R.C. Sproul: For Justification By Faith Alone

oh it's been such a delight these last couple days to be with you for this conference we're very much encouraged to see so many of you out for it and I have bast in the glory of listening to the messages from the other men that have been brought and I hope that we've all been edified by them I particularly was interested in John's last address when he was so candid about his feelings when he wrote the Gospel according to Jesus how shocked he was that he would have to write a book like that in the evangelical world and I remember being just as shocked at that time that the doctrine of justification would ever become an issue within evangelicalism since evangelicalism is a broad spectrum of denominations protestant denominations dating back to the reformation and we all have our different distinctives but the two concepts that unified evangelicalism for hundreds of years were first of all Sola scriptura the final authority of Scripture and secondly Sola feed a the doctrine of justification by faith alone Sola scriptura was considered the formal cause of the 16th century Reformation and Sola feed a the material cause the matter the substance of the issue that provoked the Reformation in the 16th century and this unity through the years had been so strong the last thing I really ever expected but that there would be a debate within evangelicalism on either one of these topics well first came the erosion of confidence in the authority of Scripture within evangelicalism you might recall in the book that was written by Harold and Zell the battle for the Bible and then the formation of IC bi the International Council on biblical inerrancy which had a 10-year initiative trying to encourage the church in particularly the evangelical church not to abandon their confidence in the inspiration and authority of Sacred Scripture but I understood something of that crisis because of the avalanche of criticism that the church has been exposed to on the doctrine of Scripture in the last couple of hundred years I remember that at the turn of the century I don't remember it but I remember reading about it I'm thinking when I say the turn of the century I mean the turn of the 19th of the 20th century that it was said that biblical criticism had degenerated into biblical vandalism so severe had been the attacks on sacred scripture so I wasn't caught completely off-guard that the issue of Scripture would emerge even within evangelical churches but that the doctrine of justification by faith alone would become an issue and in the lordship salvation controversy where John MacArthur fought for the angels that was a total shock but not nearly the shock of what came in its weight we're leading evangelicals declared to the world that there was now a unity of faith in the gospel between Roman Catholics and evangelicals that really surprised me radically and before I get going with this today I just want to say I've heard many many statements by leading representatives of various sections of Christendom over the last 20 years about this where I've heard one scholar write that the Reformation is over I've heard other ones say that the Protestant Reformation was quote a tempest in a teapot another evangelical leader say that the Protestant Reformation was all a misunderstanding I heard another leader say that in the sixteenth century Luther was right but not today I've heard many leaders say that Vatican Council too changed the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation and of justification and again all of these statements indicate you know that the confidence that people have said that the Roman Church has changed her doctrine on justification and but again the proclamation of Evangelicals and Catholics together was that we now have a unity of faith in the gospel and that provoked a radical crisis within evangelicalism and I was a lightning rod in that as well as was John MacArthur and I said to my friends those evangelical leaders who were involved in that I said I'm puzzled because you say you have a unity of faith in the gospel with men who still strongly affirm the Council of Trent I know I don't have a unity of faith in the gospel with those men so my question is if you have a unity of faith in the gospel with them and I don't have a unity of faith in the gospel with them how can I possibly have a unity of faith in the gospel with you and so this activity that was supposed to bring believers together actually drove a serious wedge within the evangelical world itself and I came to the conclusion after reading EC T 1 EC to EC 3:3 that many of our evangelical leaders simply either did not understand Roman Catholic theology or they didn't understand historical Protestant theology I came to the sad conclusion that many of them didn't under than either and what I want to look at today is how critically important it is that we stand firm on this essential doctrine of the Christian faith I'll just say this further aside during the heat of that controversy I was in conversation in a room with several of the leaders and I asked one of them I said do you believe that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel and he looked at me and he said well I would say it's central to the gospel I don't see how anything can be central to the gospel and not at the same time be essential to it but I said that's not what I asked you I asked you do you think that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel no matter how hard I pled it was like pulling teeth I could not get the man to say that salafi day was essential to the gospel this when the Apostle Paul had seen that it was not only essential to the gospel but without it you don't have the gospel you have another gospel and there of course is not another gospel so there's been massive confusion about the doctor just because here's one other thing I've heard I've heard it said 100 times well after all arsey we're not saved by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith alone and beloved there is no doctrine that's ever been confessed in the Christian Church that would more strongly assert that one cannot be saved by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith alone then the doctrine of justification by faith alone because the doctrine of justification by faith alone is only shorthand for saying that we are saved by that we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone not by faith in the doctrine of justification by faith alone I mean the person can believe and affirm the doctrine of justification by faith alone and not be saved on the other hand I worry about those who deny the doctrine of justification by faith alone and wonder if they indeed can be saved while at the same time denying an essential truth of the Christian faith well having said that by way of preface let me read for you a few verses from Paul's letter to the Galatians in the first chapter beginning at verse 3 where the Apostle and characteristic fashion addresses the people by saying grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory for ever and ever amen then the Apostle articulates his apostolic astonishment where he says I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel which is not another but there are some who would trouble you that want to pervert the gospel of Christ but even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached to you let him be accursed as we have said before so now I say again if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that which you have received let him be accursed there is nowhere in Sacred Scripture where the Apostles Paul speaks more strongly and more vehemently than he does here but anybody preaches any other gospel than that which you have received let him be on a Thema let him be anathema let him be damned is what he is saying and then he goes on to say for do I now persuade men or God do I seek to please men for if I still please men I would not be a bondservant of Christ how is it possible in this day and age that the gospel has been so broadly negotiated within evangelicals the only answer I can give is the church has been inundated with the influence of the secular culture of relativism and we want so much to get along with everybody that we want to please men we want to avoid conflict and I don't know anybody who enjoys conflict I surely don't the Apostle Paul here when he writes the Galatians said may Grace and peace to you we love peace and I hear people say doctrine divides yes it does doctrine has always divided Jesus and the Pharisees were sharply divided over the identity of the Messiah that was a doctrinal issue every Epistle that comes from the pen of the Apostle Paul has to address divisions caused by false doctrines entering into the church now let me say to you before again I go over this historical reconnaissance with you that I'm talking now today about the difference between the Reformation and biblical view of justification by faith alone and the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification I'm not I understand that there has been a tremendous split within Rome since the mid-60s of the 20th century between the so-called Talihina val the new theology the progressive whim weighing of the roman catholic church particularly in germany switzerland Holland Canada and the United States and what was called the Latin wing of the church found in Spain Portugal and Italy and a lot of France and a Latin America and Eastern Europe and when I'm talking today about the Roman Catholic view of justification I understand that there are many priests in America who really affirm what we would call the doctrine of justification by faith alone and probably millions of Catholic adherents who actually believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone we call them crypto Protestants they're Protestants they don't know that they're Protestants but they are now the vast majority of Protestants on the other hand if you ask them are you a Protestant then they say yes and then you follow it up with the next question what is it that you're protesting they don't have a clue and that's why some church historians are saying there was a great battle over this doctrine in the 16th century but people really don't care that much about it today and so it's not that big of a deal all that's at stake here is the simple question how's a person saved when Desiderius Erasmus wrote his diatribe against Luther in Luther's response he said to Erasmus I thank you that you haven't bothered me with trivial matters such as the authority of the Pope or the place of Mary or the sacraments in Rome but you have asked me about the essence of the gospel and we could focus our attention on this now again I'm going to be saying today my understanding of the Roman Catholic understanding of the gospel not the London Catholic Church not the Berlin Catholic Church not the burn or Zurich Catholic Church or the officer dome Catholic Church or the Boston Catholic Church or the Los Angeles Catholic Church I'm talking about the Roman Catholic Church the one whose headquarters is in Italy in Rome which church has official Dogma defined in church councils and in papal encyclicals and at the time of the Protestant Reformation the most important response of Rome to Luther and Calvin Zwingli and Knox and the rest of the Magisterial reformers came by way of an ecumenical council that was held in Trento which is called the Council of Trent and in the sixth session of the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church did two things in that session one it defined her doctrine of justification in the decrees and then the second section was the canons or the Anathem OU's that were written against the Reformation understanding of the gospel so in the sixteenth century though many of the canons of Trent missed the mark and failed to really capture the essence of Protestant teaching they hit the bull's eye when it came to Salah fidei and there's no doubt that at Trent in the sixth session the Reformation doctrine and understanding of the gospel was given the Anathem of the Roman Catholic Church and some people say well that lasted until vatican ii were and everything changed no vatican ii did not alter in any way the roman you of justification in fact john xxiii when he convened the council which was called the unexpected council made it very clear that the point of the council was to deal with ecclesiology and not with theology and doctrine like issues of justification and if you're familiar with the Catholic catechism of the decade of the 1990s you will see that that catechism strongly and categorically reaffirms what was taught at the Council of Trent with respect to justification of course it reaffirms it because the church embraces the doctrine of infallibility and Rome suffers from the problem of what I call theological haemophilia you scratch her she bleeds to death she can't say maiya culpa our doctrine that we expressed ecumenically at the ecumenical Council of Trent was wrong they can change their attitude their rhetoric instead of calling us says Maddox and heretics they can refer to us that they did at Vatican two is separated brother they can be much nicer gentler and kinder but their doctrine hasn't changed and let me give you a brief summary of the Roman Catholic understanding of the gospel and don't take my word for it check it out yourself study the decrees of the Council of Trent particularly in the sixth session now let me begin by saying that so often Protestants falsely accused the Roman Catholic Church of teaching something they don't teach and never have taught some Fratus and say well we believe in justification by faith Rome believes in justification by works we believe in justification by grace Rome believes in justification by merit we believe in justification by Christ Rome believes in justification by the person themselves that is pure slander against Rome Rome teaches now it taught in the sixteenth century it has always taught that faith is necessary for justification well let me just say they taught it in the 16th century and they've taught it for most of her their lives they're beginning to be shaky on this as John McArthur just pointed out a few moments ago some of them are saying now they don't have to have faith in order to be saved but in the main the Roman Church has said that faith in Jesus Christ is a necessary condition for justification that is to say you can't be justified without it at Trent there are said three specific things about faith they said faith is in the first instance the initial the fundamental and the second person and the third point the Roddick's of justification that is the Initium it is the beginning of justification the fundamental the foundation for justification and the Roddick's the root of justification so you can see with these three affirmations in the sixth session that rome took a strong view of the importance and meThe necessity of having faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved and though they say that faith is a necessary condition to be saved it is not a sufficient condition meaning you can have what we would call saving faith and not be saved you have to have faith to get it but that faith is not enough to get it indeed when Rome spells out the dilemma of the commission of mortal sin they maintain that a person can have saving faith commit mortal sin lose justification lose your salvation while you still have the faith so obviously faith is not enough it's not faith alone that gets you into Christ and then salvation has to be something more now how does it work well justification in the first instance according to Rome is communicated Sasser totally that is through the sacraments and rome is careful to define it this way that the instrumental cause of justification the means by which justification is communicated to the person the instrument that causes it is in the first instance the sacrament of baptism at baptism the righteousness of Christ the grace of justification is poured in or infused Ex opera apparat oh that is by the working of the works into the soul of the person who receives that sacrament now the sacrament itself doesn't automatically save you it automatically infuses the grace of justification but in order to be saved you have to do two things according to Trent cooperate and assent RA cooperate with and assent to that infused grace now if you cooperate with the grace of baptism assent to the grace of baptism then you are in a state of justification all right this is the gospel now this is how you're saved now the good news is you're now in a state of justification the bad news is if you commit a mortal sin you lose your justification you lose your salvation it's gone but that's not the end of the world because as Rome defines it in Trent there is a second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their faith and the way you make shipwreck of your faith again is by committing mortal sin mortal sin is distinguished from venial sin is sin that is so severe that it kills the saving grace in your soul that's why it's called mortal and if you commit mortal sin you lose your justification but it can be restored again through a sacrament in this case it is the Sacrament of Penance which was at the eye of the tornado in the 16th century because the elements of penance have several parts to it first of all there is confession you come to the priest and you confess your sins father I have sinned because I've done this - that the other thing that wasn't the issue in the sixteenth century nor was it the issue that after you give your act of contrition and confess your sins where the priest then pronounces your forgiveness he says hey absolve oh i absolve you and even that wasn't the issue in the sixteenth century because the Protestants agreed that Jesus did give the authority to his representatives to bind on earth to bind on heaven and to pronounce God's forgiveness for those who repent of their sins we do that in Protestant churches all the time in the promise of the assurance of pardon for all of those who confess their sins where the problem came in was in the next point after absolution came works of satisfaction which works of satisfaction are necessary to perform to be restored again to a state of grace so now you see you have to have faith plus works these works are called works of satisfaction because they satisfy the demands God's justice which justice has been violated when you commit a mortal sin now also Rome gives careful definition to how these works of satisfaction by the way works of satisfaction at the time of the sixteenth century included minor little things like saying so many Our Fathers sang many Hail Marys or giving alms through the giving of alms you can receive indulgences and a restoration - justification that's all it all started in Germany with the sale of indulgences and so on which practice continues to this very day and go to Rome go to the the Church of the Lateran and you see the sacred stairs there and the sign on the door that tells you how many indulgences you can gain by going up the stairs on your knees and saying so many Our Fathers on each step and so on but in any case these works of satisfaction were said to give the penitent sinner a kind of merit which is called by the Roman Catholic Church Cohn grew merit now this is important because Rome makes an extremely important distinction between what they call condign Co nd IGN merit and congruous merit merit Rome de kindig no meritum de can grow condign merit is merit that is so high so significant that it requires a reward from a just and righteous God congruous merit is true merit but not as high as condign merit and congruous merit means that if you gain this congruous merit through works of satisfaction it is now fitting or congruous for God to restore you into a state of justification do you get it it's not that he has to restore you to a sated state of grace but it would be incongruous for him not to it would not be fitting of God to keep you from justification after you've done your works of satisfaction so you see you have faith plus works necessary grace you can't get the congruous merit without grace grace is there but it's not grace alone it's grace plus merit now perhaps the biggest issue came with the next point Rome points out that God never will ever declare a person just listen to this until or unless righteousness in hairs in the person the Latin is in hair ends in the succession God will never say that your just until learn unless you are just now you can't become inherently righteous without faith you can't become inherently right just without grace you can't become inherently righteous without the help of Christ but with the aid of faith and grace and Christ you can become inherently righteous and if you want to be justified you must become inherently righteous and if you die while you're in the state of inherent righteousness you will go into heaven you won't pass go you won't collect your $200 you'll go straight to heaven because God will at that point declare you just because when he looks at you he sees that you really are just just as my friend here is this was the heart of the issue because if you have one imperfection on your soul one peccadillo on your record no mortal sin your faithful in church you go to church all the time go to Mass every day of the week you do good works you do all these things go to confession if you commit a mortal sin all these things but you dive with one imperfection on your soul you will not go to heaven then before you can go to heaven you first have to go to the purging place to have any impurities that remain in your soul when you die purified before you can go to heaven okay now that in a nutshell is the Gospel according to Rome to me it's the worst news I've ever heard if I have to be inherently righteous before I go to heaven then I'll have to write another book called not a chance I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow morning because that's not good news that's horrible news the great news of the gospel of the Bible and of justification by faith alone is that I am declared righteous by God the moment I put my trust in Christ because when I put my faith in Jesus God assigns transfers or imputes the perfect righteousness of Jesus to my account you get that now is that good news or what that is that the basis the ground of my justification is not my righteousness no matter how I gain it but it is Luther said was an alien righteousness a righteousness that is extra knows not inherent but outside of us it's somebody else's righteousness just as Jesus died for me because my sin was transferred to him it was imputed to him and then also his righteousness is imputed to me in the sole instrument by which I am linked to Christ and the benefits of his atonement and of his righteousness is faith now it doesn't mean that we believe that we can be justified by a faith that has no fruit Luther says we are justified by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone this is what st. James was saying if you say you have faith and you have no works you don't have saving faith because saving faith will always manifest itself in a changed life in the fruit of righteousness but that righteousness that is the fruit of faith is never the grounds of my justification it's never good enough to satisfy the perfect holiness of God the only righteousness that is good enough to get me into the kingdom of God and you into the kingdom of God is Jesus and Jesus alone that's why the church can't save me the sacraments can't save me my good deeds can't save me my penance can't save me only Christ can save me and he truly will save me if I put my trust into him and in him alone and what Paul is saying to the Judaizers in the Galatian community as they did the very thing that Rome did they wanted to mix work with faith they wanted the people to think that they had to do their righteous deeds in order to be saved through the works of the law even after the Apostle had written so plainly by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified therefore we are justified by faith and being justified by faith we don't just look forward to having peace with God when we get to heaven we have peace with God right now right now we're in a state of reconciliation the moment we put our faith in Christ our sins are forgiven we're adopted into the family of God I don't have to go through purgatory to receive those things I receive them the moment I receive Christ and embrace him and trust in him and him alone do you see the difference between the two I would despair really if I had to be without imperfections before I could go to heaven I don't know how long I would have to go through purgatory at least two million years because if I would die tonight I would take to my grave more than this slight pact Adela more than a minut imperfection you know and if God would look at me apart from being clothed in the righteousness of Christ if he would look at me and my naked humanity of who I am I would have no hope of being justified now Rome categorically reject the idea of the imputed righteousness of Jesus and here's the crazy part about it on the one hand they deny the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer saying that the Protestant doctrine involves God in a legal fiction God counting somebody righteous when in fact they're not just as God counted abraham is righteous when he believed god as in genesis theme as Paul Labor's in the book of Romans that Abraham the father of the faithful didn't have to wait til he became actually righteous but rather the moment he believed God counted him as righteous before he did any works this was what again Paul Labor's that point in the gospel but what difference does it make heaven and hell that's what difference it makes because if I'm trusting in my works that much I have something of which the boast I've missed the gospel I've missed Christ that's a justification by faith alone means justification by trust in Christ alone and I said what's weird about this is that there's another kind of merit there is supererogatory merit merits of supererogation not super irrigation where they're all wet but super irrigation works of supererogation are defined by rome as works so meritorious that they're above and beyond the call of duty and there were a handful of saints who've been canonized and beatified throughout church history who died with such a high level of righteousness that they had a surplus of merit more than they needed people like Saint Francis of Assisi and st. Augustine the Virgin Mary the Holy Family had enough not only enough merits of their own to go into heaven but they had access merit now where does that merit go you don't know in the bank what bank into the treasury of merits the Treasury of merit which is that Treasury that the Pope has the key to the kingdom that he has the key to that Treasury where all this where these works of supererogation are deposited along with the merit of Jesus so the Treasury of merit contains both the merit of Jesus and the merit of his mother and the merit of st. Thomas Aquinas and the merit of the rest of these saints that I've mentioned and so what's so important about the Treasury of merits well this is how the indulgences worked if you wanted to get an indulgence and you gave alms to the building of the Saint Peter's the giving of those alms was worth so much indulgences from the church and in the indulgences the church takes from the Treasury of merits merits that are there and give them to you I can't imagine any way they can do it except by imputation they don't believe in the imputation the merit of Jesus for our salvation but they'll take the imputation of the merits of the saints if that isn't a ghastly perversion of the New Testament I don't know what is and the Apostle Paul said hey if anybody preaches to you any other gospel than that which you have received even if it's an angel from the heaven if an angel comes in here and says wait a minute you can't get the heaven by trusting Christ and Christ alone and having the imputation of his merits and the angel came here and said for you to really be justified you have to have inherent righteousness you have to add works to faith merit or grace you to Christ if an angel from heaven came in here and said that this afternoon I would take him by the seat of his celestial pants and kick him out of here Paul says if anybody teaches you any other gospel even if it's an angel from heaven let him be on a Tama let him be anathema let him be damned and men Paul goes on to say if you didn't get it the first time let me say it again if any one the Pope the bishop your priest your preacher teachers any other gospel then that which is received let him be an athame because there is no other gospel and now I'm interested because I can remember when I got involved in this debate back at the time of ect and was losing friends faster than I could shake a stick at them and people say you're dividing the church and all that same kind of thing they said that John MacArthur and I was alone one night I wanted the church and I opened up this passage Galatians and I had always stopped at verse 9 if any we said before so I said again if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that which you've received let him be accursed that I would stop there this time I went the verse 10 for do I now persuade men or God do I seek to please men for if I still please men I would not be a slave of Jesus Christ here is where when the gospel is at stake as Luther said in his great hymn a mighty fortress in the last verse let Goods and kindred go this mortal life also if we have to let go of our family let go of our friends let go of our church let go of our lives so be it otherwise we seek to please men rather than to please God and God has saved us with a gospel that is really a magnificent gospel a marvelous gospel and if I trade that in or negotiate it and say to people who affirm the Council of Trent this other gospel that I have a unity of faith in the gospel with them what if I come I'll give up my relationship to any leader and curse of them over this doctrine I'll split my family over this doctrine split the church over this doctrine this is the gospel the Lord marks iniquity who shall stand well guess what he does mark iniquities and blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin from the Garden of Eden the first way justification entered the world was how God saved Adam and Eve by covering their nakedness by hiding their sin the whole system of atonement in the Old Testament when the blood came into the Holy of Holies and was sprinkled on the mercy seat it was to cover the sin of the people that's what the cloak of the righteousness of Christ does for all who put their trust in him his righteousness is my covering and that's how I can stand before a holy God again if I have to wait until through the machinations of the church and the sacraments and all the rest on purgatory make me pure before I can be justified I'm going to sleep in tomorrow morning because without solo fidei you're without the gospel and without the gospel you're without hope but thanks be to God who gives us the glorious gospel of justification through trusting in the work of Jesus and the work of Jesus alone who alone is not only able but willing to save all who put their faith in Him let's pray father help us not to be contentious or obnoxious or belligerent but also help us not to be acquiescence when the gospel is at stake help us to be willing to lose all to save that gospel for it is your gospel it is your good news not ours it is good news from you it is good news for us and to us thank you for the merit of Jesus and His perfect righteousness thank you for Jesus who alone had righteousness that was inherent in him and for taking of that righteousness and using it as the grounds of our own justification we have no other hope o Lord accept the imputation of his righteousness for our salvation but with that hope we are not ashamed amen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

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Keywords: faith, god’s grace, how can a person be justified by faith?, how can one be justified by faith?, how is a person justified by faith?, how to be justified by faith?, justification by faith paul, justified by faith, justified by faith alone, not by faith alone bible verse, salvation by faith alone, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in christ alone, we are saved by faith alone but the faith that saves is never alone, what is meant by justification by faith alone?, rc sproul

Id: DfKUxXB7_Cg

Length: 48min 4sec (2884 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2015