God is not one who builds on our foundations; He creates life out of nothing. And it meant that, instead of looking to God for assistance, but ultimately relying on self, Luther was turning to rely entirely on Christ, in whom all righteousness is achieved. You may have heard of the five solas of the Reformation.
Sola is the Latin word that means alone. One reason these solas are so important is because they help clarify the division between the Protestants and the Roman Church. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics could agree, for example, that grace was necessary for salvation. But the reformers insisted on the biblical truth of sola gratia, that we are saved by God's grace alone. Welcome back to Renewing Your Mind on this Thursday.
Today we'll be continuing our study of Reformation truths with Michael Reeves by considering God's grace in salvation. As we think about this subject, I'm reminded of how many people today don't really understand the grace of God. They think that Christianity is just a set of rules that we follow to make God happy, and they've never really grasped the reality of God's grace in Christ. If you can think of a friend, family member, or coworker that needs to hear the truth about God's grace today, I encourage you to share today's episode with them. Let's join Dr.
Reeves now for today's message. Years before the Reformation. In his days as a monk, Martin Luther had begun lecturing on the Bible at the University of Wittenberg, and there, years before the Reformation, he taught his students that salvation is by grace. I quote: He said, "Not because of our merits, salvation is given out of the pure mercy of the promising God." No alarms went off. Not a single eyebrow was raised among all the inquisitors in Rome.
And why not? Because Martin Luther, the monk, was still then upholding Rome's own theology. He was loyally teaching standard medieval Roman Catholicism that salvation is by grace.
Now, eyebrows might not have arched in Rome, but yours might have done. For wasn't the whole point of the Reformation that medieval Roman Catholicism falsely taught salvation by works, and that certainly is how many see it. But that idea actually fails to grasp quite how things were, and more importantly. It fails to grasp the true wonder and acuteness of the reformer's message.
So let's see a comparison. Let's compare grace in medieval Roman Catholicism to grace as the reformers understood it. First, then, what did Martin Luther, the monk, before the Reformation? Mean when he taught salvation by grace, he could teach that salvation. I quote, is not on the basis, said Luther, of our merits, but on the pure promise of a merciful God.
Which all sounds very reformational, until he goes on to explain. Luther said, as a monk. The teachers correctly say that to a man who does what is in him, God gives grace without fail. To a man who does what is in him, God bestows everything gratis and only on the basis of the promise of His mercy. Although He wants us to be prepared for this, as much as lies in us.
So, according to this, God does save by grace, but that grace is given to those who are prepared for it, who do what is in them to be fit for grace. Or, as the teachers of his day like to put it, God will not deny grace to those who do their best. Romans chapter five verse five is perhaps the single most helpful verse for understanding this view of salvation by grace, and we'll return to it a few times. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, given to us, writes the apostle Paul.
So, instead of being read as a verse about the transformative work of the Spirit in those who Romans five verse one have been past have been justified by faith, that's the context. Romans five five is talking to those who have been justified. Romans five five was taken in medieval Roman Catholicism to be an account of salvation, meaning that God pours His love and grace into our hearts, transforming us internally, making us holy, ultimately holy enough to merit heaven. And our problem, according to this theology, is that while God is holy, we're lazy, and only holy people belong with a holy God in heaven. But while here's our problem: while we might recognise we really ought to be holy, we really can't be bothered.
Not quite enough. We don't seem to be able to muster up the energy that we need to be holy, but don't worry," said the Roman Catholic theologians. "God, in His kindness, gives us grace, and so grace here was a bit like a can of spiritual Red Bull, an energy drink." So I find myself I can't be bothered to pull myself together and get holy, and God gives me grace, and I suddenly I take in this grace, and I find myself a lot more eager and ready to go out and be holy. This then it was a theology of salvation by grace.
So without the grace, we could never become the sort of holy people who belong in heaven. But it was absolutely not a theology of salvation by grace alone. Here, grace provided the necessary boost, the fuel we need to earn eternal life. But it didn't actually give or guarantee eternal life. The red bull of grace would be given to those who want it, who pursue it, and it only saved in so far as it enabled people to become holy and so win their salvation.
Luther's. Reformation message of salvation by grace alone that he came to later could hardly have looked more different to that old pre-Reformation teaching of his about salvation by grace. This is how Luther began to talk. Luther said, "He is not righteous who does much." But he who, without work, believes much in Christ. Here said Luther.
Grace is not about God building on our righteous deeds or helping us to perform them. No, God is not one who builds on our foundations. He creates life out of nothing, and it meant that instead of looking to God for assistance, but ultimately relying on self, Luther was turning to rely entirely on Christ, in whom all righteousness is achieved. He wrote, "The law says, 'Do this.'" And it's never done. Grace says, "Believe in this, and everything is already done." And here Luther found a message so good, it almost seemed incredible to him.
It was good news for the repeated failure. It was news of a God who doesn't come to call the righteous, but sinners. See, deep in our psyche is the assumption that we will be more loved when and only when we make ourselves more attractive, both to God and to others, and enter that. Luther speaks words that just cut through the gloom like a glorious and utterly unexpected sunbeam. Luther wrote, "The love of God does not find it; creates that which is pleasing to it, and rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good.
Therefore." Sinners are attractive because they are loved. They are not loved because they try to make themselves attractive. There's the countercultural, counterintuitive, glorious message of the Reformation that we need again today, and for the rest of his life, Luther. Took this message as good news that needs to be continually reapplied to the heart of the believer, because, from his own experience, he found we are so instinctively self-dependent. That while we'll happily subscribe to salvation by grace, our minds are like rocks drawn down by the gravitational pull of sin, away from belief in grace alone.
And so he would counsel his friends. Here's a letter he wrote to one friend, saying, "My dear brother, learn Christ." And him crucified. Learn to pray to him, and despairing of yourself, say, "You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness. I am your sin. You've taken upon yourself what is mine, my sin, and given to me what is yours.
You've taken upon yourself what you were not." And given to me what I was not.
Now there is far, far more than first meets the eye, standing between the Roman Catholic idea of salvation by grace, and the Reformation's message of salvation by grace alone. And the fact that just one little word alone. Distinguishes them can make you feel like this is a difference only the fussiest theologian can notice, but the difference actually involves even more than where we should look to for confidence before God. In reality, the very meaning of the word grace is different in each. See, in Roman Catholicism, we've seen grace was seen as a thing, a force or a fuel, like Red Bull, and so Catholics would pray Hail Mary, full of grace, because Mary's got a lot of this grace in her.
She's wired with spiritual caffeine. And that was nothing like how Luther and his fellow reformers saw grace. For them, grace was not a thing at all. It is the personal kindness of God, by which He doesn't merely enable us, but by which He rescues and freely gives us. Himself, or to be even more precise, there is no such thing as grace.
There is only Christ, who is the blessing of God given to us. And that being the case, Luther actually tended not to talk that much about grace in the abstract. Preferring to speak of Christ. For example, he said, "Therefore, faith justifies because it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ." The Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart of the true Christian righteousness, on account of which God counts, asks righteousness and grants us eternal life. In other words, the grace and righteousness we receive in the gospel is not something other than Christ.
I quote Luther again. Christ is the divine power, righteousness, blessing, grace, and life.
So, for Luther, God does not give us something other than Himself. In His grace. He unites us to His Son by His Spirit, that we might share the life and righteousness of the Son. Instead of throwing out some enabling blessing, Christ makes Himself ours, and so totally that we may plead what is His. As ours.
Now, what difference does it make living under grace alone? We've seen a very different understanding of grace, but what difference does it make?
Now, clearly, anyone who can know that they are accepted and loved by God because of Jesus. And not because of how well they feel they've done, they can know a confidence as secure as Jesus Himself. In Him, they have an unsurpassable righteousness that is like Him, the same yesterday, today, forever. But might that lead them to be a little too confident? With heaven in the bag, might they feel we can continue in sin that grace may abound?
Couldn't they argue, "I like sinning; God likes forgiving," and that was just what many Roman Catholic theologians wondered when they heard the reformer's message. And ever since, it's not just been Roman Catholics who've. Felt the dangers in the 20th century, surrounded by a people and a church that had so easily capitulated to Hitler. The Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt it was a wrong attitude towards grace that was partly to blame. And on the eve of the Second World War, Bonhoeffer wrote a scalding attack on what he called cheap grace.
The cheap grace he believed had allowed such moral spinelessness on the part of the church in facing the Nazi regime.
Now Bonhoeffer defined this cheap grace and called it grace without Jesus Christ. For grace without Jesus Christ was the problem. In Bonhoeffer's day, but grace without Jesus Christ was precisely what the reformers were stepping away from. With the reformers' message of grace alone, they were not offering more of grace as stuff, as spiritual fuel. They were offering Christ.
In other words, salvation by grace alone is just another way of saying salvation by Christ alone. Luther wrote, "Through faith in Christ, Christ's righteousness becomes our righteousness; all He has becomes ours, or rather." He himself becomes ours, and that puts a world of difference between the message of grace alone and cheap grace. It means nobody can receive the Christ who justifies. Without receiving the Christ who makes us holy, that means holy living is not an awkward small print of the gospel. The catch hiding behind the good news of grace alone.
No. This is wonderful good news. Through this gospel, God acts to free us, not only from the horrifying future penalty of sin, but also from its present enslaving power. Grace alone is the most potent message of liberation. Total and absolute liberation from hell, and gradual liberation, even from its foul but addictive foretastes.
Which is why Paul can write in Titus two, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all. Training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself. For us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, who are zealous for good works, because true grace is never grace without Jesus Christ. It means the apostle has no intellectual difficulty in putting free salvation alongside good works. Ephesians two, he writes, for by grace you've been saved through faith.
This is not your own doing; it's a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. There's no difficulty. For that is the only true life, the life for which believers are freely saved, to be freed from the captivity of sin, to know God and share His good, pure, and holy life. And there is a consistent testimony down through the centuries.
Those who have accepted that God saves by His grace alone have found the message to be one of unutterably sweet liberation. Martin Luther wrote, "I felt I was altogether born again, entered paradise itself through open gates." And so it remains today. The reformer's tenacious insistence on grace alone is no relic of the history books. To be looked on with embarrassment as the sorry squabble of penitenti theologians, it remains as the only message of ultimate liberation. The message with the deepest power to make humans unfurl and flourish.
For by grace alone, all those who know themselves as failures can know not just a bit of enabling from God, helping them to do a little better. They can know a wholly new. And victorious identity in Christ, they can know assurance, relief from guilt, and sweet intimacy with an Almighty Father who cares for them, and knowing that. They begin to find a hearty desire rising up in them to follow the One who is the source of all grace and every good. See, once they would have attempted holiness out of the desperate desire to earn eternal life.
With this gospel, they do so out of a heart. Transformed to want Christ, to see the beauty of His kindness, His goodness, His generosity, and all His holy ways. True Christian obedience is not born of a desire to justify ourselves before God. Rather, it's the glad, grateful response of a heart that's received God's amazing grace in Jesus. This has been such a helpful study today on Renewing Your Mind.
I hope you found it personally encouraging. Like me, you probably have friends and family members that seem utterly beyond the reach of God's grace. But today's message is a reminder that God is able to bring salvation to people who are utterly opposed to Him. He did it for you and for me, and He can do it for anyone. You can share today's message by using the link in your podcast app, or by sending the link for today's episode from renewingyourmind.org.
Join us tomorrow as we continue our exploration of Reformation truths with Dr. Michael Reeves by reflecting on justification by faith alone here on Renewing Your Mind.
