Instrumental Cause of Salvation

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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As many of you know, at Sovereign Grace Family Church, where I'm the pastor, we also have Sovereign Grace Academy, which is what we have called a seminary for every believer.
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We offer this program to students at no cost.
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The only charge for anyone to take the class is the cost of the book material that you would have to purchase to be able to take the class.
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So basically, it's an opportunity for anyone who wants to be in our church or in the community to have the chance to take a seminary level class on various topics.
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We have a two year program and at the end of the two year program, you can earn a diploma in basic ministry training.
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So today, what I want to do is something a little different, something I don't ordinarily do on Coffee with a Calvinist.
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I want to use today's program as a way to aid in my class that I'm doing in Sovereign Grace Academy.
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In Sovereign Grace Academy right now, we are going through a survey of Bible doctrines.
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And so we have an eight week course.
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Every week we look at a different Bible doctrine.
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And then at the end of the course, the students have to do a paper.
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It's a research project, which is how they receive their grade for this particular course, along with whatever work they have to do during the week for class.
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But what I want to do today is I want to actually teach on something that I won't get to talk about in class this week just because of time.
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As is always the case, we have less time than I have material to teach.
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And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to teach this short lesson here today and encourage my students to go back and listen to the podcast.
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So if you're not a regular listener, today's a little different than what's normal, but I hope that it's still profitable for you.
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And if you are a regular listener, you'll know that we do a lot of different things on this program.
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So today is just one more different thing that we're going to do.
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So what I'm going to talk about today is I'm going to talk about justification by faith alone, because that's going to be part of our subject for this Thursday night's lesson.
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And I'm going to talk about the idea of causation.
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Because when we discuss justification by faith alone, we are talking about the cause of justification.
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And to understand what we mean by the cause of justification, we need to understand the different types of causations that have been understood historically and how the reformers were using the term justification by faith alone.
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I want to begin with a quote from Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul.
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Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul says this, we say that justification is by faith alone.
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And the word by in that slogan was part of the 16th century controversy.
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By refers to the means by which something is brought to pass.
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The controversy, therefore, concerned the instrumental cause of justification.
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Today we do not speak much about instrumental causes.
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In fact, that language goes back to ancient Greece when the philosopher Aristotle distinguished between various types of causes, material, formal, final, efficient, and instrumental.
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That's the end of the quote by Dr., actually, I'm sorry, the quote continues by Dr.
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Sproul.
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It goes on to say, by way of illustration, Aristotle used the creation of a statue by a sculptor.
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The sculptor fashions his block of stone.
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The material cause for the statue is the matter out of which the artwork is produced, the stone itself.
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The instrumental cause, the means by which the raw block of stone is transformed into a magnificent statue is the hammer and chisel.
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This was the language used in the 16th century debate.
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All right, so just to kind of clarify what we're talking about here.
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We're talking about justification by faith alone, and we're talking about that word by.
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That word by refers to the cause.
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Justification is caused by, or is by, faith alone, but in what way? In what way is it caused by faith? And in what sense is that word being used? As we noted from Aristotle's view of the different types of causes, there's the material cause, there's the formal cause, there's the final cause, there's the efficient cause, and there's the instrumental cause.
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And if we want to try to understand those, the material cause would be that which something is made out of, like we talked about with the sculptor.
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The sculptor has the stone that he's making something out of, so that's the material cause.
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If somebody says, well, what brought about this statue? Well, the material cause of the statue is the stone itself.
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A formal cause would be the plan or the blueprint.
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The final cause would be the purpose for which something was made, the purpose it's being made to be a statue, it's being made to be ornamental, or it's being made to be functional.
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For whatever reason it's made, that's the final cause.
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And the efficient cause is the person who is making that thing, the sculptor himself is the efficient cause, and so the instrumental cause are the tools that he uses to bring about that particular sculpture.
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So again, I hope I haven't lost everybody, but for now, the material cause is the thing it's made out of, the formal cause is the blueprint or the plan, the final cause is the purpose which it is made, the efficient cause or the working cause, if you will, is the person who's making it, and then the instrumental cause is the tools that are used to make it.
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So let's talk about this in regard to salvation for just a moment.
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The efficient cause in salvation, the sculptor in the analogy, is God himself.
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He is the cause of salvation.
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And the formal cause or the plan is God's grace and mercy.
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God chooses to save.
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The material cause is Christ.
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He is the stone.
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His active and passive obedience provide the substance for salvation, the material cause.
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And the final cause, the purpose for all of it, is God's glory.
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But the instrumental cause, the instrument that God uses to bring about justification in the life of a believer is faith.
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That is the tool, that is the process God uses.
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It's justification by faith alone.
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Now the Roman Catholic Church said that the instrumental cause of justification is baptism, the sacrament of baptism.
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Baptism sacramentally confers upon the recipient the grace of justification.
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In other words, the righteousness of Christ is poured into the soul of someone who receives baptism.
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That pouring of grace into the soul is called infusion.
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So Rome does not believe that people are justified apart from grace or faith, but that justification comes about as a result of an infusion of grace by which human righteousness is made possible, and it is by the sacrament of baptism.
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Over and against that view, the reformers argued that the only instrumental cause is not the sacraments, but is faith alone.
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As soon as people take hold of Christ by faith, the merit of Christ is transferred to them.
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Whereas Rome holds to justification by infusion, Protestants hold to justification by imputation.
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The Roman Catholic Church says that God declares someone just only by virtue of his cooperation with infused grace.
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Protestants believe that the ground of justification remains exclusively the righteousness of Christ.
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Not the righteousness of Christ in us, but the righteousness of Christ for us.
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The righteousness that Christ achieved in his perfect obedience to the law of God.
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The righteousness, the first part of the ground of justification is applied to all who put their trust in Christ.
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The other part of the ground of justification is Christ's perfect satisfaction of the negative sanction of the law and his sacrificial death on the cross.
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This is what we call the active and passive obedience of Christ.
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This means ultimately that we are saved not only by the death of Christ, but also by the life of Christ.
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A double transfer takes place, a double imputation.
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Our sins are transferred to him.
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He takes the penalty for our sin.
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His righteousness is transferred to us and we, by faith, are declared righteous because of his righteousness.
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Therefore, when we say justification is by faith alone, what we're actually saying is that justification is in Christ alone because it is by faith in Christ.
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That being the tool, that being the instrumental cause.
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By faith in Christ, we are saved through his perfect life and his substitutionary death.
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Now again, I hope this was helpful for the students of Sovereign Grace Academy.
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And if you're not a student of the academy, but you would like to join us for an upcoming semester, we have a new semester starting.
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We have four semesters a year or four terms per year.
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And if you are interested in being a part of the academy, please let me know.
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You can send a message through the program or you can visit us on our website at sgfcjacks.org.
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And if you want to look specifically at the academy, it's sgfcjacks.org slash academy.
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So thank you for joining me today for the lesson on the instrumental cause of salvation, justification by faith alone.
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This has been Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this.
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Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.