Last week we began a 3-message series about
the Reformation, and in recent days I have been doing a little bit of polling,
asking some of my fellow clergy how many of them were doing sermons about the
Reformation, since this month it its 500th anniversary. I have been surprised to get mostly
disinterested responses, so maybe it’s not as interesting a topic to most
people as it is to me. So, if you
don’t find it interesting, there’s only one more week!
Today’s
message is Sola Fide: Faith Alone. The Reformation was based,
theologically, upon what are called the Five
Solas. Sola is a Latin word that means only, alone, or single. The Five
Solas are theological statements that provided the foundation for all that
Martin Luther – and those who came after him – taught. The Five
Solas, and a very brief definition, are –
1. Solus Christus – Christ
alone. Solus Christus affirms that there are no other mediators between
God and humanity other than Christ.
One of the most significant expressions of this belief, for our church,
is the manner in which we practice communion. For Disciples churches – and to some extent other
Protestants as well – it is not necessary to have an ordained individual
officiate at the table. Generally
speaking, it is most often an ordained minister who officiates at communion in
a Disciples church, but not always.
A few weeks ago, when I was on vacation on a Sunday, I attended a
Disciples church where communion was officiated by a layperson. The significance of Solus Christus is that we do not depend
upon a minister, priest, or other church official to act in any mediatory role;
only Christ does this.
2. Sola Scripture – Scripture
alone. One of the most commonly
misunderstood aspects of Catholic theology is related to this point. Protestants will often ask, why do Catholics believe that? It’s not in the Bible. Well, it might be in the Bible (the
Catholic Church recognizes several more books as belonging in the Bible than do
Protestants). Catholic theology also
recognizes, however, the teaching of the church across the ages as being
equally authoritative to the Bible.
For Catholics, then, it is not necessary that a practice or doctrine be
found in Scripture, as church tradition and teaching carries equal authoritative
weight.
3. Sola Fide – Faith
alone. Sola Fide is the affirmation that we are saved by faith, not by
works. While good works can serve
as evidence of salvation, they are not a necessary prerequisite to being
granted salvation. It is this point
that we will talk about today.
4. Sola Gratia – Grace
alone. In some ways, Sola Fide and Sola Gratia seem very similar, as being saved by grace alone sounds
like the same affirmation as being saved by faith alone. Faith, however, is the means by which
we act and grace is the means by which God acts.
5. Soli Deo Gloria – Glory to
God alone. In this teaching Luther
was taking aim at the practice of the veneration of the saints and other
characters in Catholic theology.
To Luther, it was God alone who should be given glory.
Our Scripture text for today comes from three
passages in the book of Romans.
Reading through the book of Romans is what brought Martin Luther to his
awareness of the fact that it is faith alone that grants us salvation.
Romans 1:17 –
17 For in the gospel the righteousness of
God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it
is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Romans 3:22-24 –
22 This righteousness is given through
faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew
and Gentile,
23 for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and all are justified freely by his
grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Romans 4:1-8 –
1 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather
according to the flesh, discovered in this matter?
2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had
something to boast about—but not before God.
3 What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and
it was credited to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as
a gift but as an obligation.
5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God
who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the
blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those whose transgressions are
forgiven, whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will
never count against them.”
1. Salvation does not have to be earned.
I think, deep down, it is very difficult for us to free our minds of
the idea that we do not have to earn our salvation. Even though we talk a great deal about salvation as a free
gift, as much as we talk about grace, and as much as we talk about the love and
mercy of God, I think most people still, down deep, believe we are still
somewhat responsible for having to earn our salvation. We are, after all, are a do-it-yourself society. We pull ourselves up by our own
bootstraps. We are not dependent
upon anyone but ourselves. We
don’t believe there is such a thing as a free lunch.
But, theologically speaking, there are a couple of problems with our
sense of independence and do-it-ourselves. Number one, sometimes we not very good at doing it
ourselves. I don’t have a lot of
talents, especially when it comes to working with my hands. I can’t fix many things. I can’t build many things. I think some of you remember my stories
about taking three years to build a deck.
A deck that is nothing but a rectangle, with nothing fancy added. There are some things I cannot do, and
one them, theologically speaking, is to save myself. And, secondly, we are not very good at asking for help. I am not. I prefer to do things myself and I really do not like to ask
for help. That attitude seeps into
our theology as well, as we find it hard asking for help – or thinking we need
help – and this reinforces our idea that we can earn our salvation.
If you are still uncertain about how much we believe we can earn our
salvation, think about what I call funeral
home theology. Funeral home theology is a very
works-based theology; that is, it demonstrates how deeply engrained it is
within us that we must earn our salvation. Funeral home theology
goes like this – you are in a funeral home for visitation. A friend comes in and says, I’m very sorry about your grandmother,
and you respond, I’m very sad that
grandma is gone, but I take great comfort in knowing where she is. And the reason we know where she
is? Because, as we might say, she
was such a…good person. Now,
we should certainly affirm grandma’s goodness; it’s grandma, after all! But is salvation granted to her, or
anyone, because of their goodness?
No. And thank goodness it’s
not. Salvation does not have to be
earned.
Listen to some of the ways Paul expresses this in our text for this
morning –
3:24 all are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
4:2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had
something to boast about—but not before God.
3 What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and
it was credited to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as
a gift but as an obligation.
5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God
who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
Note that in verse 4 Paul says that to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an
obligation. What this means is
that, if we are trying to earn our salvation, we can never get ahead. Any good we do is only what we should
have done in the first place. If
you remember what I said last week about the idea of indulgences and the
surplus of righteousness of the saints, you will know that it is an idea that
is based upon the idea that there is a standard of righteousness that we can
achieve, but there is not. Paul is
very plain in telling us that we can never be good enough to earn our
salvation.
Sola fide – Martin Luther wrote those words in the margin
of his Bible as a young Augustinian monk.
Write it in the margin of your Bible. If you like tattoos, that would make a great tattoo. Get it tattooed on your arm and it would
be a great conversation starter about faith. Luther made great efforts to find God’s grace; he was
haunted by the sense that he had to do
something in order to earn salvation so he was constantly doing penance and all
the other things people told him were necessary in order for him to find
salvation. Eventually he came to the point of despair, understanding he could
never be good enough, but then he had a moment of great awakening when he
understood that –
2. Salvation is a free gift.
Unfortunately, some people believe that love must be earned. Sadly, that is how some people
operate. Some people want us to
work to earn their love, but that is a very human way of operating and is not a
way in which God operates.
God’s love is free; totally free, and does not have to be
earned. There are plenty of people
who believe there is no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free
salvation. Actually, in one church
where I served, we decided to offer a free lunch on the sidewalk in front of
the church. Being located on the
town square, we thought it would be a great place to offer a free lunch, so on
a Friday we set up a grill and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, had chips,
dessert, drinks and other items and gave them away. For free. It
was amazing how suspicious people were.
What’s the catch, some would
ask. There is no catch, we would tell them. Still, some people would walk back and forth, observing, but
hesitant to receive a meal. One
man actually started arguing with me.
He tried to pay some money and we wouldn’t take it he got mad! And left his plate of free food on the
table!
I think one of the classic Biblical stories about salvation as a
free gift is the story of the thief on the cross, in Luke 23:39-43 –
39 One of the criminals who hung there
hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
40 But the other criminal rebuked him.
“Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?
41 We
are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man
has done nothing wrong.”
42 Then
he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus
offered the thief a free gift. He
did not say, well, you’ve waited kind of
late in life to make this decision.
We really need more time so that we can get you into six different
classes and we would prefer if you had some experience serving on a bunch of
church committees. No, Jesus
offered the free gift of salvation to the thief in the final moments of his life.
Another great passage is the parable of the workers in the vineyard,
in Matthew 20:1-16 –
1“For
the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to
hire workers for his vineyard.
2 He
agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About
nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace
doing nothing.
4 He
told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is
right.’
5 So
they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and
did the same thing.
6 About
five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He
asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because
no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in
my vineyard.’
8 “When
evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers
and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to
the first.’
9 “The
workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a
denarius.
10 So
when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each
one of them also received a denarius.
11 When
they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
12 ‘These
who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them
equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But
he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you
agree to work for a denarius?
14 Take
your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave
you.
15 Don’t
I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious
because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the
first will be last.”
The workers who had been in the vineyard all day assumed they would
be given more than those who were hired at the very end of the day, but all the
workers received the same amount of pay, regardless of how much time they had
worked. The free gift of God’s
salvation means that everyone is offered the same, free gift. It matters not how much I have worked
in church over the years, the person who comes to salvation at the very end of
life receives the same, free gift.
That is demonstrative of God’s love and generosity!
Luther, after experiencing his
epiphany of the free gift of salvation, wrote of Romans 1:17 that at last, as I meditated day and night on the relation of the words ‘the
righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written, the righteous person
shall live by faith,’ I began to understand that ‘righteousness of God’ as that
by which the righteous person lives by the gift of God…the merciful God
justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘the righteous person lives by faith.’
This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I
had entered through open gates into paradise itself.
In Romans 6:23, Paul writes that the free gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord. Salvation is a free gift!
3. God is the grantor of salvation and he
alone is our judge.
There is
no shortage of people who are happy to tell us what we must do in order to be
granted God’s grace. There is no
shortage of people who are happy to heap upon us all manner of rules,
regulations, and requirements that we must fulfill. Don’t let people do that to you, because God doesn’t do that
to you. God is our judge, not
other people. And yet we often
find ourselves trying to please other people and trying to live up to their
expectations and requirements of us.
Thank goodness that God is not as hard to please as other people can be!
In
Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus says –
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is
light.”
One of
the reasons Jesus said that is not only for us to release our worries and
cares, but also to release the expectations, rules, regulations, and legalism
that people want to impose upon us.
His followers were tired of so much of that being heaped upon them, and
when he talks about his burden being light, he is talking about the absence of
those rules, regulations, and legalism in what he asks of us.
In
Matthew chapter 23, Jesus lets loose a scathing judgment of those who add all
the requirements that they believe others must follow –
1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples:
2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in
Moses’ seat.
3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell
you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on
other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger
to move them.
Jesus
often heaped scorn upon the religious leaders because of the abundance of
regulations they place upon people.
Over the course of time, literally hundreds of regulations and laws had
been enacted in order to fulfill the commandment to honor the Sabbath day and
to keep it holy. Hundreds. Literally. Who could keep up with that many laws, and that’s just one
commandment!
Who is
your judge? Is it me? No! Is it another person?
No! God is your judge and
my judge. Who do you need to
satisfy? Me? No! Someone else?
No! We do not have to
please someone else, we do not have to live up to the theological expectations
of others, and we do not have to accept the theological baggage that someone
else would desire to place upon us.
How many
of you like a bargain? We all like
bargains, don’t we? As the year is
speeding towards its conclusion we will soon be looking for holiday bargains. In the coming days, many of us will
make the short trip down I64 to the outlet mall and shop for bargains, getting
excited when we see signs advertising 25% off. But even a very good bargain comes with a price, doesn’t it,
because we still have to hand over our hard-earned money. Not everything, however, comes with a
price. Salvation is free. Now, I’m not saying that following
Jesus is always easy, but I am absolutely saying that salvation is God’s free
gift. We do not have to earn it, we
do not have to work for it, and we do not have to deserve it. It is God’s free gift, and that’s good
news!
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