Session 6: The Five "Solas" - Salvation is of the Lord (Ephesians 1:1-13)

The foundation of the Reformation and that which distinguishes its theology from that of modern times is that God is the center of everything. He is the reason for all that he does. He is the reason for all that he asks.

He is the root from which all things come. He is the root, R-O-U-T-E, by which all things come. He is the reward that he gives, and his glory is the result of all that he decrees to come to pass. There were five solas, which means only, that summarize Reformation theology and thought.

The flagship one was Soli Deo Gloria, glory to God alone. Or to put it in our vernacular, it's all about God. But there were four others that are worthy of our note. Sola gratia, grace alone. Sola fide, faith alone.

Solus Christus, Christ alone. And solus scriptura, the scriptures alone. So salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in the scriptures alone. Each of those is an affirmation of biblical truth, opposing the errors of the pre-Reformation church.

If you would ever want to look at this, you could get a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a copy of the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent, and just go side by side by side and see what they were opposing.

Grace Alone in Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 1

Now much of what I say has been explained at great length over the course of the previous sessions, so I will just touch lightly on them. We might normally think of Ephesians 2, about salvation being by grace alone.

For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works. So there we have two of the solas, grace alone and faith alone, and their antithesis, works.

But we need all four. So let's go to Ephesians chapter 1, and we're going to read verses 1 through 13. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the beloved. Let me just pause here.

That's the only place that you're accepted is in Christ. You're not accepted in any other way. If you're in Christ, you're accepted. If you're not in Christ, you're not accepted. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.

Having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him.

In him also, we've obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.

We'll just stop there. You have all the solos in this one passage. In verse 7, we're forgiven according to the riches of his grace. According to, not out of. That's an interesting simile there. I think Elon Musk is the richest man in the world.

If you wrote a letter to him and asked him for some money, he could give you out of the abundance of his wealth by giving you two bucks. If he gave you according to the riches of his wealth, he could give you two billion and not even notice.

Here, God grants his grace according to, not out of. Big difference. In verse 12, we see that his purpose is that we who first trusted, there's faith, in Christ, there's Christ, should be to the praise of his glory.

And in verse 13, we see how it comes about. In him, you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And in verse 14, it comes full cycle to the praise of his glory. And we have them all.

How nice of God to put them in a nice, neat little passage like that, isn't it? It's like I heard somebody say how nice it was for Jesus to be born on Christmas. So let's look at grace alone. And we can speed through some of this because we've covered the territory before.

Paul contrasts in Romans grace with doing anything for your salvation. If it's of grace, it can't be of works. Because the two are incompatible. And so he says, for him who does not work, it's reckoned of grace.

Augustus' top lady wrote that hymn, Rock of Ages. And in the second verse, he says, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. You know why you bring nothing? Because you have nothing to bring.

Contemporary of Luther's was Philip Melanchthon. He said, the only thing you bring to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. Again, the rich young ruler says, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Can't do anything to inherit something. I published a book, I didn't bring any copies here, called The Humble Sinner Resolved What He Must Do to Obtain Salvation. And I gave that to a lady in the church who's very astute theologically.

Two weeks later, I said, well, what did you think of the book? Didn't much care for the title. The Humble Sinner, you hate that part? No, keep going, resolve what he must do to obtain eternal. I said, you're not suggesting for a moment that you don't have to do anything, are you?

You have to believe, right? Yes. You have to repent, right? Yes. You have to forsake sin. Yes. Why are you arguing over whether to say you must do this? The issue is, doing that does not save you. Christ saves you.

There's no merit in your doing those things, but you must do them. It's hyper-Calvinism to say, there's nothing for me to do, I'll just sit here and wait for God to kill me, or save me, or whatever. You have to do those things, but you don't earn anything by doing them.

You can't earn a gift. You can't earn an inheritance. God owes us nothing at all but punishment for our sins. There isn't a single thing you and I have ever done that has obliged God to be nice to us.

And as this passage in Ephesians points out, it's all a matter of, I love the language, His mere good pleasure. Why does God do anything? Because it pleases Him to do it. Why doesn't He do this? He didn't please Him to do it.

And now you know the answer to all those questions. Why did God do this? He pleased Him to do it. Yeah, well, how come He didn't do it? He didn't please Him to do it. If it had pleased Him, He would have done it.

God is gracious because it's His nature to be so, and because nothing we could ever do would be good enough anyway. Again, the standard is, be ye holy as your Father in heaven is holy. That's the standard.

And nothing less will ever satisfy a perfectly holy God. And if we add to this the fact that God never made a way of salvation for angels, which He did for fallen men, God is being gracious to some and not to others, which it is completely His prerogative to be that way.

I mean, didn't He say, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy? My choice, He says, not your choice, my choice. This should put it all in its proper perspective. Then we move on to faith alone. That's the topic that we have spent the majority of our time so far.

According to the Reformers, it was, quote, the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. You abandon this doctrine, you're not a church anymore. Not a Christian church. It's also the doctrine on which the individual stands or falls.

This is the sine qua non of Christianity. Latin translated, without this, nothing. Thomas Cranmer was one of the main evangelical forces in Reformation England. He said, Plus nothing brings justification, but justification brings works, or it's a dead faith.

The scripture does speak of two kinds of faith, saving faith and dead faith. It's not what I have done. It's not how good I have been. It's how good Christ was and what He did on my behalf. That's the issue.

I put my faith in that. In Christ alone. You might wonder about this one. Obviously, the unbelieving world rejects this. All roads lead to heaven. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere.

We're going on through this in our society with this gender identity issue. I believe I'm a woman, so I'm going to swim in women's meats. That makes as much sense as identifying as a potato chip. It doesn't matter.

Truth is what is real, not what you believe it to be. Well, that's my truth. How many kinds of truth are there? The church needs to be reminded of this one and to make sure it has a working definition.

Christ Alone and the One Mediator

One of the central issues of the Reformation was that of merit. By whose merit is a man made right before God? Jesus made this clear in the gospel where He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to God without going through me.

That's a pretty exclusive religion, isn't it? There's only one way. There's only one truth. There's only one life. And every other way to God is rejected as being useless and invalid. Again, the only two theologies.

The theology of divine accomplishment. The theology of human achievement. People don't like it when religious people proselytize them on the basis of their religion being the one true religion. But that's exactly what Jesus did.

That it's me and there's no other Savior. There's one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. There are Roman Catholic churches in South America. Outside the church there's a cross. On one side they have Jesus.

On the other side they have Mary. Because they believe that Mary is a co-redemptrix. She is as involved in your salvation as Jesus is. How interesting that God anticipated there's one mediator, the man, Christ Jesus.

There is no other name given under heaven where we may be saved. Sound like any doubt in God's mind about this? It's not Christ plus works. It's not Christ plus faith. It's not Christ plus obedience. It's not Christ plus anything.

It's Christ alone and we put our faith in him. And because of that we do good works and obey him. But all the merit is only in Christ. Isaiah says, he was crushed for our iniquities and by his wounds we are healed.

And Isaiah says that God is satisfied with what Christ has done. Now, if God is satisfied, how dare we not be? Well God, what he did may be enough to satisfy you, but it's not enough to satisfy me. You see, the sinner's real problem is not that he doesn't think that he's good enough for God.

He thinks God's not good enough for him. It's no wonder God is so angry with sinners. Didn't Christ say that to reject him was to reject God? It's the utmost act of human arrogance to reject and be dissatisfied with God in Christ.

Scripture Alone, the Final Authority, and the Power of Preaching

Scripture alone. If this one issue were settled, all the others would fall into place. I used to enjoy watching John MacArthur on the Larry King show. And I asked John one time, how'd you pull that gig?

He says, Larry King's producer is a member of my church. And he says, Larry would come to him and say, I want to do a show with a quiz panel. And I've got a Catholic priest and a new age guy and a rabbi.

Can you think of an evangelical we could come in and bring in? Let me see. And that's how John got on the Larry King show. And it was interesting because when they would ask John, what do you think? He would always say, doesn't matter what I think.

I'll tell you what the Bible says. And they would go back and forth. Well, so-and-so said in the 1100s in China. And John says, let me tell you what the Bible says. I have a friend in the Orlando area, a Reformed Baptist pastor friend of mine.

He has a very effective counseling method. So somebody will come in and I'll ask him what the problem is. He says, last week a lady came in and says, I'm just tired of being married to this guy.

I want out.

I want a divorce. He said, okay, that's the problem. What does the Bible say? The Bible says God hates divorce. And why are we still talking? What does the Bible say? That's the final authority on everything.

But what do we mean by scripture alone? We're saying that everything necessary for salvation and to live the life that God calls us to can be found in the Bible. We mean that scripture is the final authority and controversies.

And that in everything that is essential, it is clear enough. We also mean that scripture is the best interpreter of itself. What it opposes is the idea that the church is the final authority. Or that the church alone has the right to interpret scripture ultimately.

We oppose the idea of Gnosticism, where only a select few have some secret knowledge that none of the rest of us have. Now having said that, it does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid.

We reject the notion the Bible means, quote, what it means to me. You'll hear somebody do that. You'll quote the scriptures. Well, that's not what it means to me. Why do I care what it means to you? How about what it means to God?

Or they'll say, that's just your interpretation. Well, of course, that's my interpretation. Who else's interpretation would it be? So when somebody says, well, I have a right to be happy. Well, the Bible says you have an obligation to be holy.

Well, that's your interpretation. How many ways are there to interpret that? The Bible may have one meaning, but it has multiple applications. And serious, diligent, disciplined study is essential to rightly divide the word of truth.

In our pluralistic, self-centered culture, we think that anybody can go to the Bible, read a verse or two, decide that's what it means to him, even if it contradicts what theologians and serious scholars have thought for centuries.

The Holy Spirit doesn't say one thing to this person and something totally different to this person. Scripture alone removes the God-said-to-me mentality that is so prevalent in our day. When I worked at this college in Missouri, one of the cheerleaders, Cheryl, came up to me and we were talking, and she had theological inclinations, and she says, God wants me to be a minister.

And you can't. What do you mean, I can't? Because the Bible forbids women pastors. Well, I don't know about that. I just know what God said to me. You can't even have an intelligent discussion now. God speaks in his word.

If you say God spoke to me, I'll ask, give me chapter and verse. He may guide us with secondary helps, but according to Hebrews, he speaks one way now. Scripture alone also contradicts the idea of Scripture and tradition being the full mind of God or something.

Calvin said, where the Bible is silent, we may not speak, at least not authoritatively. And Luther added, what may be deduced from Scripture is as authoritative as that which is explicitly stated. The Bible is not a textbook on Chinese acupuncture.

It's not a manual on how to build a better diesel engine. But with regard to matters of the soul, it is all we need. Interestingly enough, the very word psychology literally means the study of the soul.

What better tool to treat the soul than the very word of God who created the soul and best knows how to nurture and care for the soul. The church today may accept the Bible's authority, but so often it rejects its sufficiency.

The issue for the reformers was the authority of the Scripture as being more so than that of the church councils, traditions or the Pope himself. The burning question for them was this. Does the church get said authority from the Scripture or does the Scripture get said authority from the church?

Reformers said the former. The Roman Catholic Church said the latter. I think for the most part, the church no longer believes that the gospel is the power of God to salvation. Paul wrote under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

It was the foolishness of preaching that God uses to reach men. It was preaching that God uses to draw men to himself. We read in Ephesians in him. You also trusted after hearing the word of truth. Faith comes by hearing.

Literally, faith comes by hearing someone preach Christ. Not by hearing anything. In John's gospel, men are born again by the living and abiding word of God. Do we really think that the gospel is what saves men, but human wisdom is what sanctifies them and makes life livable?

Do we believe that?

It is Scripture alone, my friends, that changes the heart. It is Scripture alone that feeds the soul. It is Scripture alone that tells us what God's mind is. It is Scripture alone that comforts us. And it is the Scripture alone, the word of God, that has the final say on matters of the soul and the heart.

Scripture’s Sufficiency, Divine Truth, and Reformation Today

We've wandered from this greatly, I'm afraid. Now we hear insipid things like this. God said it. I believe it. And that settles it. How long did it take you to figure out that one-third of that was completely irrelevant to anything?

If God said it, that settles it. Doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Now if God said it, you better believe it. But if God said it, it's settled. In fact, the Bible says, let God be true in every man a liar.

It could possibly be that God's the only one that believes something and it's still true. You're in our country now. We take a vote. And if more people are for teaching children about gender identity in the first grade, then we're going to do it.

No.

It's not okay. I don't care if everybody believes it. I told Jim the other day about a familiar John Gerstner story. This is in Western Pennsylvania. He went to Westminster College, which was a Presbyterian school, and did four lectures on election.

And after the first night, a lady came up to him and said, well, Dr. Gerstner, I don't believe in election because I don't believe the Bible teaches it. He said, Madam, I applaud you. Don't you ever believe something that you don't think the Bible teaches.

But would you at least stay for the next three nights and hear the remainder of the material? Yes, I'll do that. So after the last night, she came up to him and said, OK, you've convinced me the Bible does teach it, but I still don't believe it.

He said, Madam, you're a lost soul. You're not arguing with Gerstner. You're arguing with Jesus Christ. There's no hope for you. If God said it, that settles it.

Period.

Doesn't matter if you understand it. Doesn't matter if you think it works or not. It doesn't matter if you like it. That's the universal hermeneutic anymore. I remember walking out of church and hearing this.

What did you think of the sermon? You don't hear anybody think about a sermon anymore. How did you feel about the sermon? If God said it, that settles it.

Period.

So it's what the Bible says and what the Bible actually means by what it says that determines all controversy. We must believe exactly what the Bible says. Unless there's good reason to believe from the Bible that it means anything other than what it exactly says.

Well, those are the five souls of the Reformation. We need the same Reformation today in the church. The church you attend is not the norm. The church you attend is very unusual because it's committed to the Word of God and truth.

And there'll be no compromise here. I was doing a Q &A up at Grace one time where a man stood up and says, Pastor John, if a woman ever preaches from this pulpit, what will be the reaction? He goes, there'll be no reaction.

No woman will ever preach from this pulpit. What once was a Reformed church is now in danger of becoming a Deformed church. May God reform us once again. Amen.