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Our pastor has shepherded us to look at the five souls of the Reformation. The first Sunday was

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Scripture alone. The second Sunday was Grace alone.

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Today, we look at Faith alone. When Paul explains the

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Gospel in Romans, he says that in that Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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I want to begin by looking at how the Catholic Church obscured the Gospel, then move to how the

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Reformation recovered the Gospel, and finally give an implication of the

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Gospel for us today. The Catholic Church obscured the Gospel of Faith alone by tangling up regeneration and justification like a bad game of Twister.

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Biblically, regeneration is being born again, having eternal life imparted into the soul.

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Justification is God the Judge declaring us to be legally righteous in His sight instead of guilty.

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The mixing up of regeneration and justification resulted in the

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Catholic Church teaching that in baptism, a man receives an infusion of righteousness into his soul, and that infusion of righteousness makes that man internally right before God.

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Consequently, the Catholic Church went on to say this, the fruit of righteousness flowing from the divine life experienced in baptism flows out in works so that a man may merit, by gracious works, a second justification before God.

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So the foundation of a right standing before God is what a man becomes at his baptism, and what a man does after his baptism, that baptism being an infant baptism.

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This was the thinking that plagued Martin Luther. Similarly, when a man,

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I'm sorry, my paint is going to get stuck. If ever there was a monk who could have been saved by his monkery, it would have been

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Martin Luther. Aside from vigils, prayers, and reading, he would spend six hours at a time in the confessional, and he would go time after time, three days, fasting without a morsel of bread or a drop of water.

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But all of this work failed to give Luther the peace with God that he sought for.

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And that's because Galatians 2 .16 says, By works of the law, no one will be justified.

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So the Catholic Church obscured the gospel of faith alone by tangling up regeneration and justification, and in this way, tortured

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Martin Luther. But what the Reformation did was untangle regeneration and justification, and this resulted in clarifying what justification means.

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Justification is not a process. It is an instantaneous declaration from God the

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Judge in the courtroom of heaven that a sinner is righteous instead of guilty.

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And the instrument by which a man is justified is not man's work, but faith alone in Christ and His work at Calvary.

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Romans 4 .5 says, To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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Does not work, but believes.

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God justifies the ungodly.

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But how can God declare an ungodly man righteous?

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He does not do this by infusing righteousness into a man's soul, as the

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Catholic Church taught, but by imputing the righteousness of Christ to a believing sinner.

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In other words, when a man believes on Christ, God considers the righteousness of Christ as belonging to that sinner.

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Think of it this way. When a poor woman marries a rich man, the woman enters into a union with him so that she shares in his wealth.

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The poor woman becomes rich. Similarly, when a sinful man believes in Christ, that man enters into a union with him so that he shares in Christ's righteousness.

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And in this manner, God considers Christ's righteousness as belonging to the sinner, and thus declares the sinner to be righteous.

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This is the only way that a sinful man may have peace with God. Luther put it this way,

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Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.

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I could not believe that He was placated by my satisfaction. At last, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is revealed by the

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Gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which the merciful God justifies us by faith.

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The Catholic Church obscured the Gospel. The Reformation recovered the

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Gospel. Here is an implication for the Gospel for the Church today.

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We had better get justification by faith alone right before we get to work.

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Another way to say it would be this. We had better get the Gospel right before the

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Church works. When Paul reveals what the

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Gospel means in Romans, he speaks about it in terms of justification by faith alone.

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When the Catholic Church obscured that Gospel, it gave rise to an unhealthy religiosity.

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Williston Walker says this about Germany. Germany, at the beginning of the 16th century, was in many respects the most churchly of the

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European lands. Pilgrimages and masses for the dead were more popular than ever.

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Veneration of the saints, especially of the Virgin Mary and of her mother, St. Anne, had increased dramatically.

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Collections of relics abounded and the sale of indulgences multiplied. Many new churches, chapels, and chantries were built.

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Germany was not being taken over by secularism when the

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Protestant Reformation broke out. It was very religious, but it was an unhealthy religiosity that arose from the burial of justification by faith alone.

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Contrastingly, we here in America do see secularism taken over, a gross paganism infiltrating our land.

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And what a temptation it would be for us in our day to say, we need to get back to America being religious.

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But if that religiosity does not arise from justification by faith alone, then we are not standing on the

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Gospel. What revolutionized Europe was not increasing religious activity.

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It was a recovery of justification by faith alone.