2021 09 26 Sola Fide and Sola Gratia Grace Bible Church Conway AR

All right, it is great to be here this evening, especially since when I pulled out of somewhere in Oklahoma early, early this morning, my truck started saying that its battery was about to die and I was about to stall and I thought, uh-oh, I'm not sure I'm gonna be making it to where I was supposed to be tonight,.

But I fixed it myself.

I mean, I am not a mechanic, but I sort of thought, you know, this seems like something's not tightened up and lo and behold, that's exactly what it was and so we're good. So anyway, it is good to be here and I do enjoy riding my bike inside my RV.

That's the whole reason that we got it really was that I can combine those things. How many of you are going to G3? How many of you wish you were going to G3?

Okay, all right, all right, that's good.

I will wear, I probably will wear a bow tie at G3, but I'm road tripping right now, man. So I just, if you ever see anyone driving an RV with a bow tie on, stay away from that person, okay? That's not good.

I've seen some weird things already and that's about as weird as it gets. Now, I noticed that I being far older than any of the other speakers, they could almost be my sons, I ended up with three of the five solos and I'm not really sure exactly how that works, but I have two of the three in one shot tonight and that's not really fair.

That means we're going to have to move really, really fast. I saw a young lady taking great notes down here with her left hand, by the way. And so that hand is going to fall off trying to keep up with how fast I'm going to be going in this time period.

But part of the reason is, I've taught church history since 1990 and therefore I would like to expand greatly on all sorts of the historical ramifications of both Sola Fide and Sola Gratia. I'd like to give you all sorts of illustrations and stories from Luther or Zwingli or whatever, and I don't have time to do that.

But that would be a normal aspect of how we would address the Solas. That would be the same whether we did it in 2010 or in 2021, but 2021 isn't 2010, is it? And the reality is most of us are living in a schizophrenic state.

We're here and we're talking about the stuff that we were talking about 11 years ago, while at the same time, the world around us is changing so rapidly and going a direction that is, as anybody who knows history knows, so massively dangerous that I feel like a schizophrenic.

I feel like I live my normal life still and I still try to make plans for the future along those lines, but then I also recognize what in the world is going on in our world. And it's hard to keep the two of them together and I'm not gonna tell you that I'm doing it perfectly, but if you're feeling the same way, you're not alone.

And so I think it is necessary to talk about what these Solas are about, but then try to say something about and here where we are today, these are why these things are still important. These are why these things are still relevant.

Instead of looking, just looking back, we need to look forward and recognize what's happening, the possibilities for the future, and say, okay, are these things just interesting stories that we know from the past or do these things still have relevance to us today?

And so get your Bible. I'm going to, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna run through a few texts very, very quickly. It's pretty easy to actually do faith alone and grace alone because so many of the biblical texts that present these truths are the same biblical texts.

Now, the reason, I hope everyone recognizes, no one was, and this may bum a few of you out that maybe have all five Solas on your arms or whatever else, something like that, but no one back then was using these phrases.

This is from our modern vantage point, looking back at the Reformation, asking the question, what motivated these men? What made this movement successful? What was the things, what were the things they were emphasizing?

And so, for example, you had the material and the formal principles of the Reformation. The material principle was sola fide. It was the preaching of justification by faith alone that was the central material, the essence of what was being preached.

But as soon as Luther begins to preach that, then he's challenged by those who are standing against him to substantiate these things, and that's when he has to come to grips with sola scriptura. He had not embraced sola scriptura, didn't know what sola scriptura was until he was challenged on that very issue because he had come to understand justification by faith.

So what we do today is we look back and we see the formal principle, that which gave form to the rest was sola scriptura. Scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith of the church because they are theanustas, revelation from God.

That is what gives the form to everything else. The substance was the preaching of justification by faith, and then, as you see the application, you then see the other solas. And so sola gratia, grace alone, not grace put into a sacramental system that can be controlled by man, to the glory of God alone, by Christ alone.

These all become central themes of the Reformation, but I'm afraid they had no five solas T-shirts at the Wittenberg Church. I've tried to find them and I could not find any of them. They would have been in German anyways, so it really wouldn't have fit quite as well.

Justification by Faith Apart from Works in Romans 3

So grab your Bibles, Romans chapter three. Romans chapter three, remember where we are. Paul has spent two and a half chapters demonstrating the bad news, the universal sinfulness of man. Romans chapter one, in broad scope.

Romans chapter two, the Jews are going, yeah, you get those Gentiles. And Paul says, no, I was talking about you too. You go to Romans chapter three, puts it all together. You have that incredible cantina of passages in Romans three, 10 through 18.

That is really depressing. If the Bible stopped there, this letter, that would be a really bad place to stop. But that's where you have to have the bad news because beginning in verse 19, you have, why have I gone through the bad news first?

Because you're not ready to hear the good news until you've heard the bad news. And one of the biggest mistakes we make in the modern church is we want to rush people to the good news without doing the bad news first.

And then they do really bad things with the good news because they don't realize what the real issue is. And so what does he say? Every mouth is stopped. Every mouth is closed. There's no more professing my own righteousness, my own goodness, everything else.

It's the picture of the person with his head down. I'm guilty. Whatever you say, you have the authority to judge me. That's the person who now then can hear about what it means to be justified by faith because it's the person who recognizes that God is the one that's in control and I have sinned against God and God can justly judge me.

And so that's when we then have the proclamation. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being testified or witnessed to by the law and the prophets, righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ to all the believing ones, for there is no distinction.

And then everybody in here knows Romans 3 .23, but it's fascinating how many people don't know what the context of Romans 3 .23 is. Why does it say, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?

Because the all is Jews and Gentiles. The all is Jews and Gentiles. All Jews, all Gentiles, all of mankind has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all stand before God condemned and that's why the only way of salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ.

For there is no distinction. So the Jew is saved on the exact same basis as the Gentile. If you realize Paul's greatest fear was that there could be a division into a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church.

And he fought against that and that's behind so much of what he says. And so he says that there is all have fallen short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus.

So here you start seeing these grand themes that he is going to develop all the way through. He sort of gives a general statement of the gospel in verses 21 through 26. And then he says, where is boasting?

It's excluded by what kind of law? By law of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we consider, we reckon, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law. Now you may know that Luther translated that particular text by faith alone.

And people have attacked him for doing that. He was adding to the word of God and everything else. The reality is there were at least three Roman Catholic translations before Luther that likewise used sola fide in their Latin translation at this particular point.

So Luther was not doing something new, but I've got to give you one. I'll tell you one little thing that you probably would never be allowed to find out. And that is if you stand in Luther's pulpit in the castle church in Wittenberg.

So the pulpits here, Luther is buried right down there. That's where his body is. If you look straight across this way at the stained glass windows, at the same level that you're standing, you will find Romans 3 .28 in German, and it will say faith alone.

And the reason I know that is that four years ago, last month, I preached in that church and in that pulpit. And that was, do you want bucket list? There's a bucket list, okay? Now the funny thing is, just in passing, at the beginning of this, now I was under a little bit of pressure because I felt if you're gonna stand in Luther's pulpit, you should quote Luther.

And if you're gonna do that in Wittenberg, Germany, you need to quote Luther in German. And so I did. And so I was a little nervous about how that was gonna go. It went all right. It wasn't the best, but it went all right.

But so right at the start, there was this buzzing, just a little bit of buzzing. It wasn't real bad. There's a little bit of buzzing in the sound system. And when I got done preaching, I went down and talked with the folks that were there.

And I said, you know what that was? That was Luther spinning in his grave because a Baptist was preaching from his pulpit. He would not have appreciated that. And that's one of the things about church history is I know that some of my greatest heroes that I've benefited so much from in church history would have either driven me out of town or drowned me.

And I can still appreciate them because I know where they lived in history and why they thought the way that they did. Very important observation that I don't have time to develop right now. We've got to get back to the text here because that's why we'll never get everything finished.

And so you have this summary, and then the development and the argument begins in chapter four, and he raises the issue of Abram, and he takes us back to Genesis 15, six. Quoting Genesis 15, six in verse three, and Abram believed God and it was reckoned to him, imputed to him as righteousness.

Then you have this important, important section. Now to the one working the reward, the wage, misthos, it's what you're paid, is not reckoned or imputed katakaran according to grace, but kataophilema, what is owed.

So in other words, if you work for something and you are given something for that work, that is debt. You've done something, you put somebody else in debt. So it's not a gift, it's not by grace, that's gift and grace are the same term, but it is what is owed to you.

Verse five, but to the one not working, this is in direct parallel to verse four, to the one not working, but believing upon the one justifying the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness. And so working one, what you receive is simply what you are owed.

To the not working, but believing one, his faith is reckoned as righteousness using Genesis 15, six as the basis. And then these three verses, I have used so many times, I'm not sure if any of you have ever seen the debate I did with Father Peter Stravinskas back in 2001 on purgatory.

But during the cross-examination, this text came up and it was central to what the discussion was. Just as David speaks the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works. Now notice, that's a positive act.

God reckons righteousness apart from works, but then notice the quotation from the 32nd Psalm. Blessed is the man whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered over. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

So Paul sees positively in verse six, the imputation of righteousness apart from works, but the text he quotes from David speaks of the blessedness of having sins forgiven and covered over and then the non-imputation of sin.

And so I have very often asked Roman Catholics, who is the blessed man of verse eight? Who is the blessed man of verse eight? I asked that of Peter Stravinskas. Now Peter Stravinskas had two earned Ivy League PhDs.

He had not read a single word I had ever written on purgatory before we did that debate. I had read everything he'd ever written on the subject. That happens a lot in the debates that I do. He didn't think he had anything to worry about.

In fact, he quoted from Jimmy Swaggart in his opening statement. One of my theological heroes. Yeah, that's how that evening went. If you haven't watched it, you need to look it up. Look up James White, Peter Stravinskas, and it's a very, very entertaining debate.

But I asked him, who is the blessed man of verse eight? You know what his initial answer was?

Jesus.

Think about that for a second. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. What? Everybody in the audience did the same thing you did, huh? Even the Roman Catholics going, huh? He had never even thought about it.

It never crossed his mind. And so I gave him a second chance. Well, it obviously isn't Jesus. And so he said, well, I hope to be the blessed man. You see, that's the best a Roman Catholic can say. There is no non-imputation of sin in Roman Catholicism.

If you commit a venial sin, it's imputed to you. If you commit a mortal sin, it's imputed to you. There is no non-imputation of sin because there is no imputation of the righteousness of Christ to you.

Because they don't have a finished work because the nature of the sacrifice of the mass. This is old-style Orthodox Roman Catholicism. Who knows what Pope Frankie believes? Oh, that's a, I have no earthly idea, and I don't think he does either, so.

But a believing Roman Catholic has no answer to this because they don't know who the blessed man is. And the sad thing is when you read Romans 4, Paul is simply talking about every single believer in Christ is the blessed man.

That's what it means to be a Christian. That's what it means to be a Christian. So was this important? You better believe it was important because then Paul can summarize at the end of that chapter, after discussing the perfect harmony that exists between the grace of God and the empty hand of faith.

You don't bring anything in your hand. You don't say, you're gonna give me eternal life, but can I put a 10 spot in here just to say thank you? No, nothing goes in the empty hand of faith. If you put something in there, you'll never be able to grasp the free grace of God.

It is the empty hand of faith that grasps the grace of God, and therefore he can conclude in Romans 5 .1. Remember all the chapter and verse divisions are a later thing. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the introduction to this faith in which we stand into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

So there you see the grace in which we stand. Faith is the mechanism by which we are justified and made right before God. So what was the issue at the time of the Reformation?

It's very, very simple.

By the time of the Reformation, over the course of many, many years, traditions had developed as scripture became subordinated to higher and higher piles of tradition. And what had happened was a system of sacraments had been developed that controlled the grace of God.

And so now to access the grace of God, you had to come through the church itself. What that resulted in was a necessary belief that man had to have at least enough of a will to operate the sacramental system.

And so while Augustine had emphasized the deadness of man and sin and the grace of God and election and things like that, no, don't think he was exactly like us on everything. There's a lot of, Augustine actually believed that there were people who are regenerated and made spiritually alive, but since they weren't given the gift of perseverance, they would all fall away.

So there were non-elect who could actually be saved for a while and then cease being saved. That's how he explained apostasy. So there are reasons for that that go back to the Donatist controversy. Don't have time to develop all that right now.

It's fascinating stuff. But if someone as brilliant as Augustine could have contradictions in his theology, so can all the rest of us. And therefore it's a good warning to all of us to keep that type of thing in mind.

But by this point in time, the sacramental system was the means by which the grace of God was to come to any individual and you had to, in essence, work the system. And so we think of the freedom of the grace of God in such passages as Ephesians chapter two, you know the text.

You know that it says, it is by grace we have been saved through faith and that not of ourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works that a man should boast. For we are his poiema, his thing that he has made, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained in order that we should walk in them.

And so we know the text and hopefully we know the fact that when it says, by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, the that refers to everything in the preceding section. It's not just talking about the faith, it's not just talking about the grace.

If you're familiar with the controversy about this, people say, well, that is neuter. That's because neuters are used to wrap up entire phrases. And so the entire phrase, grace, salvation, faith is wrapped up, it's not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, it's not of works because if it was, we would boast.

So that it would be not of a place of boasting, it is not of works. And we are his workmanship and God is the one who is working within us. So we know those texts, but we also know that once you take that grace and teach people that it's only available in portions through sacraments, you now control them.

You now control them. And so Luther proclaimed sola fide, faith is the only way, you cannot earn, you cannot merit. But that then caused people to begin to think a fair amount about the nature of what grace must be.

And remember that one text in Romans chapter 11, it doesn't get as much attention as others. But if you look back at Romans chapter 11, partly because Romans chapter 11 is a tough chapter, there's some challenging stuff in there.

But in verse five, it mentions to us that this present time, there is a remnant according to God's election, his electing grace. And then you have this interesting verse, verse six. If it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

Now, if you have a King James or a New King James, you have a long ending to that verse that is not found in the earliest manuscripts. So be aware of that. And I think it is a little bit, it's tough to understand that addition because it says that otherwise works is no longer works.

I think that misses the point of what Paul was actually saying. If it is by grace, it's no longer of works. And this is what I wanna focus on. Otherwise grace is no longer grace. What does that mean? We don't have to deal with all the Israel issues and things like that.

He's making an assertion about the nature of grace. I wrote a tract years and years and years and years ago that we used to pass out outside the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. The Mormons have sort of disappeared.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this. Once COVID hit, they ran into their basements and have yet to come out. They're still in there. They have not had a public general conference since the end of 2019.

And most of the temples have been closed and it's just, it's amazing. They're gonna be so pasty white when they come out of those basements, it's not even, what is that thing in the sky?

It's like white and delightsome.

If you know anything about the Book of Mormon, that'll be their new thing. But anyway, what was I saying? Oh, I wrote a tract. I'm just sitting here thinking about how many people are gonna be really mad at me for making a joke.

But anyway, I wrote a tract for passing out, not just to Mormons. We passed out lots of them to Mormons, but they're for anybody who struggles with this issue. And the tract title was, grace plus works is dead, being meaningless.

Grace plus works is dead, being meaningless. Now, all Mormons know James 2 and that faith plus works, you know, you gotta add them together and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So they would sort of see that and then they'd be a little bit confused.

And in that one little moment of confusion was your opportunity to say, well, you know what Paul said in Romans 11, six, if it's by grace, it no longer works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. You see, once grace is something that's earned, once grace is something you get through sacraments or through fulfillment of temple ceremonies or anything like that, it's no longer grace.

Because if it's grace, it has to be free. It has to be power from God, not something controlled by man. And so this is what came out of, this is the light was shown back on the reality that the biblical teaching on this particular subject is that God's grace is free.

It is not channeled through sacraments. And faith is the kind of faith that Paul talked about when he said, not the working one, but the trusting one. You know, that is so opposed to the natural man's thinking.

Did you know what Joseph Smith did in his inspired version of the Bible? Did you know he had an inspired version of the Bible? Isn't that the height of hubris and arrogance? I'm gonna come up with my own version of the Bible.

It's gonna be the inspired version, you know. Well, I guess that's sort of like what the Jesus Seminar did. Theirs is called the scholar's version. Yeah, so, you know, it's pretty much the same thing.

But what he did in that text in Romans 4, when it says, when it talked about the God who justifies the ungodly, his version said, who does not justify the ungodly. He negated it. He put the word not in.

That's the end of the gospel. Joseph Smith had no concept of grace whatsoever, none. Whatever Sunday schools he went to did not do him any favors at all. And unfortunately, many people still follow him to this day, though Mormonism is changing very, very, very rapidly.

So, when we have debates with Roman Catholics today, we debate Sola Fide, and they go to James chapter two, and I wrote an extensive exegesis of James two in The God Who Justifies that has been helpful.

To a lot of folks.

I'd recommend it to you. If you have Roman Catholic friends and family, that's something I think you need to be prepared for when talking to believing Roman Catholics, many of whom are just as confused about Pope Francis as all the rest of us are.

But you need to be prepared to deal with those issues and to deal with what works of the law means and all sorts of those types of things. Don't have time to go into all that tonight, but the point is that the preaching of the Reformation brought out the reality of the New Testament teaching that you do not earn or merit the favor of God.

Now, that, of course, was directly connected then to the other major issue of the Reformation. If you've ever read Luther's debate with Erasmus, the first written debate of the Reformation, I highly recommend it to you.

Luther's book was called On the Bondage of the Will. And Luther said to Erasmus, you alone of all my opponents have put your finger upon the heart of the issue, the hinge upon which it all turns. And what was it?

The issue of the freedom or the bondage of the will. Is man's will free or is he a slave to sin? Now, the vast majority of Luther's followers today would not agree with Luther on that particular subject.

And sadly, the vast majority of people today who call themselves children of the Reformation, even if they know what the Reformation was, also would not agree with Luther on the subject. And in fact, today, I would say the vast majority of Protestants have gone back to the Roman Catholic understanding of man and man's will and the subject of election and predestination and everything related thereto.

The Reformers were very strong on those things, William Tyndale and others, understood the sovereign grace of God and recognized that if we are saved by grace, then this faith that we have is actually a gift from God.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, rather than just simply something we work up within ourselves and then keep working the system of sacraments to keep ourselves in a state of grace. There is a vast difference between those two different understandings.

And so these two solos, the sola fide being the material principle, that which gave the substance of the preaching, said to Luther's heart and therefore to many, many others within his hearing and in the preaching of Ulrich Zwingli and then Verre and Butzer and eventually Calvin, who's really a second-generation Reformer, the freedom of what it means to have peace with God because of what Christ has done for you, rather than what Christ has made it available for you to do for yourself.

How much of current Protestant teaching did I just say was wrong? A large portion. And it's a huge difference. It's the same difference between saying that Jesus makes salvation a potentiality and saying that Jesus saves.

So with that said, faith alone, means of justification. Grace alone takes away all the concepts of merit, earning, the sacramental systems. That was also touching on, but more tomorrow night when we talk about Solus Christus, the entire pantheon of semi-deities known as the saints that were also a part of the experience of people at this particular time in church history and continues to be in many places in the world,.

By the way, as well.

Biblical light shone upon these truths as part of the preaching of the church. Okay, great. What does that have to do for a person who today is in prison? Good to know where you came from and what your history is and things like that.

But if you are put in a position of either having to renounce your faith, and sometimes it's not just, you're not necessarily just told you have to renounce Jesus, but what if you're told that you need to instead attend and accept the teaching of the state approved church, which you know is not teaching the truth about Jesus?

Well, we're not saying that you have to deny Jesus. You just have to come to understand who Jesus really is from the state approved church. And you know that if you do that, you'll be separated from your wife, separated from your husband, your children, in my case, my grandchildren, your parents if they're still alive.

You would have to make a tremendous sacrifice to stand firm in that situation. And would either of these solas be at all relevant to the decision that you make? We have the time. I don't know how much time.

We're way behind the ball to be perfectly honest with you time wise. To be thinking through, especially those of us in this room, all you weird dividing line devotees and debate binge watchers, you especially should recognize the necessity,.

The importance of going,.

Well, I've always thought these things are really important. But if they're really important, then they're gonna remain important no matter what my particular condition and circumstances in life is gonna be.

And that means I'm gonna have to think through how to apply these things in ways that I never thought I'd have to, I never have to think these things through. I've come to realize my generation, we lived with a pretty comfortable world, pretty comfortable relationship to the state, never really had to think too much about them.

We made the mistake of thinking that you could be neutral about these things. And neutrality doesn't work when Christ is risen from the dead. You can't be neutral about that. And so as we think about these two solas, how do they apply to a person facing the choice of your worldly possessions, relationships, freedom, and maybe even your life?

What would these two solas, I mean, we now know what their historical origination is, we know what their backdrop was. And I think it's vitally, you can't begin to understand our statements of faith if you don't know these backgrounds.

The language we use to speak about our faith was forged in those controversies that took place back then. It's very important to know. You can't read the London Maps Confession of Faith, got a guy sitting down here with 1689 on his chest, okay?

And so you read what the chapter on the Lord's Supper says in the 1689, and if you don't know what was going on at the Reformation, half the language in there, you have to look up in a dictionary, and you may not even still understand at that point in time, but if you know what Rome taught, you know exactly what they were talking about.

So it's important to know the history, but how is that relevant if you're facing time in prison? Well, it's pretty obvious for these two solas, for all the solas, truly, how they are still relevant, and how they are absolutely foundational to the decisions that we will have to make.

When Caesar says to you, bow down, offer the incense, say Caesar is Lord, and you say, I cannot do so, sadly, I say this sadly, because I don't rejoice in this division, but sadly, the Roman Catholic who says, I will not do so, has a different foundation for why than I do.

We may both say no, we may end up in the same cell, but not for the same reasons, not for the same reasons. That's an important thing to realize, and you need to realize it now, not before you're talking to your Roman Catholic cellmate.

It's good to have this figured out now. Why is it, what would the difference be? How is this relevant? If I stand before a magistrate that I know, this magistrate is opposed to the kingdom of Christ, and is a persecutor of the people of God, he is promoting evil and punishing good.

I know in my heart that there is a day of judgment coming. That's one thing that has been lost in our secular society. In fact, I think it's one reason, just in passing, have you seen the videos coming out of Australia of the cops just going full on thug life?

You know what that's from? Once a society loses as a part of its consciousness, what our society said every time when a president or anyone else took the oath of office, what did they do? They swore by something greater than themselves.

There is nothing in secularism that's greater than yourself. And they did so, do you remember what the Bible was open to in the old days for the president? Most people don't know. Deuteronomy 28 and 29, the blessings and cursings for obedience and rebellion.

And I don't know about you, I've just been struck like this by Act 1731 recently. And the reality that in the end of Paul's sermon at Mars Hill, he proclaims the resurrection, the coming day of judgment, and that Jesus is gonna be the one who judges us all.

And what he says is God has given evidence to everyone everywhere by raising him from the dead. Evidence of what? Oh, evidence of the resurrection. No, the resurrection is the evidence of what? The coming judgment.

The coming judgment. And once people don't believe there's ever gonna be a judgment, they start acting like those guys.

Down in Australia.

What's worse is the social justice folks start thinking you need to do final issues of justice in this life because after people die, that's it. They start trying to do cosmic justice, which Jesus will do in this life, and the result is perversion of justice.

So I understand I'm standing before a magistrate who's in rebellion against God, and he's gonna be judged. And he's telling me, you need to do this, you are the person who is doing something evil. I need to know a few things.

I need to know that my Lord has risen and has ascended on high and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. I need to know that that was described for me in Daniel chapter seven. Ever read Daniel chapter seven?