TPW #9 | Sola Fide Taught By God

Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived. The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in.

Uninterrupted warfare for the truth.

The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers. They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.

Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture. What happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross?

That was the day of wrath. That was the day of judgment.

That is the day of final salvation,.

Brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our.

United Christ.

The Gospel, Effectual Calling, and the Cross

Welcome to the Protestant Witness Outdoor Backyard Edition. I'm just sitting here in my backyard, and it is just a gloriously beautiful Friday evening. My little kids, my younger ones, are inside. I just started one of those Shrek movies for them.

Those are weird, with a little ogre, the ogre dude thing. They're, you know, mildly entertaining, but I just looked outside, and it's so lovely and gorgeous out here. I just decided to come outside, and I've got a little fire going on my fire pit.

And I just wanted to share some thoughts about the gospel. You know, my life's been somewhat interesting since I've gone on record saying what I think of John Piper's formulations of how we get into heaven, and the issues that I have with that, and the problems I think that there are very serious issues with the way he's saying that.

And I've just been reflecting more lately on how precious the gospel is, and I've been thinking about how precious that message is to all Christian people everywhere, and that all Christians everywhere know how to put their hope and their faith in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation, for getting into heaven at the last judgment, because they are taught by God how to do so.

John 6 and Being Taught by God

There's a great text in the Gospel of John, chapter 6, 44 and 45. Jesus said to that crowd that followed him over the Sea of Galilee, the 5 ,000, the people that he had fed there in the first part of John, chapter 6.

This huge crowd follows him over the Sea of Galilee, basically because they want another meal. And Jesus rebukes them for that, because they weren't following him for the right reason. He says in verse 26, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

And then Jesus does something in John 6 that he does in other places in John. John 10, he does the same thing. He explains the unbelief of his opponents to them. He actually tells them why they do not believe in him.

And he does the same thing here in John 6. He turns around to the crowd and rebukes them and says, you guys are not following me. You're not following me because you saw the sign or because you believe I am who I say I am.

You're following me because you ate of the loaves and had your fill and you just want more free food. And then he says to them in John 6 44, no one can come to me. That's the phrase in Greek, udais dunatai, none are able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.

It is written in the prophets and they shall all be taught.

By God.

Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. And I just think that's an amazing statement. So often we reform folks, us Calvinists, we key in on John 6 44 and rightly so because it's one of those real clear statements of the inability of man to come to Jesus.

No one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. And then he says, as it is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

Now think about what that is saying. Here's how this relates to the gospel issue and to the whole controversy over John Piper and all the yammering and really some of the really just chest-thumping and bravado that's been going on with with some individuals who have, you know, tried to get, you know, I don't know, some kind of a debate or something going and then their their champ stood down.

So whatever. The point here is, the point is, God teaches his people how to come to Christ and they will always and only trust in him because they are taught by God to do so. One of the best books I ever read on the issue of justification, and I could see immediately, right when I became Reformed and I was in my early 20s, when I was thinking about the ministry, I could see this whole issue of justification by faith alone.

I had spent so much time arguing with Roman Catholics about it. I could see this is, this is the centerpiece of everything else that we believe, teach, and preach. This has got to be the thing that I understand and know how to defend and preach and teach and how, what are the key passages that people will misuse to try to deny it on scriptural pretenses and everything else.

And did a lot of reading about it. One of the first books I ever read on justification, it was a bit of a beast. It was John Owen's massive work, Justification by Faith Alone. And that book is outstanding.

If you can, if you can persevere through Owen, there's a, I can't remember if it's his book on communion with God or if it's, if there's a different one, but in the foreword of one of Owen's books, he actually says something along the lines of, for those who want flowery rhetoric and fine speech, I bid you farewell.

Because Owen,.

Owen is a little bit rough to read, but the thing is though, if you take the time to push through him, he does have a really, really clear way of explaining things, and he was an outstanding, gifted scholar and teacher in the church.

But in that book, in the early section of the book of Justification by Faith Alone by John Owen, he points out that no matter how much false doctrine there has been on the landscape at any point in church history, no matter how much distortion there has been of the basic gospel message, and that sinners are justified before God by faith alone, in Christ alone, on the legal grounds of the cross work of Christ and the righteousness of Jesus Christ, his preceptive obedience to the law of God, which is imputed to our account, no matter how much distortion there has been on that, the elect of God, I remember, I can't recall if this is a direct quotation or not, but I underlined it, something along the lines of this, the elect of God have always known how to put their faith in Christ alone for salvation, because it is God who teaches them to do so.

John 6 45, and they shall all be taught by God. He said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day, as it is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught by God.

Therefore, everyone who has learned and heard and learned from the Father comes to me, Jesus says. That is talking about conversion, that is talking about when sinners recognize the depth of their own sin, and they recognize the inability in themselves to remedy the situation, and they put their faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus taught us in that great passage in John 6 44 and 45, that it is God who teaches us to do that. They shall all be taught by God, and John Owen explained that so well, and it was such an encouraging thing to me, because along with studying systematic theology, especially even before I went to seminary, I read a lot about church history.

I could see immediately, church history and historical theology are really, really, really important things. So I started working through Kenneth Scott LaTourette and Philip Schaaf, and I read Bruce Shelley's Church History in Plain Language several times.

I thought it was just so excellent. And there's Chadwick, and there's a lot of other, William Cunningham's historical theology, etc, etc. And what you see, and it can be a little daunting at first, is to notice that there is a lot of distortion, especially in the post-apostolic church fathers.

You see a trajectory in their theology and in their thinking that is not good, and they're moving in a direction of almost being superstitious about sacraments. They're moving in the direction of the whole idea of the rise of the of the Christian quote-unquote priesthood and sacerdotalism and all this other stuff.

But the simple fact is, in the heart of a true believer, there is always going to be a rock-solid confidence that is unshakable, fixed on Jesus Christ alone, for their justification, which is what gets them into heaven.

And Owen is so good on that particular point. That book is outstanding, Justification by Faith Alone by John Owen. And he goes into, you know, one thing Owen does is he tries to deal with pretty much, I mean, every conceivable permutation of argument that someone might ever try to bring up against what he's saying.

And for that reason, the book's extremely valuable. But I think the thing I was just meditating on today is, you know, with the whole Piper thing, I just thought to myself, after haranguing with some people on Facebook today, which is why I ended up staying late to get my second sermon done, which is why I try not to do that much on Facebook, because it always takes longer than you think it's going to.

I was just thinking, you know, a true Christian is not going to buy this stuff. God's people are not going to buy Justification by Faith Alone as if it's entirely distinct from how we get into heaven.

Christians aren't gonna buy that. They're not gonna buy that, because they're taught by God how to put their hope in Jesus Christ alone. It's one of the most precious things in my own life, is that no matter how much I've ever gotten involved in controversy, and I have spent an incredible amount of my time debating the issue of justification with Roman Catholics, witnessing to Catholics when I was in seminary.

That was at the height of the Federal Vision controversy. In fact, Guy Watters was one of my professors, and there were guys there that were fans of the Federal Vision guys. They had blogs, and of course, it was always all the same guys off to the right on their blog role.

You know, John Barish, Jeff Meyers, Peter Lightheart, Doug Wilson, James Jordan, blah blah blah, all the same guys. And so we had some of those discussions in class, but even then I had already read Owen and just was thinking about that a lot and thinking, as sad as it is to hear distortions of the simple biblical gospel, of the simple biblical gospel, the people of God are not gonna be taken in by any of it.

They may be misled a little bit, but they're not going to go off and start believing or trusting in their works because they are taught by God how to put their faith in Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus said.

Those who come to him do not come of themselves. It is a supernatural, effectual drawing of the Father. That's what John 644 is saying. And people try to say, well, he draws everybody. Well, that's impossible.

That's impossible. John 644 says, all that the Father gives me will come to, excuse me, no one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. Every individual, grammatically, that is drawn is raised up by the Son.

So every single person that's drawn in the way that it's spoken of in John 644 is raised up, meaning that they all go to heaven when they die because to be given eternal life, to be raised up in Johannine vocabulary like that is how a person gets into heaven, is referring to that.

And so it's just an encouraging thing to me that no matter how many false teachers and their and their coterie of followers are squawking false doctrine, the elect of God, the people of God, are never going to buy it.

It's so encouraging to me to know that. Also in my own heart, I am so thankful to Christ that even though I fought the battle of the Federal Vision when I was in seminary, and I got books by Doug Wilson, Reformed is Not Enough, you know, Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant, and Peter Lightheart, Against Christianity, and Steve Schlissel, and all the rest of them, and read a whole bunch of that stuff, listened to them, listened to the other side, and I knew immediately the Federal Vision was heresy.

Not that, well, you know, these guys are our brothers and we need to, their theology needs to be tweaked to make it more biblical. No, it was a false gospel, plain and simple. Plain and simple. Did you hear the cow?

There's cows here in my backyard. It's a, yeah, my neighbors are cows. So they moo at me once in a while. I like to think of it as like amens from the cows when I'm out here preaching. But anyway, fought the battle of the Federal Vision, went through all that, read all that stuff, and I immediately knew that it was wrong.

As soon as anything other than faith is the instrumental cause of our justification, which is our legal acquittal, and the grounds upon which alone we enter heaven when we die, if you add anything to that, if you smudge that together with works in any kind of nuanced way, you don't have the gospel anymore.

You don't have the gospel anymore. Paul was so very clear about that in Galatians. I have no doubt that Paul was well aware that people were going to come up with a thousand different ways of restating the Galatian heresy.

There's a million different ways to do it, just like there's a million different ways to deny the deity of Christ. I mean, the heretics in the early church figured out every conceivable way to do it, every conceivable way to do it.

And so now we have a guy, John Piper, who's teaching, hey, I believe in justification by faith alone, and I believe in justification by faith alone, and it's on the grounds of the cross of Christ alone, and no charge can be brought against you, God's 100 for you, Christ's righteousness is imputed to you.

And in final salvation, faith is confirmed by the sanctifying fruit it has borne, and we are saved through that fruit. And that's where you say, no, the fruits of our faith are exactly that. They're the fruits of our faith.

And we are justified by faith alone, apart from works. I always think, you know, Ephesians chapter two is a text. I've been reciting it with my children, my five youngest. I try to teach them the catechism, Westminster Shorter Catechism, and some passages we've been reciting every single night for the past several months.

I recite with them Psalm 23, Psalm 1, and then we recite Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 together. And I've told them, kids, if you understand Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 clearly, and you understand what it's saying, it gives us the perfect teaching on how we are to understand works with regard to our salvation and faith with regard to our salvation from God's wrath.

So let's say it together, kids. For by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. How are we saved? We are not saved through the fruits of our faith.

We are not saved through works. Our salvation is not in accordance with our sanctification. Our salvation is not on the basis of the progress we have made. It is not on the basis of putting sin to death.

It is not on the basis of pursuing holiness. It is by grace through faith, not by works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So do works figure into our salvation? No. How can I say that? Because Paul excludes them. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works, not by works, lest anyone should boast. Well, isn't he just talking about like initial salvation?

No, those are not categories in his thinking. There is no initial justification or final justification or anything of the kind. The Bible speaks of justification, and Paul, when he brings it up, when he explicates it in its fullness in Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and in all the objections that people bring against it, the antinomian objection, I actually preached on that this past Sunday, and then the struggle with sin in Romans 7, when he rhapsodizes about the glorious nature of this entirely gracious salvation that we have, he says in Romans 8, 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies, who is he that condemns? And that is not talking about the initial justification. That is talking about who will bring a charge on the day of judgment against us. And folks, I want you to think about how serious it is if you don't understand that.

Think about who Jesus is and what he did when he died. What was that that was happening on the cross? When you remember and think of Jesus carrying the cross up Mount Calvary, when he willingly laid his life down, when he was nailed to the cross and lifted up in the air and dropped down in the hole and bled and died on that cross, what was happening there?

He was not achieving our initial justification. He was achieving our entrance into heavenly glory. He was taking the fullness of divine wrath upon himself in our place, vicariously, and he drank every last drop of that to the full.

That's why no charge can ever be brought against us. That's why our works cannot save us. That's why Paul says it is not by works. We are not saved in any degree through the fruits of our faith, or by our works, or by anything we do.

Our works are the fruit that grows on the tree, and the fruit does not make the tree what it is. It only shows you what kind of tree it is. It's like the apple trees over by the parsonage. There was a manse.

My family and I lived in that manse for a little while. It was a small house. We had seven kids and we lived in there. It was a little tight. But we used to go out there. There were four apple trees, very nice apple trees, on the side of that house.

And I used to use that as a teaching illustration to the kids. I said, kids, do these trees become apple trees? Are they made in some way, even partially made, apple trees, by bearing apples? Well, no.

I said, why do they bear apples? And they said, because they're apple trees. I said, kids, listen. You don't say, bah, bah, to become a sheep. You say, bah, bah, because you are a sheep.

Okay? It's not hard to understand.

The gift of salvation, the gift of entering into heaven, is not hard to understand. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

And then immediately, Paul knows what people are going to say. Well, you're saying we can live like the devil and still go to heaven. And that's why he says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

The gospel is so simple. The righteousness by which we enter heaven at the last judgment is the righteousness of God that has been revealed to us apart from the law. Apart from the law, Paul says in Romans 3 .21.

Being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation, as a sacrifice, which turns away both the cause of wrath and the wrath itself.

God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Our justification is our final verdict at the last day.

That is so simple. It's so fundamental. Because what Jesus is bearing on the cross is indeed the fullness of divine wrath. That's why Paul says in Romans 5 .9,. How much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

You hear that?

We've been justified by the blood of Christ. And because of that, we shall be saved at the last day, from his wrath, through him. Not through the fruits of our faith. Not through the fruits of our faith, but through him.

And faith is the sole instrument by which we are united to Christ, and his righteousness is imputed to our account. Romans 4 .6, just as David speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose transgressions are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. My sins will not be imputed to me, because they were laid upon Christ my Savior, my curse-bearer.

Christ has redeemed us from the curse. You know what that curse is? That's eternal damnation. That's the curse of the law of God. Christ has redeemed us from the curse, having become a curse huper haemon, in behalf of us.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God. I love N .T. Wright's explanation of that. That's just about apostleship. Talk about a man whose penchant for missing the obvious is legendary.

It's legendary. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses. That's just about apostleship, he says. Folks, just remember something. The elect of God are taught, by God, how to put their faith in Christ.

And they will never trust in anything other than him to get them into heaven. That's an encouraging thing to me. I used to get a lot more discouraged by this kind of stuff when I was younger. But now that I've seen the faithfulness of God much more in my life, and he's carried me through some pretty hard trials, and he's seen me through a lot of things, and I see his faithfulness, and I see his supernatural hand on all his works, and on his church, it's such an encouraging thing to me to know the elect of God are taught, by God, how to come to Christ in the right way.

And they won't come to him for initial justification, and then hopefully through the fruits of their faith, and God is faithful, he'll produce those fruits, enough fruit to confirm our faith, nothing like that.

No Christian is going to believe that at the last day they're going to be saved by their works that they've done as a Christian. Because they're taught by God to put their faith in Christ alone. God makes sure that that's what we do.

And I bless his holy name. It's one of the most comforting things in my life as a Christian man, that in my heart, from the moment I was converted, from the moment I first came to Christ when I was 18, at no point has my hope ever, ever been divided between Jesus and something else.

My hope of getting into heaven at the final judgment has never been divided between Jesus and anything else. Not the fruits of my faith, not my sanctification. And boy, I'll tell you, I am so very thankful to Christ for the incredible work that he's done in my life, and all the sin that he's freed me from, and all the work that he's done.

You know, I'm not where I should be, but thank God I'm not where I used to be. But I would never trust in that. I would never trust that I'm going to be saved through those fruits.

Never, never.

Because God taught me how to put my faith in Christ alone. So I want to encourage the troops out there, those that love the true gospel and are willing, often at great personal cost to fight for it, often at great cost to fight for it.

I want to encourage you guys to know that God will reward you richly for choosing a lonely path at times to glorify the name of his son. But on the other hand, to remember that all who truly know Christ are taught by God how to put their faith in him.

God will use us. He'll use our clear proclamation of the truth to draw his people to himself. But it is God who does that. God teaches his people how to put their faith in Christ alone to get them into heaven, because only Christ's righteousness can get us there.

Thanks for listening to the Protestant Witness. This has been Pastor Patrick Hines in my backyard, by my fire, with the cows bleeding there in the background. But thanks for listening.

God bless.