Justification by Faith Alone

If you'll notice on the tables, there's some study guides there. I didn't want to be saying all these words and not give what we mean by the terms that we're saying. And I'll actually give you a couple of references there for Scripture.

I'll actually read that through my lesson here. But as we do get started, if y 'all want to go to the Lord in prayer as we seek Him and His wisdom tonight. Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight. We just want to thank you for gathering those that you've ordained to be here, to be here, to just know that justification is in the work of your Son.

It can only be had and held on to by faith that you've granted to all those that He died for. So Father, as we look at your Word tonight, as we study the lesson, let me not put too much on those that are here tonight.

Let me just give a clear, concise, how we're justified before you. And all to your praise and glory tonight. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Yeah, the paper there on the tables, I'm going to step into that here in a second.

Because there's so many ways to look at faith. And it could be complicated because you think, okay, we're justified by faith. And when somebody has faith, it could be misleading. That doesn't always entail saving faith.

So I'm going to go over those words and the definitions for them. This is the very doctrine that makes biblical Christianity, or like Pastor Nate said, Christendom exclusive. It's justification by faith alone.

There was a Latinist, Sola Fide. This article is by which the church stands or falls. There was a theologian, Martin Luther and John Calvin. They proclaimed this with their lives. But more importantly, the Apostle Paul made this very clear in all of his epistles.

This is how we are declared right before God. There's no other way to stand right before God than this very doctrine. This is what provoked the Reformation of the early 16th century. So what is justification by faith alone?

And what do these words mean? This is what we're going to go over tonight. Faith, the definition can be found in the beginning of the Hall of Faith. That's Hebrews 11 .1. It's a workable definition for what faith is.

It says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. There are many ways to describe faith, as I was saying earlier. So I'm going to try to, I don't want to go into Latin, but there's no other, no better way to kind of point it out than right there that's on your table.

I got these terms from the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms by Gritz, Geritzke, and Nording. The first one is notitia. It's Latin for knowledge or acquaintance with something or someone. In theology, notitia came to refer to one aspect of faith.

The others that we'll go over is assensus and fiducia. To believe in Christ, a person must first become acquainted with the gospel message. So this refers to the content. And we know the content is going to be found in scripture.

That's where we go to to get notitia. The example that I gave there was John 5, 39 and 40. Jesus says, you search the scriptures because you think in them that you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me.

Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. Another reference will be John 12, 37, that they believed but did not profess Christ as Lord. They didn't profess their faith before people. The next term is assensus.

It's a Latin term referring to the intellectual assent to acceptance of a theological truth. While the biblical concept of faith includes the idea of assensus, it should be not equated with a saving faith.

One who exercises biblical faith assents to the truth that Jesus is both human and divine. However, assensus does not guarantee that biblical faith is present. An example of this would be James 2, 19.

For you believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. So this is an intellectual knowledge that God is one and that's what he's getting at here. The next one will be fiducia.

It's literally trust. The Latin fiducia refers to a central nature of faith that is to exercise faith, is to engage in trust or commitment. Although related, fiducia is distinguished from assensus which refers to the intellectual acceptance of certain propositions or truth.

Biblical faith affirms the importance of both fiducia and assensus. Yes, sir. I'm in chapter 41. I'm going to get into the other part of it. I just wanted to kind of give a dialogue of going back and forth because I'm going to lead into some of the catechisms that the Roman Catholics, you've got to hold and affirm to.

So yeah, we're in chapter 41 on justification by faith alone. I just wanted to kind of give what Protestants affirm as these working definitions and meanings of the word. An example of fiducia kind of goes into Romans 10, verse 5 through 11.

And when we look at this verse, you're going to notice that it's got the heart thing there and then it's also got the assensus and then it's got the noticia all wrapped up in one. And this is where Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law that the person who does not, the person that does the commands shall live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will send into heaven, this is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss, this is to bring Christ up from the dead.

Just kind of reference, this is a, Paul was drawing off of Deuteronomy 30, verse 12 through 14. And it's kind of the blessings and curses where you do this, you get this. So he's kind of saying that now we're living by faith.

That's what, but the righteousness is based on faith says. So we're living for Christ by faith. Continue on, verse 8 says, but what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. With the heart, one believes and is justified. And with the mouth, one confesses and is saved.

For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. It goes on to talk about anybody that calls on the name of the Lord will be saved in verse 12 and 13. This text has all of the points.

The example of Notitia, the scriptures that possess the content in whom we believe. Also a census, which is the word is near you and in your mouth. You are acknowledging that these words, then fiducia, which is in and with the heart you believe.

The text also states the object of saving faith. And that is Jesus Christ himself. I told you these things because it's not a formula that we can actually use to save people. I just, when we look into how God saves, these are the means by which he brings about justification of those that Christ died for.

The means of Notitia, scripture alone. By hearing with faith, we're justified by faith alone and Christ alone. So all these things are what must take place to call the children out of the darkness and into the light.

Now we're going to look at justification. What does it mean? There's a couple of different dictionaries that I, that has small commentaries with it that I want to kind of point out. That way it's the working definition for how we see justification.

The Greek word is diakaio and diakaiosis. That's the noun form. The righteous shall live by faith. So men and women alike, Christians, they're the righteous that shall live by faith. And they're diakaiosis.

Um, the Christian doctrine concerning how believers are declared to be right with God through their faith in Jesus Christ. The first one I want to highlight is home and treasury of key biblical words.

The judge makes the pronouncement, not guilty. The pronouncement is what it means to be justified. In common Greek, outside the New Testament, justification and justify were frequently used terms in the court of law described to an act of acquitting or vindicating someone.

The Greek noun for justification is diakaiosis is derived from the Greek verb diakaio, meaning to acquit or declare righteous. And we can see that in Romans 4, 2, 4, 5, and 5, 1. It is a legal term used for a favorable verdict in a trial.

The word depicts a courtroom setting with God presiding as judge. The next one I want to give is the biblical dictionary is divine forensic act of God based on the work of Christ upon the cross, whereby a sinner is pronounced righteous by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

The doctrine of justification is developed most fully by the apostle Paul as a central truth explaining how both Jew and Gentile can be made right before God on the exact same basis. That being faith in Jesus Christ, without this divine truth, there can be no unity in the body of Christ.

Hence its centrality to Paul's theology of the church and salvation. Those definitions I gave kind of so we knew what we're looking at when I bring up Roman Catholicism and what they mean by the very same words.

The Roman Catholics use those words and add works. Works is always infused. And I use that term because upon infused, that third doctrine is infusion. But Romans 11, 6 says if it's by works, it's no longer by grace.

And that's the Christian doctrine. It's all by grace. That we have anything good in our life. And that's the objective to not, that's my objective to not kind of give a distinction before we go into the rest of it.

I didn't want to just make claims about Roman Catholicism without getting their catechisms to kind of say, okay, well, this is what they believe. But the Roman Catholic Church says that God declares someone just only by virtue of his cooperation with the infused grace of Christ, especially through baptism and penance.

Their definition, their working definition of infusion is the pouring of grace into the soul. They do not believe that people are justified apart from grace or faith, but that justification comes about as a result of this infused grace of which the persons themselves are righteous.

This happens through their cooperation with the infused righteousness of Christ. Pretty crazy stuff. Salvation in the Roman Catholic Church is a process. To begin, God grants grace to a person. But I'm going to give you the catechism.

I'm just going to give you the number. So if you want to jot it down as I'm saying it, I'm going to give the reference to the number. God grants grace to the person which enables him to believe, Catechism 2000, and also believe in the truth of the Catholic Church, 1814.

After belief, the person must be baptized, which is necessary for salvation, 1257. This baptism erases all original sin, 405, unites the person to Christ, 977, infuses grace into the person, 1999, and grants justification, 1992 and 2020.

After baptism, he is saved, but to maintain his salvation, it is necessary for him to perform good works, 2010. 2068, 2080, and participate in the sacraments, 1129, which provide the grace that is proper to each sacrament, 1129 and 2003.

This is necessary in order to maintain infused grace, 987 and 1468. However, grace can be lessened by venial sin or completely lost by mortal sin, venial sins, 1862, remove part of the infused grace, but not the saving grace known as sanctifying grace, 1868.

To remedy the problem of venial sins, the Catholic is to take the Eucharist, which the church teaches forgives venial sins, 1416. He must also perform various penances, which must be done in concert with perfect contrition, 1452.

But there is a problem. Sin requires punishment. Even though sins are absolved by a priest, 1463, 1495, the punishment due to a person because of his sin can remain. To deal with that remaining punishment, indulgences can be administered to deal with the punishment due to the guilt of the sins already forgiven, 1471 and 1498.

These indulgences draw upon the good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1477, and of Christ and the saints, so as to obtain the remissions of the temporal punishments due for their sins, 1478. Furthermore, indulgences can be applied to themselves or to the dead, 1471, who are in purgatory, 1498.

Now, in the case Catholics have committed a mortal sin, then all of his infused grace is lost. To regain this grace, he must partake of special penances, 980, since it helps restore grace that was lost, 1468, 1496.

To conclude, the Roman Catholic must have faith to participate in the sacraments, take the Eucharist, keep the commandments, perform penance, do indulgences in order to maintain, attain, regain his salvation, as well as reduce the punishment due to him for the sins which has already been forgiven.

Well, Christ instituted seven sacraments from the new law, the baptism, confirmation, or charismation, the Eucharist, penance, the anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony. The seven sacraments touch all stages and all important moments of the Christian life.

They gave birth and increased healing and missions to the Christian life of faith. This is thus a certain resemblance between the stages of natural life and the stages of spiritual life, 1210. Okay, that's the Roman Catholic view.

I mean, I'm sure there's a lot more, but I just didn't want to go on and on and on, that was pretty long anyway. According to the Roman Catholic Church, when it comes to faith, morals, doctrine, Christians are not allowed to interpret scriptures in contradiction with how the church interprets them.

So it is impossible for a Roman Catholic to know if their teachings are false because they are obligated to never contradict the Roman Catholic Church when examining their scriptures. They must admit to whatever it says in proper biblical interpretation, therefore yielding to any and all teachings that the church would proclaim in the areas of faith, morals, and doctrine.

Yes, there's none.

The Pope is the one that dictates whatever he says when he's on the little seat that he sits on. Yeah, whatever they call that. The magisterium then gets to whatever he says is not the infallible. It's whatever the magistrates then interpret him to mean by what he says when he spoke.

It could be whatever. So yeah, it's a tri-part system. Yeah, so and like Dr. James Watts says, that the Roman Catholic can never know what peace with God is. Romans 5 .1, we have peace with God and there's no way that they can tell you what peace with God is like because they don't know what their doctrine, they don't have peace with God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And see, most Roman Catholics, I don't want to say, I don't want to give a number, but Roman Catholics say, well, when they hear they're teaching this, well, I don't hold to that. It doesn't matter what you hold to.

The church dictates that if you don't believe this, you're not a Roman Catholic. I don't care what you say. This is the teaching of the church. You must hold to what the church teaches as true, period.

You can buck up against it all you want, but yeah, if you don't hold to what they have in their catechism, you are an anathema. There's many anathemas that they give in scripture. Justification by faith alone, you're an anathema.

Cross alone, you're an anathema. We just read that one that is by Mary, that you're given, basically, she's a mediatrix in that service.

Absolutely.

It says, 1477, it says, indulgence is drawn upon the good works of the blessed Virgin Mary. That's in 1477. I don't know 100%. The great place I went to get all my information is karm .org. It's Christian Apologetics Research Ministry by Matt Slick.

He does all the research for you. It's out there.

So, yeah, they think, yes, she is the one,.

They believe the saints can do all that praying, that you could pray to Mary and she intercedes for you to, so I don't know all of it, but I know that it's completely different from Christianity. So, yeah, it's pretty tough to be where they're at.

Now, I'm going to kind of switch gears. If anybody ain't got one of these, I highly suggest it. I love it. I hold to it. So, 1689, London Baptist Confession of Faith. That's what I'm fixing to go over.

Chapter 11, there's six articles in it. So, you'll see the distinction between Roman Catholicism and Biblical Christianity. 1689, London Baptist Confession. Yeah, second one. I think the first one's 1647.

All right. So, we'll see the scripture is the arbiter of life and godliness and the life of a Christian as Paul, right? Yes, 1689. The 1689, it's a confession. It's got all the doctrines of what we believe as Christians.

It has scripture, like we're going to get into it. Everything that it talks about, it's not just giving you, this is what we believe. It backs it up with scripture, chapter and verse. It does not leave it empty-handed.

It's going to tell you, it's justification by faith. It's going to go through each article and it's going to tell you where to find that scripture, what that scripture is.

And so, this in context.

I love how Sam Waldron, I love the guy. I heard him say that 1689 is how you learn to read. Everybody learn to read the Bible. This is the God post. It's not inspired. Scripture alone is inspired by God, but this is a God post.

Great theologians of the past come together with scripture and wrote this. Kind of, this is what Christianity is. So, you ever been to a bowling alley and you put up some guardrails? Creeds and confessions are the guardrails that point us back to scripture.

You're okay, get back to scripture, find out. Do the majority of Christians believe what's written in here? This is not inspired.

No, no.

If you looked at the new confession that come out, the confession was in 2000 or 2010. And Southern Baptists would be kicking themselves in the tail because by their very confessions, they should be Reformed Baptists.

But they don't open it up. They don't look at their confessions. So, if you start to tell them what's in their confessions, you probably gonna get mad and booted out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, that's Presbyterian.

Westminster Confession of Faith is Presbyterian.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, as we look at the first article in it says, those that God effectively calls, He also freely justifies. Romans 3 .24 and 8 .30. He is not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting them as righteous.

Romans 4 .5 -8, Ephesians 1 .17. He does this for the Christ's sake alone, and not for anything produced in them or done by them. 1 Corinthians 30 and 31. Romans 8, I mean Romans 5 .17 -19. He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness.

Instead, he imputes Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death as their whole and only righteousness by faith. Philippians 3 .8 -9, Ephesians 2 .8 -10. This faith is not self-generated.

It is a gift of God. John 1 .12, Romans 5 .17. Second article is faith that receives and rests on Christ and his righteousness is the only instrument of justification. Romans 3 .28. Yet it does not occur by itself in the person justified, but is always accompanied by every other saving grace.

It is not dead faith, but works through love. Galatians 5 .6, James 2 .17, 22 and 26. Third article is by his obedience and death, Christ paid the debt of all those who were justified. He endured in their place the penalty they deserved by this sacrifice of himself.

His bloodshed on the cross, he legitimately really and fully satisfied God's justice on their behalf. Hebrews 10 .14, 1 Peter 1 .18 and 19. Goes with Isaiah 53, 5 and 6. Their justification, yet their justification is based entirely on free grace because he has given or was given by the Father for them and his obedience and satisfaction was accepted in their place.

These things were done freely, not because of anything in them. Romans 8 .32 and 2 Corinthians 5 .21. So that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God would be glorified in the justification of sinners.

Romans 3 .26, Ephesians 1 .6 and 7. And 2 .7. Fourth article is from all eternity, God decreed to justify all the elect. Galatians 3 .8, 1 Peter 2 .6. And in the fullness of time, Christ died for their sin and rose again for their justification.

Romans 4 .25. Nevertheless, they are not justified personally until the Holy Spirit actually applies Christ to them at the proper time. Colossians 1 .21, 22. And Titus 3 .4 through 7. The fifth article is God continues to forgive those who are justified.

Matthew 6 .12, 1 John 1 .7 and 9. Even though they can never fully fall from the state of justification. John 10 .28. They may fall under God's fatherly displeasure because of their sins. Psalm 89 .31 through 33.

In that condition, they will not usually have lots of his face restored to them until they humble themselves, confess their sins, plead for a pardon and renew their faith and repentance. Psalm 32 .5, Psalm 51 and Matthew 26 .75.

This last one is pretty good. It kind of sums it all up. In all these ways, the justification of a believer under the Old Testament was exactly the same as the justification of believers under the New Testament.

Galatians 3 .9 and Romans 4 .22 through 24. When I started the Lesson 9, I gave the definitions and terms so we could see the difference between Roman Catholicism and what biblical Christianity is. Justification by faith alone.

I'm going to poke at R .C. a little bit. He kind of left this little window of nugget. On page 233, he talks about the instrumental cause and he kind of gives the philosophical idea of the different kinds of causes.

And I found it interesting. This refers to the means by which something is brought to pass. Apparently, R .C. never read the 1689. He was a Presbyterian. I'm pretty sure he's a Reformed Baptist now.

But, sorry.

The article 2, faith that receives and rests on Christ and his righteousness is the only instrument of justification. That's Romans 3 .28. He goes on and talks about how we don't talk about instrumental causes these days because, I mean, it's a different word.

So that's why I brought that out because that's what 1689 actually says. The instrumental cause of justification is faith when it's anchored into the person of Christ. Because it's not faith that justifies you.

It's faith that's anchored and lodged into the person and work of Christ. That's what faith is. Justifying faith. Romans 3 .24 says, The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus 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.

For Protestants, the foundation to which a person is justified is based solely on the righteousness of Christ. When a person looks to Christ and takes hold of him by faith, the person is declared righteous by the merit of Christ and his righteousness is credited or imputed to his or her account.

That is called the great exchange of 2 Corinthians 5 .21. We have a righteousness that is not our own. Now I'm going to go into the lesson, Danny, if you want to call me out on anything. The justice of God.

I'm just going to kind of touch on a little bit of it. It's on page 232, 233. All mankind encamers a problem with sin. Since God is just, sin must be judged. Well, we know that when our faith and trust is put in Christ and Christ alone, he bore the sins of those he died for.

1 Peter 2 .24, he bore our sins in his body. And that's a reflection from Isaiah 53. So everybody that puts their faith and trust in Christ, they are born again. They are justified by that work of Christ.

I wore this shirt because that's the next point. Simo Eustace et peccator, it's Romans 6 .12.

It's being righteous,.

Sinner and righteous at the same time because we don't possess righteousness ourselves. So we're the sinner and we have an imputed righteousness is Christ. So that's how it's those things that Martin Luther come out with.

This simultaneously justified and sinner at the same time. And the place you find that is Romans 7 .15 -20 where Paul was talking about the evil that you don't wanna do. He does that, the good he wants to do.

And he's not having all that. So it's an ongoing battle. 1 John 1 .8 -10, if you say you are without sin, you're calling God a liar. But we as Christians, we struggle with sin. I love how Pastor Jeremiah put it to me as he's combating the church of Christ.

When you're justified, you're freed from the penalty of sin. When you're sanctified, you're freed from the power of sin. And when you're glorified, you're freed from the presence of sin. So we see that Paul gives us that.

You have been saved or being saved and you are saved. The three tenses there that Paul gives us and that's how we would theologically tie it.

Yes, ma 'am.

Yeah, when we're justified, we're freed from the penalty of sin. When we're sanctified, we're freed from the power of sin. And when we're glorified, we're freed from the presence of sin. And we know in 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy to be killed is death.

So when death, there will be no more sin. Most people don't know Romans 5, 12 through 21. Paul kind of gives an outline because it kind of got dashes in verse 12 through one man's disobedience, death spread to all men.

Well, he gives the conclusion in verse 21 because he says that if death spread to all men, well, sin reigns through death. So that's the conclusion. If death spread to all men, all sin because sin is reigning through death.

So it's crazy how people can kind of negate the first atom, but still want to get the righteousness of the second atom, which is Christ.

Absolutely, yes, that's right.

Yeah, that's what sanctification is. There's two kinds of sanctification, but that's the sanctification we're talking about. There's a sanctification of setting apart for holiness, justified, and it's a one thing.

And sanctification is for the rest of your life until the day you're glorified. So if you're not going through trials and struggles yet, man, something's off because we struggle every day. I mean, we praise God for our struggles because we're being shaped by them.

And we taught that's what your trials are for. They're for shaping and growing where you can, that's right, yeah. So it's pretty crazy. But yeah, we're justified by faith and Roman Catholic, you gotta be, you have to actually be just in order to be justified before God.

So they believe in, was it analytical? But we believe in a synthetic, something that's outside of ourself. That's how we're justified. A faith is not our own because a sinner, that would make, this may sound weird, but would make God unjust if he justified somebody that's unrighteous in themselves.

This is the thing that from my understanding of the Roman Catholic view, even through their catechisms, we're talking about the Eucharist. The Eucharist, they believe in transubstantiation.

Well, so that's how they're getting.

Infusion of the grace. They believe that you have, every time they partake of the Eucharist, it's like, I think it was it, being your sins, it's actually replenishing the infused grace that was lost when you sin.

So it's a completely workspace, blood of Christ.

Yeah, that's possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a continual work on both parts. They don't believe he's a perfect savior. So when they looked up passages like Hebrews 7, 25, that he saves to the uttermost, they don't believe in that. They believe that you have to work contingent with God, it's your faith and his righteousness infusion.

Because you have to be righteous in and of yourself where God is unjust in their view to deem a sinner righteous.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead Keith.

Yeah, they don't have no security. Yeah, it's tough. When you can't rest in the finished work of Christ, when you don't rest in Christ, you won't ever have the assurance. We have the assurance because 1 John 5, 15 up, gives like seven or eight.

We know, we know that we have eternal life. We know that we've been born of God. A Roman Catholic can't say that.

Because he has to infuse. Yes, no, but they don't believe in that.

They don't believe in that. They more than likely, 1 Corinthians 3, they take the purging of your works and whatever's left from the hay and stubble or silver and gold. They believe that that's people that go to purgatory.

You're being purified by fire. And that's one of the passages they get for purgatory. Yeah, they can pray for those that are in purgatory, their repentance and stuff. How I get all this stuff, I don't know.

It blows my mind. But we pray for people that are outside the faith because we've been blessed with this grace, this gift of God that we believe in his son. So we should, yeah, go ahead.

Amen. Absolutely.

Yeah.

We need to remember that most people want to say, well, it's a different kind of Christianity. They're not. There's one biblical Christianity. And what makes us distinct from any other worldview, which would be what they are as a pagan worldview, because justification by the righteousness of Christ is the biblical worldview for Christianity.

Anything outside that, what you call it, Islam, Roman Catholicism, LDS, SDA, whatever, any other acronym for the false religions out there, that they fall outside the paradigm of Christian. So just kind of touched on the last.

Is there anybody else got a question? I want to kind of just hit this last point of where our righteousness comes from, Philippians 3, 7 through 9. But whatever gained, I had counted as lost for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as lost because of suppressing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and counted them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

This speaks so much of the last article of imputation. It's not our righteousness. We were declared righteous. One of the greatest was Philemon. It's a weird name to say. Philemon, verse 18, Paul is actually talking about, I guess it's one of them is for a weird name to say, but he's telling Philemon that if he's, whatever he's done to him, he says, charge that to my account.

Paul's going to take care of that. That's what Christ's done. He says, charge their iniquities to my account. And Christ took our iniquities on the cross for what we deserve hell, but Christ said, nah, I'm going to rescue you from your sin.

And so that whole paradigm of imputation, that's scripture. Scripture reveals to us how we're justified before God. So beautiful thing to serve the Lord.

Yeah.

My question is, what is the significance of Jesus's obedience in his life and the sacrifice of his death? I'll give you a hint. What's the significance of Jesus's obedience in his life and the sacrifice of his death?

Because we, yeah.