God Uses Luther’s Flawed Pen to Reform the Church | 1 Timothy 3:15

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Oh, and I did also want to apologize for another thing, if my preaching may have been a little loud last

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Sunday, I think I got a little excitable, and so I do apologize if it was too loud, if it was ringing in anybody's ears, my apologies for that.

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At least I don't need a mic, right, at least we don't have to use any fancy technology, but I was talking to my wife and she had mentioned that, yeah, it kind of, she really heard the message last

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Sunday. So this Lord's Day, I do want to broaden our historical horizons a little bit in this sermon because I'm going to tap into other elements of Luther's life and writings outside of just the 95

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Theses, okay, so we're going to take a bigger picture here a little bit more as we start to close out this series.

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And I want to reiterate, I want to kind of draw something out here regarding the

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Church of Rome, and you know, part of this is the Scripture that for today is 1st

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Timothy 3 .15 Pastor David read, is the fact that the Church is the pillar and buttress of the truth, but Rome obviously takes that and twists that to mean that she is the true

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Church, the one true Church, and that outside of her, there is no salvation, and I'm going to read some direct quotes to you today from their official documents stating that very thing.

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But of course, how do we judge the true Church? How do we know what a true Church is?

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And this is why we need to be very familiar with God's system of checks and balances because anybody can claim whatever they want.

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Anybody can claim to be Christ's vicar on earth or his representative or the one true

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Church. But how do you know? Right? That's the big question. How do you know? And that's what we're going to seek to draw out a little bit further.

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So do not be deceived, beloved. That's the moral of the story right now.

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Do not be deceived. We must learn and appreciate Church history in light of God's word.

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In light of God's word. In light of the historical claims that others, that churches may make or that institutions may make.

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We need to examine those things and the history of the Church in light of the word of God to see what was good, what was bad, what was sin, what was right and wrong.

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And there is another reason why many are confused about the Church of Rome that I didn't mention last time about what the

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Church of Rome actually teaches, including, and this includes

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Roman Catholics and Protestants again that are very confused often about this. And it's not just because of Rome's apologists or the people that represent

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Rome and the Roman Catholic faith and they do debates and things like that.

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But it's also because of the official magisterium of Rome as well.

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That's the official authorities of Rome, such as the Popes and those who have declared official, published official documents on behalf of the entire

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Church authoritatively. And so, centuries after the

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Council of Trent was written between 1545 and 1563, some

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Popes began to refer to Protestants as separated brethren. Some of you all may have heard this before, separated brethren.

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And this was initially done by Pope Leo XIII in 1894. So there's a kind of a misunderstanding about when this actually began to be used more heavily by the

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Roman Catholic Church. Many mistakenly claim that it was in Vatican II, which was in around 1963 to 65.

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But some Popes had already began to use the term before that. And it was perhaps in Vatican II, it was a little bit more formally pronounced and established.

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But that's the reality of the situation here. It's still centuries later.

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And this is important because the Roman Catholic Church has never retracted the

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Council of Trent. They never corrected it. They never retracted any of the anathemas, the condemnations that they put on us

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Protestants and on the biblical gospel of the five solas, the five alones, of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And so this is a big problem. And it highlights, once again, the duplicity of Rome, the deliberate deception of Rome.

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Because, again, we see from section 6 of the Council of Trent, which is on justification, canon 9, says very plainly, if anyone saith that by faith alone the impious is justified, the impious is justified, in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining the grace of justification, let him be anathema, condemned.

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So they condemn the biblical gospel of, we are justified, we are made right before God by faith apart from works of the law.

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Like Ephesians 2 says, like countless other passages in Romans, the New Testament says how

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Abraham was justified by faith and not by works.

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And we understand that James 2 is talking about justification before men and not before God.

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So there is no contradiction there. And Rome fails to teach the biblical gospel and instead teaches a false gospel and in turn condemns herself.

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Because again, in canon 20 of the same council here, if anyone says that the man who is justified and how perfect soever is not bound to observe the commandments of God and of the church but only to believe, in other words, faith alone, as if indeed the gospel were a bare and absolute promise of eternal life without the condition of observing the commandments, let him be anathema, condemned.

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So here, once again, they clarify even more that they expect that you must observe the commandments in order to be justified.

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There you see the same problem, the same false gospel being explained.

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And this is not to mention that the Roman Catholic Church state still continues to quote and appeal to the

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Council of Trent to this very day. So you have an institution that's speaking out of both sides of its mouth.

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On the one hand, it condemns us Protestants, evangelicals, anybody who believes the biblical gospel. And then it calls it.

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It starts calling a separated brethren. OK, so that how do you reconcile that blatant contradiction?

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Well, we'll see how they do this or try to do this. But let's see what

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Pope Pius XI says or said in 1923 of November.

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He says, let us therefore pray to her, our most loving mother, referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and especially, especially under this same title, referring to the title of queen of the pasture.

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OK, that she may guide the steps of our schismatic brethren. OK, that's referring to us

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Protestants. If we are still toward the pastors, listen to this, toward the pastors of salvation, of salvation, toward those pastors where Peter, living always in his successors, the vicar or the pope, in other words of the eternal pastor, feeds and rules the lambs and sheep of the fold of Christ.

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This is from a papal, an official papal encyclical called Ecclesiam Dei. OK, there's so much wrong with this one section just right here.

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I mean, praying to Mary, idolizing Mary on the one hand, saying schismatic, excuse me, schismatic brethren.

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And then, but they need to be led toward the pastors of salvation. OK, so how do you reconcile that?

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Now you're just accentuating the contradiction. You're making it worse. How are we still brothers if we need to be led to the pastors of salvation, if we still need to be saved?

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And so ask yourselves that question. Why are we being called brothers, brethren?

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Because according to Scripture, that term is supposed to mean that God has saved us and adopted it, saved us already and adopted us into his family as sons and daughters.

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So why, then, do we still need to be led to the pastors of salvation? Right. This is the duplicity of Rome.

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This is why it's so dangerous and confusing and all the confusion that she causes because of the speaking of both sides of her mouth and contradicting herself in this very encyclical in this very sentence.

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There's already a blatant contradiction. So then, according to Rome, Protestants, who are being referred to as the separated brethren, are not saved, after all, unless we return to the

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Church of Rome, unless we, in their words, return to, according to Rome, specifically

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Pope Pius XI, the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.

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OK? So here you see, again, that because, again, in their own words, if any man enter not here or if any man go forth from it, or in other words, leaves the

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Church of Rome, he is a stranger to the hope and life of salvation. OK?

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This, once again, is Rome's duplicity. It is a blatant contradiction from the same pope.

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And they have countless other documents that contradict doctrines that they teach on the one hand and then try to assert something else on the other and blatantly contradict themselves.

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So they violate the precept of Christ that says, let your yes be yes and your no, no.

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Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do not speak out of both sides of your mouth and be duplicitous.

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So this is the issue, one of the main issues. And this is precisely why

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Luther was so frustrated with Rome, with Rome and her traditions, because it is well known that popes and councils often err and contradict themselves.

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Amen? This is his famous speech before the Diet of Worms when he faced the emperor.

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And he was oppressed to recant all his writings. And now we know why.

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We hopefully have a better picture, a clearer picture of why he said that. Because Rome continues to contradict herself to this day in compounding her sin and furthering her false gospel and slandering true brothers.

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So Luther nails the point here, pun intended.

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He nails the point here three years later after the thesis he wrote in 1520.

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Since then, works justify no man, no one in direct contradiction to what

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Rome teaches in the Council of Trent. But a man must be justified before he can do any good work.

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We must be justified already in order to do good works. And Luther made a big deal about this when he said that, quoted the words of Jesus, and saying, a good tree bears good fruit.

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A bad tree bears bad fruit. And a bad tree cannot bear good fruit, just like a good tree cannot bear bad fruit.

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That's the issue there. The issue, the difference lies in regeneration and in the justification of God to make us good by his grace alone, apart from our works.

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So Luther continues, it is most evident that it is faith alone, which by the mere mercy of God through Christ and by means of his word can worthily and sufficiently, without any other help from us or from the prayers of the saints or from the good works of any other saints who went above and beyond what

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God supposedly required of them, according to Rome once again and her false teaching of the treasury of merit and of purgatory and of the supererogation of the saints.

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So it is sufficient to justify and save the person and that a

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Christian man needs no work, no law for his salvation.

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For by faith, he is free from all law in the sense of condemning him.

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And in perfect freedom does gratuitously out of gratitude all that he does, seeking nothing either of profit or of salvation.

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Since by the grace of God, he is already saved and rich in all things through his faith, but solely that which is well pleasing to God.

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And to that God's people can say a hearty amen. This is where we must stand with Luther because he is faithfully teaching the counsel of God with respect to salvation and how we are made right before God.

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It is by faith alone. We are neither justified nor gain merits nor saved by works because God gives us, in Luther's words, all the riches of both justification and salvation in Christ so that I, we no longer am in want of anything except of the faith to believe that this is so.

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It is to simply receive it by faith alone. Amen? So we must understand these things, beloved.

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This is at the heart of the gospel of the first and most important thing, of first importance, like Paul says in 1

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Corinthians 15. And this is the very core of what divides us and the Church of Rome.

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It was just why that we cannot have fellowship with Roman Catholics and with the Church of Rome. Now, I want to reiterate from last week and draw this out a little bit more that the

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Protestant reformers and confessions completely renounce

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Rome's treasury of merits and instead assert that a true church is fundamentally defined by its adherence to the gospel.

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So that, beloved, is how we know whether a church is true or false. Like the

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Belgic Confession beautifully summarizes once again, it is by the faithful preaching of God's word and the gospel.

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It is by administering the sacraments faithfully, a baptism in the Lord's Supper, and by administering church discipline properly.

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These are the marks of a true church. And so similarly, in the

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Articles of Religion of the Anglican Church, which at this point has become very much a compromise and apostate, sadly, it is not really a church according to the word of God anymore.

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But in Article 14 of this document is on works of supererogation, of doing more than God required of us, supposedly.

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Voluntary works besides, it says, over and above God's commandments, which they, the

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Church of Rome, calls works of supererogation cannot be taught without arrogance and impiety.

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For by them men do declare that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake than what they are bound by duty is required.

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Whereas Christ saith plainly, when you have done all that are commanded to you, all we can say is we are but unworthy and unprofitable servants, according to the parable in Luke 17 of the unprofitable servant.

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It's almost like they read the Bible and decided to directly go against it in Rome's official teaching.

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It's astounding how blatantly contrary they are to the scripture.

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And this also is very much in line with what the Dutch Reformed Belgian Confession teaches in Article 22, which

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I read last week. So now back to Luther's thesis, number 62.

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This is where all of this starts coming together now. He says the true treasure of the church is what?

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Is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.

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And to that we may say amen. This is where Luther really grasps the main issue.

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This is the true treasure of the church. This is what defines a true church. It is its faithfulness to the most holy gospel.

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Does it proclaim? Does it believe, teach, and confess the true gospel?

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And this is how God used Luther's flawed pen to reform the church, to correct the church, to submit it to the word of God, and not to a false head of the pope who contradicted and still contradicts the word of God.

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We must submit ourselves to the word of God. Everybody is obligated and required to do that.

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Everyone, pastors, and teachers, and believers who are not called to a special office in the church, we are all subject to the word of God, rightly understood according to the simple, consistent laws of logic and the context in which it was written and the audience to whom it was written for.

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The basic principles of sound hermeneutics. Now, the reformers, this brings me to a larger issue now of how the reformers in many ways were, and even now are still, are very much like the prophets of old.

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Because not in the sense of foretelling the future necessarily, even though there were men who you could say prophetically predicted what would happen.

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When Hus was burned at the stake, he said, you may cook my goose, because his name means goose, but in 100 years, there will come a swan that you will not be able to silence.

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Excuse me. And that swan was Luther. He came almost exactly 100 years after John Hus did, after he was burned at the stake for heresy, and which

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Luther came to wholeheartedly embrace later on. But these reformers were in an amazing way, not in a foretelling way necessarily so much, but in the sense of foretelling the present.

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They foretell the present. They speak things as they are. And they say, they take a stand for or against what is happening.

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And they draw the lines. They draw lines to bring out the issues of our day to light, to bring it to the forefront, and to admonish us and press us as a church to say or to decide what side are we on.

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Are you on the Lord's side, on the side of truth, or are you on the wrong side, the side of the world, the flesh, the devil, of the ministers of Satan, of the synagogue of the devil?

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What side are you on? This is what Luther did in a prophetic type of way.

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He showed the church her errors. And he said, what side do you stand on?

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And Luther said, here I stand on the word of God, which my conscience is bound to, not by popes, not to popes and traditions of men which contradict themselves and which

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Christ himself condemned in the Pharisees because they replaced the word of God with their own traditions.

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But what side are we on, beloved? What side do we stand on? Do we stand on the biblical gospel that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, but in Christ alone, or something else?

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And recall that anything else is a false gospel and damns the individual who believes it.

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What side are we on, beloved? We must be on the side of truth, always.

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Luther continues in Thesis 63. But this treasure of the gospel is naturally most odious, most hateful, for it makes the first to be last, according to Matthew 20, verse 16.

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This is the concept that Luther expounds on in his later writings of this upside down kingdom, where God humbles the proud and exalts the humble.

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And in which the poor, the wretched sinner, the poor, wretched sinner, who simply but like the parable of the tax collector and the

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Pharisee, the wretched tax collector who humbled himself before God, recognizes utter wretchedness and helplessness and recognition that by grace alone he can be saved.

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Where he tells God, be propitious to me. Satisfy your wrath on the substitute, on my behalf, a sinner.

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Because I can't do anything for myself. Only another perfect savior can.

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That's what Luther was expressing here. And this gives us a sneak peek into one of Martin Luther's major breakthroughs.

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This is so big. And until he came to understand this breakthrough, this distinction, he continued to struggle with his sin guilt and to have true peace before God.

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What is this? This distinction that he discovered. It is one of the most important distinctions in all of scripture.

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And that is the law and gospel distinction. It is the law and gospel distinction.

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The two words that sum up the entire Bible. Because those two words are a sum of how

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God relates to man. Because as sinners, we face the condemnation of the law.

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But as believers, we face the forgiveness of the gospel by believing in the gospel of God, of Christ.

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So this expresses the whole counsel of God in a powerful way.

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Because it expresses what the biblical teaching of salvation of God's word is.

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It is what the Protestant church and Luther himself championed, that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And it also reveals the true nature of man and of God. That God is perfect.

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That he is holy. That he is a just judge, like Psalm 5 says. And that he will by no means clear the wicked.

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Because in order for God to forgive sin, he must first satisfy the punishment of that sin on behalf, on our behalf, on another.

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That is why Christ came and died for us. And that is, it also illustrates the utter helplessness and wretchedness and sinfulness of man.

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That we are fallen. We are wretched, depraved sinners. And that we can do nothing for ourselves, but simply to receive the blessing of regeneration and faith that is a gift of God to believe and thereby be saved.

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It is all of grace. All of it is by grace alone. Like Romans 11, 6 says, and the whole counsel of God teaches.

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This is what Luther discovered. And this is what it truly does summarize the whole counsel of God.

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God, man, salvation. And the authority by which we declare these things, the word of God.

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The Bible, the Bible, the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the

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New Testament. This is truly what it means to understand in a very real sense, the big picture of God, of like the catechism says.

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What is, what we are to believe concerning God and what duty

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God requires of man, of us. It is the long gospel distinction.

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Now, this is the breakthrough that finally gave Luther peace with God.

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Because it is, in essence, understanding the true gospel. Because in Luther's words,

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Christ did not command the preaching of indulgences, but of the gospel, says he.

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Amen. Amen. Not of legalism, not of man -made devices that don't actually forgive or pardon sin, but in fact, blaspheme

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God because Christ alone forgives sin. And this is the main thing that Luther was recovering.

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What is the true treasure of the gospel, of the church? It is not indulgences. It is not fancy buildings that the pope was trying to fleece his sheep with by charging for forgiveness so that he could build fancy buildings in Rome.

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The true treasure of the church is the gospel. And what a whore it is,

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Luther continues, to a bishop if he never gives the gospel to his people except along with a racket of indulgences.

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All that does is make you a peddler of the word of God. You're using

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God's word. You're abusing the word of God for money. And the Bible, God condemns that man who does those wicked things.

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And that is what Rome continues to do even to this day. Again, these are not mere points of academic debate.

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This lies at the very heart of the things that are most important. The most important things to God, and therefore by extension to man, is to understand these things rightly.

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And Luther, therefore, in these theses and further on in his later writings, these are scathing fierce rebukes of indulgence preachers and those who support them.

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And they are indirect rebukes of the pope himself, but spoken through the voice of the people as well, in order to maintain, perhaps, plausible deniability.

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Even though there's an interesting historical aside here that Roland Bainton in his biography of Luther, Here I Stand, he reveals that Luther was not even all that active when he was awaiting

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Rome's response after publishing the theses. And so this took time, as I've said.

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This took time to unfold. But it also brings me to another interesting point here as I was meditating on this episode of church history and on how it relates to scripture and to our time today.

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Because indulgences, in many ways, are like welfare today.

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And I was having a conversation with Pastor David about this as well. And it made me kind of realize indulgences, in many ways, have similar consequences that welfare, that government welfare has on individuals.

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I want us to chew on that for a little bit. Think about why that's the case. Why is that?

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How is that the case? And I'll remind us what the

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Church of Rome defines as an indulgence, according to the Catholic encyclopedia, that it is the extra -sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due in God's justice to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the church in the exercise of the power of the keys through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, who went above and beyond what was required of them, according to them, according to the

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Church of Rome, and for some just and reasonable motive. So think about that definition.

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In like manner, welfare is granted by the government in the exercise of the power of its keys to the kingdom through the application of the wealth of others, just like Rome with the good works of others, and redistributes it to the poor for some just and reasonable motive, which is really socialism.

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It is stealing one man's goods and giving it, redistributing it to another. There are some striking parallels here, and how this is a parallel to what the

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Church of Rome teaches in its treasury of merit.

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It's sort of like the government's treasury of welfare. So that's because that's what it is.

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It's taking other people's money, other people's goods, just like Rome's good works, and redistributing them to the poor.

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And that's something else that's interesting, because if you're taking away, that's how

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Rome tries to justify herself, is that, well, these were works that were above and beyond. But how do you know that you already used up the ones that were extra?

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How do you know that you didn't start taking out the works that actually justified that believer, that saint, and now you're taking away from their justification?

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What happens then? Are they going to lose their house in Rome, in the heaven?

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Do they lose their heavenly salvation? Again, there's no way to know, and that's why

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Luther in his thesis was explaining these things. You don't know. You don't know these things.

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You're making them up, and you're using them to abuse the people of God.

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So in the same way that the government takes from the ones who have more money and redistributes it to those who do not.

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Now, the reason here that we need to consider, and again, it's so fascinating how many of Luther's theses can equally apply to welfare.

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Like thesis 40, where Luther says, true contrition seeks and loves penalties.

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In other words, true contrition acknowledges that sin, laziness, idleness has consequences and that we may need to account for it.

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OK? But liberal welfare or pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least to furnish an occasion for hating them.

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So what this is expressing is also what thesis 28 expresses, that it is certain that when welfare or when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice and vice increases.

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But when the church intercedes, as opposed to the government, in charity and goodwill, without government compulsion, the result is in the hands of God alone.

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So we should not, in other words, compel or force goodwill on anybody.

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And both indulgences, therefore, and welfare incentivize bad behavior.

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They promote bad behavior and discourage good behavior, virtue, virtuous behavior.

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You know, I'll share with you a funny story. When we were younger, when my wife and I were younger and recently married, we had applied for low housing, low income housing, which is otherwise known as the projects.

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We had applied for low income housing. I was not, my job didn't pay me that much.

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So we struggled in the first few years of our marriage. Because while I was paid adequately, but we still struggled because we had to make ends meet and because I refused to receive government welfare and food stamps.

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But we decided that we need to rely on God for those things, for him to provide through his means and not through the means of the government, which are illegitimate.

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And so when we applied, they said we barely didn't qualify.

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We were just above their level of income so that we weren't qualified.

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And that made me, you know, and this kind of welfare is very destructive to virtue.

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Because it almost got me thinking like, man, maybe I should just get a worse job, a job that pays less, so that I can qualify.

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Maybe I can just do that. And you see how it makes, it strives, it encourages individuals to instead of strive to do better and to be virtuous, it makes them want to do worse so that they can become dependent and rely on the nanny state.

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And that's not what God wants for us. That is not what God wants, God commands us to do, in fact.

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And it's very harmful to, you know, the motive is to help people.

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But in reality, you're hurting them. And this is where it's dangerous. And that's not to say that there's no room for charity or for goodwill.

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But there are conditions that need to be attached to charity and goodwill, biblical ones.

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And this is also how, by way of application, you can make a good case for not allowing people who are on welfare to vote,

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OK? And people, when you say things like this, they will attack you for being a racist and all of this stuff.

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And, oh, you're just being racist. And look at you. And they're so, you know, because of, you know, black people are disproportionately poor or whatever the case may be.

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The reality is this. This is not helping. Welfare does not truly help those who it's claiming to help.

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And the other problem is, who do you think that people who are on welfare will tend to vote for?

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They will vote for the politicians who will seek to provide for them more welfare, which is essentially the

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Democratic Party. So it is destructive to a nation.

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And this has destroyed nations historically. It has led to the downfall of nations like Rome because of things like welfare, which is historically referred to as bread and circus, free bread and circus.

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And that's the issue with things. This is exactly what

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Luther was dealing with. Because when you give indulgences, you pay for an indulgence, and you say, oh, well,

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I can do whatever I want then. I can sin like a wretched hellion, a devil, and all

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I have to do is give my money to Rome with an indulgence, and it can all be magically wiped away.

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And that is to despise penalties. That's what Luther was explaining in his thesis.

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And it's like what Ted Nugent says. This is very well stated, that let's also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any

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American who is on welfare. Once they get off welfare and are self -sustaining, they get their right to vote restored.

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No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those

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Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That's insanity.

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And this is, again, this is very much a biblical principle. And it also motivates the individual to get out of welfare.

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If you want to vote, you can vote. But first, get out of welfare. Strive to work so that you can provide for yourself, and you can get out of welfare and vote.

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This promotes virtue. This promotes virtue as opposed to vice of laziness and idleness and dependence on a nanny state, which, again, is sinful according to the word of God.

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And really, the real solution is that governments should not provide any welfare.

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They should not provide welfare. This is because, again, it also deters individuals from exercising their own goodwill and charity towards others because they say, oh, well, the government will take care of the poor.

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The government will just take care of the homeless with shelters or whatever. So I don't need to do anything after all.

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Again, this is totally contrary to what the Bible teaches because the Bible says that we are called to be good

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Samaritans. We should give out of our own resources to those who are less able than we are to help them to get back on their own feet.

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Right? This is what the Bible, again, the government should not be a good

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Samaritan. They are not called to do that. Individuals are called to do that with their own resources, like the good

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Samaritan, who uses his own money to help the individual. And again, it's similar to what

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Luther says. The person who gives to the poor is better off than the one who, instead of helping the poor with his money, uses it to pay for an indulgence, who instead earns the indignation of God, the wrath of God.

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It's the same consequence, the same result, just a slightly different context.

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One is indulgences and the other is welfare. So this is incredibly relevant to what we deal with today on an everyday basis in our society.

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Like 2 Corinthians 3 .10 says, if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat.

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Neither let him eat. We need to encourage individuals to take care of themselves and to seek to provide for themselves and for their own.

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Women, of course, should seek to get married, biblically speaking, instead of the feminist agenda.

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So there are things to account for here as well. But we need to do things God's way as opposed to man's way.

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And I encourage you all to check out an article by John Robbins called

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The Ethics and Economics of Health Care for more on this. It's so important to understand. And it guides us as to who we should vote for as well, locally, statewide, and nationally.

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Because this type of government intervention, this nanny state, feeds the same kind of corruption in politics that Luther was dealing with in the

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Roman Catholic Church. It's the same problem that we deal with to this very day.

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And it's also what led to the downfall of the Anglican Church. Because the

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Anglican Church's bishops are on the state's payroll. They are on state welfare.

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The state pays for their salary. And now you see corruption ensuing.

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They no longer hold to a biblical gospel. You have heretics who are archbishops of Canterbury now.

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And who are in the Anglican Church. They don't hold to the biblical gospel anymore.

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That's what happens when compromise ensues. Now, this brings me to the next major point of what

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Luther was getting at in these theses and highlighting the true gospel. Because it illustrates the very thing that we've been seeing that one of the major conflicts with the

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Roman Catholic Church is that she was pushing a different gospel and still continues to do so today, according to Galatians 1, 6 through 10.

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There is no other gospel but by the one that was delivered unto us through the apostles, through the word of God, through Christ, and the

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New Testament, and the Old Testament. It's all the same gospel. Because the

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Church of Rome's view of justification is analytic or subjective, in which, according to the

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Council of Trent, we are not only reputed or declared, but are truly called and are actually just or righteous, receiving justice within us, each according to his own measure, and requires inherent righteousness and our own so -called good works at the last judgment in order to be truly considered righteous before God.

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Because, again, in the Roman system, you must be righteous by definition. Righteousness must inhere within you.

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You must actually have it and practice it for you to be considered righteous, which is, again, contrary to the biblical gospel and to the nature of man.

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Now, the righteousness, according to Rome, may be rooted in the grace of God, but it must become a personal inherent reality through the cooperation of good works, like I just read from the canons of Trent.

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That's the very thing that they teach. This is the material principle of the

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Reformation. It is one of the most important conflicts that came out of the Reformation. It is justification by faith alone, apart from any works of any kind.

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This is the very heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification, that it is only by a forensic declaratory legal faith alone.

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It is called synthetic faith, because God does not declare us righteous by our own righteousness.

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Why? Because we have none. According to Luke 17,

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Romans 3, 10 through 20, and on and on and on. But it is by substitution, by the righteousness of another, which is extra nos, extra nos.

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That is Latin for foreign. It is outside of us. It is an alien righteousness that is not our own.

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It is the righteousness of Christ alone. Amen? Amen? It is imputed to us.

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It is credited to us by faith alone. And it's funny, because Rome's response to this

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Protestant gospel was not only to condemn it, the biblical gospel, but it was also to call it a legal fiction.

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They call it a legal fiction, which is a legal fiction is something that you just sort of declare as some kind of legal reality that's not actually true.

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So that's what they claim our gospel teaches, is that we are only falsely claiming that somebody is justified because they're not actually just by definition.

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And yet the irony here is that if you want a real example of a legal fiction, look no further than Rome's doctrine of indulgences and of the treasury of merit.

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That is the true legal fiction there. Because again, for you to pay the

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Church of Rome for a document that popishly declares you to be saved and forgiven of your sins, that expiates your sins is a total legal fiction on what grounds do you have, can you even make that statement?

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You can't. That is a legal fiction. There is no such thing as a treasury of merit by which other saints contribute to their own good works that they went above and beyond, because the

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Bible teaches completely contrary to that. That is the legal fiction. It is the gospel, the false gospel of Rome.

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Ours is not a legal fiction, because as the Bible teaches, we are actually reckoned righteous because of the righteousness of another exclusively, that of Christ alone.

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That is the true gospel. And it is no legal fiction, because the wrath of God was truly satisfied on Christ, on our behalf.

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He became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the true righteousness of God in him.

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Amen? That is the gospel, the only gospel. And so as we close out here today,

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I want us to consider a few things here. And it is that God used

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Luther's flawed pen, because he had many faults. But he used

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Luther to powerfully restore the gospel, to recover the gospel that the

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Church of Rome had suppressed for so long, and obscured, and rejected.

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And so we need to be mindful of church history and how

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God works through men, through restore, prophetically, how

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God works through the church prophetically to bring the truth to light when it gets muddled or distorted.

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That's what the prophetic office of the church serves for, to call sin, sin, and righteousness, righteousness, and truth, truth.

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That is why the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. It is the salt and light of society.

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We are the salt and light of society, because we are members of the one body, the Church of Christ.

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And so it is similar to how God used Luther mightily to usher in the reformation of his church and the powerful recovery of his true gospel.

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Now, I want to give out a warning here, because there are many who mischaracterize

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Luther. Even people on our side, not just Roman Catholics or others, but even people on our, even

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Protestants can mischaracterize people in church history.

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Some people go as far as to condemn him as an unbeliever. Because yes, he did say many sinful things, even after he became a believer, a

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Christian. But we have to be wise in our judgments. And I encourage you all to go back to the series

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I did on church history to learn more about these things, about how to be wise in our judgments of the past.

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Now, we have to be careful not to be imbalanced in our judgments of God's people, especially.

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Now, one example of this that I want to highlight is James White, who is a very influential church historian.

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He is a Reformed Baptist, as much in the same way as we are. And he gives the impression that Luther only grew worse in pretty much every way after the year 1525, and didn't really publish anything that influential or substantial.

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And again, this is partly because Luther became very anti -Jewish.

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Not necessarily racist, but anti -Jewish. And James White says here, the post -1525

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Luther, the impact of the peasants' revolt upon Luther, and that Luther, prior to 1525, so Luther before 1525 was very open to the evangelization of the

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Jews and to the freedom of the Jews. But he became more anti -Jewish after 1525.

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And he becomes more of a curmudgeon, more of a grumpy old man.

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And his works had next to no meaningful influence upon the Reformed churches. So that was

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James White's estimation of Luther after 1525. Now, the reality is that he also explains that Luther wasn't nearly as bad as John Eck was, who was a

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Roman Catholic opponent of Luther. He wrote a much worse treatise condemning and reviling the

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Jews. So this was actually commonplace, to revile the Jews, because there were things that were, there were false accusations about the

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Jews that many, sadly, of the Reformers also took on, like Luther. And they were not actually true.

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And they started to see them as a threat to society. But again, we have to be mindful of and balance.

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We have to have balance. And that is why we have to be careful to get different perspectives of, especially church history, to make sure that we're not being influenced wrongly by somebody, even if they are very sound, generally speaking, and influential.

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Because I actually like much of what James White teaches on church history.

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But Roland Bainton, I think, gives a much better picture of Luther in his biography that I've been reading from throughout this series, where he says that Luther's later years are, however, by no means to be written off as the sputterings of a dying flame.

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So here, he's directly going against what James White believes about Luther in his later years.

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So Bainton continues, if in his polemical tracks he was at times savage and coarse, and that is very much the case, especially against the

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Jews, in the works which constitute the real marrow or substance of his life's endeavor, he grew constantly in maturity and artistic creativity.

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The biblical translation of Luther was improved to the very end, his

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German translation of the Bible. The sermons and the biblical commentaries reached superb heights.

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The delineation of the sacrifice of Isaac, that was one of the things that Luther wrote that was very influential, came from the year 1545.

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And some of the passages cited throughout the entire book in Bainton's biography that he used to illustrate

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Luther's religious and ethical principles are from the later period of Luther's life.

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And again, the battle hymn of the Reformation, a mighty fortress is our

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God, was written between the years 1527 and 1529. So we must, again, just be careful and wise to trust but verify your sources as much as you can.

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Be careful to not blindly trust what people say, even if they may be generally sound overall.

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We must continue to be good Bereans, just like the Bereans were with the apostles themselves, and search the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

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That is what we must do with everybody, with everybody, including myself, including any pastor or teacher.

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So in conclusion, we must bear in mind that a lack of balance is often what drives men to err in various ways, in ways that can be serious but also damning.

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It is a lack of balance, and particularly a lack of confessionalism and a failure to systematize scripture.

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That is why I try to be so emphatic about these things. Because Paul himself said,

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I did not neglect to declare to you the whole counsel of God. And that is why we need the historic confessions that I've been quoting, because they help us to find that biblical balance insofar as they accurately reflect scripture and the law and gospel distinction, which the

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Protestant reformers in church has championed throughout the history of the church. But many churches today have a hard time reconciling bookend doctrines, which balance and complement each other, such as the justification of Paul, of faith apart from works, and the justification of James, which

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I alluded to earlier, and the warnings of Hebrews in Matthew 7. Many Protestants, because they fail to balance their doctrine properly and systematically, they slide down the slippery slope towards the false gospel of Rome.

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And though the historic creeds and confessions, particularly from the reformed faith, clearly, concisely, and accurately summarize the major doctrines of the

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Bible, many professing Protestants today have largely forgotten their conflict with Rome and their confessional heritage.

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Again, that conflict continues to this day. I just read from you very recent documents. And there are many more that we can read and look at.

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This, there has been a spirit, a zeitgeist, a spirit, a false spirit that has infiltrated many churches of false ecumenism and irrationalism and biblicism, of biblicism and this no creed but Christ mentality, and of pietism, of emphasizing other things apart from sound doctrine, like emotional experiences and quiet prayer time, and not emphasizing what's most important, which is the sound doctrine of the word of God, which is the gospel, which is a body of doctrines that we must rightly understand.

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So this is what we must hold to and cling to as a church.

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And this is what defines us as a true church. We must understand these things, beloved, that Christianity is a system of doctrine that is logically consistent, for God is not the author of confusion, of contradiction, like the

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Church of Rome has been pushing for centuries, but of peace, but of peace, of love, and has given us a spirit of power and of a sound mind.

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God has placed these crucial bookend doctrines as checks and balances for us, so that if one strays too far in a particular direction, in an extreme, to the point of affirming a falsehood or a false teaching, it will create insuperable contradictions in other counterpoint doctrines as well, just like Rome.

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Rome doesn't just teach one false thing. She teaches many false things that I quoted to you and more.

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This is why we need to be so careful. The remedy, therefore, to these pernicious errors is to return, but to return to what?

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It is to return to the ancient paths, to remember our

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Reformation roots, and to grasp the first principles of the oracles of God, as Hebrews 5 .12

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says, and Jeremiah 6 .16 says. We need the whole counsel of God and the five solos of the

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Reformation and beyond to the reformed confessions in catechism and systematic theologies that are sound, to understand and grasp these things biblically and how they relate to each other, how all these doctrines relate to each other, and how they are tied together by the pillars of the formal principle of scripture alone and of the material principle of faith alone of the

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Reformation and by and which, by the grace of God, Luther championed with his own flawed pen.

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Amen? So with that, beloved, I close out this series with so many vitally important lessons for us as a church today.

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Let us bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our dear, precious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much,

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Lord, for this blessed Lord's Day and for the preaching of your word. Father, we ask that you would open our eyes to see your word for what it truly teaches,

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Father God. Help us to exercise, as you have used your faithful servant, your servant of old, flawed as he was, as sinful as he may have been later on in his life,

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Father. But as he so clearly and aptly expressed your word, that we must be convinced by scripture and by clear and plain consistent reason that accurately reflects scripture,

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Father. Help us to embrace these principles in our lives and to grasp your word systematically, faithfully, and consistently,

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Lord. Help us to be like Luther, to be bold, to stand against the errors and lies of not just the

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Roman church, but of any church that claims to be, even if it claims to be

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Protestant or evangelical or a true church. We must still exercise the discernment that the

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Bereans did, Father. Help us. Give us that discernment, Lord. Help us to strive for that discernment, to exercise that discernment by your means and to, by constant practice, to know the difference between truth and lies,

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Father, between good and evil, as your word teaches us, Lord. Help us,

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Father, to bring that spirit of the Reformation, that spirit of reform, of the reformers, back into the church,

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Father God, for us to embrace this spirit of reform that so beautifully summarized in that Reformation motto of Semper Reformanda, that we must always reform according to God's word and away from sin and away from lies and away from falsehoods,

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Lord. Help us to be a true and faithful church in like manner, Lord. And we thank you and ask these things in Jesus' precious, almighty name.

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Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.