ACBC Theology Exam 14 - Trust in Christ Alone for Salvation
00:00:00.000 | you in this online community and I want to welcome you to Intermediate Biblical Counseling. This is
00:00:06.240 | week number 14 and we're looking at theology exam number 14 tonight, the exam on trusting in Christ
00:00:17.200 | alone or the great doctrine of sola fide and I look forward to a wonderful time studying God's
00:00:24.240 | Word with you tonight. I hope that you're doing well and that you're enjoying the blessings of
00:00:30.480 | Christ and his amazing grace in each of our lives and thank you for your faithfulness to this class
00:00:36.880 | and for your faithfulness in the study of God's Word. It's just a joy to continue in these essay
00:00:42.800 | topics with you and to be a part of what God is doing in each of your lives. In theology exam
00:00:50.880 | number 14, we are moving on from the section of exams which deal with the doctrine of Christology,
00:00:58.240 | the person and work of Jesus Christ. We had a wonderful time studying a number of topics
00:01:05.280 | related to Christology and the person of our Savior and we are moving on tonight to the
00:01:13.200 | section of exams which deal with the topic of soteriology or the doctrine of salvation.
00:01:22.000 | And as you know, the study of soteriology is really closely tied together with Christology.
00:01:29.520 | You cannot study the doctrine of salvation without understanding the person and work
00:01:35.600 | of Jesus Christ and yet this is a wonderful segue, I think, for our class to think about
00:01:44.320 | the doctrine of salvation of God's amazing grace in each of our lives and how he has
00:01:50.080 | saved us from our sins and given to us an eternal inheritance in Christ. I think this is going to be
00:01:59.600 | a wonderful study. So, welcome everyone tonight and we hope that you'll be blessed by our hour
00:02:06.800 | together. Just as a word of devotion, what I'd like to begin with is a reading from Romans 1,
00:02:17.600 | verses 16 and 17 as we introduce the subject of sola fide, salvation through faith alone.
00:02:28.960 | We are looking at the core cardinal doctrine which launched the Protestant Reformation
00:02:36.000 | and just a precious truth for each of us in our own walk with Christ to know that we are justified
00:02:45.360 | not by any works of the law, not by any works of human merit, but we are justified by grace alone
00:02:53.760 | and that justification is received through faith alone on the basis of Christ's work alone,
00:03:01.280 | all to the glory of God alone. These are the fundamental truths which we build our lives upon
00:03:10.000 | and I think we have a clear statement of the doctrine of sola fide or salvation
00:03:17.120 | through faith alone from Romans 1, verses 16 and 17. So, I'd like to go ahead and
00:03:23.840 | read this for us. The Apostle Paul says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power
00:03:32.000 | of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it,
00:03:40.400 | the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall
00:03:49.040 | live by faith." My friend, Dr. Keith Palmer, who is on the board of ACBC and who serves as an ACBC
00:04:00.800 | fellow, made this observation in his message at the 2017 ACBC National Conference. He said this,
00:04:11.120 | "The Protestant Reformation began as a counseling problem. The Protestant Reformation began as a
00:04:21.840 | counseling problem. It began as an overwhelming life struggle in the heart of one man and that
00:04:32.560 | man you and I know is Martin Luther. It was Luther's overwhelming heart struggle to deal
00:04:41.760 | with unresolved guilt in his life that led him to discover the truths of scripture,
00:04:50.080 | which in turn launched the Protestant Reformation. And Luther, in his account, many of you have
00:04:58.320 | already read this, but I'll just bring this to our attention for tonight. He recounted his
00:05:04.320 | pre-conversion experience in the following way. He said, "Though I lived as a monk without reproach,
00:05:10.560 | I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.
00:05:16.880 | I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the
00:05:23.680 | righteous God who punishes sinners. And secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly,
00:05:32.880 | I was angry with God and said as if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners eternally lost
00:05:41.200 | through original sin are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue without
00:05:48.400 | having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteous
00:05:55.360 | wrath. Thus, I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience." Now, let me just pause at this point
00:06:07.040 | and ask you as biblical counselors in training, if the pre-conversion Martin Luther were to
00:06:17.200 | enter into a time machine and make an appointment with you for counseling,
00:06:24.880 | and he told you in the first number of sessions of how his conscience was extremely disturbed,
00:06:35.760 | if he told you about his anger toward God, if he told you about the murmuring and the grumbling
00:06:41.520 | that was in his heart, if this counselee were to come to you for counseling and speak to you of
00:06:51.600 | his overwhelming sense of guilt, his unrelenting struggle with this tormented conscience,
00:07:00.640 | how would you respond to this counselee? What answers would you have for this person's troubled
00:07:10.800 | soul? Would you tell him, "Well, Martin, the problem is that you lack self-esteem.
00:07:24.160 | The issue is you need to think more highly of yourself. You should start repeating yourself
00:07:31.440 | on a daily basis. I am valuable. I am worthwhile. I am a good person.
00:07:36.640 | I am a beautiful butterfly who is waiting to soar. The problem, Martin, is that you just have
00:07:46.720 | a deficit of self-esteem, and so we need to build you up in your self-esteem. Don't be so hard on
00:07:55.280 | yourself. You struggle with so much guilt because you need to think more highly of yourself."
00:08:03.120 | Or maybe you would take the Freudian approach and say, "Well, Martin, the problem is that
00:08:12.560 | your id and your superego are at war with each other. Martin, the id is raw desire and the
00:08:21.680 | superego is the judicial branch that tells you if you're doing right and wrong. Martin, your problem
00:08:31.280 | is that your superego has been basically strengthened by all of these external forces
00:08:38.240 | that are in your life. You've had a difficult, demanding dad, and he's been really hard on you,
00:08:44.560 | and you've just been weighed down by all these societal influences. So, Martin,
00:08:49.520 | your guilt is really false guilt. You are experiencing guilty feelings that are not
00:08:58.160 | rooted in any truth. So, the answer is, Martin, we need to engage in psychotherapy
00:09:06.880 | and have hours of sessions of free association that dig into your past so that we can try to
00:09:15.520 | make these guilty feelings go away." That would be another approach. Would you give him that approach?
00:09:21.440 | Or how about this approach? Would you tell your counselee,
00:09:27.920 | Martin, that, "Martin, the problem really is that you have an empty love tank.
00:09:36.000 | Your heart is really empty and neutral. You're just a needy person who needs to be filled.
00:09:43.440 | It's really your father's fault and your mother's fault because they never really learned to fill
00:09:49.600 | up your love tank and speak your love language, and that's why you have such a troubled soul
00:09:56.720 | today. It's not your fault, Martin. It's your family's fault. It's your loved one's fault.
00:10:02.160 | It's society's fault." If the pre-conversion Martin Luther were to come into your counseling room
00:10:11.760 | and make an appointment with you, how would you help counselee Martin with his troubled soul?
00:10:20.960 | And can I just encourage you in this way that this is a great advertisement for biblical counseling
00:10:31.520 | because, as we know the story, Martin Luther's great internal struggle,
00:10:36.480 | his battle with this fierce and troubled conscience,
00:10:41.200 | was not addressed through endless sessions of psychoanalysis and free association.
00:10:47.680 | It was not addressed by an attempt to build up Luther's self-esteem.
00:10:59.120 | It was not addressed by teaching his family members to speak his love language so that
00:11:04.640 | he would fill up his empty love tank. Luther's troubled soul, and here it is, here's the
00:11:12.400 | argument for biblical counseling, was addressed through a rigorous understanding of the text of
00:11:20.080 | Scripture, and more specifically, it was addressed by Luther coming to understand the doctrine of
00:11:28.800 | sola fide, justification by grace alone, received through faith alone, apart from the works of the
00:11:39.200 | law. Luther's heart struggle was addressed through an understanding of Romans 1, verses 16 and 17,
00:11:50.320 | and he writes this of his understanding of that text. He says, "Nevertheless, I beat importunately
00:11:58.960 | upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what Saint Paul wanted.
00:12:04.880 | At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words,
00:12:13.120 | namely, 'In it, the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, 'He who through
00:12:20.400 | faith is righteous shall live.' There I began to understand that the righteousness of God
00:12:27.280 | is that by which the righteous lives by gift of God, namely, by faith." And here was the effect
00:12:36.880 | of this understanding on Luther's soul. He says, and this is the meaning,
00:12:43.280 | "The righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with
00:12:52.080 | which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous
00:13:01.680 | shall live.' Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through
00:13:09.440 | open gates. Here a totally other face of the entire scripture showed itself to me.
00:13:16.320 | Thereupon I ran through the scriptures from memory and I extolled my sweetest word with a love as
00:13:24.480 | great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word righteousness of God. Thus that place in
00:13:34.400 | Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise." What began as a counseling issue, the experience of a
00:13:47.920 | man facing great internal struggle became the launching point of the Protestant Reformation
00:13:57.840 | and the discovery that Luther made as he rigorously meditated on the words of Paul
00:14:05.200 | in the epistle to the Romans was that man is justified by grace alone through faith alone
00:14:12.800 | on the basis of Christ's work alone as revealed in the scriptures alone to the glory of God alone
00:14:24.800 | and that salvation is received by faith alone apart from human merit, apart from
00:14:32.400 | the works of the law, but solely on the basis of Christ's all-sufficient work through his life,
00:14:40.160 | death, and resurrection from the grave. And Luther said, "This was for me truly the gate
00:14:50.640 | to paradise." Don't underestimate the power of these glorious doctrines to cure troubled souls.
00:15:00.480 | That was the effect of the doctrine of Sola Fide on Martin Luther's soul and I believe it can be
00:15:10.320 | the effect upon our souls as well and the souls of those whom we minister to and serve.
00:15:20.160 | And so just as I conclude this devotion, I want to read from Romans 3 verses 21 to 26 and just
00:15:28.400 | note the many times the term faith and the term believe are used in reference to Paul's explanation
00:15:35.520 | of salvation and this is going to be a segue into our essay topic tonight because theology exam
00:15:46.240 | theology exam number 14 is an exam dealing with the doctrine of salvation through faith alone.
00:15:56.320 | And so listen to Paul as he explains and amplifies what he introduced in Romans chapter 1.
00:16:05.680 | Romans 3 verse 21 Paul says, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested
00:16:12.400 | apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness
00:16:18.480 | of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all of
00:16:26.400 | sin and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the
00:16:33.280 | redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be
00:16:40.480 | received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance
00:16:47.600 | he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might
00:16:55.040 | be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. And so theology exam number 14
00:17:09.040 | is an exam which asks you to explain what it means to trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
00:17:16.560 | And I hope you see how important this essay is in the training of biblical counselors.
00:17:23.040 | I hope that writing this essay will be an opportunity for you to clarify what you believe
00:17:31.120 | about these doctrines of justification by faith alone. And I hope this will be a
00:17:40.800 | training exercise for you so that when a Martin Luther-like person comes and sits with you for
00:17:48.880 | counseling that you will be able to use this doctrine to minister to that troubled soul.
00:17:57.200 | So let me pray and we'll devote this time to the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you for
00:18:01.840 | this precious truth that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone that
00:18:10.160 | we are justified on the basis of Christ and his perfect work alone that there is no work
00:18:18.720 | that could add to or supplement the work that Christ has already done on our behalf.
00:18:25.600 | We thank you that these truths are revealed in the scriptures alone and all of this rebounds to
00:18:31.680 | your glory and your glory alone. And we pray that you would help us, Lord, as we study these truths,
00:18:40.320 | not only to find joy in them ourselves, but Father, I pray that you would train us and equip
00:18:48.080 | us that we may be skilled practitioners of your truth, that we would be able to make the application
00:18:55.600 | of these precious doctrines to the troubles of life, that you would help us to
00:19:03.120 | use these truths in such a way that we would bring healing and hope to those who
00:19:12.320 | have troubled souls and a troubled conscience. Father, I pray that as you would bring to us
00:19:20.480 | those who, like Luther, are afflicted with great torment of spirit and conscience,
00:19:27.200 | that you would help us to wield the great truths of the gospel and that we would be able to witness
00:19:34.960 | the healing, transforming power of your word in people's lives. I just thank you for each
00:19:41.760 | of my brothers and sisters tonight. Thank you for their faithfulness and tuning in week after week
00:19:46.000 | and studying and writing their essays and laboring to be precise with doctrine. I pray that you would
00:19:54.080 | bless each one and allow the fruit of this time to abound to your glory. And we pray all this in
00:20:00.480 | Christ's precious name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so we're looking at page one of your handout there, and I
00:20:11.360 | just put some good works for you to look at. The standard works from Wayne Grudem and Paul Enns and
00:20:21.760 | Charles Ryrie all have very solid sections that will help you walk through this topic of what
00:20:27.840 | it means to trust in Christ and him alone. And I would also recommend to you John MacArthur's
00:20:34.080 | "The Gospel According to the Apostles," especially chapter six of that book, which is entitled "Just
00:20:41.200 | by Faith." That's an excellent read that is clarifying for this issue. And then for supplemental
00:20:47.760 | reading, I'd recommend R.C. Sproul's "Faith Alone, the Evangelical Doctrine of Justification."
00:20:54.560 | That will be a helpful work for you just to enrich your understanding of this doctrine. So
00:21:03.040 | I do encourage you to acquaint yourself with those resources. As you move to the next page of your
00:21:11.280 | handout, what we're really looking for in this essay is a clear understanding of sola fide,
00:21:19.360 | the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the idea here of trusting in Jesus Christ alone for
00:21:29.440 | salvation. The words "trust," "believe," and "faith" are used interchangeably in the Scripture.
00:21:37.200 | And so we're asking you to write an essay giving a clear understanding of what it means to trust
00:21:46.720 | in Jesus Christ alone. I have in your handout there the idea of sola fide is the biblical
00:21:54.720 | conviction that salvation by grace alone, salvation is by grace alone through faith alone,
00:22:02.480 | apart from any works of man. So just at the starting point, we want you to be absolutely
00:22:11.840 | clear on this topic that we are saved by grace alone, not by works,
00:22:20.240 | that we receive that salvation through faith alone, not through any meritorious effort,
00:22:27.360 | and that we are saved solely on the basis of Christ's work alone. We just want you to be
00:22:34.240 | absolutely clear that you believe the salvation is received by faith alone. So we are not eager to
00:22:45.760 | affirm any Catholics as part of ACBC certification training. We want you to make sure that you have
00:22:54.400 | a correct understanding of salvation and that you're able to articulate those basic truths.
00:23:02.320 | By the way, some of you are going to be given a ministry to, an evangelistic ministry,
00:23:11.520 | to those coming out of a Catholic background. And if you're trained to be certified as an
00:23:17.360 | ACBC biblical counselor, you may have opportunities to sit with Catholics and
00:23:25.040 | to be able to lead them to an understanding of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
00:23:29.920 | And so this is part of your training for that ministry is to write this essay. Just be aware
00:23:36.960 | that that is an opportunity that we do see in our counseling ministry. So we just want you to be
00:23:44.800 | absolutely clear on this topic, Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, "For by grace you have been saved
00:23:51.600 | through faith. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that
00:23:57.200 | no one may boast." Or as the hymn writer put it, "Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to the cross
00:24:05.920 | I cling." Just a brief overview on your slides here of the five solas of the Reformation.
00:24:13.920 | I would encourage you, if you haven't already, to listen to Heath Lambert's message from the 2017
00:24:21.440 | ACBC National Conference. The conference theme was "Faithfully Protestant," and
00:24:31.680 | Heath Lambert was introducing that theme by relating the five solas of the Reformation to
00:24:38.640 | counseling ministry. And his argument was that biblical counseling, which holds to the doctrine
00:24:46.000 | of the sufficiency of Scripture, best represents the theme of the five solas of the Reformation
00:24:56.240 | because we are founded upon the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Just an excellent
00:25:03.360 | message. It's available for free on Vimeo. I'll send out a link if you haven't gotten that already.
00:25:08.400 | But he walks through the five solas of the Reformation with a specific application to
00:25:15.120 | counseling ministry. "Sola gratia," salvation is by grace alone and cannot be earned through
00:25:22.720 | human merit. "Sola fide," the instrument of receiving God's grace is faith, not faith plus
00:25:31.440 | works. It is received by faith alone. "Solus Christus," faith has an object, and that object
00:25:38.800 | is the person of Jesus Christ. Salvation is accomplished through the perfect life, death,
00:25:45.520 | and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "Sola scriptura," the Bible alone is the only authoritative source
00:25:53.360 | for understanding the gospel and salvation. And "Soli Deo Gloria," salvation is to the glory of
00:26:00.000 | God alone. And as R.C. Sproul has well observed, the distinction between Protestants and the
00:26:08.000 | Catholic Church is not in the words "gratia," "fide," "Christus," "scriptura," and "gloria."
00:26:16.720 | It is in the word "sola." It is the concept of grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone.
00:26:26.000 | A Catholic will say that he or she believes in grace, faith, Christ, and the Scriptures.
00:26:35.680 | But a Catholic, at least if it's in accordance with the official documents of the Catholic Church,
00:26:41.280 | Catholic will not be able to say that he or she believes in "sola gratia," "sola fide," "solus
00:26:49.760 | Christus," grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. That's really the dividing mark and the dividing
00:26:56.400 | line between Protestants and Catholics. So those five "sola" stand and fall together. I hope you
00:27:04.240 | all see that. If you lose "sola scriptura," if you lose the Bible alone as your authority, then you
00:27:10.880 | lose "solus Christus." You lose the doctrine of Christ because Christ is revealed through the
00:27:18.320 | written Scriptures. If you lose the person and work of Jesus Christ in your understanding of
00:27:23.200 | salvation, you lose an understanding of grace alone and faith alone. And all of that has
00:27:29.840 | implications on "soli deo gloria," salvation to the glory of God alone. So those five "solas" stand
00:27:36.800 | and fall together, and this is what was articulated by Heath Lambert in that message where he says
00:27:45.120 | those are the five "solas" of the Reformation arranged around this text of Scripture itself.
00:27:49.600 | Each element of Paul's theological framework fits together. Each element of Paul's theological
00:27:56.880 | foundation depends on the other elements. His biblical and theological commitments are a web,
00:28:04.080 | not a list. You cannot take anyone away without damaging the entire system.
00:28:09.600 | If you take away "sola scriptura," there is no way to know the others. If you take away Christ,
00:28:16.080 | there is no object of faith. If you take away faith, there is no way to lay hold of Christ's
00:28:22.800 | work. And his message there was simply that a biblical counselor who holds to the sufficiency
00:28:33.360 | of Scripture ought to be the most Christ-centered counselor, because Christ is the focus of the
00:28:40.240 | Scripture, and ought to be the most grace-centered counselor upholding the grace of God in salvation.
00:28:50.640 | But if you take the integrationist approach to counseling, and you remove the doctrine of
00:28:56.240 | Scripture alone in your counseling methodology, you will inevitably diminish the person and work
00:29:02.800 | of Jesus Christ in your counseling practice. That Christ may be an add-on, or he may be a reference
00:29:10.320 | in your counseling, but he will not be the center of your counseling if you do not hold to the
00:29:15.120 | doctrine of Scripture alone as the authority. Again, an excellent work, and I commend that
00:29:22.880 | to you. So, let me move to your notes on, and I believe this is the same page as
00:29:31.200 | "Trusting in Christ Alone for Salvation." I have a quote there from the Westminster Catechism,
00:29:38.560 | which says that, "Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins,
00:29:46.320 | and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of God imputed to us,
00:29:54.640 | and received by faith alone." I love that language of being received by faith alone. It's not that
00:30:02.640 | faith is a meritorious work, that you become a person of great faith, and somehow that earns
00:30:09.280 | God's favor. It is simply that the grace of God, his unmerited favor, is received by faith.
00:30:18.960 | This is why even a weak faith in a strong Savior can bring salvation to the sinner.
00:30:29.760 | It is the object of faith who shows himself to be strong, and even those who are weak in faith,
00:30:37.440 | as Scripture describes, there are some who are stronger in faith and weaker in faith, but even
00:30:43.040 | those who are weak in faith have full salvation because the object of their faith is Christ and
00:30:50.480 | him alone. This, of course, is in contrast to what the Catholic Church teaches. The following is a
00:30:57.040 | quote from the Council of Trent, which says this, "If anyone says that the sinner is justified by
00:31:04.080 | faith alone, meaning thereby that no other cooperation is required for him to obtain
00:31:10.000 | the grace of justification, and that in no sense is it necessary for him to make preparation and
00:31:15.680 | be disposed by a movement of his own will, let him be anathema." So, the Council of Trent says,
00:31:26.480 | if you say that man is saved by faith alone, then let that person be anathema. So, the battle lines
00:31:35.440 | here are very clear. Do you believe that salvation is by faith alone, or do you believe that it is
00:31:42.320 | by faith plus works? On your handout, you have an article from Table Talk magazine,
00:31:50.800 | which is produced by the ministry of R.C. Sproul, and it says this, "Among the many points Rome
00:31:57.440 | offered, chief among them were several key claims. Number one, the sinners are justified
00:32:05.280 | by their baptism. Number two, the justification is by faith in Christ and a person's good works.
00:32:17.360 | Number three, that sinners are not justified solely by the imputed righteousness of Jesus
00:32:22.560 | Christ. And number four, that a person can lose his justified status." So, for five years here
00:32:32.480 | at the church, I've taught the baptism class at Kindred, and we do make the point very clearly
00:32:41.680 | and emphatically that baptism is not a requirement for salvation. The thief on the cross went to be
00:32:48.240 | with Jesus in paradise, and he was not baptized. We're saved by grace alone through faith alone,
00:32:54.160 | not faith plus baptism. And at the same time, we make the point that baptism is one of the first
00:33:01.920 | acts of obedience for a Christian, and that it is a command of God, and we should not neglect
00:33:08.480 | to be baptized. It's that tension that we want to make very clear that baptism is not a requirement
00:33:16.560 | for salvation, but that does not make it optional in the Christian life. But there are many who are
00:33:23.840 | teaching that a person is saved as they enter into the waters of baptism, the doctrine of
00:33:31.680 | baptismal regeneration, which is an aberrant understanding of salvation and an assault
00:33:38.800 | against the doctrine of sola fide. I believe that R.C. Sproul's explanation is helpful. I
00:33:47.120 | like math equations, and so this is a helpful equation. The Roman Catholic view is that faith
00:33:53.520 | plus works equals justification. The Protestant view is that faith results in justification
00:34:00.880 | plus works. In the first equation, works are presented as the root of salvation,
00:34:09.360 | a requirement for salvation. In the second equation, works are presented
00:34:13.360 | as the fruit of salvation, but not the root or requirement for salvation.
00:34:21.680 | So we do believe that faith in Christ produces good works, but those works are never the
00:34:27.680 | requirement for a person being justified. As Sproul writes, neither view eliminates works.
00:34:36.240 | The Protestant view eliminates human merit. It recognizes that the works are the evidence or
00:34:43.280 | fruit of true faith. They add or contribute nothing to the meritorious basis of our
00:34:50.560 | redemption. So this is the glorious work of salvation. God opens the sinner's eyes to see
00:34:57.760 | the true condition of his or her soul. The Holy Spirit brings to the sinner a conviction of sin.
00:35:04.320 | Before the holy law of God, the sinner confesses that he or she is a sinner, that there is nothing
00:35:13.440 | that can be done to earn or to merit salvation. In Luke chapter 18 verse 9, Jesus told the story
00:35:20.400 | of two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
00:35:25.840 | The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men,
00:35:30.240 | extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give
00:35:37.280 | tithes of all that I get, but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes
00:35:42.800 | to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man
00:35:49.120 | went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be
00:35:54.800 | humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Jesus said that the tax collector who
00:36:03.040 | simply cried out for grace was a picture of true salvation. This is what happens when a person
00:36:09.760 | becomes saved. The sinner sees himself with nothing to offer in terms of merit. The sinner
00:36:17.520 | sees all of his or her work's righteousness as filthy rags. The sinner sees that the only
00:36:24.800 | contribution that he or she can make to salvation is the sin that needs to be forgiven. The sinner
00:36:32.560 | comes with what's been called by John MacArthur a beatitude attitude in Matthew 5 verse 3. "Blessed
00:36:38.960 | are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they
00:36:44.320 | shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who
00:36:49.040 | hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." The sinner who formerly
00:36:54.720 | flattered himself or herself like the Pharisee in Luke chapter 18 is convicted of sin and comes
00:37:02.000 | with poverty of spirit, mourning over sin, hungering and thirsting for righteousness
00:37:08.560 | that is not possessed, and then the Holy Spirit in the wonderful and glorious work of salvation
00:37:15.440 | opens the sinner's eyes to see the all-sufficient work of Jesus Christ on our behalf and to lead
00:37:24.720 | the sinner to embrace the perfect substitute, the perfect work of Jesus on the cross that pays for
00:37:33.200 | all of our sins and earns all of our righteousness, and then to receive that righteousness as a gift
00:37:40.560 | of grace, not as the result of the works of the law. That is the glorious work of salvation that
00:37:51.280 | leads the sinner to embrace the truth of grace alone through faith alone. So if you'll move with
00:37:58.960 | me to the next page, what I want to do is to break down the three components of saving faith,
00:38:06.160 | and you'd do well in your essay to articulate a view of this, of the three components of saving
00:38:14.720 | faith. You'll find in Paul Enz's work, as well as Wayne Grudem's work and Charles Ryrie's work,
00:38:21.840 | they all have some kind of explanation of these three components, and you would do well to read
00:38:29.120 | those sections of those systematic theologies and then to, in your own words, articulate your
00:38:34.800 | own understanding of the components of saving faith. But for our time tonight, let me walk
00:38:42.400 | through these components together. Number one, there is an intellectual aspect to saving faith.
00:38:49.440 | Romans 10 verse 17 says, "So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ."
00:38:58.480 | So there are biblical truths that must be intellectually understood and known in order
00:39:06.800 | for the sinner to be saved. So man, a sinner must understand that all have sinned and fall short of
00:39:16.960 | the glory of God, the truth of Christ's work on the cross, salvation by grace and not works of
00:39:24.000 | the law. There are certain biblical truths that simply must be understood in order for the sinner
00:39:29.520 | to come to salvation. This would argue against the Roman Catholic idea of implicit faith. I don't
00:39:39.120 | think I have that term on your handout, but it's this idea in the Catholic Church that a person can
00:39:47.600 | be saved by simply having a general acceptance of whatever the church believes without a specific
00:39:58.320 | understanding of the contents of that faith. So this is the idea, implicit faith, that you don't
00:40:05.360 | actually need to know certain truths about the gospel to be saved. You just need to generally
00:40:11.280 | affirm that, "I believe whatever the church teaches." But that is not what the Bible teaches
00:40:18.640 | us about saving faith. Listen to Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 1. He says, "Now I would
00:40:27.120 | remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand,
00:40:34.800 | and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,
00:40:40.240 | unless you believed in vain." And here are the elements of the gospel. Verse 3, "For I delivered
00:40:46.960 | to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with
00:40:53.440 | the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with
00:40:58.320 | the scriptures." Paul says these are the central tenets of the gospel that must be intellectually
00:41:06.320 | understood for salvation. There is an intellectual aspect to saving faith, that the sinner must
00:41:15.120 | understand certain truths in order to be saved. Now let me just pause at this point in our
00:41:21.920 | discussion and make some application to counseling ministry. I think if you've been with me for any
00:41:29.680 | length of time, I've explained the whole idea that counseling ministry is sort of the emergency room
00:41:34.880 | of the church, that you've got primary care, which is maybe small groups or other ministries,
00:41:40.960 | and you've got kind of the general flow of ministry in the church. But counseling is really
00:41:45.760 | the emergency room. It's urgent care. It's the place where people go when things are falling
00:41:52.960 | apart. And so this is not the pediatrics section of the medical center where you see babies who
00:42:02.960 | need to be immunized. This is the emergency room. People come in, their lives are falling apart.
00:42:10.960 | And in the counseling ministry, you are going to hear all sorts of things in terms of
00:42:15.280 | a person's understanding of Christ, a person's understanding of the gospel. Oftentimes you may
00:42:22.880 | hear a heavily psychologized understanding of the gospel and of Christ's idea that
00:42:29.920 | Jesus came in order that I may turn over a new leaf, or Jesus came in order that I may
00:42:37.600 | reach my full potential, or Jesus came in order to give me excitement in life because
00:42:46.720 | I needed to be rescued from my boring life. You'll hear all sorts of understandings of
00:42:52.400 | Christ and the gospel. And under this first component, knowledge, just the intellectual
00:43:01.040 | aspect of saving faith. What we want to work with our counselees on is a clear understanding of sin
00:43:10.960 | and salvation. We want to help our counselees come to the place where they can articulate a clear
00:43:19.200 | understanding of their sin before a holy God. The wages of sin is death. The holiness of God's law
00:43:30.640 | and their need for salvation. We want them to be able to articulate a clear understanding of Jesus
00:43:38.000 | and his saving work on the cross that Jesus came to save me from my sin. He died in my place for
00:43:43.920 | my sin. The full righteousness of Christ has been given to me as a gift of grace. Those are just
00:43:52.000 | very clear teachings about the gospel. And you might say that, "Well, you know, I'm going to
00:43:59.440 | assume that my counselee understands all that because my counselee has been in the church for
00:44:04.320 | over 10 years." And we would just encourage you that that is an assumption you would be wise not
00:44:11.680 | to make. You will find all sorts of understandings of who Jesus is and why Jesus came and why he came
00:44:20.880 | to die for us. You will find all sorts of understandings of the gospel of Jesus. And you
00:44:28.880 | want to make sure that your counselee, at the very least, has an accurate intellectual understanding
00:44:35.680 | of the basic truths of the gospel. We're not talking here about high-level theology. We're
00:44:40.960 | not talking here about some upper level of theological knowledge. We're just talking about
00:44:47.040 | basic truths of sin and salvation. Who God is. Who man is. What Jesus has done. How do I come to
00:44:56.000 | saving faith in Jesus Christ. And I've been, this is my pastoral lament, that a very clear and
00:45:05.280 | straightforward articulation of sin and salvation, which really can be articulated in two or three
00:45:11.920 | minutes, but that clear, straightforward confession of, "I am a sinner who needs salvation. Jesus died
00:45:19.920 | for my sins. He took the wrath of God. I'm justified by grace alone." That clear understanding
00:45:26.880 | of salvation is increasingly becoming more rare in our church today. And so you just want to
00:45:35.760 | make sure and labor with your counselee to understand. Don't assume that they have a clear
00:45:40.640 | understanding of sin and salvation. Work with your counselees under this intellectual aspect of
00:45:47.520 | knowledge. Now we know that knowledge is not enough. On your handout you have there, James 2
00:45:53.840 | verse 19, "You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder." A person can
00:46:00.720 | know the basic truths of the gospel and not be saved. Sad to say, but we do see this happen all
00:46:10.160 | the time. We often get the question in church ministry and in counseling ministry, "What about
00:46:16.080 | the person who said that they believed in Christ when they were eight years old and now they're 30
00:46:20.720 | years old and they're living in unrepentant sin? Did that person lose their salvation?" And the
00:46:28.400 | scripture would say, "They didn't lose their salvation. They demonstrated the reality that
00:46:33.680 | they were never saved to begin with. They went out from us because they were not of us." We want to
00:46:42.160 | continue to pray for such people, but we don't want to give assurance of salvation to someone
00:46:48.800 | who's living in disobedience to Christ. So, that's the intellectual aspect of saving faith. You have,
00:46:57.360 | secondly, the emotional aspect of saving faith. Paul Enns writes that conviction involves the
00:47:04.160 | emotions. This element emphasizes that the person has not only an intellectual awareness of the
00:47:11.360 | truths, but that there is an inner conviction of their truthfulness. This conviction is the work
00:47:20.000 | of the Holy Spirit. John 16 verse 8 says, "When he that is the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict
00:47:26.640 | the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." Concerning sin, because they do not
00:47:33.520 | believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer.
00:47:38.640 | Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. And then I love Acts chapter 2
00:47:45.520 | verse 37. Now, when they heard this, when they heard the preaching of Christ, they were cut to
00:47:52.320 | the heart. That's a very vivid and memorable phrase there. They were convicted of their sin
00:48:01.280 | and need for repentance and need to place their faith in Jesus Christ and said to Peter and the
00:48:06.000 | rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" That's good preaching. Good preaching does
00:48:13.520 | not elevate man's pride, but good preaching smashes man's pride to the dust and exalts Christ
00:48:22.320 | as the perfect substitute. So there you have emotional conviction over what was heard. And
00:48:32.080 | then the third aspect would be the volitional aspect, which is trust. It's one thing to say
00:48:40.080 | that Jesus died to save sinners. It's another thing to say that Jesus died to save me.
00:48:44.720 | It's one thing to say, "I understand that men need to trust in Jesus for salvation."
00:48:51.760 | It's another to say, "I will trust in Jesus Christ for salvation."
00:48:58.480 | As the illustration, I'm borrowing this illustration from someone, but it's one thing
00:49:05.760 | to analyze the parachute on the plane. It's another to put the parachute on and trust that
00:49:14.320 | the shoot is going to work. The "I will trust Jesus Christ for salvation" is very
00:49:23.680 | important. That's Paul's language in Galatians 2, verse 20. "I have been crucified with Christ.
00:49:29.440 | It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh,
00:49:34.560 | I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." It's just beautiful language.
00:49:42.800 | It's one thing to say that Christ loves the world. It's another to say
00:49:49.200 | that I know he loves me and he gave himself for me. Saving faith means to trust in Jesus Christ
00:49:59.120 | as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal life with God. So says Wayne Grudem,
00:50:05.840 | "Saving faith is not just a belief in facts, but a personal trust in Jesus to save me."
00:50:17.680 | Just an application to counseling ministry. In counseling ministry, we make personal
00:50:25.680 | application of the truth of Scripture. We use the words "you," the second person,
00:50:30.160 | "you," not just "them" or "the church." We make things personal.
00:50:37.840 | It's powerful. It's powerful to be on the receiving end of that ministry. It's powerful to
00:50:47.360 | to be on the ministry side of that conversation.
00:50:53.040 | It's one thing to teach that Jesus died for sinners. It's another thing to sit with
00:51:00.880 | John or Jack and say, "I want you to know that Jesus died to save you."
00:51:10.160 | It's the great opportunity for counseling ministry. When I came to faith in Christ,
00:51:17.200 | back in February of 1992, I always tell people I was the nightmare new visitor.
00:51:23.040 | I was a sophomore at UCLA. I was able to articulate my thoughts fairly well,
00:51:32.080 | and I was hostile toward the faith. I came out to a little church in Sylmar, California,
00:51:40.960 | and I scribbled down tons of notes from the sermons of why the preacher was wrong,
00:51:45.680 | the pastor was wrong. I intellectually assaulted the truth. I argued with anyone who would talk
00:51:51.280 | to me about why Christianity is wrong and the Bible is wrong, and the pastor, being very
00:51:57.840 | long-suffering, Pastor John, instead of writing me off and kicking me out of the church, invited me
00:52:05.600 | to lunch, and we went to Chili's, because Chili's is where all good things happen. Over lunch at
00:52:15.520 | Chili's, Pastor John listened to, I believe, this must have gone on for a couple hours, just all of
00:52:22.480 | my arguments and all of my disagreements with Christianity and the Bible. I remember at the end
00:52:29.440 | of that conversation, Pastor John saying to me, "Really, these arguments are not the issue,"
00:52:38.880 | and he said to me, "Dan, the issue is that Christ is calling you to submit to His lordship.
00:52:51.200 | Christ wants you to obey His word. Christ is calling you to come to Him,
00:53:00.320 | and the issue is that you are not willing,"
00:53:04.080 | and I can't say that I gave my life to Christ there at the Chili's. Chili's was not the place
00:53:12.720 | of my salvation. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I can't say that the
00:53:17.440 | Holy Spirit used that conversation in my life, and it wasn't long afterwards that I gave my life to
00:53:23.840 | Jesus Christ and truly repented of my sins, and it was the power of that conversation of the personal
00:53:34.480 | application of the gospel to my life, of a man of God who had the Bible and who opened the Bible
00:53:43.200 | and ministered Christ and then used the second person pronoun, not just, "Dan, Jesus died to
00:53:51.120 | save the world. Jesus is calling everyone to come to Him, but Dan, Christ is calling you to come
00:54:00.160 | and to submit to Him, to submit to His lordship," and God used that conversation in my life to bring
00:54:06.800 | me to Christ. There's such power in that conversation. That's the volitional aspect.
00:54:16.480 | Once you understand the knowledge, "Here's the gospel," and then there is conviction because
00:54:21.680 | the Holy Spirit brings those truths to bear upon a person's heart, then there is the question,
00:54:27.040 | "Will you come to Christ? Will you believe in Him? Will you trust in Him?"
00:54:33.760 | And that element of saving faith must be there in order for the faith to bring salvation. So,
00:54:43.680 | on the next page of your handout, I don't have time to go into all of this, but just note the
00:54:48.960 | number of passages there that speak of belief in Christ being the requirement for salvation.
00:55:01.600 | I believe we're going to get into this in one of the next sessions of how faith and repentance
00:55:06.560 | are really two sides of one coin, and it's not that there's two requirements for salvation,
00:55:11.840 | faith and repentance. It's really that faith and repentance are two sides of
00:55:16.160 | one calling, and that's why the Bible sometimes just says, "Repent." The Bible sometimes just
00:55:22.480 | says, "Believe." The Bible says sometimes, "Repent and believe." It's really two sides of
00:55:33.360 | one calling for the sinner to turn from his sin and to embrace Christ for salvation.
00:55:42.720 | So, you have the solas. You have "Sola gratia," "Sola fide," "Sola Christis," "Sola Scriptura,"
00:55:53.440 | and we end with "Soli Deo Gloria." And what that means is, in the middle of your handout there,
00:56:03.440 | no boasting. If you understand these truths, you end up in saying that man has no reason to boast
00:56:13.600 | in his salvation, as if he's earned it in any way, but he has every reason to glory in the
00:56:19.520 | greatness of God's grace. Romans 3, verse 27, "Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded
00:56:24.400 | by what kind of law? By law of works, no, but by the law of faith. Behold, that one is justified
00:56:32.000 | by faith apart from the works of the law." One final application, and then I'll close. I've got
00:56:41.120 | two minutes here, so I'm going to make it good. I believe that biblical counselors ought to sing.
00:56:52.960 | You might think that worship ministry and biblical counseling ministry are really two
00:56:58.400 | separate ministries in the church, and they never intersect or come together,
00:57:03.360 | but I believe that biblical counselors ought to sing, and biblical counselors should teach our
00:57:11.840 | counselees to sing, because an understanding of grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone,
00:57:18.880 | scriptures alone, leads you to the glory of God alone. And if you understand these truths,
00:57:26.320 | you end up by affirming solely Deo gloria, that my gracious God, who has saved me through the
00:57:33.760 | work of his son, deserves all my praise and all of my adoration. Proud people don't sing.
00:57:42.960 | Prideful people don't sing, because they're filled with themselves. They're like the Pharisee,
00:57:49.360 | who was moral and simply rehearsed his own righteousness and looked down upon others.
00:57:56.240 | Who did not have that perceived righteousness. Proud people don't sing, because they have nothing
00:58:02.960 | to sing about, but if you understand these truths, what it does is it produces a song in your heart.
00:58:11.520 | You sing to the glory of God. Your heart is filled with praise to God for the greatness
00:58:19.120 | of his salvation. You understand that nothing shall separate you from the love of Christ,
00:58:24.720 | and what you do is you bring that heart that is filled with song into the counseling room,
00:58:33.040 | and you teach your counselees to sing. That is the intangibles of biblical counseling ministry. That's
00:58:41.520 | the flavor, if you will, or the culture, or the atmosphere, the environment
00:58:46.800 | of the counseling ministry. We desire that counselors go deep into their understanding
00:58:53.200 | of the doctrine of salvation, so that we will be amazed at the greatness of God's amazing grace,
00:59:02.400 | and from that experience in the truths of scripture, that we would come alongside other
00:59:13.200 | sinners who are in need of grace. Just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread,
00:59:20.960 | and because we have received such grace in the gospel, that we would flavor our
00:59:27.760 | ministry with a gracious and a kind spirit that would reflect the gospel that we believe and we
00:59:37.920 | love. And so, I just commend to you the study of sola fide, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.
00:59:48.800 | I pray that this will be a rich and a wonderful time of study for you, and that as you put your
00:59:54.320 | understanding of this doctrine, definitely make sure to contrast sola gratia, sola fide,
01:00:03.280 | grace alone through faith alone from the works righteousness system of salvation.
01:00:07.840 | That would be a good place to start in this essay of just the many scriptures which contrast
01:00:17.280 | salvation through grace alone and faith alone with a works righteousness system,
01:00:23.680 | and make sure that you highlight the components of saving faith and show how each one are,
01:00:32.400 | which one of those components are essential for salvation, and I trust that God will give you a
01:00:37.360 | wonderful time of study. So, God bless you all. Thanks for being here tonight. I am going to
01:00:45.680 | go ahead and sign off tonight, and I wish you a wonderful time of study this week, and just again,
01:00:53.520 | super thankful for your faithfulness and for your commitment to being trained in biblical
01:01:00.080 | counseling ministry. If I can be of any help in the writing of these essays, you can feel free to
01:01:07.280 | email me during the week, and also Joan Shim. I believe many of you have her contact. She's also
01:01:14.400 | available to help you with any editing work at all, and we're just thankful for your continued
01:01:22.960 | progress in these essays. So, stay encouraged, keep studying, keep digging deep, and I trust that
01:01:29.120 | God will bless your labors. Let me close this in prayer. Father, thank you so much for this time
01:01:35.600 | around your word, and we just marvel at your grace, the grace of salvation, and pray that
01:01:42.240 | these truths would so cause our hearts to rejoice in you that, Lord, when we come alongside troubled
01:01:52.480 | souls like those represented in Martin Luther's case, that we would be equipped to bring healing
01:02:01.120 | and help to those who are struggling. Thank you for each of my brothers and sisters in training
01:02:07.360 | for counseling ministry. Pray that you bless each one and give us a great week of study. We pray this
01:02:12.480 | in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all. We will see you next Sunday at 5 p.m., and we'll go through
01:02:19.840 | theology exam number 15.