Sunday Sermon: By Grace Alone (Sola Gratia)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

Here is Pastor Gabe. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance,

He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful again to you for calling us into your presence.

We were sinners. We were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked.

Following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But as Ephesians 2, 4 goes on to say, but God being rich in mercy by the great love with which you loved us, you did not leave us dead in our trespasses and sins, but you raised us up together in Christ and by grace we are saved.

What do we need to understand about this grace? How does it make us better worshipers of God?

How does it make us to love one another better?

And these are things that we want to consider as we think about this doctrine today, the grace of God that has been shown to us in Christ our savior.

It is in his name that we pray, amen. One of my favorite stories that comes out of the

Protestant Reformation is Luther's experience with the passage that we just read,

Romans chapter three, where it is said that God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

And this was all according to his grace. We are justified by his grace as a gift.

Luther was kind of a tortured soul. And as we had considered last week, the

Protestant Reformation didn't begin on October 31st, 1517, as we often say.

That's the date that we kind of pinpoint as the beginning of Reformation, but there were men long before Luther who had come and espoused these things that then

Luther and various other men protested against the Roman Catholic Church regarding. But as Luther was tortured over the things that he knew, the doctrines that the

Roman Catholic Church taught, and then the things that he would read in scripture. He was well -versed in Latin, so of course he could read the

Latin and he understood the scriptures. But when he looked at the doctrines of the church and he looked at what the scripture said, he found great contention.

But there were many things that he continued to believe about the doctrines of the church, even though his soul was held captive by what the scriptures said.

When he read in Romans 1, 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. He sees in verse 17, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Well then Luther keeps reading, he goes on to verse 18 and it says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

And here was where Luther's soul was tortured by the things that the

Romanists were teaching. Versus what the scriptures said, because in verse 17 it says, the righteousness of God is revealed.

And then in verse 18 says, the wrath of God is revealed. And so what

Luther was doing when he would read those two passages is he interpreted wrath of God as being the righteousness of God.

Because if the righteousness of God is revealed and that righteousness is the wrath of God, then these are the two things that Paul is synonymously saying are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

So Luther thought that the righteousness of God was the wrath of God. Now, God's wrath is indeed righteous.

He is a holy God. He will pour out his wrath on the wrongdoer and on the evil.

But that's not what Paul is referring to when he talks about the righteousness of God revealed from faith and for faith.

Nonetheless, this was still something that Luther deeply wrestled with. And in his journal, he talked about how much he hated

Romans 117. He hated that verse because he believed that the wrath of God is revealed from faith and for faith and the righteous shall live by faith, the wrathful shall live by faith.

These were things that he could not understand. So one day, Luther was reading in the

Old Testament. He was reading in Exodus chapter 25, in fact, and he was reading it in Greek.

If you'll recall, the Greek translation of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint. And Luther's Greek was better than his

Hebrew. So he decided to read the Old Testament from the Septuagint and Exodus 25 was where he found himself on this particular day.

And in Exodus 25 .17, this is a section of scripture that you probably go to when you want to do your devotionals on any given day.

Because once you get past the giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, then it's a lot of law.

So it's not like, you know, I really want to read the law today or even the instructions that God would give regarding the construction of the tabernacle, the priestly garments, the making of the

Ark of the Covenant, and things of this kind. It's not typically pleasant for our quick, you know, 10 -minute devotional that we want to do.

But this was where Luther was studying on this particular day. And so in Exodus 25 .17,

he read the following. You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold.

Two cubits and a half shall be its length and a cubit and a half its breadth. And you shall make two cherubim of gold.

Of hammered work shall you make them on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end and one cherub on the other end, and of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends.

The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another.

Toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark.

And in the ark, you shall put the testimony that I give you. There I will meet with you.

And from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony,

I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

Now, suddenly, when Luther read that passage, his heart, he would write, felt as if it had exploded within him.

And he suddenly saw the grace of God unlike he had ever seen it before. How? I mean, a description of the

Ark of the Covenant, of how the Ark of the Covenant was going to be made. How was it that Luther saw the grace of God in this passage?

And the description that we have there of the Ark of the Covenant, whenever you read this description, you probably picture in your mind something that was like in Indiana Jones and the

Raiders of the Lost Ark. And that probably wasn't too unlike what the Ark of the Covenant looked like.

But here as Luther is reading this description, he is overwhelmed with an understanding of God's grace toward him.

What was it that Luther saw? Let's go back to that passage in Romans 3 that we started with.

In the Greek of that section in Exodus 25, mercy seat in the

Hebrew is kippur et. Now, even if you don't know Hebrew all that well, you might be familiar with the

Hebrew word kippur. Where have you heard kippur before? Yom Kippur, right? The Day of Atonement.

Now, that's what it is in Hebrew. In Greek, it's hilasterion. And that word comes up in the section that we just read in Romans 3.

Look again at verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation. In the

Greek, hilasterion, the same word that's used in the Greek Septuagint for the mercy seat of the

Ark of the Covenant. God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

And now, suddenly, Luther understood that this is the meeting place, that we get to meet with God through Jesus Christ, through the propitiation where by His blood, the wrath of God was satisfied.

And now, we have peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, Luther sees it.

This is not about the wrath of God. This is about His grace toward us in His son,

Jesus. And here's what Luther wrote when he came to realize and understand these words.

I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to their context.

The justice of God is revealed in it as it is written, the just person lives by faith.

I began to understand that in this verse, the justice of God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God.

I began to understand that this verse means that the justice of God is revealed through the gospel, but it is not a passive justice, that by which the merciful

God justifies us by faith. As it is written, the just person lives by faith.

And all at once, I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates.

Immediately, I saw the whole of scripture in a different light. I ran through the scriptures from memory, and I found that other terms had analogous meanings, like the work of God, that is,

God works in me. The power of God, by which He makes us powerful. The wisdom of God, by which

He makes us wise. The strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

I exalted the sweetest word of mine, the justice of God, with as much love as before,

I had hated it with hate. This phrase of Paul was, for me, the very gate of paradise.

In another place, Luther wrote, quote, if you have true faith that Christ is your savior, then at once you have a gracious God.

For faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will that you should see pure grace and overflowing love.

This is to behold God in faith, that you should look upon His fatherly, friendly heart in which there is no anger, no ungraciousness.

He who sees God as angry does not see Him rightly, but looks on a curtain as if a dark cloud has been drawn across his face, unquote.

I mentioned to you last week that before Luther wrote his 95 theses, which he nailed to the door of All Saints Church, he had previously written in the month before, in September of 1517, he had published his

Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, which was 97 theses. And as R.

Robert Godfrey said, that was probably more bold than the 95 theses, which were against indulgences that were being practiced in the church.

Cuz the 97 theses were basically like, okay, I'm challenging the entire theological teaching system in the

Roman Catholic Church. Let's go after all of it. And in his first thesis of the

Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, he said, to say that Augustine exaggerates in speaking against heretics is to say that Augustine tells lies almost everywhere.

This is contrary to common knowledge. This was the very first thesis in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology.

What did Luther mean by this? Well, here's what the Roman Catholic Church was teaching. Augustine was such a great purveyor of grace.

He loved writing about the grace of God. But it became to a point where many

Roman Catholic teachers were saying, whenever Augustine speaks about grace, he loves it so much that he exaggerates.

It's not that God is really that gracious. Augustine's just, he's overwhelmed with it.

And so he tends to take it to a degree that even the scriptures themselves do not mean. And so Luther's contention with this was, well, if Augustine exaggerates here, then you're accusing him of lying.

And he's no good anywhere. So his very first thesis was to confront the church on their teaching about grace.

Now, we love to sing about grace. Grace was in our lyrics this morning. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt.

Wonderful grace of Jesus, greater than all my sin. How shall my tongue describe it?

Where shall its praise begin? Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus, deeper than the mighty rolling sea.

I'm giving you ideas for hymn requests tonight when we come back and sing hymns for our

Sunday evening service. So we love to sing about God's grace. It is, it blankets all of our favorite hymns.

What do we mean when we use this word grace? We've talked about this in previous lessons, even as we were going through the pastoral epistles, 1st and 2nd

Timothy and Titus. Grace is very simply unmerited favor. We don't deserve it, but God shows it to us anyway.

As he said to Moses, as it is repeated in Romans 9, I will be compassionate to those on whom

I will show compassion, and I will have mercy on those on whom I will have mercy.

That's the grace of God. We don't deserve it, we do nothing to earn it, he just shows it to us.

But as I appreciated one theologian who described grace this way, he said, calling it unmerited favor, that's a perfectly good definition of grace.

But even more than this, we might look at it as demerited favor. Because what do we really deserve for our sin against God?

We deserve his judgment and wrath. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, as we just read.

And all of us deserve his judgment because of the rebellion that we have committed against the high king of the universe.

But yet God does not judge us, he loves us, he sends his son to die for us.

Romans 5, 8, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, that's his grace.

And that we deserved wrath and death, but he gives us life through his son. Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. So unmerited favor, certainly, but even more than this, demerited favor. For we deserve judgment, but we receive love.

And more than this, adoption, that we may become sons and daughters of God. And as we read about in Titus 3 just a few weeks ago, we become fellow heirs with Christ of his eternal kingdom.

Everything that the father is going to give to the son, we get to share in. We are fellow heirs with him.

We get all the stuff the king gets. And this is all by his grace, justified by his grace.

Perhaps the greatest passage that explains grace to us is

Ephesians 2. So let's go there together, Ephesians chapter 2. Now it wasn't that long ago we were reading from Titus that when the goodness and loving kindness of God our

Savior appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

And I said to you then when we were looking at that passage that this is very similar to Ephesians 2. I didn't teach on Ephesians 2 that day because I knew

I was going to do it this day. So we're going to come to Ephesians 2 here and understand what it means to be saved by grace alone.

Now consider Ephesians 2, 1. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

You heard me quote that in the prayer this morning. And this explains to us, once again, what we really deserved because of our sin.

We were dead in our trespasses and sins, meaning that we could have done nothing to gain salvation.

We could have done nothing to gain the favor of God. There's nothing that we could have done to give life to ourselves that we might walk in the life of Christ, for we're dead, and dead people do nothing.

If a man is dead on the street, you cannot say to that man, hey, get up, let me take you over to the hospital over there, and we'll try to put some life back into you.

Well, that would mean to imply that he has enough life in him to get up and go to the hospital and get himself fixed.

You can put that man in the hospital, you can put the defibrillator on him, and you can shock that guy all day long, and you're never going to put life back into that man.

Dead is dead, and dead men do nothing. We were incapable of anything good, as Paul would explain even in Romans 3.

There is no one good, not even one person. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

We were all here. This is every single one of us. And though Paul is speaking specifically to the church in Ephesus, he doesn't just limit it to that church that he is talking to.

This applies to everyone who is descended from Adam. For considering verse 3, it says, we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So everybody's included in this, nobody gets out. We were all dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, living dead, walking dead men.

We were headed to destruction. That was our destiny. And everything that we did was in rebellion against God.

Yes, there are atheists. There are unbelievers and skeptics out there who can do good things.

There are probably unbelievers that you know personally that you would say of them. He's a nice guy. She's a good lady.

But that would be to judge a person by human standards, right? They are good by comparison to what?

Well, at least they're not Hitler. Oh, okay, good. I'm glad you don't live next door to a genocidal maniac.

That's a good thing. But when it comes to comparing us to God, we fall short.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so all of us are as dead, and none of us can do enough good that would put us in the good graces of God again.

It must be God who acts on our behalf that he would bring us once again into his presence.

So what were we doing? We were walking in sins and transgressions. The very nature of our heart was in rebellion against God.

And a person who does good things and will say something to the degree that I can be good without God, that's self -righteous.

They're saying that I can do good things apart from God. I can merit my own righteousness without having

God do that for me or help me do that, and that's just proclaiming a person's own righteousness.

This is a great folly even of the skeptic and the unbeliever to think that they can be good on their own.

But instead, what we do is we go after the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, verse 3, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

There are three ways in which we rebel against God. There are three temptations that we give into regularly, if not for the grace of God, and that is the world, the flesh, and the devil.

For as we read here, we lived in the world. We were following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air being the devil.

And we were living in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, which is our flesh.

Now, there are some who will say that we're all born good. And if we were just left to ourselves, then we would be good people.

But it's the world, and the flesh, and the devil that would come at us and therefore corrupt our good nature.

And if it wasn't for those things, then we would be just fine. But that's not the truth at all.

The reason why we give in to the world, and the flesh, and the devil is because they promise us the things that our sinful heart wants.

It's not that if we were just left to ourselves, we would go the right way, but the world comes in and interferes.

No, you go after the world because your flesh desires those things that the world promises, whether that's some sort of fleshly gratification, a promise of popularity, promise of fame and fortune.

It could be some sort of philosophical idea. It could even be some kind of spiritualism. But in any and all of these things, the reason why our flesh goes after that, the reason why our heart would desire that is because our heart is rebellious against God.

You feed the appetites of your flesh, those carnal things that your body wants.

And the devil, in all of his schemes and the way that he tempts us to go away from God and after the things of our hearts.

This is who we were, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But then those wonderful words that are said to us in verse four, but God.

And Martin Lloyd -Jones did an entire series on those two words, but God. If you want to listen to dozens of sermons on two words,

I can point you to some resources. But God, being rich and mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. Now, if left to ourselves, we never would have gone after that.

For as said also in Romans chapter three, not only is there none righteous, not only is there none who does good, but it says explicitly, none seeks for God.

There is among American evangelicalism that which is called the seeker -sensitive movement.

The church will kind of create itself to be a conservative entertainment venture.

And it will do things that will try to attract people to come in. And these are the seekers that they will claim to be after.

And so the church will do very worldly things. It will have very attractional gimmicks and things like that, or it might even give things away.

Come to our such and such, and we'll give you an iPad. We're going to draw for a big screen

TV or something to that effect. All of these different things churches will do to try to appeal to the flesh. And they do that claiming that they're trying to draw people in who are seeking after God.

They're seeking after something, these folks will say, though they may not even know what it is that they're seeking after.

And we want to show them that what they're really seeking is God. Nonsense, that's not what they're after at all.

For the scriptures tell us plainly that no one seeks for God. They might come to you because they're seeking something of their flesh and, oh, well, this church can give me that.

And then why do they stay? Because you continue to appeal to their flesh. For as it is often said,

I've heard Paul Washer say this, he may not have been the originator of this quote, but what you win them with is what you win them to.

And then that church comes to find, well, we've got a bunch of people in here, but in order to keep them here, we have to continue to appeal to their flesh that they might stay.

And so the church becomes just a bunch of entertainment. They will even soften the gospel and a message about sin.

And though you may hear things that will be said that would be like, believe in Jesus and you will be saved, there's no practice of church discipline.

There's no calling out the sins that are so popular in the world. There is no guarding of the

Lord's table. There is no properly vetting a person before baptism to see if their confession of faith is genuine or not.

Do they even understand what they mean when they say that they're a follower of Jesus? The church will do everything that it can to just appease the person so that the person might stay there and they grow their big churches all through appealing to the appetites of the flesh.

But it is by the grace of God that our flesh is overcome, that instead of desiring what our rebellious heart wants, we have a transformed heart that would go after God.

Now, as we're looking at these doctrines between this week and next week, today being by grace alone, next week by faith alone, and these things go very closely together.

As you're going to see here as we continue on in this section. So in verse 6, Ephesians 2, 6, he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

And next week we look at faith. But grace precedes the faith. God is not gracious toward us because we believed, but he was gracious toward us and so we believe.

The very fact that our heart has been transformed so that we might come after God, this is a work that God did in us.

Faith that a person has is a demonstration of the fact that God has shown his grace toward us.

We don't believe and then receive grace, but God is gracious toward us and because of his grace toward us, our heart has been transformed to therefore hear the gospel and believe it and so be saved.

The faith of a person is a demonstration that God first had grace toward us.

And so grace preceding faith, just as we come to understand as well that it is the regeneration of the heart that precedes faith.

For you could not manifest faith in yourself just by willing yourself to believe, today

I'm going to believe. Yeah, tell that to the apostle Paul, who was on the road to Damascus to round up Christians to persecute them.

And Jesus appears to him on the road and changes his course. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And Paul replies, who are you, Lord? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. I'm going to do something different with you.

And as Paul goes to a house in which he fasts and prays for three days in blindness,

Jesus appears to a man named Ananias and says, I'm going to use this man who is going to be persecuted for my sake.

And he is going to appear before kings and judges and rulers and he is going to take the message of the gospel to the

Gentiles. This was very much against Paul's stubborn, sinful will.

But God gave him a new will that he would desire Christ instead of rebelling against him, and this all by his grace.

Now, when we talk about Roman Catholicism being opposed to the doctrine of grace alone, it is often said that Roman Catholicism teaches works.

We believe that we're saved by grace. The Roman Church will say that we are saved by works.

Now, that's actually not a correct interpretation or representation of the

Roman Catholic Church. Rome does actually teach that we are saved by grace.

The difference being that Rome will forbid and even declare you anathema if you say that we are saved by grace alone.

At the Council of Trent, which was the response to the Protestant Reformation, the declarations of which are still in force in the

Roman Catholic Church, they formally condemned the biblical doctrine of faith alone and grace alone.

And consider the following declarations of Trent. Quote, if anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.

In the sixth session, Canon 24, quote, if anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, which

I just said, but not by the cause of its increase, let him be anathema.

Salvation is from beginning to end the gracious gift of God.

And it is only by his grace that we are saved and not by anything else.

This is sola gratia, by the grace of God alone. Now, you will hear us sometimes talk about the means of grace.

It's declared, after all, in our own confessions of faith when we talk about the means of grace. What is the means of grace?

Nick Batzig of Table Talk Magazine says the following, quote, the means of grace are God's appointed instruments by which the

Holy Spirit enables believers to receive Christ and the benefits of redemption. Although he could have chosen to reveal

Christ immediately to his people, he is determined instead to do so through certain means.

God assigned the word, which we looked at last week. So it is through the declaration of the word of God that you have come into faith in Jesus Christ and this all by God's grace.

So the means of his grace would be that you would hear the gospel proclaimed and believe in it.

And so by the word of God, you have come into faith in God. As we considered from Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

So the fact that we are given the scriptures, this is a means of grace that we might hear of and know

God, and therefore, by faith in Jesus, be saved. He has also given to us the sacraments and prayer to the foremost means by which he communicates

Christ and his benefits to believers. So this is what we would refer to as the means of grace.

But the very grace of God that he gives to us that we might be saved originates from him.

And we do nothing to cause him to be gracious to us. The doctrine of grace alone is denied by Rome in many other ways.

And here are just five. I want to give to you examples of the way that Roman Catholicism denies grace alone.

Then I also want to look at ways in which the evangelical church today might deny faith alone as well.

But first, Rome denies justification by grace alone by its doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

Consider Catechism 1257, which says the following, the church does not know of any means other than baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude.

This is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are reborn of water and the spirit.

God has bound salvation to the sacrament of baptism. So in other words, you must be baptized in order to be saved.

You were not saved before baptism. Rome also denies justification by grace by its doctrine of the sacraments.

Consider Catechism 1129, quote, the church affirms that for believers, the sacraments of the new covenant are necessary for salvation.

The fruit of the sacramental life is that the spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only son, the

Savior. So you're only united to Christ by the taking of the sacraments. Thirdly, Rome denies justification by grace alone by its doctrine of purgatory, claiming that according to Vatican II, quote, the doctrine of purgatory clearly demonstrates that even when the guilt of sin has been taken away, punishment for it or the consequences of it may remain to be expiated or cleansed, unquote.

So we read in Romans 8 .1 that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And Rome would go, ah, not so fast, for there is still a condemnation that remains on you.

And even though you believe in Jesus, it hasn't fully been taken away, you must go through purgatory in order for yourself to be cleansed.

The Bible speaks of purgatory of no kind. I made a meme not long ago, which was a picture of a

Roman Catholic priest saying, here's what you need to know about purgatory. And then I had another picture underneath of a grandfatherly figure showing the

Bible to his grandchildren and saying, it's not in the Bible. So you won't find purgatory talked about in Scripture.

It is an invented doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. And it was because of this very doctrine that the

Roman Catholic Church was, in the 16th century, selling indulgences. And the selling of indulgences was essentially that you could give some sort of monetary value to knock years off your purgatory sentence or even the purgatory sentence of your relative that's already spending time in purgatory.

Now, this is a completely arbitrary doctrine with arbitrary numbers. And a person in purgatory is probably going to be there for thousands of years.

You might be in purgatory for 10 ,000 years. And so you want to knock 1 ,000 years off your uncle's purgatory sentence?

We'll pay this much so that we can build St. Peter's Basilica, and then your uncle won't be in purgatory for as long.

There were people that paid money into those indulgences in the 16th century to knock thousands of years off a purgatory sentence.

St. Peter's Basilica has since been built, and it is said to be that its current monetary value is somewhere in the billions of dollars.

But some of those people that paid money to knock years off a purgatory sentence are still in purgatory, according to the

Roman Catholic Church. You knocked 1 ,000 or 2 ,000 years off your purgatory sentence, but you're still gonna be there for 6 ,000, 7 ,000 years.

Again, it's just a completely made up number. It's whatever number they want to put out there to put fear in your heart into thinking,

I don't want to be there burning for that long, so how much money can I pay to knock off years from my purgatory sentence?

It denies that we are saved by grace alone. Fourthly, Rome denies justification by grace alone by its doctrine of the treasury of merit.

According to the Catechisms 1475 through 77, recourse to the communion of saints lets the contrite sinner be more promptly and efficaciously purified of the punishments for sin.

The treasury of the church is the finite value which can never be exhausted, which

Christ's merits have before God. So in other words, you're going to say that the treasury of merit originates with Christ, but continuing on, the treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the blessed

Virgin Mary. In the treasury too are the prayers and good works of all the saints. All those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ the

Lord and by his grace have made their lives holy and carried out the mission the Father entrusted to them.

In this way, they attain their own salvation and at the same time, cooperated in saving their brothers in the unity of the mystical body.

So in other words, God hasn't given you enough grace, but he gave enough grace to these other saints that have gone before you.

And so where you are lacking in grace, you can borrow some of theirs. That's called the treasury of merit.

Jesus said to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, my grace is what? Sufficient for you.

The very doctrine of the treasury of merit says, no, it's not. Christ's grace is not sufficient.

But instead, you need the grace that's been given to other saints. Speaking of Mary, Catechism 968 says, in a holy singular way, she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the

Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason, she is a mother to us in the order of grace.

Catechism 969 says, she was taken up to heaven. She did not lay aside this saving office, but by her manifold intercession, continues to bring us gifts of eternal salvation.

Therefore, the blessed virgin is invoked in the church under the titles of advocate, helper, benefactress, and mediatrix.

Titles that belong solely to the Holy Spirit as advocate, helper, benefactor, and mediator.

But Roman Catholicism would say, well, that's Mary, and she helps you to be saved.

Fifthly, Rome denies justification by grace alone and the sole mediatorship of Christ by its doctrine of forgiveness through the church.

According to Catechism 982, quote, there is no offense, however serious, that the church cannot forgive.

Christ who died for all men desires that in his church, the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin, unquote.

As I said to you last week, there's a temptation. There's a great temptation in me whenever someone comes to me and says,

Pastor Gabe, how can I know that I'm saved? There's a temptation to wanna popishly declare that you're saved.

But I don't have that authority. You can nonetheless know that you are saved, not by looking to me, not by looking to any priest, but by looking to Christ.

And by his grace, you are saved. His grace is enough.

It is sufficient. Now, having considered these things about the

Roman church, in what ways might the evangelical church today deny the doctrine of soligratia by grace alone?

So just because we're a Protestant church doesn't mean you just walk into any Protestant church and therefore find sound doctrine.

No, on the contrary, I've spent most of my ministry warning against churches that don't teach sound doctrine.

So the first way that someone will deny the doctrine of soligratia is by simply declaring that salvation is a shared work between God and man.

This is something that we call syncretism. Monergism is, or synergism rather, monergism is the understanding that we are saved only by God.

He does the work of salvation. He doesn't need our help, he doesn't.

And then any work that we do, even the faith that we have, is an evidence of the salvation work that God has done in us.

Synergism is the idea that we cooperate with God for our salvation.

God reaches halfway down, and we reach halfway up, and then we meet each other in the middle, or maybe

God reaches 99 % of the way down. We only have 1 % that we have to reach up and take that hand.

But nonetheless, if you claim to do 1 % of the work, your declaration is, I would not be saved unless I had done this.

And so therefore, the glory goes to you instead of God. As we're gonna consider next week when we continue in this section in Ephesians chapter two, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Not a result of works, so that no one may boast. The Apostle Paul said to the church in Corinth in 1

Corinthians 1 .30, it is by his doing that you are in Christ Jesus.

And in chapter four, who are you to boast as if you did something to receive the grace of God?

In Romans chapter 11, who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

God is not obligated to give us anything, but he has saved us by his grace.

So the first way that we might find a rejection of the doctrine of sola gratia in even an evangelical church today, even a

Protestant church, is some sort of claim that salvation is a shared work between God and man.

A second way is applying any kind of work required by us in order to be saved.

So where somebody might say, just as Rome says, that you have to be baptized in order to be saved.

And a person is not saved until the moment of their baptism. And there are denominations that teach this.

That as you're standing on the edge of that tub, I've had conversations like this with people who believe this doctrine.

You're standing on the edge of that tub before you go down into baptism, guy has a heart attack and dies. Is he saved, does he go to heaven or hell?

And those who believe in this doctrine that you're saved by baptism will say, nope, he went to hell. And of course, what do you do with the thief on the cross that was next to Jesus?

Had no chance to get down and get baptized. But Jesus says to him, I tell you this day, you will be with me in paradise.

Baptism is important. Don't hear me saying that we shouldn't do it. It's in the name of our church,

Protestant Reformed Baptist Church. Yes, we love water. Let's go for a swim.

But the baptism itself is, again, a work that is an evidence of your salvation, not the cause of it.

It is an outward demonstration of an inward change. Another way that this one still gets done quite a bit in many churches, a work that is required in order to be saved, the altar call.

Come forward, I see that hand, come on up, say this prayer, repeat after me.

And then once you've said the prayer, it's as though you've said magic words that have unlocked immediately you are saved.

Now, I'm not saying that nobody can be saved by that way. My grandmother was saved at the Billy Graham crusade.

She was in the choir. And as she heard Billy Graham preaching the gospel, she was like, I'm not a

Christian, I need to be saved. And so she came down front and she prayed and genuinely meant that prayer, confessing her sin before God and asking that he would grant to her salvation and was one of the most godly persons that I've ever known in my entire life, my grandmother, my mother's mom.

So a person certainly can be saved that way. But again, be careful of those popish declarations of, you've prayed this prayer, you said the magic words, and so now you're saved.

Even when I went through my ordination, there was a deacon on that ordination panel that had asked me, tell me exactly the date and the time in which you were saved.

And I said, well, I don't know that I can tell you that. I don't know what day it was exactly that I was saved.

Some people know that, but I don't know what day it was. I can just tell you that I'm walking with the Lord now, but I don't know what day that began.

I can tell you the day of my baptism, but I can't tell you the day that I prayed a prayer to follow

Jesus. But he was of an old stock that believed that whenever you're saved, you write that date on the inside of your

Bible. And whenever you come to a day and a time in which you might doubt your own salvation, well, just open up the front of your

Bible and you can see the date and there you can be reminded, I'm saved because I wrote a date in my Bible.

Again, you're not looking toward a date for affirmation of your salvation. You look to Christ.

And a third way that we might see the doctrine of soligratia denied even among evangelical churches is a softening of the doctrine of sin.

And we must be aware of this as well. Those who will diminish sin or say that it's not a big deal.

That God's grace is so great. Why are we even talking about sin? You're forgiven. And people will misquote

Romans chapter 6 which says we're no longer under the law. We're under grace. Missing that Paul had said in Romans 3, do we overthrow the law by this faith?

By no means, on the contrary, we uphold the law. So it doesn't mean that the law no longer applies, we're just not judged by it when we are in Christ Jesus.

But there are those that will soften sin so that we have no understanding of this being dead in our trespasses and sins and therefore in need of the grace of God.

There was a Babylon Bee article that was posted earlier this week. Babylon Bee, in case you're not familiar with it, is a

Christian satire news site. And they had a picture of a woman who was standing next to her husband in church.

And the headline was something like, woman is convicted by the pastor's sermon that her husband is a sinner.

And sometimes if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves in church singing, amazing grace, how sweet the sound for you, but not for me.

You needed that amazing grace, I was fine. And we must be careful about thinking too high and mighty of ourselves.

And getting into this greasy grace mentality of God is just gonna forgive me no matter what it is that I do,

I can go on sinning and it's not that big a deal. But as we'll come to study soon in Romans chapter 6, are you still a slave to sin?

Are you committing the members of your body unto sin? If you are now in Christ, if you are saved by his grace, then you must walk in his grace and not continue to use grace as an excuse to sin.

And indeed, my friends, if we are filled with the grace of God, then we must show that grace to each other.

We must be gracious to unbelievers as God was gracious to us when we did not believe.

Grace, the grace in the Christian faith, let me close with this. Grace in the Christian faith is the thing that separates

Christianity from every other religion, philosophy, and what have you in the world.

Just as I began in talking about those who were repudiating me for what it was that I taught last week, the world is a very unfriendly place.

You don't go and find grace in the world. We find grace in Christ.

And grace in Christianity is even unique to every other religious practice that exists.

If you were to ask a Muslim, where will you go when you die? He might say, paradise.

I read the Quran. I pay alms. I pray five times a day. I made the pilgrimages.

So I'm a righteous man. And he will boast in his works.

If you were to ask a Jew, where will you go when you die?

He might say, we really don't know where we'll go when we die. But if there is a life after this one and a reward for what we do, then surely it will be dependent upon the kind of life that we have lived.

By the way, I took that exact quote from Rabbi Howard Jaffe. That is what we teach.

Maybe we'll go to heaven. Maybe we won't. We won't know until we get there.

But if we're gonna get there, it's because of the kind of life we lived. If you were to ask a

Buddhist, you hope to achieve nirvana. How is it that you're gonna do that?

And the Buddhists will say, well, I'm gonna follow the eightfold path, or by being a good person.

How about a Hindu? Well, a Hindu strives to break the cycle of reincarnation and attain moksha by becoming a good person.

Even an atheist believes that he can be a good person without God. But if you were to ask a

Christian, where will you go when you die? The Christian will say, heaven. And you ask the

Christian, how do you know? And he will say, I was born in sin.

And the intention of my heart has been evil from my youth. I have rebelled against a holy

God, and for this reason, I deserve death. And you might say, wait a second, all these other guys, they said they're gonna be rewarded for their good works.

So how is it that the Christian can say that he will get to heaven, when he's just outright confessing to me here that he is not good?

And the Christian will go on to explain, cuz no one gets to heaven on their own merit, but on the merit of Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, to be received by faith.

We don't get to heaven any other way, but by the grace of God that was demonstrated to us through his son,

Jesus Christ. He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

He rose again from the dead, so that whoever believes in him, the sins that we had committed against God have been atoned for and paid for.

And we've been clothed in his righteousness. So when God looks at us, he does not see that sinner who was dead in his sins and trespasses in which we once walked.

He sees a son or a daughter of God clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

I remember one of the most mind blowing truths that my dad ever taught to me when I was a kid, is that God loves you with the same love that he has for his own son.

And even as a child, I found that mind blowing. I believed it because my dad told me it was true.

But how is it that God could love me with the same love that he has for Christ? And it's because I've been clothed with Christ.

And this is the grace of God. We talked about the means of grace.

And the Lord's table is one of those means of grace. We're able to taste and see that the

Lord is good, and that he has provided for us the way of salvation through his son, who died and rose again, who spilled his blood as a sacrifice and blood of the new covenant, that we would be united with God through faith.

You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

For more information about our church, visit our website at providencecasagrande .com. On behalf of our church family, my name is

Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.