Sunday Sermon: Through Faith Alone (Sola Fide)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

Here is Pastor Gabe. And when it came to deciding the order of the solas,

I began with Sola Scriptura because our faith begins with hearing the word of Christ.

And before we're going to believe anything else about God, we must first believe his word.

It's the way that our confession of faith begins, by a statement regarding what we believe about the scripture itself.

What God has said about being saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

So that's why we began with the scriptures. But of these five solas, we come to the middle of the five, and this is really the biggest of them, especially when it came to the controversy that was going on in the midst of the

Protestant Reformation. And this is the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Why is this the biggest of these five? It's not that we don't think that the deity of Christ is important, that is very important, but we understand that Christ is

Lord, that Jesus is God, by faith. It is a statement of faith. As Martin Luther said, this doctrine, justification by faith alone, is the doctrine by which the church either stands or falls.

John Calvin called it the hinge of the Reformation. The Reformers agreed that the gospel is justification by faith alone.

When we get to our study in the book of Romans, which by the way, all of this is like a precursor to, that will be

Paul's central point in his letter that he wrote to the church in Rome. The gospel is that we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone.

How providential of God to set it up like that, that it would be to the church in Rome that Paul would make this crucial theological argument, and I use that word crucial deliberately for this is out of the cross of Christ.

Now I'm going to give you my outline before we come back to what we've been studying in Romans 3 and in Ephesians 2.

Following our reading and prayer, I'm going to begin with a historical anecdote, as I've been doing, from the

Reformation, and we'll come back to what we looked at last week in Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10, and finish up that section, and also look at other places where Paul argues for justification by faith alone.

I will further argue that Jesus Christ himself taught justification by faith alone, and then

I want to take you a common rebuttal against this doctrine that is a twisting of something

James said in James 2. So once again, our outline this morning is this. Number one, history argues.

Number two, Paul argues. Number three, Jesus argues. And number four, James argues, justification by faith alone.

About this doctrine, J .I. Packer said the following, quote, the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas.

It bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace.

And so in honor of the word of the King, would you please stand as we read once again from Romans 3, beginning in verse 21.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version. Hear the word of the Lord. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we come into this again this morning, being reminded even from your word of these five bedrock doctrines of the

Christian faith. That according to scripture alone, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone to the glory of God alone.

And I pray that our worship this morning has been unto your praise and your glory and you have received our worship.

And Lord, may we now receive your word that we may be purified, sanctified, grown in the knowledge of Christ that we may know it is by faith in him that we are justified.

And it is in Jesus' name that we pray and all God's people said, amen. Amen. On October 1st of 1553,

Mary I was named Queen of England, succeeding her brother Edward VI.

Edward had been very friendly to the Protestant cause, even drawing up a devise for the succession at the age of 15 to prevent

England from returning to Roman Catholicism should anything happen to him.

He had ordered that his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Gray, would be his heir rather than his sisters,

Mary or Elizabeth. But upon his death, this decision was disputed and Jane was removed after ruling for only nine days.

Mary assumed the throne and had Jane and her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, executed.

Jane was only 17 years old and her husband was 19, martyred for the

Christian faith. In the five years of her short reign, Mary would put over 250

Christians to death, 56 of whom would be women, earning her the nickname

Bloody Mary. Two of the most widely known martyrs at Mary's hand were the English bishops,

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, and subsequently the execution of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.

These three together would be known to history as the Oxford Martyrs. According to 19th century

Anglican Bishop J .C. Ryle, no one of the reformers probably sowed the seeds of Protestant doctrine so widely and effectually among the middle and lower classes as Hugh Latimer.

He was a fiery preacher and assisted Cranmer in reforming the English church.

Nicholas Ridley was 20 years younger than Latimer, but he was one of England's most brilliant scholars, having memorized the entire

New Testament in Greek. There is less record of Ridley's teachings than Latimer's, but we know that Ridley rejected the supremacy of the

Pope and renounced the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that doctrine that claims that the bread and the cup literally transform into the flesh and blood of Jesus and are therefore worshipped as Christ.

He, Latimer, and Cranmer were critical of the Roman Catholic teaching that we can attain salvation by our merit.

Rather, the Bible teaches that we are justified or made innocent by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Latimer preached that to believe Rome's teaching that salvation was on the basis of faith and works made the

Pope and all who followed him the very enemies of Christ, for they reckoned that their good works have deserved heaven and everlasting life.

If we shall be judged after our own deservings, Latimer said, we shall be damned everlastingly.

In another sermon, Latimer preached the following, quote, by Christ's passion, which he has suffered, he merited that as many as believe in him shall be as well justified by him, as though they themselves had never done any sin, and as though they themselves had fulfilled the law to the uttermost.

For we, without him, are under the curse of the law. The law condemns us, the law is not able to help us, and yet the imperfection is not in the law, but in us, for the law itself is holy and good, but we are not able to keep it.

And so the law condemns us, but Christ with his death have delivered us from the curse of the law.

He has set us at liberty and promised that when we believe in him, we shall not perish.

The law shall not condemn us. Therefore, let us study to believe in Christ. Let us put all our hope, trust and confidence only in him.

Let us patch him with nothing. For as I told you before, our merits are not able to deserve everlasting life.

It is too precious a thing to be merited by man. It is his doing only.

God has given him unto us to be our deliverer and to give us everlasting life.

Oh, what a joyful thing this is, unquote. At about the ages of 70 and 50, respectively,

Latimer and Ridley were arrested for heresy, mainly for denying that the Eucharist transformed into the actual flesh of Jesus.

In March of 1554, they were sent to Boccardo Prison where they were expected to debate in public with Roman Catholic theologians, which

Latimer and Ridley did brilliantly. Latimer labeled his opponents mass mongers, and he called

Rome the enemy and persecutor of Christ's true church. From their cell, they had to witness other

Christians being burned at the stake, the first of whom was John Rogers, a Bible translator who had worked with William Tyndale.

On October 16th, 1555, 469 years ago this past week, the two reformers would meet the same end.

As they were led to their deaths, Ridley kissed the stake to which they would be tied, and the two men knelt and prayed.

As they were bound together about to be burned, Latimer said to his younger friend, be of good comfort,

Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as shall never be put out.

If you go to Oxford today and visit St. Michael at the Northgate Church on Cornmarket Street, you can see the very jail cell door that Ridley and Latimer were locked behind.

There are granite stones forming a cross at the center of the road in the front of Balliol College marking the spot where it is believed that Latimer and Ridley gave their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ and their faith and proclamation in the gospel of justification by faith alone.

Now Rome does teach that we are justified by faith. Roman Catholicism does teach that.

Remember that the Council of Trent was Rome's response to the Reformation, and in chapter eight the council declared, quote, we are therefore said to be justified by faith because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification without which it is impossible to please

God, unquote. That's a Roman Catholic statement. That's in their doctrine. But the thing that separates what we believe about justification by faith and what

Rome teaches about it is the word alone. Same council, canon nine, says, quote, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema, unquote.

In other words, let him be accursed if he believes in justification by faith alone. Martin Luther was so firm on this point of justification by faith alone that he said if the

Pope would just submit to this doctrine, Luther would be willing to submit to the Pope on every other doctrine.

Now that's a little far, personally. There are plenty of other problems than just Rome's view of justification.

But nonetheless, I think it illustrates just how serious this doctrine was in the course of the

Protestant Reformation. One of the things that I've noticed in arguing with Roman Catholics is that they tend to flatten justification and sanctification, making them the same thing, but they're not the same thing.

Justification is an event and sanctification is a process.

Justification is being made innocent. Sanctification is to be made more holy.

And you've probably heard this about justification. It is to be justified and that means it's justified, never done it.

That's exactly what Latimer taught. It was the same sort of a thing that you heard in that clip of his sermon that I read to you.

But the fact of the matter is that we have done it. And that's why we need to be justified, because we have sinned.

Frank Sinatra's song, I did it my way. That could be the title and the slogan of every sinner.

You didn't just break God's law, you blasphemed God doing it. I'm going to do it my way because I think my way is better than your way.

You proclaimed your ways as being higher than God's ways and that you knew better than him. You committed high treason against the king of the universe and what you deserve is death.

You did that. But Jesus has declared you innocent by faith in him.

Colossians 2 .14 says that he took our record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands and this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

And there as he died, you know his final words as recorded in the Gospel of John, it is finished, paid in full.

The legal pronouncement upon you because of your faith in Christ is justified.

Innocent, made clean, made his.

In Christ, I am completely justified. I am not yet fully sanctified.

Being justified, I am in Christ Jesus. Being sanctified, I'm being made more like Christ Jesus.

If I am not being justified, then I am not being sanctified.

I am not being justified. I am justified. I am being sanctified, I am not yet fully sanctified yet.

If I am justified, I will be sanctified. If I'm not justified, then I'm not being sanctified.

In justification, I've been given His righteousness. In sanctification, I then do His righteousness.

Are you following me? We're good? Okay. What Rome teaches is that you must be sanctified in order to be justified.

If my justification depends on reaching a certain point of sanctification, I'm in big trouble because God demands perfection.

In Matthew 5, 48, Jesus said, you must be perfect as your heavenly

Father is perfect. So if I have to be sanctified to a certain point to reach justification, well, that point, according to Christ, is perfection, and I won't ever get there.

Yet this is what Rome teaches, that your justification depends on your sanctification. Listen to this from R .C.

Sproul. Quote, at the Council of Trent, which formulated Rome's response to the Reformation, the

Roman Catholic authorities declared that faith affords three things, the initium, the fundamentium, and the radix.

That is, faith is the beginning of justification, the foundation for justification, and the root of justification.

But Rome held that a person can have faith and still not be justified.

In reality, the Roman view of the gospel, as expressed at Trent, was that justification is accomplished through the sacraments.

God does not justify anyone until real righteousness inheres within the person.

In other words, God does not declare a person righteous unless he or she is righteous.

So according to Roman Catholic doctrine, justification depends on a person's sanctification.

By contrast, the Reformers said, justification is based on the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus.

The only ground by which a person can be saved is Jesus' righteousness, which is reckoned to him when he believes, unquote.

And the Reformers believed this not because they invented the doctrine, as Rome will accuse us of, but because the

Bible says so. Let's come back now to our text, and we'll see the arguments that Paul makes regarding justification by faith alone.

So turn with me, if you will, to Ephesians 2. We're gonna pick up where we left off last week in that section.

And then we're gonna look together at some different passages of the Apostle Paul where he makes an argument for justification by faith alone.

We have read so far in Ephesians 2 that we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked, but God being rich in mercy made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. And we've also read that he has shown us immeasurable riches in Christ Jesus, with whom we have been seated in the heavenly places.

So let's pick up there at verses 8 and 9. Look there. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So none of this is your doing. Grace, salvation, faith are all the gift of God.

We said that this morning even when we were reading from our confession. Remember that we considered last week how you have faith because God was first gracious to you.

You don't have faith, and then get God's attention because then it wouldn't be grace. It would be based on something you did.

But this is the gift of God. And it is not on the basis of our works, but Christ's work on our behalf.

Now let's consider another one. We're in Ephesians. Let's go back to Galatians. So turn to the left, or if you're on your phone, use your thumb and get there.

Galatians chapter 2. This is Paul writing to the Galatians.

We're looking at chapter 2 beginning in verse 16, or just 16. So this is Galatians 2, 16.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law.

He says that twice in the same verse. Because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

Now this is as clear a statement of justification by faith alone as there could be. We are justified through faith in Jesus Christ, and no one will be justified by their works of the law.

And just to be clear, this is any law. There was a prominent theologian a few years ago who he wrote a book in which he proclaimed that the law that Paul is talking about was only the

Jewish laws. So since circumcision was the law particularly in view in Galatians, then

Paul was only arguing that you will not be justified by keeping the Jewish law, including the dietary laws, the

Sabbath laws, the Jewish feasts. No, you will not be justified by keeping any law because you cannot keep any law.

You can't even keep your own laws. The moral requirements that you place on other people by your own subjective expectations, you don't even amount up to those expectations.

No one will be justified by their works of God's law. No one will be justified by their works of Roman Catholic laws.

No one will be justified by their works of Mormon laws or Eastern Orthodox laws or the laws of nature or American laws or tax laws or the speed limit laws or the walk don't run laws at the swimming pool.

By works of the law, no one will be justified. Let's look at another one.

Turn with me a few books to the left. Let's skip 1st and 2nd Corinthians and go to Romans. Romans chapter four, we'll look at verses four through six.

Romans four, four through six. It says here the following, Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

Remember we considered last week how God owes us nothing. We've done nothing that puts

God in a position to have to pay us for anything because we cannot work to obtain his favor.

It is by his grace that he shows his favor to us. Look now at verse five. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

We are counted righteous by our faith. And Paul didn't just say that we are counted righteous by our faith.

He explicitly said we are counted righteous by our faith and not by our works.

That's justification by faith alone. Friends, this is exactly contrary to the teaching of Rome.

It is astonishing that anyone who knows their Bible could ever fall for Roman Catholicism.

To deny justification by faith alone is to deny the gospel and embrace heresy.

Paul said to the Galatians, I'll tell you this one, you don't have to go back to Galatians. Galatians five, four.

You are severed from Christ. You who would believe that you are justified by the law.

You have fallen away from grace. If you're gonna say your justification is by faith and your works, then you believe a different gospel.

As Paul said to the Galatians also, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed.

Galatians one, eight through nine. Now, Rome is not the only system that denies justification by faith alone, but it is the largest one.

Did you know that 18 % of the world's population, about one in every six people on the planet will claim to be

Roman Catholic? That's over a billion people. But just about every religion on Earth from true, apart from true biblical

Christianity denies justification by faith alone. I was once evangelizing to a couple of Mormon elders, and the question that I had for them was, if I were to ask you, how can

I be saved? How can I be forgiven my sins and have eternal life?

What would you tell me? And they said, well, the articles of faith, article four says that you have to have faith, repent, be baptized, and have hands laid on you to receive the

Holy Spirit. And I said, so I can't be justified, I can't just be forgiven my sins by believing in Jesus Christ.

There's other things I have to do. And they said, yes. I watched a teaching from an

Eastern Orthodox priest named Father Ciprodan. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it or not. But he said, salvation is a free gift, but we must work and repent in order to enable ourselves to receive

God's grace. So salvation is the free gift of God, but you must do something to make yourself able to receive it.

What kind of grace is that? I heard that, and I was like, thank God for irresistible grace.

If you have to fix yourself to get God's grace, you won't ever get God's grace. And then grace wouldn't be grace.

Now, I could go on naming other categories of religions. Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh -day

Adventists, a great number of Charismatics and Pentecostals all believe in some form of justification plus works.

At the end of the sermon last week, we considered some of the most prominent world religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, all proclaiming justification by works.

Even an atheist believes that he can be justified by his works. But Roman Catholicism remains the largest in the world that is teaching justification by faith plus works.

Are there Catholics who are Christians? Yes, there are. Because they're bad

Catholics. They're bad at Roman Catholicism and better at Christianity.

By and large, Roman Catholics and Protestants are not co -workers on the mission field.

Roman Catholics are the mission field. What is taught by Rome is contrary to the very teachings of Christ.

And with that, let's consider what Jesus has argued about justification by faith alone.

I was listening to an old sermon by Phil Johnson of Grace to You, and he was talking about a Roman Catholic apologist on the radio who argued that justification by faith alone is a doctrine that was invented by Martin Luther.

So he challenged any evangelical to show him any place in the Gospels where Jesus taught this doctrine.

And he went on saying, I've never had an evangelical stand up to that challenge. And Phil Johnson said,

I'll do it. So pointing to where the Gospels that Jesus taught justification by faith alone,

Johnson said the following, quote, if it is true that justification by faith alone is so crucial as I have said that it is, then we should expect to find it clearly taught somewhere by Christ.

Indeed, that is exactly what we discover. Christ made no formal explication of the doctrine.

He didn't stand up and systematically teach it like Paul did in Romans. Jesus didn't teach specifically about justification by faith, but it's very easy to demonstrate from his evangelical ministry, everything he said about the

Gospel depended on this doctrine of sola fide, unquote. In John 5, 24,

Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment, but he is passed from death to life.

And Johnson argued this happens without any sacrament. There's no purgatory.

There's no saying of Hail Marys or some kind of popish declaration from a priest. Jesus said, whoever believes has passed from death to life.

This is, of course, two chapters after we just read, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

And whoever believes in him, whoever believes shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

In Luke 23, as Jesus was dying on the cross, there was a thief next to him, dying on the cross right beside his, and said,

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And what did Jesus say?

He said, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Again, that's without baptism, without holy orders, without last rites. He couldn't even do the sign of the cross.

His hands are nailed to a cross. He did nothing but have faith.

And he didn't even have to go through purgatory. This man was a criminal. If there was anyone who needed to be purified by fire for a thousand years, it was this guy.

Yet because of his faith, it was the only way he could be justified.

Jesus said to him, today, today, you will be with me in paradise.

How many times did Jesus heal someone and commended that person for their faith?

In Matthew 8, when the centurion comes to Jesus and asks Jesus to heal his servant, he says, just say the word and I know my servant will be healed.

And Jesus marveled at him and said, there's no one else in Israel with faith like this.

In the next chapter, when Jesus healed the paralytic, he demonstrated that he alone had the power and the authority to forgive sins.

His ability to heal was visible proof of his authority to even forgive a person their sins.

For he said, which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven, or to say rise and walk?

But so you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

And then he healed the paralytic and said to him, pick up your bed and go home.

Later in the chapter, verse 22, Jesus said, take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.

Again, not by any work that she did, only by her faith. Also in Mark 5 .34

and 10 .32, Luke 8 .48 and 17 .19, there are many other references of Jesus healing, granting to them by faith and only by faith.

When Jesus said your faith has made you well, his point was you are justified by faith alone.

And he doesn't have to use that word to make that point. That is very clearly the point.

If you still don't believe me, let's look at the passage where Jesus taught this the most clearly.

In fact, it's the only passage in the Gospels where Jesus declared someone justified.

Turn with me to Luke 18. Let's go to Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, and we're gonna read verses nine through 14.

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

Verse 10, two men went up into the temple to pray, one a

Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus,

God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, not like extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift his eyes to heaven.

He beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Now, this would have been an astonishing parable to the people who heard it. This man who did nothing but humble himself before God and say,

God, be merciful to me, a sinner. He had nothing to boast in. He just simply beat his chest and asked for God's forgiveness.

This is the one on whom Jesus pronounced justification by his faith and only by his faith.

The Pharisee had all these works that he had done, but not one of them made him justified.

In Matthew 5, Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the

Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And that would have shocked the people too to hear

Jesus preach that in the Sermon on the Mount. The Pharisees were the most righteous people that they knew, but it wasn't enough.

Your righteousness has to exceed even theirs. You need the righteousness of Christ.

A person who rejects the doctrine of justification by faith alone is self -righteous.

And that's what the Pharisee was. He was a self -righteous man. He was not justified.

Roman Catholic priests, scholars, apologists, bishops, cardinals, the Pope, the whole lot of them, they are among the

Pharisees of this age, adding to the word of God, elevating the traditions of men.

And you must do all of these things in order to be saved. Not one of them has kept their own laws, let alone

God's law. If they truly knew the teachings of Christ, they would know that he taught justification by faith alone.

Now, I think it would do us well to consider the main central objection to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And you have no doubt heard this many times before any of you have done any sort of study on this doctrine.

The Romanist will say that the only place in the Bible that faith alone is even referenced is in James chapter 2, where it is said, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

James straight up says it. A person is justified, is not justified by faith alone.

So how can we say that the gospel itself is justification by faith alone without denying a clear statement from one of God's teachers himself?

So Romans 3 .28 says, we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

We've already considered Romans 4 .5, which says, and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Then you go to James 2 .17 and you read that faith without works is dead. It's not even real faith.

We affirm that 100%. Martin Luther gravely misunderstood James saying that at one point, he wished the book of James would be excluded from canon.

That's not where we are. But let me also say matter of factly that James absolutely would have repudiated

Roman Catholicism. Turn with me over to James chapter two. Let's look at parts of this together. So James chapter two.

In James chapter two, look first at verse 10. James says, whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

So if someone is going to use James to argue that we can somehow do good works in order to merit peace with God, James would have told them, okay, then you must keep the whole law perfectly every day.

And who has done that? You've not even done that today. You have not loved

God or your neighbor perfectly today and neither have I. And the day isn't even half over yet.

So James then goes on to challenge the person who says he has faith. Notice in verse 14, this is specifically about the person who says he has faith but does not have works.

Can that faith save him? Can that kind of faith, a faith one confesses but does not do, there is no fruit in that person's life giving any evidence of their faith, can that faith save him?

No. Verse 17, so also faith by itself if it does not have works is dead.

Now skimming down to verse 24, it says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

He is justified in the sense of his claim that he says he has faith, you know, back up to verse 14.

So it's just as if I were to say to you, I play baseball for the Arizona Diamondbacks but you can't find my name in any

Arizona Diamondbacks lineup. You don't see any kind of work ethic worthy of a major league baseball player.

You cannot even find a Diamondbacks jersey in my wardrobe. Well, my claim is dead.

It's a stupid claim. But if you were to find my jersey after the game with my name on the back of it and evidence of dirt and sweat all over it as if I had just played a game, if you were to look at me and you saw the physique of a major league baseball player and you turn on a

Diamondbacks game and you saw me on the field with the team, then I would be justified.

Meaning that by the evidence of my works, there is a reasonable basis for my claim.

That's the point of James's argument. When James says, what good is it my brothers if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him?

His question has nothing to do with whether a person is reconciled to God through faith plus works.

His question is simply this, how do you know if that guy has a real faith?

Answer, by what he does. It's not that what he does saves him.

It's that what he does is evidence that he is saved. That's the exact same thing that we've been saying here this morning.

And we looked at it last week in Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. Good works will not save you. If you are saved, you will do good works.

In this way, Paul and James do not disagree. How is a person reconciled to God?

By faith and not by works. That's what the Bible says.

Now, if a person were to say, I believe in Jesus and therefore I'm saved, but they were to continue to live a life of sin, living just like anyone else in this world, no conviction, no sense of repentance, that would be just as much a perversion of the gospel as what

Roman Catholic, as what Roman Catholicism teaches. By the way, this guy whom

James describes, the person who says, I have faith, but doesn't have the works to back it up, this is the most common kind of Christian on the planet.

James would say, the professing Christian who is not a doing Christian is not a

Christian at all. When a person is saved, God dwells within them.

He gives them a new nature that desires to do good works. The person who does not do good works does not have the faith that results in good works.

The faith he says, the faith that James says he has, the faith that this man says that he has is dead.

He has not been made alive together with Christ. He is dead in his sins.

Works are still important to our salvation. They're not the cause of it, but they are part of it.

Again, right after Paul says that we are saved by grace through faith and not of works, he says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. In Titus, the Apostle Paul said, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

This was after that he said in chapter two that the grace of God trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self -controlled upright and godly lives in this present age.

Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

My friends, without the good works, he's not justified us. In Revelation chapter two, verse 23,

Jesus says, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works.

Revelation 20, verse 12 says, and I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne.

Great books were opened and then another book was opened, which was the book of life and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done.

Remember that this is still all of Christ and it is not under our power, but by the power of God within us.

Philippians 2, 12 to 13 says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is

God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

So we have considered here what history argues. What has been argued in the history of the church for this doctrine?

There are people, men and women, teenagers, middle -aged and older who have given their lives because they believed that we are justified by faith alone and not by our works.

They believed this because it's what the Bible says. Second, we have also considered what

Paul argues. Romans 4, 5, to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Thirdly, we have considered what Jesus argues. John 5, 24 says, truly, truly,

I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. And lastly, we have considered what

James argues. If you wanna say you're justified by faith and works, then you have to keep the whole law.

He makes no argument in James 2 about being reconciled to God but he argues that the one who says he has faith but does not have the works as evidence of that faith, then he has no faith at all.

And all four of these, history, Paul, Jesus, James, they all proclaim that we are justified by faith alone.

I am no more innocent than anyone else by my own merit.

It doesn't matter what you think of me. It doesn't matter what you have seen in my history. It doesn't matter whatever reputation

I had as a teenager or as a young man, as a husband, as a father, or as a pastor.

My merit does not gain me righteousness before God. I am just as much a sinner as anyone in need of a savior.

And Christ is that savior. I have sins in my past that have haunted me.

I've had things in my past that I've wondered, what would someone's opinion be of me if they found out that I did this?

But I have no fear of the judgment of God. Not because of anything that I do because I finally wash myself and dress myself in a suit and I look like a squeaky clean young man.

I know that I am innocent before God because of what Christ has done for me.

And his righteousness has been credited to me by faith in him alone.

It is only by faith in Jesus Christ that any one of us can declare ourselves saved.

And don't let anyone teach you any other gospel but this one.

You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

For more information about our church, visit our website at providencecasagrande .com.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again