense? Let's make sure everyone's clear on that. It's not that Roman Catholicism says you're saved by works. all on your own. That's the Pelagian heresy that they also condemn. They say, no, no, no, no, no, no. God's grace produces good works in you, which completes your salvation. Yes, they would say that, yes. Yes, yes, so in Protestantism we hold a doctrine of forensic justification, that we are declared in the courtroom of God's, in God's courtroom of justice to be justified. It's not because we are actually righteous We are declared righteous on the basis of Christ. Rome argues, no, you actually have to be righteous, like physically righteous. You can't just, God just can't call you righteous. You have to, so that either happens through good works and if you don't, you know, do enough, you suffer in purgatory till eventually you're made righteous through your suffering there. And when you attain to that righteousness, then you enter heaven. Yes, the Roman Catholic never has assurance of their standing before God. Unless you're the Pope. It's pretty nice to be a Pope. I mean, let's just be honest. See, that's a cool deal. No, they would say that. Yes. Merited. Deserved. Purchased. That's what Luther argued and that's what I'm about to say. Yes. Well, with that definition, I'm presupposing the Protestant definition. If you want to think back really more closely to what they would hold, grace is simply God's divine work within us. Exactly, yeah. I mean, in some sense they would argue, okay, yeah, it's not that, you know, God owes us grace, but in practice, and in practical theology, they have a doctrine of it can be earned and merited. I'm gonna contrast this in a second so you get all of this. In Roman Catholicism, it begins in infant baptism. Baptism washes away original sin and places one in the context or the arena of grace. Kind of like baptized into the covenant of grace, our Presbyterian friends, you can see where they got that. Alright, I'm going to stop right there, sorry. Baptism puts an infant in the context, the arena, it puts them in the game. Now they're in that place where they can then pursue more and more grace to attain salvation. The Eucharist for them, the Mass. is grace inside of you. That's why they stick so firmly to their doctrine of transubstantiation. The bread is actually the physical body of Christ and it physically goes inside of you and it's in your stomach. That is grace in a tangible form inside of you and that transforms you into more righteousness. It's very medieval nominalism and mysticism. Good works earn more grace, and the more and more grace that you have, the more and more you can attain and work to your salvation. And their central dogma, especially during the Reformation was, this is translated from Latin, but to those who do what is in them, God will not deny grace. You get what that means? To those who do what is in them, God will not deny grace. To those who, in a sense, God will reward your best efforts with whatever it is that you've been given. Everyone has something inside of them. God gives some a great measure, like the Pope or the saints. He gives others small measure. But there's something good inside of everyone. And if you're just faithful to do good with what God has given you, God will not deny you grace. Exactly. modern day god helps those who help themselves everyone or maybe you've heard um In Protestantism, what about people who live in the remote parts of the world who never hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Do they have an opportunity to be saved? You'll hear the response, well, everybody has something within them, and if they just reach out in some measure, God will save them. So everybody has a chance. That is this right here. applied to that situation. It's Roman Catholicism. Yeah, that's a hard question to answer. Part of it is that the church really has gotten away from their core teachings in some sense. In many respects also, I mean, think about it, this system and their understanding of justification and the Christian life isn't really inspiring as well. It leads to some miserable living. Part of it is purgatory. It doesn't really matter. No matter how hard you try, unless you're the Pope, you're going to go to purgatory. And that's where it all gets burned off anyway. So, I mean, there's a lot of difficult ways that we can answer that question. So let's talk about this in relation to the Reformers. Grace alone to the Reformers meant that God's grace is not just necessary for salvation, everybody agrees that, but it's the soul-efficient cause of our salvation from the beginning to the end. I underlined that, soul-efficient, because that's the two key words in this phrase. It is the only, efficient cause of our salvation from the beginning to the end. Man is dead in sin by nature. We are unable to contribute anything to our salvation. And this covers even contribution enabled by the work of grace in the Spirit within us. This is how Roman Catholic dogma gets smuggled into Protestant churches. Well, It's the Spirit who causes our good works. And so, that's by grace. The Spirit is cooperating with you. There's a working together. No. The Reformers argued that salvation is by God's eternal, unconditional favor, grace alone, through faith alone. from beginning to end. That doesn't mean that we don't respond in faith. It doesn't mean we don't respond with holy living. It doesn't mean we don't play some role in our sanctification. But ultimately it comes down to God's grace within us. It is entirely unearned and unmerited favor. So here, just a contrast at point by point, and then I'll see if there's any questions. In Rome, grace is a gift from God. Uh-oh, what did you do? My Wi-Fi is down, uh-oh. Let's try this again. There we go. Oh, hang with me. Grace, in Rome, grace is a gift from God, but a gift that can be earned by trying your best, for lack of a better term. It can be deserved, God owes it to you. It could be bought, et cetera. But to the reformers, grace is always and only given, cannot be earned or merited. It is a one-way street. Humans can never deserve it whatsoever. To Rome, grace is God's work in you that helps you complete your salvation. How cool is that? You don't have to do it all your own. God can help you. He will help you. But to the Reformer's grace by itself is what completes our salvation. You don't do anything for your salvation. Christ has done it all. To the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Romans chapter four. To Rome, man cooperates with grace. Man cooperates with God's divine operation within us, but to the Reformers, man is passive in receiving grace. It is the gift of God. A little bit of redundancy here, but just to illustrate so that we're clear. In Rome, the sacraments dispense grace in and of themselves, and this works automatically, right? You're baptized as an infant. You got grace. You receive the Eucharist. It doesn't matter if you have faith or not. It doesn't matter if you believe or not. It doesn't matter anything. You have that grace inside of you. It works automatically. It works just by participating in the ritual. But to the Reformers, the sacraments are better seen as means of grace. They are channels of grace. There are ways in which God promises to give us grace, but they only do so through living in true faith in Jesus Christ. Another way of putting this, and I want to be careful in how I say it, but it's true in some sense, is that faith is the true and proper means of grace. The means of grace, of course, are preaching and teaching and the Lord's Supper and baptism and prayer, but those are channels, those are ways in which God gives us grace, his divine favor, his promises, but none of those are efficient apart from faith. It doesn't work automatically. And then in Rome, grace doesn't completely save, it only prepares and helps people to be saved. While to the Reformers, Luther argued, grace comes before all and grace finishes all. It completely saves. Any questions, historically, before we move on? You guys good? Where is this taught in Scripture? Hey, my next slide. Alright, we don't have time to read it all, but a key text here as we turn now to defend this idea of grace from Scripture would be Ephesians 1, 3-14. Starts with, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And it goes on from there. And what I want to point out from this, again I'm going to move quickly instead of just reading it, what I want to point out from this is a few points. Verse three, blessed be God who has blessed us. Paul starts with this benediction of blessing in this sense because God's action is that one-way street here. Blessed be God because he has blessed us. How has he blessed us? Well, he starts where? At the very beginning. He chose us before the foundation of the world. Grace comes before all. God's choosing, predestining, is the beginning of our salvation and that is by grace. He predestined us according to His will to the praise of His glorious grace. It's not to the praise of anything in us. It began with Him and the praise goes to His grace. That's what Paul says very clearly. 7-10, in Him, in Jesus Christ. We have all these salvific blessings according to the riches of His grace and according to His purpose. Again, Paul comes back to grace and says, not only are you predestined and is that by grace, but also these blessings that you experience now are according to the riches of His grace. Verses 11 through 14, this is all to the praise of His glory. And through the indwelling Spirit, it means that it is certain, and sure, and firm, and unfading. This grace is not something that can fail to complete what it began, because of the Spirit. He says there, the Spirit is the seal. And the Spirit is what confirms to us that the grace that started within us will complete its work, and we have assurance of that. He doesn't get around to talking about our part in anything until he gets to verse 13. After all of this, he says, you heard the word of truth and believed. This is the means by which all these things came to you. You heard the word of truth and believed. And we go down again. Sorry about that. So you can pay attention to me for a second until this comes back up. This is the beginning of our salvation, the favor of God upon us before the world was made, predestined, chosen in Christ. This is the accomplishment of our salvation. Paul mentions the redemption that we have through his blood, Jesus Christ coming and dying for us. This is the in-breaking of salvation into our lives here and now when we heard the word of truth and believed in him. This is the completion of our salvation. Paul says, through the indwelling Spirit, which is the seal of our inheritance until we are fully ushered in into the reality of these things and everything is fully and finally accomplished. So from this passage we see that God and not human beings is the sole efficient cause of our salvation from beginning to end. Another passage in Ephesians. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no man may boast. For you Greek students here, yes, yes, I'm gonna do this. We have a few. See that underlined word right there? That's grace. I'm not gonna put you on the spot, okay? But I want to point you to the tense of that grace, that word grace. It's in the dative, right? So, yeah, there's the article and there's the ending. You know, charisse is the normal kind of dictionary, lexical, whatever you call it, form of the noun. But here it's in the dative. What does that tell us? What does it mean that it's in the date of...? It means that grace is the cause. That's why it says, by grace. The word by is not in the Greek. B-Y. Alright? For grace you are, have been saved. Grace is the cause, have been saved, of our salvation. Grace, God's work, is what brought it about. It's the cause, again, of our salvation. We might say it is because of grace, or on the basis of grace, you have been saved. And that's why it's translated by grace. And the means is through faith. How is it accomplished? Through faith. But the basis upon which is accomplished is grace. Make sense? Romans 3, 23-24, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified. I don't know what's going on with this thing but are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. All have sinned, fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift. Pretty clear here. We're justified by grace, not by our works. Grace, again, is the cause of our justification. And this grace is a gift. It's not something that's earned or merited or deserved. As a gift, Paul says. Apologize for the technical difficulties. As a gift. It is the cause as a gift and A practical kind of implication of this is that if God owes everyone this grace, it's not a gift. If we must choose this gift, our justification isn't by grace, it is ultimately by our own choice. This is how personal merit is smuggled in the back door of Protestantism. As Luther said, and I think it was Cody who said earlier, if grace depends upon our cooperation, it's no longer grace. It's help, but it's no longer grace. All right. I'm just going to close with this and then we'll take questions because we don't have time to get to the rest. We'll get to it next week. Doctrinally speaking, our confession has a very robust doctrine of grace. One place it's seen is in chapter 10, verse 2. The effectual call of God to salvation, that is, is of God's free and special grace alone It is not from anything at all foreseen in man, so God doesn't see how you're going to act and then decide to give you grace. Nor from any power or agency in the creature. It's not because you've done anything. But being wholly passive therein, we are passive because we are dead in sin. We are quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit by God's free and special grace alone. If there is anything in man that is the determining cause of our salvation, it is no longer by grace. That's what they're trying to say here. Grace through the Spirit is what quickens and renews so that we respond in faith. All right. We're not going to get to this. Does it still matter? But we do have a moment if you'd like to ask any questions or comments, closing thoughts. Shelton. So I think to really appreciate comments, you're going to have to have a really high view of just how simple and how hard. Absolutely. But with that comes the consequence of saying, oh my gosh. So how do you come to a place where you're not competing with the sufficiency of the cross? Like my sin is outweighing what Jesus did. How do you come to that place of saying, oh my sin doesn't compare with what Jesus did? It's a dilemma personally that I'm struggling with. How do I know that that's greater than what I've done? Yeah, I'm trying to understand exactly what you mean by that. Are you talking about in the sense of like, when we understand our sin, we're almost driven to despair? Feeling of unworthiness? Yeah, that is difficult. I mean, the best way I would address it would be, that is why the Christian life is a continual infatuation with the cross. And why God at times leaves us to our own sin. Lets us fall in very scandalous and sometimes deep personal sinfulness to remind us of just how Forgiving and gracious He is in Christ. Yeah, that's a hard question to answer. Amber? I feel like that would be the importance of understanding the sufficiency of the person of Christ. When we're overburdened by our sins, the assurance we have is the sufficiency of what Christ did for us. So it's not that our sin is greater than what He did for us. It's that what He did for us is sufficient enough to save us. Yeah, yeah, and it kind of goes back to what you said. It really is about Christ in that sense, and not letting the focus turn to us. You know, Robert Murray McShane, I say it all the time around here, but he said, for every one look you take at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. And self-focus and self-love can manifest itself in so many ways, even with this, oh gosh, oh shucks, I'm such a sinner, and you get so kind of consumed with that, that you fail to do what the Bible exhorts us to do, which is look to the author and finisher of your salvation. Yeah, that's a good book. And it can take so many forms, and it appears to be so pietistic, you know? I'm such a sinner, I'm such a sinner. But at the end of the day, Christian life is all about communion with Jesus Christ, and looking and trusting and hoping in Him by faith alone. Great question though. Josh? What would the Roman Catholic Church consider some of the verses that you brought up? It seems so clear. That's a good question. Obviously, they would interpret them through the lens of their tradition and argue that it's really not up to you or me to interpret that, but the church tradition has the final say in what those verses mean. And the Pope as well. I mean, that would probably be the bigger issue. What they would say specifically, I'm not sure. I do have a Roman Catholic Study Bible. I could look that up and get back to you on that. Yeah, there actually is one. But again, they would argue that grace is necessary. But at the end of the day, they define it differently. They define what grace is differently. And they have a different doctrine as well of how we receive it. So, that's probably the best way I can answer. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Anything else? I hate it that we can't talk about how it still matters. That's the whole point of our study. But we'll have plenty of time to talk about it next week if you come back then. But let's go ahead and close in prayer.