The Rest of the Solas

Reformation Day and the Five Solas

Well, as was already announced, we are on Reformation Day today, and certainly we can name ourselves in the minority of folks who realize that that's exactly what today is. I noted as we were leaving my neighborhood, I did not see that most of the people, especially the young people walking down the sidewalks, were dressed as Martin Luther.

In fact, I, in all my years, have never seen a John Calvin outfit, not that I would have necessarily recognized it one way or the other, but didn't see one of them at all. So something tells me that we are in a small minority who are observing this.

Now, what Pastor Frye doesn't know, aside from the fact that I changed the hymns on Sunday morning and we sang Mighty Fortress then, which is fine, I think we can sing it more than once, but we also, as those of you who were here know, that during Sunday school, I did somewhat of a travelogue and showed you my pictures from my visit to Wittenberg, and so we saw many of the places of Luther's life that I had seen back in September myself, and then, again, if you were not with us, we covered the material and formal principles of the Reformation.

On Sunday, in the Sunday morning sermon, we looked at the material principle, that which was the primary preaching and teaching aspect that brought about the Reformation, and that was, of course, the preaching of the doctrine of sola fide, faith alone.

We talked about the fact that it was not an alone faith, it was that faith is alone, that instrument, that empty hand of faith that can grasp hold of God's grace. You have anything in that hand, you're not going to be able to grasp hold of the promises of God.

And then, Sunday evening, we looked at the formal principle, which the Reformers very quickly had to move to, and that was the concept of sola scriptura, that the Scriptures are the sole, infallible rule of faith for the Church, not the sole rule of faith, and we have a confession of faith, but it is not infallible, it is subservient to the Scriptures, it does not have the same nature as the Scriptures being theonistos.

And so, what I felt would be appropriate this evening, in our time together, would be to consider this evening the rest of the solas of the Reformation. A lot of folks can identify those first two, at least sola fide, faith alone, but there are traditionally, anyways, five solas of the Reformation, and I think that we especially, even our young folks, should be able to know the five solas of the Reformation.

In fact, I think you all should be sharing this with your friends and neighbors at work tomorrow when they're talking about what they did on this evening. I mean, you can talk to them in Latin, and they will be deeply impressed by that.

I would imagine in the parts department at Midway, they do Latin all the time. All the time, yes, I thought of this, but, or at least something related to Latin, or sounds like Latin. So, what were, how many would confidently, right now, feel that you could list all five solas of the Reformation?

You didn't need to raise both hands, either, I didn't, I didn't mention that in passing. But, we have the two, sola fide and sola scriptura. One is very, very well-known, but needs to be defined, is sola gratia, sola gratia, grace alone.

Now, if you've heard me speak on this subject, and by the way, I apologize for my voice, I probably have to stop a couple of times and avail myself of that hydrous oxide down there. But, evidently, there was something in the air today, and it is not reacting well with my sinuses.

But, sola gratia, grace alone. If you've heard me teach on this subject, you've heard me say many, many times, the issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace. The issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace.

Write that down. Because, there are people running around today, I could name names, who are so excited that the Roman Catholic Communion affirms the absolute necessity of grace, in fact, that you could be saved, apart from God's grace.

So, the necessity of grace, even the Mormons, I've quoted for you from the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon says, is, by grace we are saved, after all we can do, 2 Nephi 25, 23. So, even the Mormons say, it's by grace we're saved, well, after all we can do, translates in their language into, you put out a 100 effort, then grace meets you, which, if you're thinking about it, is a mission impossible salvation system, since no one ever does 100%, but that's another issue.

It may become more or less relevant on November 7th. Religion that even calls itself slightly Christian will affirm the absolute necessity of grace. The only people other than that, the people who deny that, are called Pelagians.

And the Pelagian controversy raged at the beginning of the 5th century, and Augustine was involved with that, and Pelagianism was condemned. ...that every man was a new Adam, and the only reason that men sinned was because of the bad examples of people around them, but that you were not born with a sinful nature, it was not necessary that you sin, and it's not necessary that you have grace either, to be saved.

So, why sola gratia? I've heard many a Catholic say, you cannot be saved outside of the grace of God. So, why sola gratia? Do they believe sola gratia? No. Because the issue of the Reformation was never the necessity of grace, the issue of the Reformation was the sufficiency of grace.

That's the issue. And you know what? It's still the issue today. It's still the issue today. I wish I could tell you that every person associated with the Reformation in history believed in the utter sufficiency of grace, but I cannot.

I've looked to forms of sacramentalism and things like that to control or mediate the grace of God. But the real issue then, and the real issue today, in regards to the freedom of God and salvation, all comes back to, is God's grace sufficient to save?

Is grace something that makes us savable? Or is grace something that actually saves? Two very different propositions. To say that grace has made us savable is not the same thing as to say that I have been saved by grace.

We need to keep that in mind. And so, while there are members of the Roman Catholic community who will say, oh, we believe in sola gratia, and that's not what we mean. We don't mean the mere necessity.

When we say sola gratia, we are talking about the sufficiency of God's saving grace requires nothing beyond itself. It is not a synergistic cooperation, it's not something that makes us savable, it's not that Jesus merited enough grace for salvation on the cross, that's another common statement you hear Roman Catholics make.

God's grace is free, and it is sufficient, and hence God saves freely. So that's sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gratia, solus, solus Christ alone. Now why, what was the need for that? Well, does anyone know what tomorrow is in the Roman Catholic sacramental calendar, liturgical calendar?

All Saints Day. And so, we well know that by the time of Martin Luther, a tremendous focus, and it has only increased primarily because of the increase in focus upon Mariolatry, the focus upon her and her intercession, but there were many many saints already who were being appealed to for assistance and it has only become more gross, more open.

I've actually debated Roman Catholic apologists who have defended the idea that it is appropriate for us to pray, not only to saints, but also to angels, to seek their intercession for grace. So you can see how many of the solas are related to one another.

Obviously sola gratia and sola fide are like this, because the faith that saves is the work of the Spirit of God and so on and so forth. So we can see that they're very closely related. And solus Christus would be related to the others as well because the affirmation is that the unique central assertion that Jesus and Jesus alone is Savior, fundamentally denied, it is fundamentally compromised when you allow for, in essence, a pantheon of minor deities to stand between you and Christ.

And that's what you have. I mean, you go to very heavily Roman Catholic countries, I'm not talking about secular countries, but you go to southern Mexico, you go to many of the Central American countries, observe Roman Catholic worship in those places.

Some places in Spain, in Portugal, and of course in Italy itself, even though secularism certainly has made huge inroads there as well. And you will see what I mean. You will see the fervor of the religious worship.

And of course, Rome says, no, we only worship God, we only give to God latria, we give to the saints and to Mary, well, give the saints dulia and to Mary hyperdulia. There truly is no biblical distinction at this point to serve and to worship, singular Hebrew term in the Old Testament is used to speak of these things.

And so, as you see people rocking back and forth, lighting candles, praying in front of a statue of Saint whoever, or Mary especially, it is natural for you to recognize that this individual is engaged in religious worship.

Call it what you will, this person thinks they have a direct personal access of this individual and that somehow this individual, knowing what their requests are, is able to in some fashion provide assistance, aid in their time of need.

And it becomes especially problematic when we consider the prayers that are offered within Roman Catholicism to Mary, seeking her intercession, entrusting the soul of the individual to Mary for salvation, and seeking Mary's protection from the world, from the flesh, and from Jesus, their judge.

Many of you, some of you who have been around here as long as dirt has, remember the first few debates that I did back in 1990, shortly after I, we started coming here in 1989. Many of you young people are going, oh, they're talking about ancient history again, yeah, that's okay.

And you remember that I debated a man by the name of Jerry Matafix. I've actually debated Jerry 13 times. I think I deserve some type of award, some type of Jove award or something for debating Jerry Matafix 13 times, if you've ever heard him.

At the time, he was a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. I debated him in Boston, at Boston College, and we were doing a radio program on WEZE, for some reason I remember the station. I debated him in one of these, where a person trusts themselves to Mary, and they pray for Mary's protection from, if I recall, it was the world, demons, and Jesus.

He says, by one prayer from you, he will be of ease. And I expected Jerry to respond by going, oh, James, James, James, you're misrepresenting us, this is just a form of piety, blah, blah, blah, blah.

When he looked across the studio, it was through the arms of various microphones, because we were in a radio studio. So he looked through those things in the way, he looked at me, and he said on the air, James, I pray for the day when you will be able to pray that prayer with me.

Really took me aback, didn't expect it, made for a good conversation, was highly illustrative. But there you have the reason for solus Christus, because if you're having to go to Mary out of fear of Jesus, then you don't understand who Jesus is, and you don't understand what the gospel is, and you don't understand his role as Savior, and you don't understand what it means to enter into the presence of God before the throne of grace by means of his very flesh, which opens the way to do that.

And it is just a fundamental denial of the Christian gospel. And yet there are thousands, yea, sadly, millions around the world. Solus Christus, it is Christ and Christ alone. Here we think of that signal text in John chapter six, where the son indicates he's not come down of heaven through his own will, but the will of him who sent him.

And what is the will of him who sent him? That of all that he's given him, he lose none. He has that power, solus Christus. That is our confession. So we have sola fide, we have sola scriptura, we have sola gratia, we have solus Christus.

What's left? Soli Deo Gloria. To the glory of God. You can see the direct relationship here between solus Christus and soli Deo Gloria. Because again, part of what prompts this assertion is the division of glory that comes about when you have multiple saints, angels, intermediaries through whom you are able to obtain help before the throne of God.

Even when you consider the doctrine of indulgences, you end up standing before God in this multi-patchwork robe which is made up of the righteousness of Christ, Mary, and the saints. The saints being individuals not just who have been canonized, but a saint technically is a person who has more positive merit than they have temporal punishments on their souls when they die.

Therefore, they go directly into the presence of God. Extra merit is placed into the treasury of merit from which indulgences are drawn. And so when you receive an indulgence, then you're receiving the extra merit that comes from this mixed treasury made up of the excess merits of Christ.

You only need to shed one drop of blood to redeem the world. But since he bled copiously, there's all this extra merit. Mary, who likewise was sinless, tremendous extra merit. And then the saints. Some saints have lots of extra merit, some saints not so much.

But it's all placed into this treasury of merit under the control of the magisterium of the church and the keys of Peter. And hence, when you stand before God, this is your righteousness. That obviously results in a diminishment, a diffusion of the glory of God.

And I guess you could say that Soledad Gloria is the overarching capstone because everything else beneath it fits together to defend the complete freedom of God in the salvation of his people. He is able to save his people freely.

He is not under constraint. He is not in a situation where he tries and yet fails. And hence, we can think of Ephesians chapter one, which explains the ultimate purpose in all things. Not only is God described there is the one who works all things according to his own wise counsel and his own predetermined plan, but all these things are done from eternity past, as stated earlier, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Certainly, Soledad Gloria draws attention away from ourselves. So much of modern evangelicalism and modern Arminianism may speak of the glory of God, but functionally is the glory of God in a system of salvation where God is trying, trying, trying and yet in many instances today failing.

Where is the glory of God when he is forced by some external contingency to try to save one person whom he knows in his divine knowledge will never be saved equally with every other person that he knows will be saved?

What is, what is the, how does that all that fit together? I don't believe that it does. And so Soledad Gloria is an overarching correction of all of those abuses that draw attention away from the fact that the gospel is perfectly accomplished by the triune God, that it's a, it's a triune gospel, that it flows from the father's, the, the, the decree of the triune Godhead, but flows from the father accomplished by the son applied by the spirit.

All those things are true, though we don't want to so divide things up that it does not remain a truly triune action, but that's the sole idea of Gloria does is it protects and reaffirms that all of this is done to the glory of God.

So those are the five solas. And I hope that that you'll keep those in mind, see their interrelationship and be very, very thankful because 495 years ago in Europe, well, 495 years ago where we live, there was no light at all.

There was no light here. Gospel comes much later. The reason really that there is light here now is because of what took place then. And as I said, it wasn't just Luther. There are many others as well, but we celebrate the breaking in of that light this evening and truly we should rejoice.