Reformation III: Sola Gratia and Sola Fide | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratia, and I'm here again this week with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author and teacher in the Behold Your God study series by Media Gratia.

The Reformation Series and the Five Solas

We're in episode three of a series on the Reformation because we've been in Reformation month, and this is how we've approached it. In the first episode, we gave a little bit of a timeline of the Reformation, and we gave some commentary on those things so that we don't miss the primary actor, God, at work in his church, just by looking at the men that he used, the secondary causes.

And then last episode, we started to go through these five sola of the Reformation. And for each of these, there's a certain way that we want to approach it. We want to see what the statement means. We want to see what scripture proofs there are for the statement.

We want to see what error each one of those counteracted back then, and then how the truth's been reemphasized by others since the Reformation. And then finally, how important it is for each generation of the church to continue to reform according to the word of God.

So last week we did sola scriptura, which is the beginning, and it's very important. We wanted to begin there for what reason?

Yeah, that's the soil that this plant's going to grow out of. Any other place, and we are awash with subjectivity. You're saying, well, I like Calvin, I like Luther, I like Knox. Well, so what? Why not another person?

So we want to make sure that the things that these reformers were emphasizing came directly from scripture, and so did they. Just in our last episode, you read from the 1689, the Baptist confession, the Baptist version of the Westminster, and it begins a little differently, clearly stating that the only authoritative, inerrant, and insufficient revelation we have of God and His will is in this book.

And that's our guide.

And we're working our way to soli deo gloria, meaning that all of these things are to the glory of God.

Right, right. Otherwise, we bend them to fit our personal preferences.

So if you haven't listened to those introductory two episodes in our series, go to mediagratia .org or themeansofgrace .org and look for those there. I think that that will be helpful to you because we're going to jump right into the second of the five sola that we intend to discuss, which is sola gratia.

Grace Alone as a Free Gift of God

Now, what does that mean?

It means that the entirety of our rescue from beginning, eternity past, to end, eternity future, and every single aspect between those is a free gift of God alone. Let's take those words free and gift.

Well, gift, it's a gift. It's not earned. Do you remember Romans chapter 4? This is not something you earn. It's not your spiritual paycheck. And it's free, not meaning that it doesn't cost you, like, well, you don't have to pay anything for it.

That's in the word gift. But when we talk about the free grace of God, what we mean is free as in without obligation. God is free to give a gift to whom he wishes to give. If it were a paycheck, it's obligated.

You know, no boss comes at the end of the week and says, well, if I want to give you a paycheck, I'll give you a paycheck. But, you know, the employee says, no, I've worked for that. But if it's a gift, well, then he's free to give to whom he wishes.

And so it's a free gift. It is God is not obligated to show mercy to anyone. No one can say that they deserve this love. And yet God shockingly has poured out his grace upon us through Jesus Christ.

Yeah, the spiritual paycheck that we've earned, all of us, is death. If we were to receive the wages that we've worked for. And yet through Christ, we and by faith, we receive his free gift. But I really appreciate the distinction there.

It's important for us to understand when we say free, we mean that God is not obligated by justice to give this to us. But for reasons drawn from within himself, he set his love on a people. And because of the work of Christ for us, we can receive this.

What scriptural proof do we have of this sola, this sola gratia? Well, there are many, but in Ephesians 1 and verse 7, and again in 2 verses 8 and 9, we read, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

And again, for by grace you've been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as the result of works, so that no one may boast. And then in Romans 3, 24 and 25, being justified as a gift by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly, or placarded as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. So, many, many places that I hope our minds run to immediately when we ask, where do we get this whole idea of grace alone?

The Error of Works-Righteousness

But what errors, why did we even have to say it back in the Reformation? What errors was it counteracting?

Well, I think, you know, in the Reformation period, like every period of human history, our natural religion is a workspace religion. It's a religion that says, hey, I may not be perfect, but I'm better than Joe, and so God, I think I deserve a look here, I deserve a chance.

And so, whether it's climbing a mountain and meeting a guru and not eating for 40 days, you know, or whether it's in the Old Testament, the pagan sacrificing a child, the most costly gift I can offer to my idol, or whether it's today with a person saying, okay, what do I got to get in?

Repeat a prayer, join a church, give some money, okay, I'll do it. There is always within us this undying tendency to think that it is God's love, but there's something in me that was lovely and worthy of that love, and together they answer the reason of why I'm a Christian.

So, in the time of the Reformers, that tendency was showing up within the church system, that there is something in you, in your works, in your church, in your church affiliation, in the ordinances or sacraments the church is giving you, or the means that they're giving you, what the priest told me to do, that these were things that weren't just good or biblical, but they were actually meritorious.

To me, that's such a strong apologetic for the truth of Christianity, because it's true. There really only are two religions in the world. They have a lot of different names, but you have sola gratia and you have everything else.

What do I need to do to be right with God? Listen to how Spurgeon explained this truth. In a sermon entitled, The Glories of Forgiving Grace, Spurgeon said, Rivers or alms in Alps, or resolves and vows and promises in countless numbers, all will amount to nothing as a bribe of grace.

Forgiveness, like love, is unpurchasable by us. God's pardons are absolutely free. He forgives because He chooses to forgive. Out of sheer pity to the sinner, out of clear unmixed compassion, but with no adulteration of anything like bribe or price.

Yeah, that's such a clear statement. I think in our own day, we have to continue to return to this, because again, there is the tendency to mix with the purest form of undeserved love some small aspect.

So Spurgeon says it like that, not in any form. Not in any form are you contributing to this. You know, and he talks about a bribe. You think about it. Two people, they both go to church. One has been saved by the grace of the Lord, and they have embraced that through faith, and everything is different.

They've gone from death to life, from darkness to light, and now they want to live differently. And the reason is gratitude, love. Now, here's another guy sitting right beside him. He hasn't been born again.

He doesn't get it really, but he knows he needs to be a good guy. You know, wife wants me to be good. Kids need a good dad. So he changes a lot, and on the outside, they look a lot alike. Person one and person two both made a lot of changes.

Person one from gratitude because they have been saved. Person two working toward this, not from it. What's so bad about it? Person two's good works are not good at all. First of all, they're not perfect, so they're not acceptable to the Lord.

Christ's good works are acceptable. Our good works, if we were trying to earn His love, are unacceptable. They're tainted. But this man's good works become offensive to God because they're a bribe. Instead of coming to the Father through the sacrifice of the Son, His greatest gift, we arrogantly say, sorry, I don't need it that bad.

Like, I can do better. That's for people that can't do anything good. I can do some good, God. So here, let me offer you this. What an offense when the Son is rejected to the face of the Father. I'm rejecting your Son, but I'm offering you my dirty good works.

So you want to bribe me for a love that can only come through my Son? And, you know, so even good works become, instead of a thing that kind of lifts you up to heaven, a weight that weighs you down to judgment.

But think of, you know, think of this. Nothing in us earned His love. Now, that means nothing in my character. Like, well, I'm the kind of person God probably would want to rescue. Nothing in what I might offer Him.

I have gifts that if God got a hold of me, I could do a lot of good in the church. Nothing in what I resolve to do. If God will give me a second chance, tomorrow morning I will be so different than I was yesterday that it will be worth the bargain.

You know, God's going to come out pretty good. No bargaining. I mean, that's not grace. God, first you do this, I'll do this. We know that we've gotten hold of the truth of soli gratia, that it's by God's undeserved love alone.

Even a love that we didn't want, that we ran from. When we start to ask you questions that Paul asked in Romans 3, how can a God who's so holy offer this so freely to people who are so foul? And Paul argues and says, you've been given grace in a way that you mentioned, placarded, displayed God's perfect righteousness.

Because the Son of God bearing our terrible shame and the Son of God working out a perfect righteousness is the only way that a holy triune God can offer a sinner all this. So I think that one simple test for us is this.

Do we find salvation by grace harder or salvation by good works harder? And some people say, well, man, by good works. Like, you've got to work for it. No, no, I don't believe it. Everyone finds salvation, you know, a type of salvation by good works.

It just comes naturally. But salvation by grace. Salvation from a being who finds nothing in you that was attractive and yet has loved you infinitely is so offensive to my pride and so impossible to my human understanding to get a grip on that it really is not.

We're not talking about easy believism. We're talking about impossible believism. Only by the work of the Holy Spirit does a man come to an end of himself and throw it all before God, all before the throne and say to him, I don't know why you would love me, but you have loved me.

And it is the most humbling reality ever. And you can have me, you know. So grace, no matter how many times we say it, has to be revisited every generation by the believer. Yeah, amen.

You know, we've said that this principle of simper reformanda according to the Scriptures, and as you said, it is so natural to us and it cuts right against the grain to believe in sola gratia. So hopefully if you're listening to this, and we all recognize when we're not careful that we are starting to put a little bit of our hope in the things that we're doing.

Well, the Reformation lives on today as we turn away from and repent of those things and continue to, you know, with empty hands come and grab hold of Christ again. Yeah, yeah. Let's move on now to sola fide, which is a great transition there into this concept.

Justification by Faith Alone

What does it mean, sola fide?

Well, all of these are so intertwined, these truths. And that's encouraging for us because that's a real mark that this is the truth of God and not something we came up with. That sola gratia, that by grace alone, there's no contradiction that there must also be faith.

In fact, they wonderfully are woven together. Sola fide means this, that we are judged righteous in the sight of God, purely on the basis of faith, not of works. We are justified by faith alone. Now, why?

Faith alone receives the imputed righteousness of Christ and the atoning benefits of his death. Now, that in Martin Luther's struggle, probably more than any of the other reformers, that question of how can I, no, not anybody else, me, knowing me, how can I love this holy God?

You know, at one point Luther said, I hate God because he's so holy. I mean, he must condemn me. He must. There's no other choice. So how could I love a God that must damn me? And Luther coming to the truth of justification through Christ's death and life attributed to us as we receive it through faith, Luther came to think and to say this about justification by faith alone.

This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification, is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness.

You know, this word justification, this is not a word that we've made up in theology just because it really fits, you know, the answer to a problem that we have. This is a Bible word. And yet it's a Bible word that maybe is misunderstood often or maybe is just not even talked about a whole lot in church circles.

Just recently we had a screening of the Puritan film locally in Tupelo, Mississippi. And I had a conversation with a lady I'd never met before who saw the ad for it on social media and said, oh, I've got to go see that.

She took me aside and she put together that we'd also done the Behold Your God series. And she told me with tears that in the workbook that she went through in the church where she attends, in the back of the workbook, we included a glossary, just a simple term and definition, term and definition for Bible words, words like sanctification and justification and imputation and others.

And she told me with tears that in reading the glossary she was saved because she'd never understood the gospel before. And so, you know, these words are not just big theology words. These are essential Bible words that communicate the gospel to us.

And so incredibly important for us to understand and for us to hold to. She went on to say that they printed out that glossary and made little bookmarks that they keep in their Bibles and they give away to people because in a huge way, it's maybe one of the best gospel tracts that there can be because we understand what does the Bible say and what does it mean by these things.

So where do we get this, this whole idea of justification in the Bible? Well, many places, but if we look at Galatians 2 and verse 16,. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.

And then later in Galatians 3 and verse 11,. Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident, for the righteous man shall live by faith. So in the time when this sola was put together, what errors specifically was it counteracting?

Well, again, the idea that our works could satisfy God's perfect law, his perfect expectations, which these aren't arbitrary things. You know, these are the law of God is an expression of his moral perfection.

You know, shine down into our kind of world, our kind of life. And we owe him everything the law says we owe him. So could we somehow by works earn that? Well, no. So we can't help God. We can't help pay for this mercy.

We can't really pay God back for this mercy. So the only hope that we have is that faith would reach out like a beggar's hand, emptying itself of any other hope and any other pretended worth that we think we have.

We throw it all down. We reach out the empty hand. And we ask God, you know, is he as good as his word says he is? Is he really willing and able to forgive and cleanse people like us? And he is. And we grab hold of those promises.

And we appropriate, you know, we grab hold of Christ. I mean, sometimes in church, you know, we've said it this way. In a sense, conversion is the sinner turning to, away from to turn to, away from self and sin to God.

But faith's aspect is this. I give all that I know of myself to this God. And I grab hold of all that I know of this God in the person of his son and make it mine. You know, so it's not works that makes me righteous.

It's faith that grabs hold of the free gift of Christ's righteousness. One way theologians have made this clear is the difference between an imputed righteousness and an imparted righteousness or imputed and infused.

And it's tricky because we do see righteousness in the Bible being imputed or legally declared right with God. Because what Christ did in his perfect obedience and death has been attributed to the believer.

So there's a legal declaration. You are right with God's law. You are right with God himself because you have been given the righteousness of the perfect man. But the trick is that when God does that, you know, that's the great beginning.

It's not the end. Transformation, you know, the regeneration, the sanctification, the persevering and finally the glorification. We are being transformed. And that is the work of God. There is a righteousness being planted and growing and spreading through the work of the Spirit that wasn't there before.

There's a new nature, a new desire. But even though that is the work of God, that cannot be part of the justifying work. It's imperfect. It's incomplete. If we think that that is what makes me right with God, well, we say, well, it is God at work in me, right?

Well, yes, it is. Well, so does that add to what Jesus did for my forgiveness? No. Even good works that flow out of the work of the Spirit in the new life of the believer. These are fruit. These are not roots.

And they cannot contribute to the root system. One way we could say it is this. If you take a tree and turn, take a fruit tree, an apple tree, and you turn it upside down and put the apple, the fruit part in the ground and bury it and hope it will grow, well, it would die.

The fruit of the Christian life, what comes from faith, embracing Christ and the life of grateful obedience, that's important. But it's never part of the root system.

So 100 years after the Reformation and in the Puritan era, as men are working through, how do we take these sola and really flesh them out and take the data from the Scriptures, the witness of the Scriptures, and put those in systemized ways of explaining?

In the era of confessions being written, the 1689 London Baptist Confession in chapter 11 says this about justification. Those God effectually calls, He also freely justifies. He does this not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting them as righteous.

He does this for Christ's sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them. He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing, or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness.

Instead, He imputes Christ's active righteousness to the whole law and passive obedience in His death as their whole and only righteousness by faith. This faith is not self-generated. It is the gift of God.

Faith that receives and rests on Christ and His righteousness is the only instrument of justification. Yet it does not occur by itself in the person justified, but it is always accompanied by every other saving grace.

It is not a dead faith, but works through love. Then Spurgeon, who 100 years later after the Puritan era, who reprinted and republished the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith in October of 1855 for use by his own church.

He wrote this,. Because it is God's promise and it is worthy of dependence. Now, how do we need to return to that today? I don't think that there's a way we don't need to return to that. Right, right.

Every generation. Well, let's just take a couple of quick applications. We live in a day where, you know, kind of an easy believism has swept our part of the world. And, you know, every generation has its own version.

But let's take kind of just an easy believism where someone is told a list of facts about Christ. And then they're told a Christian believes this list of facts. So the way to become a Christian is just to nod your head to this list of facts at the appropriate time.

Right. So do you agree with these things? You say, well, sure. Okay. Okay. Then you're a Christian. So kind of an empty assent, kind of a really not really even believing. It's not that it's an intellectual belief.

It's really not belief. It's just kind of nodding our head to a list of facts. So a non-experiential, a faith that doesn't have any teeth to it, any reality to it, any substance to it. And usually it's a faith where you look at your faith and say, well, I did that.

So it's not a faith looking to Christ. It's a faith saying, I did what the preacher told me to do. So you're looking back at yourself. That's a thing we must put away. That's a very dangerous substitute.

And deadly. But reacting against dead faith, this just surface kind of belief, we can get into another era of kind of treating faith, because it's important, as if it's got to be perfect, because it's the thing that earns me His love.

So I believed strongly enough. I believed consistently enough. My faith is strong and big enough that I'm a true Christian. But when my faith is a little weaker, or when my faith stumbles, or, you know, when it's small, then I think, well, I'm not a Christian now.

And that's a wrong view of faith. It really treats faith as another work. So instead of keeping ten commandments to be a really good person, I just got to keep one commandment, believe. And I'm going to keep it really well, and then I'm going to be okay with God.

So that's a mistake that we don't want to slide into. So Sola Fide, understood correctly, keeps us on track. Spurgeon mentioned it, 1689 mentioned it, Scripture mentions it, that faith is a gift. It is also an instrument.

It is the instrumental cause of our justification. That is, it is the tool by which God has freely put into your hands to stretch them out and to receive this astonishing gift of Christ's righteousness.

I mean, we just don't have it in ourselves. We would never trust everything in life to a God that we don't see or hear or touch. We would prefer this instead. I'll trust myself. So God gives us the ability in regeneration.

He opens our eyes. He softens our heart. He frees our will from the captivity of sin's lie. And He hands us, in a sense, this empty bucket. We could call it faith, you know, in a very childish illustration.

And we stretch it out to Him, and He fills it, and we pull it back. And we never let go of Him because it's His gift. So faith in the Bible is not contrasted to grace. So He doesn't say this. It's by grace you're saved.

Not through faith. I mean, you don't have to work up faith. No, grace and works. But also, faith and works. So there's something about faith that is essential. You've got to stretch out the empty hands to the King.

And yet it's not meritorious. And it's because it is a gift that is only an instrument that receives. And no beggar that stretches out his hand who's thinking correctly, once he pulls back a hand full of kindness, says, You know what?

I earned it. Because look at that hand. That's a great hand, you know. So faith is essential to turning to God. Faith is a gift. It is an instrument. It is not a work. It is a way of receiving. And if we understand sola fide, it keeps us from all those dangerous cliffs.

Faith Alone, Living Faith, and the Lordship Salvation Question

One of the most encouraging things about attending conferences is when people drop by our booth to tell us how one of our studies or films helped or influenced them, their families, or their church. Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record their stories to share with you.

This is Royal. We talked to him at the G3 conference about rethinking God biblically.

We watch it as a family devotional, a learning opportunity. We go through one of the men of the faith at a time to learn more about them and how that theology affects our lives today. So we spend a lot of time doing that.

And again, we watch it over and over again because you miss certain things or you just want to remind yourself of what's going on. I've never been a biography guy. Theology guy, yes, probably not a lot about biographies.

But consequently, having saw the video series, I picked up probably a biography of everybody on the videos because it's so interesting. And to get those little vignettes tells you a little bit about them, but then you really do want to know more about them and what caused them to be so faithful toward God.

For more information about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit TheMeansOfGrace .org. Well, the last thing that we can say before we run out of time about this is continuing down the discussion that you were just leading on how many errors can be corrected if we have a right view of this.

And the second part from the way that the confession puts it, that faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness is alone the instrument of justification, yet it is not alone in the person justified, but it is ever accompanied with all other saving graces and is no dead faith, but works by love.

If we really hold to that as being true and a faithful representation of what the Scripture teaches, then that does save us from the whole wasting time arguing about lordship salvation. Well, can you accept Jesus as your Savior?

And then maybe later on down the road you accept Him as your Lord. It's been put in a much simpler way that we are saved by faith alone, but faith is never alone. Faith is always going to be accompanied by, because we have been given a new nature now, regenerated by God, that that will be accompanied by every other fruit or every other saving grace.

Yeah, that's such a clear statement there.

Closing Resources and Next Week's Topics

Well, there's so much more that we could say about this and each of these sola. And if you want to get a little bit of guidance on where you can go from here to dig further into these subjects, do go to mediagratia .org or themeansofgrace .org and look for this podcast page where there are going to be a lot of recommended resources and other additional reading to really help us ground ourselves in what the Scripture teaches on these things.

We appreciate you listening, and we want to invite you to come back and listen again next week where we start to think about Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria. Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast.

All the Scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at mediagratia .org slash podcast. That's m-e-d-i-a-g-r-a-t-i-a-e dot o-r-g. You can also get there by going to themeansofgrace .org.

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