Apologetics - Catholicism - Section 2 Part 1

I will pray for us, and then we will start. Father, we're grateful for the works that you're doing in our lives and through this church, and we pray that you would continue to use us for your glory to reach out to all those who need to hear the gospel.

We're grateful that you have made us your stewards, the stewards of the gospel. Help us to clearly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we go, and help us to be gentle and kind, but firm in Jesus' name.

So section two is on justification, right? Justification is and was the main doctrine that stirred Western Europe with Martin Luther, right? We're gonna go over the Catholic view of justification today, and then we will go over the biblical view of justification next week.

Again, if you miss one or the other, it will be uploaded online, and then, of course, the slides can be shared too. It's not a secret artifact. So let's talk about justification by faith alone. It is the core issue of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, and in fact, if you ever wonder why are we called Protestants, it's because they're protesting, right?

That's why they're Protestants. They're protesting against the false doctrines. They're protesting against the Catholic Church. That's why we're called the Protestants, right? Again, that's just one of the labels that we use, right, to distinguish ourselves from the Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, right?

I like the term evangelical a lot, even though it's been very much defiled and soiled by modern media, mainly because the word evangelical comes from the word gospel in Greek. So I like the idea that we're the gospel people, right?

So even though people hate that title, right, and a lot of seminaries and schools are ditching the word evangelical, my seminary gave an option. Do you want Trinity Evangelical Divinity School or Trinity International University?

I chose the former, right? Ironically, the university closed down a couple years ago. I'm glad. But again, Protestant, that's one way. I like the term evangelical when it's used rightly, not in a political sense.

All right, let's talk about the Catholic origin. So how do the Catholics view justification? They get the word justification from justificare. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. It's Latin, right?

The translation of that would be to make righteous, to make righteous. And the reason why it has a Latin origin is because the early Latin fathers studied the Vulgate instead of the Greek Septuagint, that's what LXX means, or the Greek New Testament.

So the early church fathers in the Latin sphere studied Jerome's Vulgate. So those are Augustine of Hippo, right? He's really a very famous Latin theologian, one of the most well-known, right? In both Protestant and Catholic Church.

Jerome, of course, right? And also Ambrose. Those are the Latin fathers that I'm speaking of. And they studied the Latin Vulgate and they used the Latin Vulgate. Hence, the Catholic origin of justification is very much based upon the Latin culture, Latin as in Rome.

All right, so next. That means they developed the doctrine of justification looking at the Roman court system. So how they understood how one is justified, how one is made right is by looking at the Roman court system.

So under the Roman court, the Roman judicial system, you are made righteous when you have been, you're declared righteous, rather, when you have been made righteous. So the act of being justified is the result, right?

So justification, hence, with the Roman Catholics, occurs after sanctification. In order for you to be declared righteous by God and before God, well, you better be righteous, right? That's why there's that human aspect to it, right?

There's a human aspect to it. Justification cannot be by faith alone, right? That becomes problematic for them because you have to be made righteous to be declared righteous. Now, what's wrong with this hermeneutical method?

Hermeneutical means the art of interpretation. What's wrong with this interpretive method? That's not quite right, mainly because if you ask a Catholic, are you justified by faith? They would say, yes, amen.

They will. The key term is not, it's not that they don't believe that you're justified by faith. Their key term is alone. That's the problem that they have. Now, the hermeneutical method, what's wrong with this method, is that they are incorporating a Roman court system in order to read scripture.

Because how many of the scriptural authors in the New Testament or old wrote in Latin? Zero. Which means if you are using the term justification in the Latin Roman sense, you have to download it from somewhere else in which the scriptural human authors did not intend.

It would be kind of like if I text you something in English, and then you translated it to another language, and then you try to understand it using that language. Although translation can be helpful, it is not the most accurate way to develop your theology.

We would have to go back to the source. Now, let's talk about the Protestant origin. The Protestant origin is that we actually go back to the Greek New Testament text. Whenever I write NT, it means the New Testament.

The word is dikaio, and it means to declare righteous. To declare righteous. And the Greek concept of justification is that you are declared righteous before the process of sanctification, right? So under the Greek court system, you are declared righteous before you even show through works that you are righteous.

It's a completely court-based system, right? It's not based upon the reality of whether you are truly righteous through good deeds, but rather the court find you righteous and declared it so. And the question we have to ask is which group actually went back to the apostolic tradition?

Not the Catholics. People need to remember the apostolic tradition is not just by you saying so and can trace back all the names of popes which are debatable, right? We're gonna go over why Peter wasn't really considered a pope.

But not only that, we have to go back to the scripture. And scripture is our highest standard of truth. And we're going back to what the apostles wrote, which is in Greek, and it is the Greek understanding of justification.

And we're gonna go over different biblical texts on justification next week as to why we believe it's by faith alone, right? That's our response. And by God's grace alone. God justifies only as a gift, not merit and gift.

All right, next. Justification is very much tied to the Catholic sacraments. We do live in the city of Sacramento. And that really means sacrament. And that's because they looked at the river and they said, it's beautiful sacrament, right?

The river, right? Like they consider baptism and holy water as sacraments. With the sacraments, it's the operation of the church. It's what the church does. It has to only be from the church. When I say that, of course, it is the Roman Catholic Church, not any other church, right?

They wouldn't count the baptism that we do as legitimate. Legitimate, right? And frankly, we don't count theirs either. So yeah, I mean, it mainly, I will go over the baptism. The hard part is because they view the sacrament of baptism as regenerative, as in it has a spiritual reality in which grace is infused.

And we don't agree with that. It's a doctrinal issue. So it begins with the sacrament of baptism. So justification has to start with infant baptism or whenever you're baptized as a Catholic. The Latin term is ex operia operato, which means through the working of the work.

The moment you're baptized, you're infused with God's grace or God's grace is poured into you. So the act of baptism is quite important. Now, what that means is the righteousness of Christ is put into the believer at that moment.

It becomes a person's possession. Now, what is problematic with the view that the righteousness of Christ is all of a sudden your possession, right? It's more dependent on the act of the sacrament, right?

Like a process or the sacrament itself rather than the event of justification, right? It has to be continual, right? This also means you can lose that. If it's poured into you, you can lose that. If it's your possession, you can lose that according to their view, right, right?

It's a crucial thing for the Catholics to be baptized as an infant or whenever you get the chance, right? Yeah, the priest is right. Yeah, it's not in scripture. Infant baptism has to be inferred from scripture.

Anyone who believes in the infant baptism, they have to get it from any time in Acts where the whole household is baptized and they would argue that there probably was a baby there. Now, I'm not saying anyone who believes infant baptism is, right, it's just not a believer.

I'm not going there, but the Catholic view of infant baptism is wrong because you can't be infused with Christ's righteousness by the act of baptism. That suddenly becomes a crucial component to one's salvation.

Our best argument against it, as Dave and Dexter know when we talk to the Jehovah's Witnesses, is the thief on the cross. He was saved when he had no time to get baptized because Jesus actually clearly says, today you'll be with me in paradise.

It's just, that's completely by grace and through faith alone. Like, that's a test case example that undermines all the teachings of any other religions in which works need to be shown. Just didn't have the time.

All right, next. So we go to the Council of Trent. Remember, the 16th century, probably one of the more famous councils of the Catholic Church because it's in response to the Protestant Reformation. Their view is that, their view of sacrament, of baptism, is cooperate and assent.

So after assenting and cooperating, cooperating with the infused grace of baptism, the person who is baptized is in a state of grace or justification. He's in a justified state after the said baptism.

That's their view, right? Now, next slide. The hard part is that infused grace can change. That justified state can change. It can increase or decrease or be completely lost. You can lose the state of justification and be sent to hell, according to the Catholic doctrine.

And the reason is if you commit something called the mortal sin. Mortal sin is what they call a serious sin. And also hard to pinpoint what those serious sins are. But murder would definitely be one of them.

If you commit murder and you die, you will be sent to hell, even after that infusion of God's grace, right? Even if you've been baptized as a baby, right? After you commit a mortal sin, and you don't get to perform all the rituals to do away with it, you can go to hell.

Yeah, mortal sin bypasses purgatory. Yeah, venial sin is the less serious sin, which is weird to say less serious sin. All sins are serious. But that would be more purgatory worthy. But purgatory is not a pleasant place to be.

It's the purging of sin, right? It burns, that's what purge is. So you're stuck there for however many years you need to be, according to their doctrine. So it's like, they're both horrible, but one is permanent.

What's serious, what's scary is that the mortal sin is so serious that it ends God's justifying grace. That's a hard doctrine to swallow. Sin that is so serious that it ends God's justifying grace. Now, what's wrong with this view of sin?

That sin is so serious that it ends God's justifying grace. Yeah, right, it limits the Lord. I call that the sin sovereignty. Like, what's more sovereign here? God's grace, God, or sin, your sin? And we look down upon that as a Catholic thing, but implicitly, Christians, true believers do similar things.

They commit something, I'm not, you know, it could be anything, commit certain sin, and then they, even though they know they're forgiven, they live as though they're not, right? They try to, like, make up for it, or they're, like, haunted by that, right?

And that's actually kind of the natural response for humans. We want to make ourselves right. We want to justify ourselves. And just hearing the pardoning words from Christ is not enough, right? So this is a problem, not just for the Catholic Church, but for the Protestant Church, too.

A lot of Christians feel that they're not truly forgiven, right? And then they continue to keep on confessing to Christ, but then 1 John 1 says, 1 says enough, right? If you confess your sin, right? He is righteous and faithful to forgive you of all your sin and cleanse you, cleanse you of all unrighteousness.

So that's important. This is important for believers, too. Sin sovereignty is a huge problem. Get haunted by it even years after. And the question is, well, if God doesn't view it, if God doesn't see that in you because it's been paid for on the cross, what right do you have to hold onto that?

You're not God. All right, next. So right view of sin. The right view of sin is that there is gradation of sin. Some sins are more serious than others, yet all sins are mortal, right? That's important.

Yes, there is gradation of sin. Some sins are more serious than others, yet all sins are mortal. That's important. All sins will lead to death, right? And the one who sins will experience death, of course, without Christ.

Yet the correct view of sin is no sin can destroy God's saving grace that we receive upon our justification the moment we believe. No sin, if you're truly justified because you truly believe, no sin is greater than God's justifying grace.

That's important. Now, of course, there are people who live like pagans all their lives, but then they go back to like a prayer they prayed 30 years ago, and they're like, see, I'm justified. We're gonna go over why that's not right, right?

And that's next week when we look over James 2, because that is the main text that the Catholics will go to to argue against justification by faith alone. But James 2, when read in the right context, cannot be argued.

You cannot use that to argue against justification by faith alone. All right, next, sacrament. Penance. Penance is the restoration after mortal sin. So it is another sacrament. So in order to be made right with God after a mortal sin, what's required?

Who gets to do it? The church, right? All of a sudden, it's not God who pardons, but it has to be through the intermediary called the church. And again, read that when you read another sacrament, right?

The sacrament of penance. It is when you go to a priest, right? And you're contrite. Contrite means you feel bad and sorry that you offended God rather than you feel sorry that you might be going to hell, right?

That's contrition. Then there's confession. You confess what you've done. And then there's the satisfaction. Oh, and after you confess to the priest, the priest says, I absolve you. Crazy that a human can say that when every sin is an offense against God.

Who are you to say, right, that that sin's been absolved? Right, even for Protestants, we don't have the right to say, ah, yes, you are forgiven, right? All I can say is, if you confess your sin, he is just and faithful to forgive you of all your sins.

I have to point you to Christ. Did you truly confess? Well, then, that's what God says. I can't say, well, you know what, God forgives you. I can't presume upon what God does or not. In fact, that can become quite dangerous.

We don't want to cosign anyone's sin, right? If someone comes to you and says, I did this, yeah, I guess it could have been a gossip, but don't ever say, you know, it's all right. You don't get to do that.

Right, don't cosign on someone's sin. Yeah, I yelled at him because, you know, he was being jerked. Don't say it's all right. They would argue that the priest represents God, but Christ represents God, and Christ is God.

God's representative under the new covenant is God himself. God's intermediary under the new covenant is God himself. To place a man, another man who is not God in between that, it's heretical. You can't, that's taking Christ's job.

All right, next. After confessing, the sinner must perform works of satisfaction. So that's where the works come in, right? That's why you can't be justified by faith alone, because their doctrine requires that you do the works of satisfaction.

Good deeds, it might be praying the rosary, however many times. It just totally depends on how serious your sin was, according to the priest. So in the end, justification requires faith plus works, right?

Again, they don't say faith is unimportant. They do say faith is important. It's just not as important, right? Grace plus merit, and Christ plus your righteousness, right? Because if you need to perform the works of satisfaction, then yes, your righteousness is required too.

They might say, well, but it's very little. Well, that little still undermines Christ's sufficient righteousness. And the question is, when you take a look at all of this, can grace ever be paired with merit, right?

Have you ever been given a gift, and the giver said, well, you gotta work for it? That's no longer a gift. That's your earning. The giver would be offended, right? That's really important. You can't have grace plus merit.

And you can't have faith plus works either. Then you're not fully trusting in the sole object of your faith, which is Christ, because you have to do your works, right? Right. And then Christ plus your righteousness says, well, his righteousness is enough.

My righteousness, the Bible would say, is filthy rags, right? How can, it's like putting a filthy rag, a filthy shirt on Christ, right? It's like, why would you cover him? All right, next. Now, there are types of merit.

There's the can-dine merit. That's also ridiculous here. It's a work that is so good, that God has to reward you. Like, it would be wrong for God to not reward you after this. I have no idea what can be that great that you could do that God has to.

And the moment you put God needs to reward you, the focus is no longer God. There's the congruous merit, and that's the merit that's required for the works of satisfaction. Again, it's prescribed by the priest, and it's fitting for God to restore the sinner back to a state of justification.

Now, that's their view. That's not our view. Now, how does this affect Christ's accomplishment on the cross? That wasn't enough, wasn't necessary. Both the same idea here, right? Christ's accomplishment on the cross wasn't sufficient.

It wasn't necessary. What's the point? Maybe, maybe if we just write a book about condemned merits, and we'd all be okay. Follow that, if God needs to reward you, right? And really, again, the fact that it's prescribed by a priest is another red flag.

It's not in Scripture what congruous merit ought to be. What works of satisfaction need to be done? It's not in Scripture. It's all words. Now, next slide. Go back to the Council of Trent. Again, if you wanna read any of the councils, read the Council of Trent.

The sixth session has 33 condemnations, and they're called anathemas. You might have heard of anathema. It means condemnation. If anyone sayeth this, let him be anathema, let him be condemned, let him go to hell.

That's what it is. It's strong. Don't let, don't let the Catholics say, oh no, no, Protestants are saved too, right? They're just wrong on this, this, this. That's not what your church believes. I've had some comments say that, you know, the only thing, the only important thing is you have the fullness of Christ, whatever that means for them, right?

But you're wrong on this, this, this, right? That's not the Catholic view. If you believe justification by faith alone according to the Catholic Church, you're not going to heaven. You're anathema, right?

And let me give you the example from the Council of Trent itself, Canon 9. Next slide. Canon 9, if one sayeth that by faith alone, the impious is justified, the sinner is justified, and such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to, in order to the obtaining the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema.

You can't get clearer than that. In fact, if we just delete like the last sentence, like that's a great example of justification by faith alone. Yes, justification by faith alone. There's nothing else required to cooperate.

There's nothing you can do. That's the doctrine. But for them, we are condemned. And no, they did not change on this view. If they changed on this view, then their papal infallibility and council infallibility is in question too.

The church changed its view. All right, next. To anathema, to anathematize, justification by faith alone is actually to anathematize the gospel. You cannot have the true gospel without the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And the reason is the gospel is a gift. It is by grace of God. And the only proper response of receiving that gift is by trusting in him, not working for it. Some people argue that trust is working, but it is not working.

You don't, trusting, when you trust something means you're not earning it. Working is earning. Earning is working. Your deeds don't matter when you're trusting in Christ alone. It's only the accomplishment of Jesus Christ on the cross that matters.

And that's what you're holding on to. What's scary is what happens if a church condemns the gospel? Is that a legitimate church? We even have a scriptural precedent for that. We will go over how the justification by faith alone is crucial to the gospel next week because the Bible said so.

I will read from Galatians 1, six through nine. I marvel that you're turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel. You're turning away from God, which is not another, as in there's no other gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

Verse eight's important. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that we have preached to you, let him be accursed. Anathema. Same word. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.

Anathema. What Paul is saying is crucial. If we, who are we when Paul says that? Who are we? The apostles. The apostles. If we, the apostles or angels from heaven preach another gospel, are they safe?

No, let him be accursed. What makes us think that the Roman church would be higher than the apostles? And in fact, you get to Galatians two. Paul has to correct Peter because he had the wrong view. Right?

And Peter's supposedly, allegedly their first pope. But Paul has no problem saying with this view of Christ's work that Peter had the false view that it wasn't enough, that faith alone made someone the people of God.

Well, he stood accursed. That's what Paul says. Peter, in his wrong view of the gospel, stood accursed. Now, I'm not saying Peter's not safe because he repented, right? He changed his mind. That's where we get Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, that says the Gentiles do not have to convert to Judaism.

They don't have to follow the purity laws in order to be made right with God or be part of God's people. But again, it is a serious issue to go against what the gospel, the scripture tells us. It's a serious issue to edit that.

You get rid of that alone part. It's no longer the right gospel. It's another gospel. And we'll go over the biblical references to faith alone, not works of the law. Next week. So, what happens if a church condemns the gospel?

That church is no longer the true church. That church is accursed. And I have no problem saying that about Protestant churches, too. If there's a Protestant church that does not believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, there are Protestant churches that say, oh, no, that's divine child abuse.

They're accursed. If you believe that your sin wasn't paid for by Christ and Jesus faced the wrath of God for your sake, well, then the sin remains on you, right? That's another gospel if you deny that.

All right, next. Just to clarify, faith is foundational for justification. The Catholics are not doing away with faith. Let's not mischaracterize them, right? No straw man argument. They do believe in faith.

They do believe that faith is important. It's the starting point, it initiate, and it is the root of salvation. They'll say all of that, and they would say amen. Yet faith alone is not sufficient. That's what they would say.

And that's what we have a problem with. R .C. Sproul, a great Presbyterian theologian makes an illustration. Their view is like the oxygen and fire. For those of you who's started a fire before, you know that oxygen is needed, but can you have fire with just oxygen?

No, right? It's not sufficient. That's the point. So that's their view. Yes, oxygen is very needed. You can't have fire without the oxygen, but you need something else too. You need the source of fuel.

That's how you would understand the Catholic view of justification by faith. All right, next. How did they get this? It is the medieval synthesis of Greek philosophy and Roman Catholic Church. The main guy we're looking at is Aristotle.

Aristotle, I mean, he's a philosopher. He was not a Christian, right? He came before Christ and he was a pagan. He wrote out different causes that exist, right? Imagine a sculptor making a statue, right?

There's this material cause. The reason why the statue exists is because there's the material, the marble. You can't have a statue without the marble, right? That's the material cause. And then there's a formal cause.

Well, the artist had a design in mind, right? And then there's the final cause, which is what's the purpose of the statue? Is it supposed to be in a garden or in a palace, right? And then there's the instrumental cause, which would be like the whatever tools you need to break the marble and sculpt a statue.

That's the instrumental cause. So that's Aristotelian view of causes as to why anything exists. And what they do, the Catholic view of justification, next slide, is that they apply to justification. Now, the instrumental cause, the tool by which a person receives God's grace of salvation, what would their instrumental cause be?

Yeah, it works, but specifically what? What do they need to do in order to receive that grace? Baptism, yeah. So next, baptism. You need, baptism is the instrumental cause for justification. That's why it's so important.

Now, how, next, how important is baptism for salvation for the Roman Catholic Church? It's necessary, right? That's the key point. It's necessary, it's needed. And now, you mentioned the thief on the cross.

What will they say? What do you think the argument would be? Well, the thief on the cross never got baptized. What would they say? It's an isolated case. Yes, okay. Don't give up at that point. Follow along with the argument.

If it's an exception, can God ever make an exception? What would happen if God makes an exception? Exactly. Why doesn't that apply to me? That sounds unfair. All of a sudden, you have a double standard.

All of a sudden, the immutability, unchangeability of God is in question. All of a sudden, his standard of justice is flawed. Then you have to start questioning that why did Jesus have to die in the first place if God could make an exception?

Oftentimes, people think that, are you saying God can't do whatever he wants? And they think that I'd be going against God's sovereignty, whatever, right? Like, you have a very little view of God. Actually, God can't do anything that's against his character and nature.

And I have the biblical view of God. God cannot make an exception to save even one person. If that's the case, his son never had to die. There was no other way. But Jesus' death on the cross alone. So go with that, right?

Don't let them just say, it's an isolated case. It's an exception. No. I've heard people say, well, how do you know he wasn't baptized? Guys, that's just, it's like, now you're just arguing from silence, right?

That's also not legitimate. Now, next question. What is the Protestants' view of the instrumental cause of justification? What is the instrument by which God saves? Faith alone, right? Next. It's faith alone.

Our instrumental cause, if we want to apply the Aristotelian logic, would be faith alone. That's why it is crucial that if someone wants to be saved, you have to believe. And that's the only way in which you're saved.

All right, next. So in conclusion, the Roman Catholic Church, they believe a believer is declared righteous only when he is inherently righteous. This is why, as I think Victor mentioned it, or Vakar, you know, but they're together, so.

They're one. I see them how God sees them. They're one. They can't have assurance. The Roman Catholic Church cannot have assurance of salvation until they're dead and standing before God. Right? There's no assurance of salvation because of that.

You have to be made inherently righteous in order for God to declare you righteous, according to that view. And that opens the floodgates of who's truly a saint, right? For us, we can, you know, say like, okay, my brothers, like Dexter, Kevin, right?

Like I've known them and I know they believe in Jesus. They love Jesus. It's shown through their fruit, right? Works are fruits. And I can say, yeah, they're saints, right? They're saints of Christ. I have no problem saying that, right?

Because they believe. And when you believe in Jesus, you're saved. That's what saints means. You're set apart for Christ. But for the Catholics, you can't quite say that to a Catholic person as a Catholic, right?

I'm not saying I would ever call a Catholic a saint, but it's that as a Catholic, even among fellow Catholic people in which you would hope that they're saved, they can't use that word because they don't know, right?

It's not their last day. And even if it's their last day, you don't know their heart. And we don't know. Maybe like they committed mortal sin that they don't even know. And maybe they didn't perform the works of satisfaction well enough during their lifetime.

So they might have ended up in purgatory. A lot of questions there. So how do they know? Wait, how do they know all these saints? The process of canonization. The dead Catholic must perform two miracles, verify the Vatican City after their death.

And this could be like, you have a little amulet with the picture of the dead person, like Mother Teresa. And then you like pray that your cancer would go away and then the cancer miraculous goes away.

Then the Vatican City would send people and they would investigate. And they'd be like, yes, it is, you know, it is a miracle. And you have to, well, it has to happen twice. I'm not saying Mother Teresa did that.

It has to happen twice. And the Vatican City confirms that. And that's how you get a saint. It can take years. I think recently, most recently, they had the first millennial saint confirmed. But I have no problem calling millennial Christian saints.

Right? It's using the lens of tradition. It's a sad situation. Yeah. Right, because the Bible tells us you can know. You're saved now. Or because the dead people don't need to know because they're dead, right?

Living people need to know that they're saved. Now, I'm not saying that assurance of faith is always like at the highest 100 level for Christians. And at some points, at some point in life, it might be good that you're not assured that you're saved if you're living in sin.

In fact, if you're assured of your salvation and you're constantly living in sin, that sounds like you might, you could not be saved. You're not being convicted by the Holy Spirit. But if you're living in Christ, you're confessing, you've confessed your sin, then you can have assurance because Jesus died for your sin, right?

That's the point. Now, a person dies with mortal sin, hell. A person dies with imperfection or blemish, purgatory, purging fire, that's also not a pleasant place, right? Now, is anyone inherently righteous to be declared righteous by God?

That's the question we have to ask. Can any human being, any human being born into sin, I need to specify, any human being born into sin, can he or she be inherently righteous, as in they have the righteousness of their own to be declared righteous by God?

You can't, there's no inherent righteousness that you can contribute so that God would say and look at you and say, mm-hmm, I think you're righteous. That's unthinkable. That actually minimizes God's view of justice.

The point is, there's nothing I can contribute to my own salvation. Except the sin that requires Christ's death on the cross. I forget which theologian said that. I think Jonathan Edwards, but I might be wrong.

But there's nothing I contribute to my own salvation except the sin that required me to be saved. It's not by my own righteousness, even a 1%. It's only by Christ's righteousness put on you. All right, any questions or comments?

All right, let's pray. Father, we are grateful that our salvation does not depend on us or our works even by a little bit, but it completely depends on our faith in Jesus' atoning death on the cross alone.

And help us to cling to that, and help us to live in Christ, live walking with Christ, and help us to fight off any temptation to hold any guilt or shame upon us after confessing our sin. Help us to live forgiven, in Jesus' name, amen.