The Five Solas (Reformation Day 2007)
October 28, 2007 8:10 pm Sermon-TopicalA historical theology sermon addressing the five solas resulting from the Protestant Reformation, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone, all for the glory of God alone. This sermon was originally preached October 28th of 2007 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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October 28th, 2007
Pastor Duane M. Smets
Sermon: “The Five Solas”
Text: Ephesians 2:7; Romans 1:17; Romans 3:23-25; Ephesians 2:19-20; Romans 11:36
Introduction
I. Sola Gratia - Grace Alone
II. Sola Fide - Faith Alone
III. Solus Christus - Christ Alone
IV. Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone
V. Soli Deo Gloria - Glory of God Alone
Conlcusion
Introduction
Good morning everyone. Happy Reformation Sunday! I love this holiday. It is my favorite of the year. I’m sure all of you have been reading Martin Luther’s works and getting really excited for this week and have just been thinking about the solas a ton already! All the blank stares tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about and think I’m crazy. Some of you look like you just got caught stealing or something and you’re like what is it I don’t know that I’m supposed to?
Don’t worry. That’s okay. I know I’m a wierdo. It’s my goal today to share with you a little bit of the story of the Reformation and Martin Luther and then look at five of the main doctrines or principles which emerged out of the Reformation and then hopefully prick something in you to where these truths would seem powerful and magificant and great and cause us all to come to the table to take communion today in an overwhelming spirit of thanks to our God and savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So today is one of those very rare Sunday’s at The Resolved Church where you are getting a topical sermon. The Reformation is something that happened in history in the early 1500’s. You probably read about it when you were in high school or something as part of the lead up to the time when people sought religious freedom here in the US.
Now there are a ton of things that fueled The Reformation…You can look at it politically (church-state relationship), economically (hyper class distinctions), morally (free-for all hyprocrisy), or intellectually (popular skepticism). There are ton of factors that spawned and sparked this radical change which ended up effecting the whole world. But what I want to tell you a little Martin Luther’s story, because he is the main ignitor of the whole deal and then we’ll go through each of these weird Latin phrases that are on the screen.
So the story of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Martin Luther. What can I tell you about him? He lived like 500 years ago. So it is a different Martin Luther than the Martin Luther King Jr. of the American Civil Rights movment. Martin Luther was a monk, wore a brown hooded robe, and I’m convinced that he listened to punk rock…J He had that punk blood in his bones that enabled him to single handedly take on the world. I love him because he was tough and he fought for the truth! Sometimes it seems that as you get older, in some ways, which I’m sure are good for some reason, you settle down more and more and just accept that some things are the way they are. Not Martin Luther…he went down swinging against the man.
Here’s a condensed version of his story. When he was 22 he entered a monastery. He was greatly concerned for his personal salvation but had a troubled conscience spending long times in confession and repeatedly returning. To try and help him, his advisor suggested he become a pastor. That was seven years after he entered the monastery. So he would have been about 29, the same age as me. Since he was a pastor he started preaching through the Bible, like we do here. And in 1515 he started preaching on Romans but didn’t get very far because verse 17 of chapter one wrecked him. He wrestled with it for weeks.
Romans 1:17 “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” He had been taught that “the righteousness of God revealed” as being the judgment or punishment of God being made upon sinners, that God is righteous and punishes sin, and for Luther that didn’t help his faith. He had been trying that for years and it onlyl crushed him. He says that this verse, “struck (his) conscience like lightning” because he knew that he was an unrighteous sinner who fell far short of God’s perfect demands. And he was horrified at what he discovered in his heart, he says he realized that he hated God and did not love him at all. He wrestled with the verse for weeks until something happened.
He did not give up. Luther began to focus on the second half of the verse (like how I’m always trying to teach us, to read in context). The second half of the verse which says, “the just shall live by faith.” And it unleashed something powerful that caused the recovery of the gospel to take place in Jesus’ church. He realized that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is one that is provided in grace not revealed as judgment. It is revealed as a provision in Jesus, that it is freely given to sinners through faith. When Luther realized this it was as though he saw the sun for the first time and was the point he looked to for the rest of his life as when he became a Christian. He says this that moment, “I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”
It radically changed everything. Luther started writing all kinds of stuff about it. He wrote books and documents about his discovery of “justification by faith” in Romans and started publically questioning abuses of the church which had hidden and askewed the gospel changing it into a salvation or justification by works religion. The first document that really caught attention was his 95 Theses which he posted on October 31, 1517 and in it he questioned “indulgences.” Priests and pastors were selling salvation for money in what was known as “indulgences.” You could buy supposed pieces of Jesus cross or a quick passage way in heaven. Preachers were preaching the fires of hell and telling people they could be saved if the price was right. Confession and attending mass was big business.
Many people started coming to hear Luther preach and his writings started to spread across the countries and word reached the Pope. The pope sent some guys to try and calm Luther down, and they had a meeting and in that meeting Luther ended up saying that the church was wrong to position itself in a higher authority than the Bible. When the pope heard that in Rome he issued the Exurge Domine, the papal bull, which was an order for all Luther’s books to be burned in towns everywhere because the pope had now declared Luther excommunicated, no longer a Christian and banned from the church. When Luther was handed the bull, in a great moment of triumph he took the papal bull and threw it in the fire and said, we’ll then I excommunicate the pope! See, I told you he was punk rock! He had a fire in him. I like guys with a little fire!
That led to worse things…because some the princes and rulers of the land had been pierced by the teaching of justifcation by faith instead of earning it with God, but most of the rulers still sided with Rome and exercised the pope’s authority. They called one last meeting, The Diet of Worms, where the Emporer and lords of Spain, Germany, and France were present and they called Luther to it under intentions of either getting him to recant or to burn him at the stake. Luther feared for his life. He said his goodbyes and went, seeing it as an opportunity for the gospel…he wanted real reform in Jesus’ church, not just a change of power…he didn’t want to leave and start is own thing. So the emporer heard his case but just kept asking him to recant.
Luther asked for a recess and when he came back he said this, “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the Popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” And after that his friends rushed him out of there as fast as they could before they could snatch him away and burn him at the stake.
This was the spark that started reformation all across the land. Churches everywhere began to change and new preachers and new leaders and new churches arose. Men like John Calvin, John Knox, Ulrich Zwingly, Martin Bucer, Thomas Cramner, and several others began to preach and teach and write. And people everywhere began to experience a faith in Jesus that truly cleansed their soul and gave them hope and peace.
This is our heritage, the Reformation. Now, we are not here today to bag on the Catholic church. A lot has changed especially since Vatican II in 1965. The Bible commands us to honor our father and mother and in the sense of spiritual tradition, the Roman Catholic Church is our family heritage as well. The historic Christian faith was preserved and passed down through the Catholic Church for 1500 years. Yet under it’s guardianship, the gopsel was dimished and nearly lost until the Reformation.
In many ways, I fear that today both Catholic and Protestant churches alike are danger of losing the gospel once again with an undue emphasis on tradition, an overemphasis on the ability, will and choice of man, a focus on rules and regulations not in the Bible in regards to politics, alcohol, tattoos, several other “bad” things, and most of all a lack of love, honor and respect for God’s Word. These are dangerous and damaging and they crush people, lead them astray and never address the issues of the heart.
So what is the gopsel? We are always using that word here and constantly attempting to define it and apply it. Today I want to present the gospel to you in five short phrases which emerged out fo the Reformation and you can hear and see them in the life and story of Martin Luther. I’ll just quickly go through them, they’re these five Latin phrases on the screen.
Sola Gratia - Grace Alone
Ephesians 2:7 says the gospel comes from the “immeasurable riches of (God’s) grace in kindness toward us.”
Grace alone. The source of our salvation. The gospel is salvation by grace alone, it comes from the grace of God alone. What is grace? It is undeserved favor, innumerable kindness toward us. If salvation cannot be earned by buying indulgences, doing good things, being a moral person, volunteering at Qualcomm stadium, throug comes to church…then it must come from outside ourselves. It must come from God. We don’t deserve anything. We didn’t deserve to be created. And there is no way all of the good things we have done in our life could outweigh the bad, not even to mention how many of our “good” works were done our of selfish and wrong motives. We don’t deserve anything but judgment and punishement. If there is hope for us it is going to have to come from outside of us.
This is probably the hardest point for us to connect with Luther. When we read about Luther’s story, he was seeking salvation and he was affilcited with a guilty conscience and trying to appease it as a monk. Today it may seem that few have a guilty conscience anymore and few are really wrestling with God and his love and favor quite like he did. That may be true. But I think everyone wrestles.
Think of the last time you got really frustrated at life..frustrated at things not going your way. How did you absolve your feelings? What did you try and do to make those feelings go your way? Whatever it is you wanted, that is your god of your heart and whatever it is you did to try and make that god happy is how you tried to cleanse your guilty conscience. So really we got a whole room full of Luthers here if we are honest. I’m one. I think I quoted Luther last week when he says, “the default mode of the human heart is religion.” When I get frustrated and unsettled, I just don’t sleep and I work harder. I work to earn. But Grace, not performance is our only hope because we cannot save ourselves.
Sola Fide - Faith Alone
Romans 1:17 ” For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
By grace alone through faith alone. The means of our salvation. Faith is the means which God’s grace gives us. Just as the use of a tongue and a mouth and vocal chords are the means God has given us to talk, faith is the means God grace gives us. It is through a gift of faith. What is faith?
Today, popular usage of the word seems to paint it as some vague notion. Like a leap into the dark. “You just gotta have faith…” J It makes me cringe. In the Bible faith is something far different. It is sure ground to stand on. Yes, there is movement and you must take a step but it is not a blind step. Faith involves three things. Faith is intellectual assent and being convinced of certain truths. Faith is an emotional or experiential where those truths become a living reality to you. And lastly faith is that step to take action. Out of what you are convinced of in your head and affected by in your heart you move and act and make changes and live life in a certain way.
Martin Luther said that “justification by faith alone” is the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls. Justification is a big word. It simply means being just or being made right with God. We could say righteousification but that wouldn’t make sense, so we justifciation and it comes through exercising faith which is a gift given by God’s grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 speaks so clearly, “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 that no one may boast.”
You see we cannot save ourselves. God’s grace must come in and give us faith. No works. I can do a good enough work or do enough good works. Only faith and faith alone. But faith in what? What is this sure ground that faith stands on?
Solus Christus - Christ Alone
Romans 3:23-25 “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.”
Christ alone, the object of our salvation. What is the sure ground God has provided for in us which we have faith in? The person and work of Jesus Christ, his righteousness! This is what Luther realized, God revealed Jesus from heaven. He revealed him in the form of a little baby who grew up to be a man, never sinning his entire life and then dies spiritually take on sins of others as if they were his own and then on the cross dies an eternal punishment as the eternal son of God. Jesus and his righteousness is imputed to us and put to our account through faith and faith alone. We take his perfect eternal blood which was spilled and it becomes our blood, covering our sin, and we receive through faith. No good work can earn me favor, only the person and work of Jesus Christ.
There is nothing like this. There is no comparison. No other faith, no other religion can deal with the problem of my guilt. I must either pay up or have someone pay for me. But only God is perfect, only he could die in my place. Only Christ can satisfy. Not the act of taking communion. Not the act of confessing sin. Not the act of singing songs. Not the act of reading the Bible. Not the act of doing good things and being nice. Only Jesus. Jesus is our only salvation. Jesus is the gospel. Jesus is everything. I cannot have any success, any progress, any real joy and peace in this life unless I have Christ in front of me between me and God.
It must be Christ and Christ alone. University of Virginia sociologist James Hunter, did a study and according to his reports 35% of evangelical seminarians deny that faith in Christ is absolutely necessary. According to George Barna, found that same percentage of people, 35% of people who who claim to be evangelical Protestants in America, they said they agree with this statement: “God will save all good people when they die, regardless of whether they’ve trusted in Christ.”
What Luther saw and what I pray you see today, is that in the gospel God did not reveal his justice upon us, he revealed it upon Jesus and Jesus becomes ours through faith in him. It is at the same time the most simple and powerful thing and also difficult and weak. You must abandon all your own strength and give up. You must quit trying to justify yourself and instead embrace Christ as yours and have him take over your life. You must be justified by grace alone, through faith alone in the person and work of Christ alone. You cannot earn grace or it isn’t grace. And it’s not just blind faith in whatever, it’s faith in Christ, and him alone. I plead with you today, be justified by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
Sola Scriptura - Scripture alone
Ephesians 2:19-20 “You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.”
Scripture is the authority of our salvation. The authority or the foundation is the revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the apostles and prophets. We have no other authority except the Bible and the Jesus of the Bible.
In Luther’s day he said the problem was that people said, “I go to church, hear what my priest says, and him I believe.” They didn’t even have Bible’s in their own language that they could read. When the priest would read from the Bible he would read it in Latin. So Luther fought for the place and authority of the Bible.
But today we are even one step further removed. A man named Michael Horton pointed out that many people feel as though the Bible is “…difficult, obscure, and confusing, so today people want the “net breakdown” from the professionals: what does it mean for me and how will it help me and make me happy?” And so many preachers resign to just telling stories instead of really getting into the text of a certain passage or talking about hard truths.
For many today, it seems the only authority is the one we feel which changes from moment to moment. The base for our decisions merely become what we think God is telling us subjectively or emotionally instead of what he clearly says in his Word. And that has got to change. You have got to come to grips with what the Bible says. It’s my job to help you do that but you got to wrestle with it. And I’m glad, some of you are doing that. I had a few different conversations this week that were greatly encouraging. Great questions being asked and you’re reading your Bible and trying to figure it out. That’s what needs to happen.
Kid Rock just came out with a new album titled, “Rock and Roll Jesus.” Here is the Jesus of Kid Rock from his album title song, “Testify, It’s a Rock revival, Don’t need a suit, Ya don’t need a bible, Get up and dance, I’m gonna set you free yeah, Testify, It’s all sex, drugs, rock n roll, A soul sensation that you can’t control, And you can see I practice what I preach, I’m your rock n roll Jesus, Yes I am.”
Sorry Mr. Rock. I think I do need a Bible and I don’t think following your gospel is going to set me free. It’s just going to jack up my life. I think we should take Martin Luther’s lyrics instead, he’s a little better. “Unless I am convinced by Scripture with reason, I cannot and will not!” The Jesus of the Bible, the gospel of the Bible is the only one which will do and the Word of God must come to the place of prominence in each of our lives.
Soli Deo Gloria - The Glory of God Alone
Romans 11:36 ” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.”
God’s glory is our destination. All for the glory of God alone. Kid Rock is one musical artist. Another is Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was a Christian and on Bach’s pianos and in the music halls he performed in and at the end of all his composed works, he wrote this phrase, Soli Deo Gloria. All the glory to God.
This rich salvation of God that comes by grace through faith in the person and work of Jesus revealed in the Bible is an astonishing gift. That God would do such a thing for us… Glory and praise and thanks and honor is our eruption…it is our response. It is why we sing, why we love, why we worship. It is all from and to God’s glory. God is over all.
We have on that banner which hangs on the wall, “Glory Driven.” We are a church that is about the greatness of God. We want to turn from our man-centered infatuation to an acknowledgement that the only thing which matters is God and our lives are unto him. We want to be a God-centered people. No glory for ourselves. God gets the credit for everything. We are bound for everlasting praise and thanks to him, He is our joy, our satisfaction and our destination for the gosple of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Let’s conclude. You can put all these solas together. The gospel is salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, all for the glory of God alone.
This last week San Diego went through a lot and still will be this week. Several people in our church had to evacuate. The fire came dangerously close to my uncle’s house, my mother and father in law’s house. How do you respond to something like that?
The fires were humbling. You could walk outside and smell the smoke, see it gathered up in the sky, watch it sort of rain ash. Every channel on TV flooded with coverage on the fires. And you just feel small. Helpless. It’s very humbling..how at the mercy of God we are, not mother nature, God.
On Monday morning when Amy I woke up. I opened up my Bible and I read these words aloud to her from Psalm 46. Here are its first words, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the sea.”
My plea today is to run into the saftey of the gospel. In the gospel God is our refuge and our strength. Put your faith in Jesus. Stand upon his word. Live in light of his glory. Let’s pray.