Dear Congregation,
Today is Reformation Day – the 31st October or ‘All Saints Eve’ as it was known, the day that Martin Luther woke the world from its darkness by holding up the light of Christ in the Gospel – in which he was joined by many others rejoicing in and making known the wonders of God’s grace in Jesus Christ which had all but been lost and forgotten despite the size, penetration and power of the Church that bore His name with such prominence across Europe.
Luther, like most people in his day, thought of God as an angry, vengeful judge who would condemn him to an eternity of punishment if his faith and obedience weren’t sufficient. But as a young college professor charged to teach the Bible to students Luther began to understand God (and the Christian faith) in a completely different way. His study of the Bible revealed to him that God wasn’t an angry, vengeful being, but instead a loving and gracious one. This turned his life around, and he shared these re-discovered insights about grace at every opportunity.
When, in 1517, Luther nailed his 95 Theses on door of the Castle church at Wittenberg, complaining about the abuse of indulgences, he effectively began a movement back to Scripture and toward a biblical understanding of the grace of God.
I say ‘effectively’ because he was not the only voice, nor was he the first voice. But his voice in the providence of God caught wide and increasing attention and impact including the practical support and protection by civil authorities which enabled it to grow in influence even as it grew in clarity. His boldness in declaring the Scriptures and humility is submitting to the Scriptures caught fire across Europe, across what was the Holy Roman Empire as others took up his understanding, but more the Scriptures and the light it brought to them in so doing.
As we have been considering through the recent SYPC Pastoral letters, at the heart of the Reformation were the great tenets of biblical truth and salvation known as the 5 Solas. So far we’ve noted Sola Scripture – Sola fidei – Solus Christus. Today we look at Sola Gratia or Grace Alone
The Church of Rome then believed in grace and its importance, as it still does today. That might surprise you! But we should understand that the necessity of grace for salvation has not been in dispute.
For example, the Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical document, The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, attests to this in paragraph 15: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.”
The watchword “grace alone” has to do with how we understand man’s fall into sin, and the nature of God’s coming to us Himself in salvation.
The Reformers saw that man was thoroughly corrupt and unable to do anything that merited God’s favour and that God’s grace was sovereign and objectively preceded every salvific act in man.
The Roman Church, however, had and has a different view of sin’s effect on man which saw grace as necessary, but that we were not completely corrupt, retaining some spiritual abilities, and so able to cooperate with God’s grace. So when even today it speaks of “grace alone” what it is saying is that man cannot of his own strictly merit anything from God. In this way it can affirm “grace alone” without denying man’s cooperation with grace.
Who was truer to the teaching of the Bible? Jesus taught:
| “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” – John 6:44-45 |
Paul in Eph 2 does not say we are sick, but that apart from Christ we are dead. Spiritually speaking, we are corpses in the ground without Jesus. We can no more draw near to God than a corpse can summon the strength to get out of its grave. That is how bad off we are outside of Christ.
What the Reformers did was to expose the Roman Church’s view of grace as inadequate and that it was actually contrary to the teaching of the Bible and corrupting the Gospel.
Michael Horton summarises this is true across the Solas: ‘The Reformers never charged Rome with denying the necessity of Christ, grace, faith, Scripture, and God’s glory, but their sufficiency.’
It is right that we love to sing of the saving grace of God. God’s purpose was, Paul says in Eph 2:7, that we might display the “immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
John tells us that out of Jesus’ “fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). Many of the New Testament letters begin and end with the writers expressing their desire that the grace of Jesus would be with His people. The very last words of the Bible read: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” (Rev. 22:21)
Think about that the next time you sing of the grace of God:
sola gratia – grace alone.
Together in Christ’s love and service,
John
Your Pastor