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Well, this morning we want to
continue in our study on the doctrine of the Reformation and
the importance of the Reformation. I told you last Sunday that it
would be practically impossible for me to cover the entire Reformation
thought in one message. So I've considered to try to
do it in two. And after doing that, I've considered
it will take three. You know, when you talk about
grace and you talk about the exclusivity of Christ in the
gospel, it's very difficult to just summarize that in just a
couple of verses. So I have a difficult time with
that because as I'm studying these things and I'm reminded
of these things, my mind just is flooded with scripture after
scripture after scripture of these great truths that really
are the central thought of what you and I believe. They are what
we stand for and they are the eternal truth of the gospel that
give us, no doubt, the clear picture of what God expects of
us for salvation. So with that thought in mind,
I'd like you to turn again to Romans chapter three, and we're
just using this passage as a launching pad to begin this study as we'll
go through a number of other passages this morning and consider
what the Reformation taught that was central to the gospel of
Christ. Romans chapter three and looking
at verse 19 and following, we find some great words that tell
us in great detail what really the gospel is all about. Romans
chapter three, verse 19. Listen to these words. He says,
now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who
are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and that
all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the
deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness
of God apart from the law was revealed, being witnessed by
the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through
faith in Jesus Christ to all and upon all who believe, for
there is no difference. For all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set
forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith, demonstrate
his righteousness because in his forbearance, God has passed
over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at this
present time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. The word
Bible comes from a word papyrus plant, biblios, since the leaves
of that plant were used to make the paper upon which the Bible
was written. Ancient Bibles were sometimes
written on parchment from sheep and goat skins. It could require
as much as an entire flock of sheep to provide the material
for a fourth century New Testament. The cost of the Bible in the
13th century could require the entire salary of one year for
a priest. By 400 A.D., the Bible had been
translated into 500 languages. By 500 A.D., the Bible had been
reduced to one language, Latin. That was the language considered
to be of the educated people, not the common people. The church
then was cast into what we know historically as the dark ages.
And it wasn't until the Reformation that the church was reacquainted
and returned to the truth of the gospel. Now last week, whenever
we began to look at this whole topic of the importance of the
Reformation, we saw just the beginning things that led Martin
Luther to conclude that there was a need for Reformation or
the need for truth to be reconsidered in scripture. In our last study
we looked at, we consider that Martin Luther finally had a chance
to make a pilgrimage to Rome. What Luther saw in Rome disillusioned
him. As he watched the incompetent,
flippant, cynical lit clergy performing their holy duties,
he began to experience doubts about what the Catholic church
taught. He wrote in his own words of his journey, they had gone
with onions and he returned with garlic. And those doubts, of
course, began to grow as he studied the epistles of Paul and studied
the letters of Paul, specifically Romans and the book of Galatians.
And he began to learn and began to see that the Bible taught
that forgiveness came through crucifixion of Christ alone,
that it was not through the holy orders of the Roman Catholic
church or the sacraments of the church or the priest or the Pope. Luther's understanding of Paul's
theology led him to view skeptically that the Catholic Church's reliance
upon the practice of selling indulgences was in fact something
that was not true. You remember what indulgences
were? They were basically those things that they would sell for
the forgiveness of sin. You could pay money to the Roman
Catholic Church, and in that money being paid to the Roman
Catholic Church, you could receive what they believed to be forgiveness
of sins. Luther argued that the forgiveness
of sins came from within, from Christ alone, and not through
the priest, and not through the pope, and not through confession,
and not through penitence, and not through the selling of indulgences. Luther, of course, as we learned
last week in an angry response to the indulgences being sold,
he prepared in Latin a placard and he placed it on the door
of the Wittenberg Castle Church. It was called the 95 Theses.
It was basically 95 arguments against the Roman Catholic practices
of indulgences and the authority of the Pope and what the Roman
Catholic Church taught. He taught, in fact, or rather
he wrote in those 95 theses, he asked this, he says, if the
Pope does have the power to release anyone from purgatory, then why
in the name and the love of God does he not abolish purgatory
and let everyone go? Luther complained also went to
the church's topic and teaching that justification for promoting
contributions. He complained about the revenues
of all Christendom being sucked into this insatiable basilica
church when there was much more greater needs, including the
living temples and actual local churches. When a copy of Luther's
95 theses finally reached Rome, the Pope, according to some accounts,
said Luther is a drunken German. And he'll finally sober up and
he'll change his mind. Well, that didn't happen because
what happened is Luther's reception began to grow and the public
began to embrace what he had to say because those 95 theses
were taken from his door on the church at Wittenberg by his students
and copied by this newly invented device called the Gutenberg Press.
And it was distributed all throughout Germany. And so as a result,
now the Pope began to understand that Luther was more of a threat
than he first thought. One of the cardinals was finally
sent to interview Luther on three occasions in October 12th through
the 14th in 1518. The cardinal told him that he
must recant his views on the indulgences and papal infallibility
and Luther refused. On the issue of papal infallibility,
Luther said, I deny that he is above scripture. Frederick the
Wise, who was in charge, and you could say, quote, president
of the University of Wittenberg, where he, of course, really loved
Luther and believed Luther was his best and greatest professor
and teacher and doctor. He actually subpoenaed, if you
could say, the Roman church and said, we ought to at least give
him an opportunity to have a hearing here at the university to see
whether or not he truly is a heretic and give him an opportunity to
defend what he says is correct. The fame of Luther, however,
continued to spread. He wrote a number of books in
that time. From the time of that cardinal coming to him and interviewing
him to 1520, Luther wrote the books called The Sermon of Good
Works, The Papacy in Rome, The Babylonian Captivity, The Freedom
of Christian Men. The Babylonian Captivity was
especially a controversial book because it, of course, questioned
all but two of the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church.
Rome, however, had not forgotten Martin Luther. On June 15th,
1520, Pope Leo X sent a papal bull out that basically said
that Martin Luther was going to be excommunicated if he did
not recant 41 of the 95 theses. Luther himself describes the
scene the next day whenever he was brought to be questioned,
and I quote, at four in the afternoon, the imperial chamberlain, And
the herald who had accompanied him from Wittenberg came to him
at his inn at the court of Germany and conducted him to the town
hall along the byways in order to avoid the crowds which had
assembled in the leading streets. Because you understand Luther
was very popular at this time and they were very interested
in what was going to happen when Martin Luther defended his faith
and what he believed. The archbishop named John Eck
was actually brought there that day to question him. And upon
looking at the pile of books that were placed there at the
Diet of Worms there, he said to Martin Luther, are these books
yours? And Martin Luther said, I think
those books are mine. And then he asked him again,
are you sure? Are these books yours? And he
said, yes, the books are mine. He said, will you recant the
doctrines that are in it? And Luther answered cautiously
saying, I would not want to be rash. It's dangerous for me to
reply to such a question until I have had time to meditate upon
these things in silence and in retreat, lest I incur the anger
of our Lord. And while expressing surprise,
the professor of theology could not answer the question immediately
granted Luther's request to give him time to think it over. Well,
the next day at six o'clock, Luther entered the large hall
that was filled to overflowing at this time and demanded, explain
yourself now. Will you defend all your writings
or will you recant them now? Luther saw an opportunity to
give a speech and a preacher would always do that. He was
not going to answer yes or no. So he said, well, first of all,
consider that my writings do not all treat of the same matter. Some of them are perceptive,
destined for the edification of the faithful and for the advancement
of piety. And Luther then described the
second class of writings, those in which I attack the papacy
and the belief of the papist, the monstrosities involved in
the ruin of sound doctrine in men's souls, He brashly asserted
that the Pope's decrees have often brought utter disorder
to Christianity, have surprised, imprisoned, and tortured the
faith of the faithful contrary to the gospel. And if he were
to retract these writings, Luther said, he would then lend additional
strength to the audacity of the Roman tyranny and open the floodgates
to this torrent of impiety, making it to be a breach by which all
would rush in and overwhelm the Christian world. Finally, Luther
said, there's a third class of works here in my books, and they
are those that I attack my theological adversaries. For these writings,
Luther offered a small apology. He said, and I quote, I have
no hesitation in admitting that in these I have shown greater
violence than befitted a man of my calling. I do not set up
for a sane. I do not say that my conduct
has been above reproach. Nonetheless, Luther refused to
disavow and to recant these writings as well. as he knew that that
would of course cause Rome to make use of his disavowal and
to extend his kingdom or their kingdom upon those men and oppress
their souls. Luther would not back down. Only if he could be convinced,
he said, of his errors on the basis of scripture and scripture
alone, might he be willing to offer a retraction. And he said
he would even throw his own books into the fire himself. Well,
Eck found Luther's answer invasive. He said again, Martin, answer
candidly and without horns. Do you or do you not recant your
books and the errors which it contains? And Luther replied,
since your imperial majesty and lordships demand a simple answer,
I will give you one without teeth and without horns. Unless I am
convinced of error by the testimony of scripture or by manifest evidence,
I cannot and will not recant. For we must never act contrary
to conscience. Here I stand. God help me. Amen. Now last time we looked
at that, we considered actually the first of five solas that
the Reformation taught. Now this is not something necessarily
that Martin Luther penned himself, but these are really summations
of what the Reformation taught about the gospel. Martin Luther
was dealing with a lot of the theology of the Roman Catholic
Church and a lot of the things of indulgences and papal authority,
but through it all emerged out of that debate and out of that
thrust of the Reformation a really crystallized understanding of
what the gospel is, and a crystallized understanding of what you and
I are expected by God to do, if you want to say it like that,
to receive salvation. Out of those came what we know
as the solas, solas Latin for alone, and they are five solas. The first is sola scriptura,
which means that it is the scripture alone by which we have the truth
of heaven and hell and God and Christ and salvation. The second
is sola Christos, which means that it is Christ alone that
saves. And then the third is sola gratia,
which means it is grace alone that saves. And sola fide is
the fourth one that means it is by faith alone by which you
receive the salvation offered in Christ alone. And then the
last and concluding one is sola deo gloria, which basically means
that it is all for the glory of God alone and not the church
and not man. Now the first one we looked at
was Sola Scriptura. We won't go into that in great
detail again because it basically summarizes all that we believe
here and that we understand that the Bible teaches that it is
the sole authority for anything considering faith and practice.
In other words, if you want to know anything about what the
Bible says about heaven or hell or sin or judgment or salvation. It is the scripture. It is not
the church. It is not a pope. It is not some
other hierarchy of religious order that has the authority
to tell you how you are to get to heaven. All you have to do
is go back to the word of God and it is the sole authority.
What it says has the final authority on what a man is required of
to get to heaven. As we've been reading and looking
at in this Cambridge Declaration that was compiled by R.C. Sproul
and James Boyce and Michael Horton, they were reaffirming what we
all know the Bible teaches in the Sola Scriptura and the other
Solas of the Reformation. And they were reaffirming this
because there has been a constant attack in the last few years
on the very doctrines that we hold to that are central to the
gospel of Christ. It has been over the last few
years eroded away. I am thankful to God that there
is a resurgent of reformed churches throughout America, particularly
reformed Baptist churches, because I believe that they are coming
back, but there is a fight that has been ensued as a result of
this resurgent of reformed doctrine. There are many out there that
are denying these truths. There are many out there that
are saying simply by default that they don't really matter.
But they are central and they are important and you and I must
affirm them and without them we will lose our way. We will
not know what the gospel is. So the first thesis of Sola Scriptura
according to the Cambridge Declaration was, and I quote, we reaffirm
the inerrant scripture to be the sole source of written divine
revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone
teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and
is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.
We deny that any creed, council, or individual may bind the Christian
conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently or contrary
to what is set forth in the Bible. or that personal spiritual experience
can ever be a vehicle for revelation. Did you get what it meant? Did
you understand what they're saying? In other words, it doesn't matter
what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter
what a group of theologians think. What matters is what the Word
of God says. It doesn't matter if a church
claims to have authority. It doesn't matter if a group
of men claim to have an authority. It doesn't matter if you and
I have some special spiritual experience and we claim that
some angel came and told us something unique about the gospel. The
only thing that has authority in our lives on these matters
of faith and practice is the word of God. Now the second one
I want to consider this morning as we pick up where we left off,
and that is Sola Christos, and that is a reference to the fact
that Jesus Christ is the only means by which someone is saved.
Or you could say it like this, that Jesus Christ is the only
mediator between God and man. There is no need to go to a priest
and confess your sin to another man. There is no need to go to
some hierarchy of religious order and say, you know what, I've
got to come to you and expect you to help me get to heaven.
You, by yourself, can go to God through Jesus Christ alone. You
do not need any other religious order or any other church. In
fact, I'll go as far as to say, even though I am a strong supporter
of corporate assembly of the church, that you do not have
to have a church to be saved. You can be out in the middle
of some land somewhere far away and you can be brought to the
gospel through the works of a missionary effort or something like that
and you could hear the gospel and you could come to Christ
apart from any organized local assembly. You do not need any
of that. Sola Christos, according to the
Cambridge Declaration, when they were talking about the erosion
of our Christ-centered faith, says this, and I quote, as evangelical
faith becomes secularized, its interests have become blurred
with those of the culture. The result is the loss of absolute
values, permissive individualism, and the substitution of wholeness
for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling
for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for
enduring hope. Christ and His cross have moved
from the center of our vision, and I am in 100% agreement with
that because you see it in the churches. More of it now today
is, what can I do to make sure that I feel good whenever I come
to church? What is it that I can do to help
the culture come into my church so I dumb down my theology, I
dumb down my beliefs, I dumb down my approach to worship so
that the world will be willing to come and to sit at the feet
of the gospel? Well, the problem is with that
we have decentralized Christ. We have removed Christ from the
center of our worship. We have removed Christ from the
center of the truth of the gospel. The Reformation called the church
back to faith in Jesus Christ alone as the sole mediator between
God and man. The Roman church tried, of course,
to teach that there was a place called purgatory and that souls
could be detained there and helped there by intercessions of the
faithful and that saints were to be venerated and invoked and
that the relics of the church were to be venerated and invoked. And the reformers taught that
salvation was by Christ alone and through Christ alone and
all. That's it. That's all you get. You don't need the church.
You don't need the relics. You don't need purgatory. John
Calvin said in his Institutes of Christian Religion, and I
quote, Christ stepped in, took the punishment upon himself,
and bore the judgment due to sinners. Jesus Christ stepped
in. He's the one who took our place. He's the one who indeed is the
one who gives us salvation alone. This is also taught, or has been
said that it is, to be the exclusivity of Christ or the doctrine of
the exclusivity of Christ. Now that sounds rather harsh
when you hear that word because often we talk about the gospel
being for everyone and that everyone should have an opportunity to
hear the gospel and we send out missionaries and we support missionaries
to go and spread the gospel to the whole world and then how
do we believe this doctrine called the exclusivity of Christ? And
what we're simply saying is that we believe that the gospel teaches
that Jesus Christ exclusively is the only one that saves. So
that means that we cannot agree and that we do not agree with
other religions that teach that Jesus Christ does not alone save.
And that if you embrace any other gospel that says anything else
other than that Jesus Christ alone saves, then you are not
teaching the true gospel and you are in error and in fact
you are teaching heresy. The Bible teaches clearly that
Jesus Christ is exclusively the only way. That's why it is absolutely
important. It is absolutely important that
you and I understand the necessity of evangelism and the necessity
of missions. May I go as far as to say, as
we'll talk about a little bit later in BE, that we need to
understand the necessity of praying for those who are involved in
missions and evangelism. Because what they are sharing
is the number one and the only exclusive message out there that
Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. In other words, listen
to it like this, if they don't get that message, If they don't
get that Jesus Christ is the only way, and if they don't believe
that Jesus alone is the one who provides salvation for their
souls, they will miss heaven altogether. They will not go
to heaven. That's what is so important about
that. Jesus' own words in a few scriptures that remind us of
this great truth of Sola Christos is found in John 14, 6. You know
this very well. Jesus said to them, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me. Jesus wasn't saying that I'm
one of many ways that I and the church can get you saved, that
I and religion can get you saved. He says, I am the way he uses
the definite article, the referring to the fact that he is the only
exclusive way. He is the only exclusive truth.
He is the only exclusive life there. There is no life apart
from Christ. There is no truth apart from
Christ. And there is no way apart from Christ. Jesus made it clear
when he went on to say in verse 14 or chapter 14 verse 6 of John
He says no one comes to the father except through me So you can
say all day long that you believe some church says this or some
person said that or some revel revelation revelation that you
receive from so-and-so said this But listen, Jesus Christ says
it clearly, no one comes to heaven to the Father, the same thing,
apart from going through Him. He is the only mediator between
God and man. Acts chapter 4 verse 12 says,
Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other
name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So whether it's Buddhism, Mormonism,
Islam, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah Witnesses, Hinduism, all of these
religions that we hear about and all of these false doctrines
that are being pumped out throughout the world, we have to understand
that when people adhere to those doctrines, they will not go to
heaven. They will not make it there.
We can rationalize it all we want. We can say, well, maybe
they believe that Jesus is the way, but they also affirm this
other doctrine. Listen, Jesus said this, if you do not believe
that I am the only way, you will not get there. That's why we
have to be so definitive about this doctrine. We have to be
so clear about this doctrine of the fact that Jesus Christ
is the only way, the sola Christos, that Jesus Christ is the only
way to heaven. Romans chapter five, verse one
and two says, therefore having been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It comes through
Him. Ephesians 2 verse 18, for through
Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father, through
Jesus. Hebrews 7, 25, therefore He also
is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through
Him. through Jesus. John 3 verse 16 through 18 says
the familiar words to us, for God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him, right,
should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his
son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
through him might be saved. John 3, 36 says, he who believes
in the son has everlasting life. And he who does not believe the
son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. So
you and I affirm, and we believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus
Christ alone is the one who can bring a man to God. There is
no other way. The church cannot bring you there.
Religion cannot bring you there. Baptism cannot bring you there.
Communion cannot bring you there. Only Jesus Christ can. And so
the declaration, the Cambridge declaration affirms, we reaffirm
that our salvation is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the
historic Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary
atonement alone are sufficient for our justification and the
reconciliation to the father. There is no need for anything
else. They go on to say, we deny that the gospel is preached if
Christ's substitutionary work is not declared. In other words,
you can't say you're preaching Jesus if you're not preaching
Jesus is exclusively the way to heaven. You cannot say that
you're preaching the gospel, the good news, if you're not
saying, again, that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. Now,
I know that that does not settle well with our tolerant society
that we have. I understand that people get
offended at that. I know that whenever you say
that certain religions and certain forms of religion are not necessarily
true and that they're going to send people to hell, that makes
people upset. But the problem is, folks, if we don't stand
firm for these things, in 10 to 15 more years, we're going
to find that the exclusivity of the gospel is lost. And before
long, it's going to be, well, as long as you are sincere about
what you believe, no matter what you believe, you're going to
make it to heaven. That is not the case at all. So we affirm,
not only the first Sola, the Sola Scriptura, that the Bible
is the sole authority for faith and practice. That's how we learn
that Jesus Christ is the only way. That's how we know that
the way to heaven is through Christ alone. But also we learned
the second soul of the Reformation, the soul of Christos, that Jesus
Christ is the soul mediator between God and man. We do not need another
man. I do not need to come to you to confess my sin. You do
not need to come to me to confess your sin. You go directly to
God through Jesus Christ and confess your sin to him. It is
God to whom you will give an account, not to me. And then
the third sola, which is a wonderful sola, the sola gratia, the fact
that it is by grace alone. This hits at the very heart of
the Reformation because you have to understand that the Roman
Catholic Church taught that it was by works that you were saved. It was by the authority of the
church that you were saved. It was through penance, it was
through pilgrimages, it was through the selling of indulgences that
you had the forgiveness of sins. It was through the effort of
the person to find some sense of remediation between them and
God and through their priest and so they could finally, perhaps
maybe, figure out that they were only going to spend a few hundred
thousand years in purgatory because of what they had bought through
the Roman Catholic Church. But what we believe the Bible
teaches and what the Reformation taught was sola gratia. It is
through grace alone. Now, what do we mean by grace?
We simply mean this. The basic definition is it is
the unmerited favor of God, meaning that you did not do anything
to receive it. You didn't acquire it because
God looked at you and said, you know what? You're a great guy.
I would love to have you in heaven. Look what you can offer to the
kingdom. It isn't like that at all. What it is, is that God
looks at all of humanity. And he sees all of humanity as
sinners who have rebelled against the holy and righteous God. And
that all of humanity is worthy of the death of eternal death. And that they're going to find
themselves in hell forever. And instead of God sending us
justly to eternal hell, he decides to give favor to some and to
save some. That's not injustice. That's
grace. It's grace. The Cambridge Declaration
said this, unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product
of the fallen human nature. Let me reread that again. Unwarranted
confidence in human ability is a product of the fallen human
nature. In other words, we so often think
that we can add a little bit to what God has already done.
Instead of it being Jesus alone, we say Jesus plus. Right? Or we add in our little thing.
It's Jesus plus my baptism. It's Jesus plus my work in the
church. It's Jesus plus I'm a good person.
It's Jesus plus because I never did this or never did that. And
we do that because we believe in our fallen nature that we
actually have something we can offer. That we are actually pretty
good. Often whenever I find myself
struggling with some of the great doctrines of Scripture, such
as the sovereignty of God, unconditional election, the fact that God has
had grace on some and not on others, and I find myself questioning
that, I always go back to this, I am a person who is completely
unacquainted with pure holiness. I do not understand what absolute
holiness is. I do not understand what absolute
purity and absolute justice is. So therefore, everything that
I think, everything that I believe might not necessarily be, quote,
fair, is tainted by the fact that I am a fallen human and
I am affected by sin. The Cambridge Declaration goes
on to say that this unwarranted confidence in human ability is
a product of a fallen human nature. This false confidence now fills
the evangelical world. It comes from self-esteem gospel
to the health and wealth gospel. For those who have transformed
the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners are now consumers
that you want to buy your product. to others who treat the Christian
faith as being true simply because it works. It gives me what I
want. These, this kind of teaching, this kind of doctrine, this kind
of belief silences the doctrine of justification, regardless
of the official commitments of the churches. God's grace in
Christ is not merely necessary, but is the sole efficient cause
of salvation. Did you get that? God's grace
in Christ is not merely necessary, but it is the sole efficient
cause of salvation. In other words, no one would
be saved if God did not act. Nobody. Nobody would come. You could have hundreds of invitations. You could have the greatest of
preachers. You could have the greatest of orators and the greatest
of arguments and the greatest of logic. You could have the
greatest of presentations. You could get all the media that
you could come up with and all the screens and all the digital
stuff out there and you could just promote it all different
ways, but I guarantee you if God's grace doesn't act, no one
comes. No one responds. That's why he
says it is the soul, not just one of many, but it is the soul
efficient cause of salvation. It goes on in the Confession
and the Declaration, it says this, we confess that the human
beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating
with regenerating grace. A central cry of the Reformation
was salvation by grace. Through the Roman church, they
taught that mass is a sacrifice. The actual mass of communion
was a sacrifice. which was truly propitiatory.
In other words, whenever you partake of communion in the Roman
Catholic Church, they taught that you actually were receiving
the propitiatory work of Christ on the cross. You were receiving
salvation. You were receiving grace. They went on to teach that the
grace of penitence or the gift of penitence remits our faults
and even our enormous sins, the Reformers returned to the biblical
doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. Our righteous
standing before God is imputed to us by grace because of the
work of Jesus Christ our Lord. In contrast to the doctrines
of self-merit taught in Rome, sola gratia, and the accompanying
doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, particular
redemption, and perseverance of the saints were preached by
the Reformers throughout the Protestant movement. As the Baptist
Confession of 1689 says, and I quote, Christ, by His obedience
and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are
justified. Jesus Christ fully accomplished
atonement on the cross and therefore fully discharged the debt that
you and I owe. And it is only by grace that
God would do such for all of us. Now, as we talk about grace
for a moment this morning, I want to go through a few scriptures
because I think these are important. When we think about sola gratia,
where does that come from in scripture? What exactly are they
meaning when they use the term sola gratia? Well, first of all,
it speaks to our inability to save ourselves. That's important
to understand. because the Roman Catholic Church
taught that you could cooperate with grace, that you could do
things to encourage grace, and that you could actually get saved
because you were participating in the Roman theology of grace.
And so whether it was penance, or indulgences, or pilgrimages,
or anything like that, you could actually get grace through these
things. And so the Bible teaches, though,
that you are unable to save yourself, that you do not have any ability
within yourself to save yourself. This is extraordinarily important
when you think about salvation because, listen, if you believe
just for one moment that you and I have the possibility of
cooperating with grace and that all we need to do is encourage
that part of us that cooperates with grace we are going to end
up in a pragmatic theology that teaches that we have to do whatever
we can to encourage the soul to come to Christ. And whether
it comes down to an invitational system, or whether it comes down
to a motivation of manipulation, or whether it comes down to handing
out dollar bills on the pews to get people to come, or whether
it comes down to dumbing down the theology so someone could
actually get what we think we're teaching, Or whether we actually
say, well, we're going to remove certain hymns because they're
offensive, or we're not going to talk about sin because that's
offensive, or we're going to make the gospel so appealing
that people will just flock in because it's just this wonderful
thing we want to have. You see what I'm saying? If you
don't understand that men can't come, if we could just imagine
just for a moment that as Jesus walked throughout the land of
Galilee, that what he was walking among were dead corpses, that
there were dead corpses everywhere. And unless Jesus Christ resurrected
them from the dead, they would never respond to what he had
to say. That's the same for us today, folks. Whenever people
do not know Jesus Christ, they are spiritually dead. That's
what the Bible teaches us. And when it uses the word dead,
it means exactly what it says when it uses the word dead. Dead
is dead. And it's not half alive. It isn't
like, you know, well, the guy's dead, but he really can get up
and move a little bit if we can just encourage him a little bit.
If I have just the right words, he'll move. If that were the
case, folks, I would be at the funeral home after this service.
The Bible says it like this, Ephesians chapter two, verse
one, and you who were dead in your trespasses and sins, you
were dead in your sins. You were lifeless. You did not
have the ability to move, to respond, to hear, to listen,
to follow. You were dead. In this deadness,
it says in chapter two of Ephesians, verse one and following, you
were walking according to the course of this world. He says,
"...you were walking according to the prince and the power of
the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience,
among whom also we once conducted ourselves in the lust of our
flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath." In other words, as a
dead spiritual person, you are just living according to your
flesh and what your flesh tells you to do, and based upon what
Scripture says, the flesh cannot please God. The Bible says in
Colossians 2, verse 13, and you being dead in your trespasses.
I'm like this, you know whenever the Bible says something how
many times does it have to say it before we believe it? Right
just one times all we need Ephesians 4 17 says this I say therefore
and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as
the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind
having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life
of God because of the ignorance that is in them in other words
he says in this text he says their mind and their understanding
is darkened and They're alienated from God the life of God. There's
ignorance in them and they are blind in their heart So not only
are we dead We're dark. We're alienated from the life
of God. We're ignorant and we're blind That's pretty rough and
that's pretty serious stuff well as a result of that as a result
of us being dead blind ignorant apart from the life of God We're
in a hopeless condition. We cannot do anything to save
ourselves. We cannot merit anything before God. We have nothing to
offer. John 6, 44 says it like this.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws
him. Let me read it again. No one can come. Nobody. Nobody can come. So the point is, here's a dead
sinner who needs life, who needs heaven, who needs to have his
sins forgiven. But he can't come. He can't respond. And Jesus reaffirms the truth
by saying, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent
me draws him and I will raise him up in the last day. Reaffirming
this great, wonderful truth of the grace of God. But listen,
unless God's grace exclusively acts, that soul that is dead
in its sin cannot respond to God and cannot come. It gets
even clearer because John 6.65 says this, no one can come to
me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise
him up in the last day. Then it says later in John 6.43,
why do you not understand my speech? Because you are not able
to understand my word. He's using the word over and
over again. The word cannot, the word unable
to. That word is used throughout
scripture in another way. It's the word power, dunamis.
In other words, what he's saying is that you and I do not have
the power to respond. We don't have the power to come.
We don't have the ability to come. We don't have the ability
to come to Christ. Now, talking about this grace
of Christ, we're talking about the inability of man to respond. He is unable to respond. Let
me just refer to another passage just for a second in Romans chapter
5. I don't have this on my notes,
but I thought it would be important just to bring out. In Romans
chapter 5 and verse 6 and following, when it was talking about how
Christ died for us and how he secured for us what we need in In him for salvation Verse 6
says this this is Romans 5 6 for when we were still without strength In that time in just the right
time is the point of the passage Christ died for the ungodly For
scarcely for a righteous man will one die, but yet perhaps
for a good man, someone would even dare to die. Yet God then
demonstrates his love toward us, even while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. So right at the very beginning
of this text, he tells us we were without strength, we were
ungodly, and we were enemies, and we were sinners. I was trying
to bring sinners and enemies together. We were sinners and
enemies. So the point of this passage
is we were in a hopeless state, unable to respond completely
without strength to respond. So his point of this passages
is that even while we were in that condition, we were dead
corpses, unable to respond to the grace of Christ. Jesus Christ
came and died for us so that we would not die in our sins.
Listen to this passage in John 12, Sobering sobering passage
of the inability of man to respond chapter 12 verse 37 says this
is John 12 37 But although he had done so many signs before
them they did not believe in him now this is an important
passage to remember because when we're talking about the inability
of man to respond to the gospel and Here you have the greatest
witness who has ever come in the entire history of the world,
who shows up on scene. He's God in the flesh. He comes
with profound theology. He comes with authoritative lectures
as he gives them, as it indicates in Matthew 5-7. He not only does
miracles, but he does profound miracles that are not even explainable
by man. He raises the dead. He heals
the sick. He heals the blind. He heals
the deaf and the mute. He gives limbs to people who
don't have arms and people who don't have feet. He gives them.
He creates it on the spot. He creates fish and food on the
spot. He does profound miracles. And
it says, even though, it says in chapter 12 verse 37 of John,
that He had done many signs before them, He had given them the best
of preaching, the best of teaching, the best of miracles. And it says they did not believe.
They didn't believe. It was a prophecy being fulfilled
according to the text in verse 38 that the word of Isaiah might
be fulfilled, which said, Lord, who has believed our report and
to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? In other words,
this is a prophecy of what the old Testament said was going
to happen whenever Jesus Christ came. that he was going to preach,
he was going to teach, he was going to perform miracles, he
was going to show himself completely and authoritatively that he was
the son of God and instead of them saying, hey, the evidence
is clear, no doubt I've got to believe this, it's right in front
of my face. Instead of that, they did not believe. There's
a reason. And the reason speaks to the
inability of man. It does not say that Jesus Christ was not
effective. It does not say that he did not have the right method.
That maybe he should have used evangelism explosion instead
of continuous witnessing training. Or maybe perhaps he wasn't skilled
in how to talk to the soul of man. Maybe he needed to incorporate
some psychology along the way. Or maybe his method was not right.
Perhaps maybe he needed to have some more music that would move
the soul and make people respond. So my point is this. Listen,
before I go any further, I want to put a little footnote down
here at the bottom. That does not mean we don't get trained in
evangelism. That does not mean we don't have skill in that area.
That does not mean that we don't have great worship together and
so forth. But the point is that that does not save. That's not what saves them. Because
in this text in verse 39, it says, therefore, they could not
believe. Oh, wee. Woo. They couldn't believe. That
means they didn't have the ability to believe. You say, well, wait
a minute. Couldn't they think? Couldn't
they rationalize? Couldn't they see? Couldn't they understand? According
to the scripture, they couldn't. All people without the grace
of God can't believe. Can't believe. Don't have the
power to believe. Jeremiah 13 verse 23 says it
like this. Can the Ethiopian change his
skin or the leopard his spots? Then he says, may you also do
good, who are accustomed to doing evil. In other words, is it possible
for us to change our nature? Is it possible for us to do that?
Can we do that? Romans chapter eight, verse seven
through eight says, because the carnal mind, the fleshly mind
is enmity against God, for, listen to this, it is not subject to
the law of God, nor indeed can be." In other words, the fleshly
mind, the lost unregenerate mind, that has been unaffected by the
grace of God, cannot be subject to God. So then he says in verse 8 of
Romans chapter 8, so then those who are in the flesh, another
word would be lost, unregenerate, without Christ, so then those
who are in the flesh cannot please God. Can't. It's impossible. John 3 verse 3 says, Jesus answered
and said to him, most assuredly I say unto you, unless you are
born again, you cannot even see the kingdom of God. So here you
have this unregenerate dead person who needs to respond to the gospel.
And the Bible says, unless God gives him life, he births him
again. Unless he has the ability to
have regenerating birth from heaven, he can't even see the
kingdom of God. Romans chapter 3 verse 10 goes
on and tells us like this, there's none righteous, no not one. There's
none who understands. There's none who seek after God.
I don't know how many verses we have to go through to reaffirm
the fact that men are in, they're unable to respond to this gospel
that we proclaim. The Bible teaches over and over
and over again, apart from God's wonderful work of grace in the
life of the soul, no one responds. No one. Grace, listen to this,
grants what we don't have and gives us what we don't deserve. Ephesians 2 verse 4 and following
says it like this even when I love this even when we were dead Even
when we were blind even when we were ignorant even when we
were enemies of God even when we cared nothing about the things
of God it says he Made us alive together with Christ Then it
puts this in quotations for by grace you have been saved and
And He raises us up together, it says, and makes us to sit
together in the heavenly places in Christ, that in the ages to
come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus. And then the famous verse, for
by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone
should boast. You see, the thing is, what is
so wonderful about this, whenever you and I get to heaven, there's
nothing we will be able to give credit to ourselves for. Nothing. I mean, if you're dead and you're
lying in the grave and someone like Jesus Christ shows up and
resurrects you from the grave, can you say, you know what? I
was halfway there. I'd climbed out. I was three
more feet. No, nothing like that at all.
You will not be able to say anything. You can't even say you had the
faith because God says that's a gift. You can't even say you
repented because God said he gave you that. Why in the world
do we have a problem with that whenever we don't even boast
about the fact that God gave us life at the very beginning?
We had no choice in that, right? God gave us life at the very
beginning. God gives life for salvation. He grants it by His
grace. And this is where we go so woefully
wrong whenever we move away from that and we think that God is
doing something unfair if He doesn't save everybody. Here's
the point, folks. It's all of grace. It's unmerited, meaning
it's undeserved. In other words, when we look
at all of these passages and we read these passages, we have
to always keep in mind, as I've told the class we've been looking
at on the 1689 Confession, is that we have to consider and
not forget that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God. Therefore, all are destined for hell. and all are worthy
of the eternal wrath of Almighty God. And since we're all worthy
of the eternal wrath of God, then why in the world are we
upset if God decides to be gracious and to save? All we can do is
sit back and thank God that He was willing to be gracious toward
us when we should be right now as Martin Luther so constantly
reaffirmed in his own life. He was constantly just tortured
by the reality that God was a God of justice and a God of wrath.
And he felt that pressure, that immense pressure of God's wrath
being poured out on his own soul. And he could find no sense of
forgiveness and peace through the Roman Catholic Church. It
wasn't until he finally embraced justification by faith alone
in Christ alone, through grace alone, that he was able to finally
get peace. It is through that and that alone
that we receive our salvation. It is through that and that alone
that we receive our life. By the grace of Almighty God.
Romans 3 24 says this, we read it earlier that we are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. Y'all, we need to set the clock
back. We didn't set that one back. So it's 10 o'clock. So
let's get, let's keep going. All right. Alright, let me just
quickly finish up with a few more words here on this because
this is so good. The passage we read earlier as
we began this study this morning is found in Romans chapter 3
because this really sums it all up. This really sums up Sola
Gratia right here. This is really the whole package
in one passage. I've always loved this passage
because it not only has clarity but it has great depth. As he
clearly has taught us in the passage in chapter three, verse
19 and following that we all stand before God guilty, right?
What are we guilty of? Well, we're guilty of violating
the laws of God. Another way of saying that is
we're guilty of sin. We're guilty of that. We have sinned and we
not only have sinned once, we have sinned multiple times, hundreds
of times, thousands of times. perhaps millions. But even in
this text here, it goes on a little later on as he talks about the
save ability of humanity. This is what is so good about
this. I love this passage because after it has absolutely blanket
at all of humanity and said, everybody's guilty and the guilt,
according to Romans chapter six, verse 23 says, because you have
sinned, right? The wages of sin is what death. God says, capital punishment
for everybody. You're all gonna die. And you're
not only gonna die physically, you're gonna die spiritually.
And you're gonna spend the rest of your life, eternally, separated
from God for all eternity in hell. So as a result of our sin,
we are condemned and now we're all guilty, standing before this
great courtroom of God. And what hope do we have? The hope that we have is found
and wrapped up in that great word called grace. because in
that word grace, it talks about the save ability of man. Look
at it in this text because he says in verse 22, he says that
that righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to listen
to this to all and upon all who, what, who believe for there is
no difference. In other words, the Jew or the
Gentile, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God, so we're all in the same condition, all of us. All of
us worthy of death, all of us worthy of capital punishment,
all of us worthy of eternal hell. And God just in doing so to send
us there, but by his grace, he steps in for all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. But then here comes this
wonderful, magnificent grace of God. Verse 24 being justified
freely by his grace. We were declared righteous. That's
the word. It is a judicial term. It is
a legal term. It is a courtroom term. It is
there you are facing eternal death. You have been condemned.
The jury has come in, if you will, and convicted you of all
charges. You now face eternal separation
from God for all eternity. But then God says, no, I have
someone else who's already paid your penalty. He's already stepped
in and paid the price for you. So therefore, because I want
to, because I desire to, and because I want to show myself
as a gracious and loving and merciful judge, I will justify
you. I will declare you righteous,
I will make you righteous, and I do it according to verse 24,
I do it freely. Based upon his own pleasure, according to Ephesians
chapter one, he does it freely, not constrained by you, not constrained
by me, not constrained by any other thing other than his own
sovereign will. He does it freely, and he says
it comes through grace. Unmerited favor. It is in the
redemption of Jesus Christ. Wonderful, wonderful text. He
goes on and says that that redemption that we have in Christ, that
payment that Jesus paid, on the cross, we get a little heavenly
perspective for a moment as God looks down and sees what is going
on on the cross with Jesus hanging there on the cross in verse 25.
It says, whom God, that is referring to Jesus Christ, the whom there,
whom God the Father, is the point, set forth as a propitiation through
his blood. Jesus Christ hung on the cross
satisfying the wrath of God so that you would not have to receive
the wrath of God. And by the way, it was a real
satisfaction. It wasn't a potential satisfaction.
It was real. He literally satisfied what God
demanded. He literally satisfied the wrath
of God so that I would not have to receive the wrath of God.
And in that, every sin I've ever committed in the past, every
sin I have ever committed in the future, has already been
atoned for. And the wrath has been satisfied.
Goes on and tells us there's a bigger reason for all of this.
A lot of people think that all this was for us. We have a great benefit, and
I'm thankful for it. But there's a bigger reason.
Look at it a little further on in verse 25. He says that God
had put forth his own son to be that propitiation through
his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness.
And that's the point of the passage, to demonstrate his righteousness. The whole point of redemption,
folks, is not to show our way to heaven, but to demonstrate
that God's righteous. In other words, people ask the
question, how can a just and righteous and holy and wrathful
God save anybody? That was Martin Luther's problem.
He couldn't figure that out. He couldn't make any heads or
tails of that. How can God, who's a holy and righteous and just
God, how can He save me, a sinner? How can He take me to heaven
and not compromise His own character? How can He just say, I'll just
forgive them all, bring them home? We would be all up in arms
if we heard of something happening in a courtroom wherever a judge
had a criminal brought before him who had committed capital
murder and all the evidence was clear that he had committed the
crime. And then the judge just says, you know what? I'm just
a nice guy. We'll see you later. You're free
to go. Oh my goodness. We'd be all upset. We'd be like,
how in the world can a judge do such a thing? Well, the Bible
tells us that the reason why God could be righteous and save
anybody is because he paid the penalty through Christ. And that's
the point of the passage, that even though he had passed over
many sins, as indicated in verse 25, even though he should have
acted in wrath, he passed over those sins because he knew that
in the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, those sins
would be atoned for, the wrath of God would be satisfied. Verse
26 says that all of this was done to demonstrate at this present
time his righteousness, that he might be just, and that he
would be the justifier of those who come to faith in Jesus Christ.
A couple other verses and I'll conclude. Acts 15 11 says this,
whenever they were gathering together at the church at Jerusalem
to consider whether Gentiles could be saved, they said, but
we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we
shall be saved in the same manner as they were. They get saved
the same way. It doesn't matter if it's American,
Islamic, Some other group of people far away who are in an
unreached group, the same grace of God is needed to save them.
The same gospel is needed to save them. The worst thing we
could ever do is dumb down the gospel and leave out the elements
that are clearly taught in scripture. You eliminate the message, you
eliminate the truth, you eliminate the salvation. Romans chapter
11 verse 6 says it like this, as it concludes the great doctrine
of salvation by grace alone. It says, and if it is by grace,
then it's no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer
grace. But if it is of works, it's no longer grace. Otherwise,
work is no longer work. Did you get that? They don't
mix. They're oil and water. They don't
mix. You can't say, hey, grace of God, I love the grace of God,
but I'm going to add a little bit along the way. I'm going to do
my part. No, you don't have a part. The part you have is God graciously
saving you and giving you everything that comes to Christ. faith,
repentance, confession, and all of it are a gracious gift of
God. Now, the last statement of the Cambridge confession and
declaration concerning sola gratia is this, and we will agree with
them and say the same thing. We reaffirm that in salvation,
we are rescued from God's wrath by grace alone. It is the supernatural
work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing
us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death
to spiritual life. We deny that salvation is in
any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques, and
strategies by themselves cannot accomplish the transformation.
Faith is not produced by an unregenerate human nature. Faith is the gift
of God. And that's our next topic. Sola
Fide.
The Importance of the Reformation (Pt 2)
Series Importance of Reformation
| Sermon ID | 112132044256 |
| Duration | 1:01:08 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 16:13 |
| Language | English |
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