Why the Reformation Remains Relevant After 500 Years
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:06.420 | We have a big week ahead in a trio of episodes
00:00:09.600 | related to the Reformation this week.
00:00:11.660 | And it's gonna begin with this one
00:00:13.080 | with a question from a listener named David.
00:00:15.720 | Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:16.840 | The big anniversary of the Reformation
00:00:19.040 | is coming up at the end of this month.
00:00:20.920 | So this question is pressing to me.
00:00:23.560 | Which of the five solas is the heart of the Reformation?
00:00:28.280 | Which one is most important?
00:00:30.120 | Is it sola scriptura, scripture alone?
00:00:32.960 | Sola fide, faith alone?
00:00:35.160 | Sola gratia, grace alone?
00:00:37.600 | Solus Christus, Christ alone?
00:00:40.240 | Or soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone?
00:00:44.120 | Pastor John, how would you answer David?
00:00:46.100 | - I can't answer this question
00:00:49.920 | any more than I can answer
00:00:51.960 | which wing of an airplane is most important.
00:00:55.120 | Or what's most important,
00:00:57.640 | the wings or the jet engines.
00:00:59.520 | If a wing goes, the plane crashes.
00:01:02.880 | And if one of the solas goes,
00:01:06.160 | salvation crashes.
00:01:09.560 | This is, I think, in fact,
00:01:11.880 | why the Reformation was and remains such a huge issue.
00:01:16.880 | It's not as though a person can cherry pick
00:01:22.000 | parts of God's plan to save sinners
00:01:26.780 | while neglecting the others or distorting the others
00:01:29.680 | and still hope to see sinners saved.
00:01:31.760 | I think the most helpful thing to do
00:01:35.480 | would be to explain why these solas are needed
00:01:40.480 | and what they are and why they are so connected
00:01:45.440 | that if one goes, the rest can't save.
00:01:49.100 | The reason they're so needed,
00:01:51.260 | the whole issue is the issue of salvation.
00:01:55.240 | All human beings are sinners, Romans 3:23.
00:02:00.240 | That means two things about each of us
00:02:04.240 | that we can't fix by our own initiative.
00:02:07.300 | One is that we are spiritually dead in our trespasses,
00:02:12.140 | Ephesians 2, one to five.
00:02:14.900 | We have to have spiritual life
00:02:16.900 | and we can't make that life happen, we're dead.
00:02:19.980 | We have to be born again.
00:02:21.620 | And the other is that we're under God's wrath.
00:02:25.760 | God is just and hates sin.
00:02:31.160 | And in his justice, he aims to deal justly
00:02:36.160 | with sinners and punish us.
00:02:38.200 | So one, we need life, which we can't create.
00:02:42.080 | And two, we need God's wrath to be turned away.
00:02:45.060 | We need him to be 100% for us and not against us.
00:02:48.520 | And in our guilt, we can't make that happen.
00:02:52.240 | That's the double problem that God himself
00:02:57.080 | has solved through the gospel
00:02:59.700 | and the Reformation was reclaiming
00:03:02.660 | how God solves those two problems.
00:03:07.300 | And the five solas explain how we get saved.
00:03:12.300 | And the answer of the Protestant Reformation is this.
00:03:18.680 | Our being made alive in Christ
00:03:21.840 | and God's being 100% for us forever
00:03:26.840 | is by God's grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone,
00:03:32.000 | received through faith alone,
00:03:38.080 | so that all things lead ultimately
00:03:41.040 | to the glory of God alone,
00:03:44.600 | with scripture alone as the only final decisive authority
00:03:49.600 | for discerning and teaching and defending those truths.
00:03:55.200 | That's the way the alones go together.
00:03:59.720 | The word grace implies free gift,
00:04:04.360 | not earned, not merited, not deserved,
00:04:07.880 | which means that our new birth,
00:04:10.680 | our being given life was God's doing freely as a gift.
00:04:15.680 | We did not make it happen.
00:04:18.680 | We were dead.
00:04:19.920 | Our new life, our desire, our ability to believe and love
00:04:24.400 | is all of grace, which is exactly what Paul says
00:04:28.440 | in Ephesians 2:5, "He made us alive.
00:04:32.920 | By grace, you have been saved."
00:04:37.320 | And it's the same with God's removal of his own wrath.
00:04:40.840 | He says in Romans 3:24, "We are justified by his grace
00:04:45.840 | as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
00:04:52.520 | whom God put forward as a propitiation."
00:04:56.720 | That is a removal of wrath by his blood.
00:04:59.680 | So God himself, without any of our doing or acting
00:05:05.080 | completely canceled our debt on the cross,
00:05:09.240 | bought that deliverance for us,
00:05:13.040 | propitiated his own wrath by his grace as a gift.
00:05:18.040 | We added nothing to this transaction on the cross.
00:05:23.120 | It was grace alone, not grace plus some of our merit
00:05:26.480 | or some of the saints' merits or some of Mary's merits.
00:05:29.960 | It was Christ and grace alone.
00:05:33.960 | So there's the key.
00:05:35.520 | What I could not do, could not contribute anything at all,
00:05:40.040 | God did, paying for my sins,
00:05:43.640 | propitiating his wrath at the cross,
00:05:47.000 | and then raising me from the dead,
00:05:50.160 | both by grace alone, meaning the free gift
00:05:54.480 | cannot be added to by my merit or effort
00:05:58.680 | or anybody else's merit or effort.
00:06:02.360 | Now, here's why they all stand and fall together.
00:06:06.520 | It's amazing how the Bible gives us
00:06:09.360 | explicit answers to this.
00:06:11.440 | So let me go through it quickly.
00:06:14.240 | Grace, first grace alone and Christ alone.
00:06:17.720 | Galatians 2.21, "I do not nullify the grace of God.
00:06:22.720 | For if righteousness were through the law,
00:06:27.040 | then Christ died for no purpose."
00:06:32.200 | Meaning, Galatians 5.2, "If you accept circumcision,
00:06:36.120 | Christ will be of no advantage to you."
00:06:38.760 | In other words, Christ alone is the ground
00:06:42.120 | of God's being 100% for us,
00:06:45.520 | not Christ plus circumcision
00:06:47.600 | or any other human act or merit.
00:06:49.800 | If you add to Christ as the ground
00:06:53.480 | of God's being 100% for you,
00:06:56.000 | Paul says, "Grace is nullified."
00:06:59.520 | So in Paul's mind, Christ alone and grace alone
00:07:03.560 | stand and fall together.
00:07:06.040 | Second, grace alone and faith alone.
00:07:09.680 | Romans 4.14, "If it is the adherence of the law
00:07:13.640 | who are to be heirs, faith is null."
00:07:18.000 | Nullified, just like grace was.
00:07:19.920 | "And the promise is void."
00:07:22.600 | Here it is.
00:07:23.440 | "It depends on faith in order that the promise
00:07:27.560 | may rest on grace."
00:07:30.720 | In other words, if God's blessings of new life
00:07:34.200 | and no wrath are free gifts of grace,
00:07:39.200 | the only way a human may enjoy them
00:07:43.180 | is by receiving the gift, not doing.
00:07:47.560 | Faith, not law-keeping.
00:07:50.280 | If you add to faith as a means of receiving
00:07:54.500 | new birth and justification, you nullify grace,
00:07:59.500 | Paul says in Romans 4.16.
00:08:01.480 | Faith alone and grace alone stand and fall together.
00:08:06.320 | Third, grace alone and glory of God alone.
00:08:11.000 | Ephesians 1.6 says, "The entire design of salvation
00:08:16.000 | by grace from before the foundation of the world
00:08:20.160 | was that the glory of grace would be praised.
00:08:25.160 | He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons
00:08:30.020 | through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will,
00:08:33.200 | to the praise of the glory of his grace."
00:08:37.900 | In other words, if adding to Christ
00:08:42.180 | as the ground of God's being 100% for us nullifies grace,
00:08:48.100 | and if adding to faith as the means of enjoying
00:08:52.820 | the gift of God being 100% for us nullifies grace,
00:08:57.820 | then the great aim of it all in the praise
00:09:02.940 | of the glory of that grace will be nullified as well.
00:09:07.940 | The reason God gives life and justifies this way,
00:09:13.660 | by grace alone, on the ground of Christ alone,
00:09:17.900 | through faith alone, is because he aims
00:09:22.380 | for the final and ultimate glory
00:09:26.220 | for it all to go to himself alone.
00:09:30.660 | That's what Paul says in Romans 11.36.
00:09:32.900 | For from him and through him and to him are all things.
00:09:37.900 | To him be glory forever and ever, amen.
00:09:43.060 | And all of this can only be known and believed
00:09:47.300 | and enjoyed and taught with final and decisive authority
00:09:51.860 | from the scripture alone.
00:09:54.540 | So here's my conclusion.
00:09:56.900 | Therefore, for the sake of the gospel
00:10:01.900 | of new life and justification by God's grace alone,
00:10:07.340 | on the basis of Christ alone, received by faith alone,
00:10:14.980 | so that all things lead ultimately to the glory of God alone,
00:10:19.420 | we take our stand with confidence and joy
00:10:24.420 | on the final decisive authority of scripture alone.
00:10:29.820 | They all, all the solas, stand or fall together.
00:10:34.820 | - Amen, such a great overview of the theological glories
00:10:39.140 | of the Protestant Reformation and how they are
00:10:41.980 | so inseparably wedded together.
00:10:44.200 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening
00:10:46.420 | and making the podcast part of your day and commute.
00:10:48.780 | It is an honor to tag along with you as part of your day.
00:10:51.220 | And if you have not yet done so,
00:10:53.280 | consider subscribing to our audio feeds
00:10:55.460 | and search our past episodes in our archive.
00:10:57.540 | Even reach us by email with a question you may have
00:10:59.900 | of your own, do all of that at our online home
00:11:02.660 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:06.660 | Well, as I mentioned on Friday,
00:11:09.780 | with the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation
00:11:12.500 | coming up later this month, we have set aside
00:11:15.200 | the month of October to reflect on what God has done
00:11:17.400 | through Luther and Calvin and all the many personalities
00:11:20.400 | that God used in the Reformation.
00:11:22.660 | It took a huge team to pull off by God's grace,
00:11:25.800 | and we've been celebrating many of these voices,
00:11:28.600 | many of these people at Desiring God
00:11:31.100 | in a daily series called Here We Stand,
00:11:33.640 | 31 Heroes of the Reformation.
00:11:36.040 | It's a series of articles and also a podcast
00:11:38.680 | you can subscribe to via iTunes.
00:11:41.080 | Each day through the month of October,
00:11:42.880 | we're publishing a brief daily character sketch
00:11:45.160 | of a personality in the Reformation,
00:11:47.480 | a little five to seven minute introduction
00:11:49.420 | to who they are and the role they played.
00:11:51.800 | More details can be found at desiringgod.org/stand.
00:11:56.280 | Check it out, I think it's worth your time.
00:11:58.460 | Wednesday, we return to talk about
00:11:59.800 | the best Reformation biographies of book length,
00:12:02.420 | according to John Piper.
00:12:03.800 | I'm your host Tony Ranke, we'll see you then.
00:12:05.840 | (upbeat music)
00:12:08.420 | (upbeat music)
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