As our handout is being passed out, we're looking today at Sola Fide, one of the five solas. I thought we would begin with returning to the scene of the crime. And where our longstanding difference with Roman Catholic view of the gospel began. In Roland Baton's Here I Stand, He quotes Luther's own words, I greatly long to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, the justice of God. Because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience. And I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore, I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that the just shall live by faith from Romans 1 17. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn, and to have gone through the open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the justice of God had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet, in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God. For faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is, to behold God in faith, that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly, but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face. So this is Luther's testimony. early on, I want to say it's even before he had put the 95 Theses up on the Wittenberg door. Our text at the top of our study is the book of Galatians chapter 2 verses 16 through and 21. Paul writes, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law. Since by the works of the law no flesh will be justified. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. So we're looking today, we saw last time, the centrality of Christ alone, and today we're looking at faith alone. As we do that, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this day. This is the day that not only that you have made as all the days are your creation, but Lord, this is the day that you've set apart. for your church, for your people, to worship the living God. This is the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week, the day on which our Savior rose again from the dead. We thank you for the Lord's Day and ask your blessings upon the whole day. We pray, Lord, as well for our Sunday school hour and for the other teachers and classes as they gather. We pray for our brothers and sisters who are worshiping at resurrection even now. And we ask Father, your grace to be upon us as we worship you today in spirit and in truth. Watch over and keep us, we pray. We look forward to the word and prayer and sacraments this morning. And we pray, God, that you would be exalted in your son, the Lord Jesus, and that the spirit would have his way in our hearts. Lord, we humble ourselves before you and pray for your forgiveness, for your mercies to be upon us. Help us to rejoice as your people who have been chosen by you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, so we're getting into sola fide. Faith alone is what justifies the sinner. And that became the major difference between Roman Catholicism and that of the Protestant movement, especially with Luther's own convictions. Luther had been, as you recall his life, he was looking for peace, looking for peace with God. He tried all sorts of things. He was a faithful monk trying to work his way, trying to do everything that the church offered to him that he might find peace in his soul. I remember listening to a sermon by the late D. James Kennedy, and he was talking about Martin Luther and his attempts at justifying himself by his good works. And I remember him saying, you people out there who think that you're going to get to heaven by your works, why don't you come and learn from somebody who actually tried? I mean Luther tried, Luther poured out his life by good works to be acceptable to God and at the end of which just wore him out, did not bring peace until he opened the scriptures and understood the scriptures are right of which we have just heard. So, we're looking at the topic of faith, and I think it's very helpful to, when we're talking to people, especially a Roman Catholic friend, to say, look, there is a no works clause in the Bible. There is no such no works clause in the salvation scheme of the Roman Catholic. They'll love to talk to you about faith. They will love to talk about works. But they cannot talk about no works, you see. There is no work of ours involved in our being justified. And that is the heart of the difference. they believe that in some way works enters in to that equation. So when we talk about faith alone, we need to talk about the flip side of that coin, which is not works at all enter into our being justified. The scriptures have a not works element, which Protestants rediscovered, and Roman Catholics reject. Listen to these two passages, Romans 4, 1 through 5. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. but to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness." So there it is in very stark terms. Not works, but faith, you see. If we are working our way, then it cannot be of grace. And that's something we'll see as we come to the next installment of Sola Gratia, that faith alone preserves and protects us, as it were, grace alone. And then, likewise, Romans 9, 30 and 32 through 32, what shall we say then? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith. But Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works, they stumbled over the stumbling stone. So here, faith and works, when it comes to our justification, are opposite categories. You cannot bring those two together. If you do, it's like taking an electric cord, plugging it in, chopping it and crossing the wires. You know what happens? I found out what happens when you do that when I was a fifth grader. You see the blue angel. Boom! I remember Howard Funk and I in the back of class when everybody else had gone out. He says, hey, I got this chord. He says, let's see what happens. Plugs it in. Bam! Big, huge black mark on the desk in the back. He took a big, huge radio and put it on top of the black spot and said, let's get out of here. There's one of the reasons why our works don't work is because our works are all sinful. Even our best works are mixed with sin. So we're coming then to faith and faith alone and faith has been called the. This is the material principle of the Reformation as opposed to the formal principle. The formal principle was the scriptures. The scriptures were the basis or the source of authority from which we are to argue. The material principle is the matter What was at the heart of the Reformation? It was being saved by Christ alone, through grace alone, by faith alone. And we're talking about that third one here today. Luther called it the articulus stentis vel cadentis, the article by which the church stands or falls. Any building, any group of people can put the word church on the outside and begin saying that they are Christians. But unless they understand this article, they, I don't believe, can be counted a true church. If you don't grasp justification by faith alone, you don't understand the gospel. And Calvin said something similar, that it is the principal hinge on which religion turns. Because the minute we start bringing our works into it, our salvation begins to be focused upon who? Ourselves. It is not focused any longer upon the Lord Jesus. Why is it so pivotal? Because it answers the fundamental question which all human beings must ask. Since one day I must stand before God, how can I be right with him? And that really is the great question, isn't it? This should be brought out in some way, shape, or form in our evangelism. I think that that question right there is what made evangelism explosion such an effective tool in pointing people to the Lord Jesus. That method had some difficulties about it, but this certainly was not one of them in asking those two diagnostic questions at the beginning. Do you know, God forbid, if you were to die tonight, that you would go to heaven? And the second question is, and if you were to stand before God at the gates of heaven, and he were to say, why should I let you into my heaven? What would your response be? That really does bring into a nutshell the Protestant faith that we can know that we are saved, that we have assurance, and that salvation is none other than in the Lord Jesus. The exact same question that the jailer brought up in different terms, but was twisted in a good way by Paul when he came out and said, men, what must I do to be saved? And Paul said, believe on the Lord Jesus. You shall be saved and your household. This message of faith, then, is what divided the church 500 years ago. It has always been the bulwark of solid, effectual preaching in the church. When the church is exalting the cross and exalting faith in Him and offering that Savior to sinners, That's when the church is usually in her prime and doing well. When that is hidden and we're off on rabbit trails and focusing upon secondary matters, that's where we get into trouble. The great message of past days under heralds like George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennant, Samuel Davies, Asahel Nelton, Charles Spurgeon, D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, their central preoccupation was presenting how a person can know the Lord, how we may be saved, and that way of salvation that God himself has approved, which God himself has given, being that of faith alone. And yet, when you go into a Christian bookstore today, when you turn on religious broadcasting, what do you find? Is that the heartbeat? Is that the heart and soul of what is being taught today? There's exceptions. There are times when that is being brought out. Praise God for those churches that continue to say you must be trusting in the Lord Jesus and not yourself for salvation. But is that the keynote of their ministry? We are off on so many tangents. And even within the reform movement itself, we have seen attacks upon sola fide over this last generation. You know, the time that I have, since I've been a Christian and headed towards the ministry, I mean, you can count several different individuals who have attacked this idea of sola fide. We have two examples here, Norman Shepard, who taught at Westminster Seminary, was teaching ministers, was certainly weak on sola fide. He believed in a sense that our sins are all forgiven at the beginning by our faith, but it's a particular kind of working faith, and he started mixing then, works into it, and began denying the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. He did not want to say that the Christian has a full righteousness before God by faith. but rather that all of our sins are forgiven, and certainly for that reason we'd be going to heaven. But the issue of righteousness, he wanted to say, is entirely on the shoulders of the believer. You have to produce a righteousness. And so he's really out of step with passages like Philippians chapter three, where Paul the apostle, towards the end of his life, is actually saying, I am still hoping to be found in a righteousness that is not my own. And alien righteousness, that teaching seemed to go out the window in Dr. Shepard's teaching. And I believe he was rightly released from that school for that reason. An even greater attack upon this doctrine has been presented of late under what's called the new perspective of Paul, championed by men like Dunn and who's the other fellow? What's that into right? Well, it's empty, right? But there was another. He's standing on his shoulders. Of done and another fellow. And I can't remember the other fellows name now. Well, done preceded him. And there, N.T. Wright definitely has an ax to grind as an Episcopalian. He wants to see Protestantism and Roman Catholicism coming back together. And so he wants to downplay this major difference that we have with Roman Catholics. And he just denies the imputation doctrine of the scripture. That by faith, God places on our account the righteousness, the gift of eternal life that Jesus Christ has wrought for us and that our sins are placed upon Him. So that's a lot of people are following after that teaching. I mean, I think everybody should agree that we would want the Roman Catholic Church and Protestants to be reunited. But they should be reunited in the gospel. They should be reunited in the Bible. And that's not going to happen as long as Roman Catholicism continues to hold to traditions and other ways of salvation. Now you're just asking for this external union, which which Wright seems to be happy with. He wants to downplay doctrine at that point and really pitch the whole reason for the Protestant Reformation. So the biblical faith is eroded in our day. You don't have a consistent message of saying it is by faith and faith alone. So let's look at this doctrine together this morning and the remainder of time that we have in Sunday school. It is a crucial and necessary doctrine as we begin understanding what biblical faith is. Paul focused two of his most important works, the book of Romans and the book of Galatians, largely upon this theme of being saved by faith. He reveals an alien righteousness which is not our own, that is by works, a righteousness that is of God. after he indicts the whole race of man in Romans 3, 21-24. You know the argument of the Romans Road, right? Get them lost before getting them saved. And so Romans begins by telling us what he's gonna talk about, the gospel, and then talks about the lost estate of the Gentiles in the latter half of Romans 1, the lost estate of the moralist and the Jew in Romans chapter 2, and then you get to 3, and both of these filthy rivers come together, and all mankind stands with their mouths shut as guilty. And then Paul introduces a different remedy than our efforts, our works, and brings forth the righteousness of God. Paul, in the opening lines of the book of Galatians, pronounces anathema, accursed upon any who preach any other gospel than the one of faith and not works in Jesus. We read at the beginning that passage in Galatians chapter 2, where it goes through and three times Paul says, not by the works of the law. Not by the works of the law. Not by the works of the law. But in some way, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that it cannot be by faith alone. Works must be apart. Number two, justification by works or by faith is in either case a forensic act, a judicial act, a declarative act set in the courtroom of judgment by the Lord himself. It's important to keep this before us. What is a forensic act? When a judge declares somebody guilty, does that make that person internally guilty? We're talking about their status in society, right? Or not guilty. So it's a declaration regarding something that's outside of them. Rome wants to say that the righteousness in Romans chapter 3 in Galatians is internal and infused. all of this language as you read it in the scriptures, whether you are talking about being justified by works or by grace. I'm talking about Jesus' works. Both of them, as John Murray points out, are forensic. You're just coming at it on different grounds. There should not be really any debate between Roman Catholicism of this declaration. If you want to say that God declares the sinful man or woman who has grace infused in them, it's still a declaration. It's just based upon their supposed good works, which we believe the Bible denies. We are saying that the declaration is based upon Christ's imputation of His righteousness to us and His taking our sins. Do you understand that? Both of them should, there should not be any argument about the forensic quality, whether you're basing that declaration upon man's works or upon God's work in Christ. I think that's a great point that Murray brings out. And yet, that gets fouled up very, very quickly. Go ahead. Are you meaning like, that then like, that it's all God declaring? I'm not quite sure. is based, like the Roman Catholic says, partly upon Christ's grace, partly upon man's work. In other words, partly by faith, partly by our deeds. It's still a forensic declaration. Okay, so who would say otherwise? We would. We would say it's a forensic declaration only based upon faith. Right. But what happens is that in this debate, the Roman Catholic side wants to say there is no forensic declaration. They want to get away from that. Based upon what you do, based upon your baptism, based upon your confirmation, based upon your doing these various deeds. They try to mesh it with glorification or something? Like that's only happening when you get to heaven? No, they would say that they don't want to, I don't know, some of them, when they start talking about mixing works in, All of a sudden, they want to talk about the infused work of Christ in us as being the ground for our being declared righteous. What happens oftentimes is that the declaration part, the forensic part of this, goes out the window with them. So it's like, well, you're just righteous, so I accept you as righteous. And the simple point that Murray is bringing out is that nobody should have a debate about the issue So what is the debate is the ground in number two, Christ's payment and righteousness or our works in some way, shape or form. So what is the ground of justification? Again, on the Protestant side, there have been colossal mistakes made here as well. Some have made the ground of justification faith. that God looks at your faith and just accepts your faith. That's the basis for that choice. But it's not faith. Faith is the means by which we receive the gift of eternal life in Jesus. Faith, in other words, is not being exchanged in the Bible in the place of what God expects, which is perfection. God's standard is absolute holiness, absolute righteousness. He cannot accept a sinner. He has to judge sin. And some Protestants, therefore, have confused the magnificent work of Christ and have put that in the background and just said, if you believe, that's your righteousness. And that's not the biblical teaching. Your faith, oftentimes, is quite imperfect. Your faith is incomplete. But because it's in a complete and perfect Savior, is what gives it its power, if we can put it that way. It's not even really a power in and of itself. It lays hold in such weakness upon one who is all-powerful. Neither is faith bending the law of God somehow giving a lower standard by which his people can obey and attain. It's not a second covenant of works given to us. So that now we're in Adam, we're all done, we're cooked, we're all judged, but now we're gonna make another covenant of works by which we can have a lower standard and we can accomplish what God wants and then we are accepted because are believing that and have attained to that. The ground of justification is the work of Jesus to save us. His active and passive obedience by which he freely offers us righteousness. His righteousness, an alien righteousness, one that is not our own at all. including both a new standing and the removal of all of our demerit, our sin. The law has not been altered or suspended or flouted for their justification, but fulfilled by Jesus Christ acting in their name, says J. I. Pack. And that has to be, that should be very, very clear in our eyes that God has not somehow bent the rules. He has not accepted something less. In a sense, He has given us something better and more in what Jesus has done for us. Because in Christ, we have something that even Adam did not have. We have a standing that is inviolable. Adam could fall. We will be made to stand. Nothing can change that. So, the means of justification is faith. This is the instrument that lays hold upon the Lord Jesus. It's not doing, pure and simple. It is not doing plus faith, mixing works and grace, which is what the Roman Catholic Church tends to do. And as well, what the Jews were doing in the times of Jesus. It's not any old faith that will save either. There are temporal faiths, foxhole faiths. But we're talking about laying hold upon Jesus, the cry of a sinner, for salvation from all of our sins. Pastor, several Wednesdays ago, one of your students at the Wednesday evening prayer meeting mentioned that without Mixian works, I don't think you were persuaded that that was true, but I wondered if you had an opportunity to look up any evidence that it's no longer true. Well, I have no doubt that there are priests and there are individuals within the Roman Catholic Church who are seeing this biblical doctrine and are trusting in Christ alone and are saying that it's by faith alone apart from works. And praise God for that. But the official position of the church, which has not changed since Vatican II, continues to be what we are addressing in our lecture here this morning. And Vatican II didn't change Trent. Vatican II did not change this aspect of Trent, no. It did not. Don't you think this makes it very difficult to deal with Catholics in America? Do I think this makes it difficult? Yeah. What's that? That priests can be teaching and that people can be under teaching that is very different from Vatican. I don't know. I guess. I find it hard with people that I know, because they don't even know what the Pope is. Right, right, right. And so if everything is always only about what the Vatican says, it makes it very difficult when you're dealing with actual humans. who does not, you know. I want to say on the one hand, I understand where you're coming from, and yes, it's very difficult. I remember when we were going through evangelism explosion in western New York, and we knew that we would run into a lot of Roman Catholics. In fact, those questions really deal well with Roman Catholics because they don't have assurance, generally. But I remember my pastor bringing up the point that, you know, he says one of the difficulties with evangelizing Roman Catholics is that you need to teach them first what their church believes before then dismantling that belief. At the same time, I want to say you really don't have to do all that if you're evangelizing somebody who's in the Roman Catholic Church. Maybe some of them are very savvy, they are attuned to the I mean, we read something, Mr. Winslow read something last Wednesday night about how the Pope has come out with a new set of Beatitudes now. So it's like, some people are very attuned to that kind of stuff. Most Catholics, I don't think, are. Why teach them something that you have to dismantle anyway? That's why I say, let's get to Christ and faith. Let's get to the Gospel. Let's talk to them about these things that are very vital. And I think a lot of people come to faith in that very way. It's not by first examining all of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and then saying, open my Bible and dismantle them. Everybody's a theologian, but not many of us are that good of a theologian to do that. Of course, it's not just Catholics that might be found under B2 here mixing works and grace. It could be any mainline Protestant church these days that is mixing works together and therefore their adherents are thinking they're good enough to get to heaven. Right. Well, even evangelicals are getting squishy on this. I mean you guys heard, I think we referenced a poll earlier in this study that talked about some, I mean as many as 75% of evangelicals believe that man is basically good. So that's going to come into play. Remember what John Gerstner taught about the different views of faith? You just be a good person. Everybody who loves is going to heaven. And so just be a loving person and that's pretty much it. That's the basic presupposition they have. And then the Roman Catholic teaches that it's faith plus works equals justification. And because as I mean, some of the most atrocious antinomian preaching and teaching among Arminians has been found. You're saying that all Arminians don't believe in works as a result? Take the Carmel Christian doctrine. But that's not all Arminians. I'm not saying all Arminians, I'm just saying that they do not see as well I don't think that they understand well how to bring the Christian life and sanctification in with justification. Those two things don't seem to. The works start to, when they feel their faith is fading, they will then use their works to rebuild back up their faith and then feel justified again. Well yeah, there's a lot of different versions of this. they would say that you keep yourself saved by your works. Or even before Wesley, classical, Wesley's not classical, right? Wesley changed Arminianism. He brought more grace into it. But the idea of being able to lose your salvation was held by both Wesley and the previous classical position. So that's, I mean, I failed to mention earlier, that was the problem that really bothered Norman Shepard. Norman Shepard saw so many Christians who had a profession of faith in Jesus alone as their savior, and yet it was not translating into a godly life. And so he went the route that he did, which was doctrinally erroneous, but he did it out of a desire to see the church raised to its level of holiness. Which I don't think really works. I think a lot of that problem goes back to a misunderstanding of faith that you talked about earlier. Because there's this idea that if you say this certain prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, then you're saved. And that's saying that your faith merits salvation. And it's just a totally wrong foundational idea. Right. That if they truly sought faith as just, you know, Like you say sometimes, the window that lets in the light. I think it would be different. They trust too much in saying a prayer, raising your hand, walking the aisle, you know, those kinds of things. Decisionism. That almost becomes, again, a very Roman Catholic position. It's very externalistic. You're doing what the church tells you to do. Your hands are being lifted up to heaven, your voice is lifted up to heaven, but your heart, as far when you're out there. I mean, probably the best illustration of this in recent days is all the flap that occurred when John MacArthur wrote those books on the Lordship of Christ. How the dispensational Arminian camp rose up against that and just thought that that was horrific. That was terrible. I mean, that was 30 years ago. All right, we'll talk about the place of works or obedience later, but we have to understand what kind of a faith it is that saves and how it's functioning within the scriptures. True saving faith is not a new work or a new obedience. It doesn't take the place of law obedience. I'm obeying God because I believe, that's not it. Faith is non-contributory. And we see here in letter five, number five, true saving faith is receptive. It's passive, even, although it is an act by which we go out of ourselves to Christ for life eternal. I mean, when you believe, you're doing something, aren't you? It is a doing, but it's not classified as a work, because the doing is passively receiving Jesus as your Redeemer. Faith is, quote, a means, an instrument, a way, a foundation, a channel by which, along which, or on which man participates in the gifted righteousness of God. Nowhere is it the ground or cause of justification. See, when we stand before God and we have trusted in Christ, we're not gonna say, I am saved because I believed. We're gonna say, we are saved because of Jesus. And it's faith which has laid hold upon Him. It's His saving us, not our saving ourselves by our faith. Ferguson states, faith is no constructive energy. It is complete reliance on another. It is Christ-directed, not self-directed, and Christ-reliant, not self-reliant. It involves the abandoning, not the congratulating, of self. I thought that was good. That's a good one. Faith draws everything from Christ and contributes nothing to Him. or except as one person said, our only contributions in our justification is our sins. We give our sins to him. And how that could possibly merit salvation is beyond us. Faith is simply a shorthand description of abandoning oneself trustingly to Christ, whom God has made our righteousness. He is our new standing. And what happens then is a double transaction that takes place. In Romans chapter four, there is an imputation that happens. And it's a double imputation. Number one, our sins, first of all, go to Him. Our sins are imputed to Christ. He is the sin bearer. Every single sacrifice, every animal that shed its blood in the Old Testament was saying, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming, a substitute, a victim, one that is taking your sins, one that's not dying for its own sin, but dying for the sin of another. And so because our sins are imputed to Christ, Psalm 32 verse 1 can say, blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. How can he not impute our iniquity to us? We're the ones who committed those iniquities because they were directed to another, an imputation to another. That's why they're not imputed to our account. rather what's imputed to our account, number two, Christ's active righteousness is given to the believer. His obedience in all is greater than all of Adam's disobedience, says Romans chapter five. So it's not just a singular imputation of our sins to Christ, but there's also his righteousness to our account. Because what happens if God takes away our sins, then it kind of brings us back up to ground zero. But if Christ is our righteousness, that we are complete in Him, that even the thief on the sign of the Savior, trusted in Christ, he is fully equipped to be accepted as righteous in the sight of his Heavenly Father. So, this transaction takes place and does not change, yet, our character. Our character is going to be changed by another way. This transaction takes place as to our status before the bar of God and outside of us. We are ungodly, and God justifies the ungodly, it says in Romans 4. We are in Luther's famous line, simul justus et peccator. I don't know how to pronounce that. Did I mispronounce it? Simul justus et peccator. Justus. Aren't you supposed to pronounce the J? I thought so. We are simultaneously just and sinner. That's the idea. He also said we are semper peccator, semper penitents, semper justice. Always a sinner, always a penitent, always justified. I mean, that's how we are to look at ourselves according to scripture. If God were to judge us according to our works, even our best works would not pass the test. We are justified solely because of Christ. Do you have a question? I do. Okay. Always a penitent. I remember thinking about that twice as we went over this on Wednesday night. So does that mean always sorrowful for sin, always repenting for sin? Absolutely. Okay, thank you. We don't get to a plateau. I think of, you know, in Luther's context, a penitent. Big difference. I mean, this does carry over into your doctrine of repentance. That we're repenting not so as to win God's favor, we're repenting because we have God's favor. It's a very different dynamic. Yes, our fatherly relationship can be broken. but never our tie with our God, He will always be our God and our Savior. But the fellowship can be disturbed, assurance can be disturbed in our heart, but the reality can never be broken. Why? Because Jesus either paid for all of your sins or He didn't pay for those sins that He didn't pay for. And you gotta pay for them, and if you pay for them, you're done. They're very careful with that. It is written in because of this very fact. Here's the element that really comes into play too. It's a doctrine that has been at times downplayed in reform circles. It's the doctrine of adoption. is that we have these once for all qualities of our salvation. We are born again once for all. We are justified by faith once for all. We are converted once for all. And we're also adopted once for all. I know you guys have heard this from me so many times. I hardly even have to say it again. But it's a huge difference between the governor pardoning a criminal, allowing him forgiveness of his crime, and another thing for the governor to adopt him. We are adopted. So even if our father is displeased with our sinful behavior, how we're treating one another, what we are doing, he's still our father, isn't he? My kid disappoints me. I don't go, all right, we're done. We're not going to have any relationship with you at all. We're going to save a lot of money on our food bill. You go find somewhere else to sleep. Go live with your grandparents. Isn't that, isn't that how the parents are like? You gotta go live with your grandparents. Like they would take them. So, yeah, our father will always be our father. Jesus will always be our elder brother. He will not, he is like, we feel like Joseph's brothers, don't we? We feel like, oh man, now dad's dead and now Joseph is really gonna sock it to us. But man, he is just heartbroken by that thought. Very, very rich stuff. Pastor, I think that distinction is so important because when we pray the Lord's Prayer and we ask for forgiveness of sin, the ground for that is our justification in Christ. And yet, it's done in a familial way for us who've been adopted. And probably Roman Catholics don't think of it that way. They're probably thinking when you pray the Lord's Prayer, you're asking for that ultimate verdict to be that you're forgiven. And you're certainly not doing your justification over again. It's unrepeatable. Right? It's like asking Jesus to die for your sins all over again. It's not gonna happen. So it's really living out of that, and yet our sins are still real. Christians still sin. And while our fellowship with God can be broken, and I think that that's what you're getting at in that prayer, is to restore fellowship where that fellowship has been marred. And you know, when we observe, when we think the Lord suffered, we're remembering what Christ has done for us, and we're partaking in his grace. And yet our sins are forgiven already. Amen. All right, justifying faith. We got a little bit more to go. Let me highlight a couple of things here. It includes, if you're an Orthodox Presbyterian, I hope that you've been taught those three qualities of what faith is. Faith includes knowledge. Faith is not a blind leap in the dark. It's believing. believing, notitia. Faith is also not just bare knowledge, but assent. It's not just knowing the Apostles' Creed, but I believe those doctrines. I believe those summaries of the Christian faith. And then it's not a bare assent, contra James 2, it seems. James seems to be dealing with, in chapter 2, with basically a dead faith, not a living faith. A faith that is not bringing forth fruit is really not saving faith in the first place, then. It seems just to be an assent. Remember what he says there, that even the devils, the demons, believe in one God. Well, they have faith then, right? Do the devils have saving faith? No, but they certainly have knowledge and they have assent, but they do not have any kind of trust, which is the all-important element of true faith. Trust, fiducia, surrender is involved in faith, even commitment. I wanna be a little bit careful with that term, because when you start talking about my commitment to the Lord, it's beginning to sound a lot like a work. And yet, I can't imagine a faith that saves that's not committed. So this personal, remember the word for faith, pistis, means to be persuaded. And if we apply that persuasion to our thoughts, our affections, and our wills, we are believing not just with our heads or with our hearts, but we're believing with our whole person. Then I think you have the definition of true saving. of my daily decisions that I make. We're talking about justifying faith, it has to be that, I don't want to talk about decisional regeneration or anything like that, but we do make a decision for Christ. We're coming to Christ. It truly is an active faith. That has ramifications for how we walk in Him afterwards. So think of Matthew 13, 44. There's a full sale of everything else for him. The man who finds this great pearl in the field sells what? Everything else, buys that one prize. This is all very much out of step with Roman Catholicism's view of justification and of faith, with exceptions, thankfully. There are Roman Catholics who are seeing this. There are Roman Catholics who have come out of that because they have seen this. Listen to Terry Johnson's description of this matter in his excellent book on The Case for Traditional Protestantism, The Solas of the Reformation. I'm reading from pages 96 through 98. He says, The theologians of Trent saw justification as beginning with the pervenient or initiating grace of God. Yet such grace was seen not as a disposition in the deity, but a power which enables people to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that said grace. And there he's quoting Schaff and the creeds. One is justified not because of God's declaration, but because grace as a power is infused into the soul and enables one through obedience to become righteous and thereby merit eternal life. For Rome, justification by faith means, in Horton's words, sanctification by cooperation with infused grace. The Roman Catholic Tridentine, or the Council of Trent definition of justification, included not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man. Righteousness was for them not a status but a state. It was not a declaration of righteousness but moral transformation and the condition of righteousness. They believed one is righteous only as one attained and maintained godliness. Those who continued in obedience to God's command were said by those very works which have been done in God to have fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life and have truly merited eternal life. That is, again, from Schaff. For the Roman Catholic Church to say that grace enables one to merit eternal life is remarkable in light of what we have seen of the biblical gospel message. Moreover, this fundamental error led to a whole series of subsequent errors. For example, since one could be justified through divinely assisted works, one could also lose one's justification through sin. Then again, what one loses through sin, one could gain again through penance. Because grace is a power, not a declaration. You see what happened earlier? It's still a declaration. Murray's point still stands. It shouldn't always be seen as forensic. But now God's declaration changes because you're not cooperating well enough with infused grace. It's almost like a cup that you can fill up and then it drains and you fill it back up and then you gotta... This is where he's going. It's exactly what he's going to say. You must have pervenient grace. You got pervenient knowledge. Because grace is a power, not a declaration. It can increase or decrease according to one's obedience or disobedience, and especially through the use or neglect of the seven sacraments of the church. Thus, a system was constructed and defended on the basis of a defective definition of faith, grace, and justification. The whole apparatus became a means of feeding grace as energy to the fuel tank of the soul. The burning of this fuel keeping the engine of salvation running, enabling one to merit salvation for oneself. To clarify the distinctives of the Catholic doctrine, Trent pronounced 33 curses on all dissenting views, including the following. If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified, let him be accursed. That right there, they have thrown the gospel out with that one article. If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through our good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be accursed. You add to your justification. If anyone says that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified, or that the said justified by the good works which he performed through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, let him be anathema, accursed. The Council of Trent permanently rigidified the mistaken Roman position. As we've noted, in our century, Vatican II brought many changes into the Church, but a repudiation of the Tridentine doctrines was not among them. Thus, the Church of Rome remains committed to biblical terminology without biblical content. It misunderstands faith, reducing it to assent. It misconceives of grace, making it a power rather than God's attitude of favor. It confuses justification with regeneration and sanctification, making it a process rather than a declaration, a state earned rather than a status conferred. Packer summarizes the problem. A society like the Church of Rome, which is committed by its official creed to pervert the doctrine of justification, has sentenced itself to a distorted understanding of salvation at every point. So, thank God that there are people who go, I'm not going to believe what Rome says on this. I'm not going to believe what my priests are teaching me or what the nuns are saying. And there are those who say, the Bible says. And yet, they don't separate from that false church. So? So why don't the norm shepherds of the world, not the Catholic, why don't the norm shepherds of the world just focus on sanctification instead of redefining justification? I mean, when that heart that's motivated of godliness. Why mess with it? Actually, it's not a silly question. I think it's a good question because it gets to the heart of why people do this. It's the same reason the Roman Catholics did it. They do not want to have a free, full justification because that tends towards, they say that they think that this tends towards antinomianism. So the way to change that is to change the gospel that gives such freedoms to say, there are all these strings attached that you have to do. But Roman Catholicism goes even further by saying you're actually meriting your way to salvation, something that Norm Shepard would not say. But still, he's monkeying with that full, complete acceptance, which actually liberates us to be godly. They don't get the nexus of those two things. how becoming a freeman instead of a slave to sin means also I'm going to be a slave to righteousness now since I'm freed from sin. I want to serve God because of all the great good that he has done and continues to do for me and will do forever. Do you think it's at all motivating when you see non-believers that you love reject? and trying to change the message to fit the appetites of those around you. Downplay certain parts of the gospel. That's why it's very, very important that you have sessions that examine a person's faith. Somebody mature who's going through and hitting all these buttons, all these areas that the scriptures are quite clear about. And not just saying, well, you have one area that seems to match very well to the method of salvation in scripture. instead of looking at what our confession brings out, what our Book of Church Order brings out, of what are the basics of a true confession, a true profession of Christ. Well, we're out of time. The last section here talks about the fruit of justification, which I have here as assurance and freedom and obedience. Do Protestants, as we already touched on the first one on assurance, that many believe that if you give people too much assurance, then they're not going to be as dependent upon the church, they won't be more careful in their walk, it'll lead to looseness in life. You know, the funny thing that happens is that when you don't have this assurance, when you don't have this freedom that we have in Christ, our moral compass begins to etch away at the standard. In other words, if the law is full and perfect and Jesus has fulfilled it, I am still going to aim at following God's law in all of its fullness and perfection. But if I am in some way measuring myself by that law for my justification and my acceptance with God, I want that peace so badly that I will whittle that down to fit my silhouette. And so that actually works towards antinomianism more than a free justification. And the other side, too, though, is that a person who is saved by faith, is justified by faith alone, by Christ, nothing else added. But that same faith is going to produce good works. you have to include in this gospel message, we are saved apart from our works, but saved unto good works. God is not just addressing our status before him in the court of law, but he also does address the character of man by our regeneration, and then our sanctification. So those things always go together. And that's what Paul brings out, James brings out, If I have a faith that says I'm justified apart from the works of the law, and I am living like an unbeliever in every way imaginable, that's not saving faith. Something is bad wrong. And that's the last one there is obedience. Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. It'll then produce these good works that grow out of it. OK, we are out of time. Let's pray as we close. Father, thank you for this wonderful teaching of the scripture. Thank you, Lord, for how you've brought so many millions out of the darkness, the thralldom of a false religion, as well as out of just living for ourselves, knowing, Lord, that there's a judgment to come, that we will give an answer for our sins at the last day. How we thank you that we have our elder brother, whose sacrifice, whose blood, it is sufficient to save a billion worlds. There is no limit to his salvation to save sinners. And yet, Lord, it is efficient only for your people. Because, Lord, if you truly, efficiently died for all mankind, then all mankind must go to heaven. because God would be unjust to punish twice, first at our Savior's hand and then at ours for our sins. We thank you, Lord, for this powerful gospel that does indeed call your elect, that changes sinners like us. We would have gone on in our horrible career if it were not for your intervention. And we give you, Lord, the thanks and praise for this unspeakable gift of your son. Bless us now, Lord, as we rise to worship. May you be honored and glorified for Christ's sake. Amen.