WWUTT 551 Sola Scriptura?

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Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

The 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation

Thank you Becky, and greetings everyone. Welcome to the week of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Originally I wanted to take this week to finish up our study of 2 Thessalonians, but how often does a 500th anniversary come along?

Once every 500 years. And only one time, there will never again be a 500th anniversary of the Reformation. So I didn't want to let this week get away from me, and instead wanted to commit each day this week to the 5 solas of the Protestant Reformation.

The 5 biblical principles that the Reformers believed in and preached, foundational to a doctrine of salvation. And those teachings are, Sola Scriptura by Scripture alone, Sola Fide by Faith alone, Sola Gratia by Grace alone, Solus Christus in Christ alone, and Soli Deo Gloria to the glory of God alone.

And our central text this week is going to be Romans chapter 3 verses 21 through 26. There will be other passages that we'll look at related to each one of these respective doctrines, but this will kind of be our launching point for our study.

The Righteousness of God Revealed Apart from the Law

So Romans 3 starting in verse 21. 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.

It is in this particular passage that we see demonstrated all five of those solas. Verse 21, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

There's sola scriptura by scripture alone, and that's what we'll be looking at today. I'll come back to that in just a moment. Verse 22, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

There's sola fide by faith alone. 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. That's sola gratia by grace alone. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

There's solus Christus in Christ alone. 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.

And there's soli deo gloria. This is all to the glory of God alone. Today, we're going to be focusing on that first sola, sola scriptura, which we see there in verse 21. Now, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

Now, this isn't the perfect verse to demonstrate for us sola scriptura, but it certainly points us in that direction, that we come to know the righteousness of God according to what is written down for us in the pages of Scripture.

The law and the prophets bear witness to it, but also what was written by the apostles. And that's what we're reading here. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, who gave us this book, this writing to the Romans, and then the rest of the New Testament from the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that was given to the apostles to preach to the whole world.

The apostle Paul said later on in Romans 15, four, for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

So these things are not just a historical record of things that happen, even though there is that aspect of of scripture, you know, the Old Testament, the account of how God had delivered his people from slavery and delivered them into a promised land, and also the promise of a Messiah that was to come, that would reconcile both Jews and Gentiles to himself.

And then in the New Testament, we have historical books in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, accounting for us the works and ministry that Jesus did, his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave, the commission that he gave to his disciples and his ascension into heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

And then we have the epistles that go from Acts, even though Acts is a historical account, it is also a letter Luke wrote to Theophilus. And so we have the teachings there from Acts all the way through Revelation that are telling us what it is that we need to do as Christians in this world who are walking in faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is now how we are to live. And then John also giving us a hope for the future. The one prophetic book of of the New Testament is that book of Revelation to show us how all things are going to be consummated together in Christ Jesus, who will abolish all evil and deliver all those who were righteously saved in him.

And so this is what we have for us in the pages of Scripture. And again, it's not just a historical account, but an instruction for us to follow. As I've heard R .C. Sproul explain sola scriptura, he says it this way, that it means that the Scriptures bind our conscience.

Well, now, what does that mean? Well, we see the righteousness of God, his holiness and perfection that is proclaimed in the Scriptures. We also see our sinfulness that is shown to us in the Bible as well.

In fact, it was proclaimed to us even in the verse previous to this section that we just started reading. Verse 24, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

So by the law, we see the righteous perfection of God and the holiness that he calls us to. But we also see by that law our own sin, the realization that we have not kept that law. We have fallen short of the glory of God.

We have rebelled against the high king of the universe, creator of all things, who is the giver of the law. Since he created all things, he establishes even all morality, what is good and what is wrong.

You don't get to decide your own truth. What is good for you might not be good for somebody else, but you know, whatever it is that makes you happy, that's not the way morality works. And you even know that's not the way morality works.

But we're convinced that there is there is a relative truth that is true only for the person who accepts it as true, because our hearts are darkened, because we suppress the truth with unrighteousness that was also spoken to us about here in the book of Romans.

And so it is when our hearts have become so hardened, we've become so rebellious against God that the law breaks through that hardness and shows us just how fallen we really are so that we would be cut to our hearts.

That's the way that it was that that conviction was described in Acts chapter two, when the apostle Peter proclaimed the gospel for the very first time there at Pentecost, after he said to the people there, this is Jesus, this is the promised Messiah, and you crucified him.

And it says that those who heard Peter were cut to the heart and they said, brothers, what can we do? And Peter said to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And so it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Peter revealed to them their sin and need for repentance before a holy God.

And that's what we see in scripture. We see the righteousness of God, his work, his divinity, his holiness. These things are revealed to us in the pages of scripture. We see our sinfulness, our fallenness as compared to the holiness of God.

We see the work that God has done to redeem his people from all lawlessness and to sanctify us in his truth. All of these things written down for us in scripture. We come to salvation by the scripture and we grow in salvation by the scripture.

All of this by the word of God. As a matter of fact, we we talked about this even last week when we were in Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse 13. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth.

You come to salvation in Christ because you heard it proclaimed by the word of God. What was written down for us in the scriptures, written down in the scriptures of old, written down in the New Testament as well.

As Paul will go on to say in Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So this saving faith that we came into the knowledge of Jesus Christ, who he is, is the son of God.

His death on the cross, the perfect life that he lived as a substitute for us. See, his substitute was not just in his death, but also in his life. He lived the perfect life that we could not live, died the death we were supposed to die.

And then our sins were placed upon Christ on the cross. Our righteous or his righteousness has been placed upon us. And now we have a righteous righteousness as we stand before God. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

All of these things given to us in the scriptures. And we come into this saving knowledge of Jesus Christ because it was given to us by the word of God, knowledge of our sin, need for repentance, need for a savior so that we could be right with God again.

And then the work that that savior did for us. And then if we are in that savior, we have placed our faith in Christ. How now shall we live? How shall we walk in this world now that we realize that in Christ we have been justified before a holy God and declared innocent and cleansed of our sins?

Well, then that's what the epistles tell us. The writings of the apostles to the respective churches, that we would know as Christians how we are to live in this world in a way that is holy and pleasing and acceptable unto the Lord.

If we have this righteousness, that is a righteousness of God that has been manifested apart from the law. If we have that righteousness, then we're going to live righteously. And we declare with our very lives the salvation that we have received in Christ Jesus in obedience to God because we love God.

As Jesus said to his disciples in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. So it is it is through the word of God that we come to a knowledge of our sin. It is through this word that we come to a an understanding of our need for a savior.

And then it is through this word that we are told who that savior is, what that savior has said, what he has commanded and how we are to live in that savior in Christ Jesus. And all of this work was done by God, our justification, our sanctification and ultimately our glorification.

Because again, as we read in Romans chapter 15, verse four, that it is through the endurance of the scriptures we have hope, the promises of God that are guaranteed for our future, for those who endure to the end that's even given to us in scripture.

It's not by some declaration of a pope or a priest. It is according to what the word of God says. It is by this word that we are saved. And by this word alone, perhaps you remember a controversy that started up a little more than a year ago regarding Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

And you might be going, which controversy? There's always some sort of controversy going on related to Andy Stanley. Well, he began a particular sermon series by quoting the lyrics of the song, Jesus Loves Me.

That opening line, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. And Stanley said, for a lot of us, this is where our trouble began. And he went on to insist that Christianity is about an event, not a book.

In his sermon, he went on to detail the events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. And he talked about all the people who witnessed it, including Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and James, the half brother of Jesus.

All of those things are well and good, and I've preached sermons very similarly. But there's a glaring contradiction in Stanley's argument that we're supposed to just understand these things without the Bible, that Christianity is about an event and not a book.

No matter how many people try to expose the flaw for him, he just could not see the problem with his reasoning. How does Stanley even know about all of that? How does he know about the crucifixion and the resurrection?

How does he even know that there were men named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who saw it and wrote about it? Because the Bible says so. You don't know about that any other way. Stanley has this odd affinity for the doctrine of the resurrection at the exclusion or the diminishing of every other doctrine.

I mean, the doctrine of the resurrection is an essential doctrine, but you don't do away with other doctrines and just love the one doctrine, just like as we're going through these five principal teachings of the Protestant Reformation.

No one of these things stands on their own. You can have sola fide, but eliminate solus Christus, and then you've got nothing. You've got heresy then at that point. So Stanley loves the doctrine of the resurrection, but doesn't see that as being equally as important as the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture.

You cannot separate the event from the book. You cannot divorce God from his word. We know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ because of what he said about it, and it was then written in his word, the Bible.

You know, even the apostles themselves, when they saw Jesus resurrected, they still didn't believe it until he opened their eyes to understand it, and then they believed. They were baffled by what they saw.

They could not make sense of Jesus having risen from the grave until he opened their minds to understand the prophets and the law that bore witness about Christ, that prophesied his coming, what he was going to do for the sins of the world, so that in Christ Jesus, Jews and Gentiles together would be reconciled to God.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one stands before God in favor or having merited favor by their own works or even their own heritage or background. We've all sinned. All of us deserve the wrath of God.

That's what the Bible says. And then the Bible goes on to tell us of the righteousness of God that has been manifested apart from the law and the prophets, although they bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

I don't remember if I quoted it yet or not, but even if I did, I'm going to quote it again. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. We came to this saving faith because we heard it proclaimed or we read it written down for us in the pages of scripture.

Now it's true that the Bible, as you know, the Bible, I mean, you know, an English Bible that you can have in front of you here. I've got in front of me that also has study notes written in it and all these other kinds of things.

I mean, this Bible in our own language is occupied a very small amount of church history. Well, a quarter of the history of the church now, because it was in the 15th century that the Bible was put in print for the first time.

But before that, in order to have the Bible, you either needed to be an academic, you needed to know another language, you need to be able to read it in either Greek or Latin, or you went to church and had somebody tell you what it was that the Bible said.

And this was part of the problem with the Roman Catholic Church because they weren't even teaching the Bible anymore. They were claiming that they had all the authority. They believed in sola ecclesia instead of sola scriptura, that the church even had authority over the word of God.

Whatever the Pope said or whatever the priests and the bishops said in the church, that carried more weight than what you would even read in the pages of scripture. And this was what drove men like William Tyndale to put the Bible in English so that people could read it.

If Reformation was truly going to happen, people needed to understand what the word of God said and not relying upon the Latin that was being spoken by the priests, which most people didn't understand anyway.

So a printed Bible and access to the scriptures is not something that Christians in the church have had for very long. But still, your salvation came about because you heard the word of God proclaimed, not because a Pope proclaimed it for you or somebody else, or even because you said a prayer and then wrote the date down somewhere.

And then you went back and pointed at a date and said, hey, because of this date, I'm saved. No, it was because you heard the word of God declared. You turned from your sinfulness. You believed in Christ and his righteousness.

And it is by faith in Christ that you have been saved and only in that. And that was a very important doctrine to be taught in the Protestant Reformation because the Roman Catholic Church had gotten so far away from that and the Eastern Orthodox Church wasn't any better.

So if you were in the West, it was a Roman Catholic Church. If you were in the East, it was the Eastern Orthodox. Both had denied justification by faith alone. It was salvation by a combination of works, by an authority in the church.

And both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox believe that the church has authority over the word of God, not that the church needs to submit to the authority of the word of God. But as it has been proclaimed for us in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And we only come into this according to what is declared for us in the scripture, sola scriptura. And today we are, or tomorrow we will come into the next of these five solas, sola fide, by faith alone.

And since tomorrow is October 31st, the day, the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I'll also tell you about why that day is so significant. We'll do kind of a CliffsNotes version of the Protestant Reformation.

Prayer for Conviction, Scripture, and the Gospel

Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for the availability of these scriptures, how easy it is for us to come to this and know the mind of God. We read about the history of what it is that you've done through your people, the promises that you have for us, for our future, for all those who are in Christ Jesus.

It is a grace that you show us our sin so that we might know your righteousness and our need for a savior in Jesus Christ. And so let us not, let us not ignore that conviction in our hearts when we experience it from what we read in your word, but we desire to be more like Christ.

And how else can we know how to do that except by what is written in the word of God? So Lord lead us to this and keep us obedient in it. And let us not take it for granted for there are still so many languages in the world that the Bible has not yet been translated into people on this planet who do not have access to the word of God the way that we do.

And yet how many Bibles do we have that we don't even, we don't even commit ourselves to reading it every day. Thank you for this word and give us the conviction to read it. And also the conviction that other people need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is only by this word, a people knows their sin and knows the son Christ and will turn from sin and worship him.

We pray and ask for all things in Christ's name and to your glory. Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.