The False Gospel of Rome / Douglas Wilson

Romans 8:33 these are the words of God who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect it is God that justifies father in heaven thank you for this time I pray that you would help us give us clear minds clear clean hearts I pray this we work through some challenging material that your grace would be with us and I pray that you do it for Jesus sake amen all right so hope you had a great Reformation day now that's and that's why we're talking about this topic what I'm going to be doing tonight Lord willing is walking walking between two challenging this is a challenging topic false gospel of Rome on the one hand and on the other hand I want to unleash my inner ecumenical self simultaneously and I hope you understand what how that is even possible how is it possible to address a topic like this the false gospel of Rome at the same time doing it in an ecumenical spirit and not an not an ecumenical spirit among all the anti Catholics but an ecumenical spirit among all who call on God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ so I think it's typify tour illustrated in the bulletin we sang two songs back-to-back oh god of Earth and alter the lyrics by GK Chesterton my very favorite Catholic writer and the next song we sang was Martin Luther so GK Chesterton and Martin Luther and so the question is are these people schizophrenic or the G K Chesterton was an Anglican who became a Roman Catholic and he is also one of the if I had to list the writers who have most influenced my thinking he'd be in the top five G K Chesterton would be right up there and on certain topics particularly when he gets on to Calvinism he's exasperating but I love him so I want what I want to do is approach this in a Chester tone Ian spirit and at the same time in a classically Protestant vein and I want to walk through it very care I want to frame the discussion when we talk about the false false gospel what are we talking about right what are we talking about we're not I want to begin with an illustration there are very pointed specific debates that electricians might have about how you wire a house and how you don't wire a house how you connect everything up to the fuse the the fuse panel how how do you how do you do that and there's the right way to do it in the wrong way to do it and if you do it the wrong way it'll burn the house down well if you do it in certain wrong ways it'll burn the house down other wrong ways the lights go out other wrong ways you don't notice for three years other you know you've got a range of things a toddler without knowing anything about electricity can flip the lights on all right toddler can just believe in Jesus and the lights are on a toddler doesn't need to know electrical theory in order to be able to trust in God believe in Jesus so I want to begin by acknowledging at the at the outset that there are many Roman Catholics who are not only Christians but some of them find Christians and finer Christians than I am and so how can I say that when I say that they belong to a church that has formally embraced a false gospel well what do I mean by false I mean a dispute among the electricians all right that's what I'm talking about the dispute among the electrician's I'm not saying that if you're a Roman Catholic you're in the dark I'm saying that if you're in the dark you're in the dark if you're trusting in a theology other than Jesus you're in the dark and that's but that is true on the Protestant side that's true on the evangelical side as well if you trust in the Westminster Confession of faith that's no better than trusting in the Council of Trent or something on the other side so you need to trust in Jesus so justification by faith alone which is a hallmark of the Reformation justification by faith alone Sola fidei is not accomplished by believing in justification by faith alone justification by faith alone does not point at justification by faith alone justification by faith alone points to Jesus all right so if you believe in Jesus and even if your theology is messed up on it right if so here's another illustration suppose you walk up I love pearly gates jokes even though it's not gonna be that way but you walk up to the pearly gates and st. Peter greets you and said and you look there's a desk there and a stack of papers and you say what's this and he says it's your exam it's your entrance exam to to come in and you look at it and it's the justification by faith alone pop quit but the ultimate the ultimat pop quiz and he says into the pencil and says sit down have at it and if you get a hundred you come on in and see you look at the pencil you look at the paper and you look at Peter you hand the pencil back and he says very good in in and you go you don't take you don't take a test you don't you don't take a theology knowledge test on justification by faith alone that that's not what does it Christ alone does it all right so the debate among the electricians matters even though some of the electricians if I could push this analogy out some of the electricians who get the electrical electrical Theory wrong have houses that are lit and some of the people who get the electrical theory right are in the dark all right God is sovereign all right God is sovereign and we can't get him into it we can't successfully get him into a box so keep in mind that we're talking about electrical theory and here we go so in the at the Council of Trent why even talk about a false gospel at all in the in the Council of Trent which was part of the counter-reformation and the the response to the Reformation it was a movement that addressed many of the many the practical abuses that the Reformers complained about were addressed appropriately addressed by Trent but they were also responding theologically to the to the theological challenge that was mounted by the Protestants so from fifteen forty five to fifteen sixty three the Council of Trent met they they did settled a number of things but one of the canons under the head under the justification by faith section says this if anyone saith that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins to the exclusion of the Grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost and is inherent in them or even that the grace whereby we are justified is only the favor of God let him be anathema now I hope you visions of electrical schematic drawings came up in your mind this is this is a theology that's being sliced fine right they're making very fine distinctions and these are theologians on top of their game and they are responding to what the Protestants are saying and at the end they say and if there's a difference on this then let him be anathema if anybody holds to the Protestant position then let him be anathema let him be cursed now how can I say how can I say that someone could belong to a communion that that has adopted that and never repudiated it it's part of the teaching authority of the church that couldn't be reputed repudiated how can I say that people within that communion can certainly be saved when Rome is firmly committed in principle and on paper to that statement that condemns anyone who holds to justification by faith alone the answer and this is going to sound ok Chester tone Ian I'll exasperate him the way you the reason they people in that position can be saved is because they're wrong okay no we we are the ones maintaining that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works and if you're justified by faith apart from works that means that you're justified by faith apart from tiny mental works all right little mental works where you where you pat you score 100 on that justification by faith test that st. peters sprung on you and you showed up to the pearly gates so we believe that we're justified if someone is regenerate if someone if the Holy Spirit has been given to someone by a sovereign God and the lights are on and they love Jesus then I have no problem receiving that person as my brother or my sister in the Lord and I would have a big problem I would think refusing to at the same time if I'm in if I'm quizzing a candidate for ordination at presbytery we just had our Presbyterian meeting and we were examining a couple of candidates for ordination if if one of those candidates for ordination said this is how you wire a house and you any quoted Trent here I'd say I don't want you wiring I don't want you wiring the house no we're not going to ordain you I don't want you for an electrician but I I'm more more than happy to warmly welcome you as my brother now the hinge upon which everything turns is the issue of justification all right that's the that's as Luther once said it's the article of a standing or a falling Church so let's talk about what the different let me define briefly what the difference is between Rome and classical Protestantism and then go into the I'm going to bear with me I'm going to go into the weeds a little bit so the difference is in the in the Tridentine definition part a justification includes an infusion of righteousness okay it includes that so if any this is what they condemn if anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sin all right sort of by faith alone God declares you righteous without the an infusion of righteousness into the person the Roman Catholic position wants to include that infusion of righteousness as part of the package part of the deal that's part of justification the Protestants wanted to say no justification is imputation the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ plus nothing plus nothing else now this is where it gets sliced pretty fine because the Protestants wholeheartedly agreed that there was an accompanying infusion of righteousness by the Holy Ghost and no man has ever been saved without that without that new life the new birth so everybody agreed everybody agreed that God imputed righteousness to the center and everybody agreed that God infused righteousness into the sinner the Roman Catholic position is that total package is justification and the Protestants said no just the imputation part is justification the the infusion of righteousness is part of our sanctification or walk with God etc all right so again you should have visions of an electrical schematic diagram so for those who accept the basic doctrine of the sinfulness of man establishing the need for justification we're all sinners Rome and Geneva agree on that we're all we're all sinners we need to be justified and we acknowledge the existence of a holy God that is that establishes the one who does the justifying there are only two basic directions that you can go you can either assume the justification occurs as God infuses or pours righteousness into us or you can believe that it occurs as the result of righteousness being imputed credited or reckoned to us as a forensic act now what I mean by a forensic act as this I served on a jury one time and it was a murder trial as it happened and I won't go into all the details but when we came out I was the I was the foreman when we came out the man we found him we found him guilty as it as it happened but before that moment before we read the verdict he was judicially innocent he was judicially innocent until proven guilty when we read the sentence of guilty or if we'd read the other sentence of not guilty that was a forensic act it was a performative act it was an act that did something so his status changed as soon as we said guilty as soon as we said not guilty the status moves from one position to the other so that's the Protestants say that that justification is what happens there when God looks at the sinner and says not guilty that's the forensic act the Roman position is that it's a combo all right so the in the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says the first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion affecting justification in accordance with Jesus Proclamation at the beginning of the gospel repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand moved by grace man turns toward God and away from sin thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high justification is not only the remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man so it's not only the forgiveness of sins the judicial Act but it's also the internal change all right the quote and that's a quote within a quote the quotation at the end of this citation is from the Council of Trent justification is understood to be the remission of sins which the Westminster Confession also affirms but it's also described as the renovation of the inner man okay now here's the here's the issue I'll give you a little preview the issue is when we when the jury when a four of a jury comes out and says not guilty that performative act is complete it doesn't need to be proved upon it's perfect all right the thing is done if your justification depends in part on the renovation of the interior man well how renovated I've looked in there a couple times and it's been pretty shabby I am i justified do I have am i right with God I'm kind of a mess sometimes right so am i if I'm looking at the progress of God's work in me as part of my assurance then it's going to rock it's going to rock my assurance so when a man accepts righteousness from on high he is accepting it into himself and both sides agree on that but is that justification Westminster agrees with the part about forgiveness but everything else is radically different so this is Westminster Confession of faith chapter 11 paragraph 1 those whom God affectionately calls he also freely justifies not by infusing righteousness into them so you see the dividing line the Protestants were saying God freely justifies men not by infusing righteousness into them but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous not for anything wrought in them or done by them but for Christ's sake alone nor by imputing faith itself the act of believing or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them they receiving and resting upon him and his righteousness by faith which faith they have not of themselves it is the gift of God but I hope you noticed that with that watershed phrase God freely justifies not by infusing righteousness into them now the Protestants in other parts of the Westminster Confession would jump up and down on the fact that God does in fact infuse righteousness into us all right that does happen it must happen but we must not call it our justification that not be the ground of our secure standing before God because if the progress that I made from Tuesday to Wednesday is the ground of my standing before God then I'm I don't know about you or trouble so note that the issue is not whether the issue is not whether there is a renovation of the inner man which all serious Christians believe Catholic and Protestant both but whether that renovation is to be understood as our justification and of course I would I want to argue that it cannot be for the Protestant and so when you I should say this in passing the product classical classical Protestantism is not you you shouldn't think of protesters or people with signs or it's the there was a debate at the time of the Reformation between the Roman Catholics and the protesting Catholics right so the the early Magisterial reformers i was in the first the Lutheran's the reformed the Presbyterians the Magisterial reformers did not did not think of themselves as planting a new denomination or they didn't want to do that they wanted to reform the church they wanted the the church that they'd grown up in to be their church so for the Protestant justification is a declaration in a courtroom and it is the just declaration of not guilty pronounced over a very guilty sinner now this is that now this is where it gets whoa how this how is this possible how can God be both just and the one who justifies right that's phrases from Romans so that God can be just and the one who justifies well God could be just and send everybody to hell right okay I've had it with you people and and he could be just and do that he could also be the God who justifies okay everybody go to heaven I'm tired of being so strict he could justify everybody but how can he be both how can we be the mess that we are and God be the justifying God how can a holy God justify an unholy mess and the holy God remain a holy God that's the that's the dilemma okay that's the dilemma that the Apostle Paul wrestles with in the book of Romans and that's what the the central issue was at the time of the Reformation so how can God be both just and the one who justifies this is went vindicated by the high wisdom of God and is vindicated by means of imputation this legal forensic declaration if we succeed in dismantling the concept of imputation we find at the end of the day that we've dismantled our only possible hope of salvation if the not-guilty pronounced over me consists of my state of sanctification in my interior man which is very imperfect indeed then this means that my justification is at best a work in progress my interior man is a work in progress okay but I don't want to go to heaven on basis of how my work in progress is going okay so I don't need a work in progress I need a definitive declaration and to be told by the bailiff that I'm free to go you're a free man they said not guilty by you you don't owe us anything anything less and I'm not actually justified right anything less than I'm not actually justified I'm just on probation walking around town being followed by a censorious parole officer and the ankle bracelet is starting to itch so the prisoner in the dock who hears the words of the gospel is a man who hears a glorious no condemnation to use the first words of Romans 8 no condemnation there's therefore no condemnation later on in that chapter he is the same vindicated defendant who is now able to throw taunts at all the lawyers in the prosecutors office who are trying to dig up additional dirt on him okay who shall lay this is our text who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect it is God who justifies God said I was not guilty I don't care what you dig up old tweets from high school I don't care old yeah I just don't care because God has declared me not guilty now the reason I can be declared not guilty without God himself becoming guilty that's the dilemma right how can I be declared not guilty when I am guilty and that not entail God and the guilt this is because God reckons me to be represented fully and completely by my head the Lord Jesus not only so but he represented me in the condemnation that I suffered in him and he represents me currently at the right hand of God the Father for so in 2nd Corinthians 5:21 it says this for he have made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him so there's a double transaction here our sins are imputed to Christ and Christ's righteousness is imputed to us right so our sin is placed on Christ he takes it all on himself and dies and so the penalty for sin is paid and then but I didn't just Oh God something because I sinned I didn't just Oh him the the the penalty of death excuse me the day you eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden you shall surely die in Romans the wages of sin is death in Ezekiel the soul that sins shall die so I owed God of death because I'm a sinner I owed god of death but that debt was paid by Jesus but not only do I owe God a debt because I sinned I also owed God a sinless life which I didn't live because I was too busy screwing up so I how can I offer to God a sinless life well that's imputed to me also theologians call that imputation of the active obedience of Christ so Christ didn't just die for me he lived for me his whole perfect life is imputed to me and his satisfaction for the my sins my sins are imputed to him and he dies and descends into the grave so this kind of thing can only happen by infusion or imputation and I don't I would argue it can't really be done by infusion that narrows things down a bit and we discover that the Holy Spirit has backed us into a good news corner good news I can save you and I can save you to the uttermost I can save you completely there are three there are three imputations that are an essential part of all this three imputations the first is the imputation remembered imputation is the legal forensic declaration the the imputation of Adam's transgression to all of us so Adam when Adam sinned in the garden when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the tree the entire human race was there the whole all of humanity was there and all of humanity sinned against God and the head of our race his action is credited to us that's why we're born in sin we're born into a sinful race and it's not unfair God's not being unfair even though you were clocking your little brother over the head in the nursery a sitting away before you could talk right how's that not unfair well you were represented by Adam your covenant head and he represented you well represented me well so his sin is imputed to all of us then there's the imputation of all our transgressions to Christ and last there's the imputation of Christ's righteousness to those who have faith in Him now the reason imputation works in all three cases is that the human race is not made up of solitary and disconnected individuals if we were entirely distinct individuals then it would make it would make no moral sense at all for God to let me go free because there was an entirely innocent guy over there and all that was necessary was for God to kill somebody preferably someone completely innocent right what kind of if you've ever witnessed to an intelligent non-christian and he's trying to make so let me get this right you sinned against God and God's mad at you and he's not mad at his perfect son and he God agrees to kill his son instead of you how is that fair how's that how does that just that's all that's appalling and really is this is a this is another case of great Sunday School illustrations actually being instances of high moral monstrosity 'he's an evil twin is hauled before the court and his good brother volunteers to take his place on the scaffold what kind of judge would say hey that sounds like a plan we would be trying to get that judge impeached right but the human race is constituted as a race all right we're constituted as a race individual persons are not like individual rocks in the driveway but rather like individual leaves on a tree we're not like pebbles in the driveway we're like leaves on a tree each leaf can be made out distinctly just as distinctly as the rocks right I can tell this leaf from that leaf but the difference is that the leaves have a connection each leaf can be made out distinctly but anybody who seeks to understand leaves without reference to the tree is not following the path of wisdom so when Adam and Eve were in the garden the whole human race was there and in Adam the whole human race threw itself over the precipice of sin the entire race did that when Christ died on the cross the entire new human race was represented there in him he's the the New Testament calls him the last Adam there's the second Adam so Adam was the founder of the human race Christ is the founder of humanity 2.0 God is rebooting humanity and he's rebooting humanity in Jesus and just as Adam was my sinful head so Christ is my sin less head so when Christ obeyed God throughout the course of his life the new human race was there in him represented justly by his obedience imputation works with us because human beings are defined by imputation that's what that's how the race is constituted imputation is a forensic legal and coven ental action so think of it this way when our race fell our first father was at a tree our first father disobeyed at a tree our second father the Lord Jesus obeyed on a tree i disobeyed at a tree obeyed on a tree it says that when Eve was created well I mentioned a moment ago that Jesus is described as a new Adam another Adam well an Adam must have an Eve and Adam must have a bride the New Testament describes the Christian church is the Bride of Christ well the Bride of Christ comes into being the same way that Eve came into being Adam was put into a deep sleep coma-like State and God took a rib from Adam's side and fashioned a woman and presented the woman to him in John chapter 19 when Jesus dies on the cross the Roman soldier comes and rams the spear in Christ's side Christ died he's the state of death the spears run into his side blood and water come out but the thing it's interesting about that is that the Apostle John was there and he says I was there I tell you and I wrote this down specifically so that you might believe there was something relieved that that was the creation of the Christian Church the creation of the new Eve the Bride of Christ was fashioned from his side the same way Eve was fashioned from Adams side so God has created us as a covenant aliy integrated unity this is why imputation is not an outrage if the imputation is between a coven ental federal head and Federals the Latin word for Deus simply means covenant so a coven ental coven ental head coven ental federal head and those represented in and through him if we tried an imputation of righteousness or an imputation of unrighteousness between smith there and murphy here everyone would be rightly appalled you can't impute the sins of murderous smith to murphy or the righteousness of murphy to smith you can't you don't impute the characteristics of one leaf to another one everybody knows that so bring this back around to the to the thesis the thing that we're presenting here this difference in wiring this difference in how you how you wire the house how people are to understand the gospel is a matter of over the long run when you're dealing with generations and centuries over the long run when the electrician's are on the job when they know what they're doing you're gonna have more lit rooms than not when the wiring goes wrong you can have extended periods of darkness extended periods of darkness even though you have the name of the light and that's why one of the mottos of the Reformation was post Tanner Brock's Luke's after darkness light the darkness was the darkness of all the corruptions that that had accumulated in the church over the centuries but those corruptions those barnacles on the on the ship of the the church are not there to be opposed and resisted but not in a way that not in a way that that scrubs the whole thing out so for example when a classical Protestant is asked well when if a if a bright Roman Catholic were to ask any kind of Protestant where was your church before the Reformation most modern evangelicals they have a hard time saying where their church was before 2012 well I don't know as I think the our pastor graduated from seminary and he I don't so that's one problem the pop evangelicalism has very thin view of history the Anabaptist tradition would say well where was your church before the Reformation and they say well hiding in caves from you guys mostly right we were running and we were on the lam we were running away we were no formal structure or anything like that but I've referred to Magisterial Protestants and I would lump Lutheran's Presbyterians Anglicans in this category in answer to the question where was your church before the Reformation I would say well where was your face before you washed it this is the Boniface is my brother at the church prior to the Reformation that's my church there's my Pete these are my people this is this is not an a dispute arose even even a stall whereas stalwart of reformers John Knox wrote a letter to Mary of Guise there were they're too many Mary's that's the 16th century had too many Mary's let's just agree on that but he wrote a letter to Mary of Guise and said basically would you lay off persecuting the Protestants right now because he said there's currently a dispute between us and the papal party so John Knox was thinking himself as being a member of a faction in the one Church this is the one Church and there's a papal party and there's our party and we're having a dispute and John Knox said could you hold off until we have a chance to have a general council and sort these things out historical events overtook everybody before that sort of thing could happen and I'll end with the words of CS Lewis he in his wonderful book on the called English literature in the 16th century excluding drama the first in the the introduction is he talks about how complicated the the theological issues were between wrong and the Protestants and he says it's it's as though you tried to set up a debate a metaphysical debate at the fair where you were walking through the fair trying to conduct this metaphysical debate where all he didn't use these words but the carnies and the roustabouts all these people were picking fights and the police were looking over the whole thing carefully and the police frequently changed sides so that was that was not the that was not the most conducive place to work these things out having said that it matters I I want to say as a as a Protestant that the Reformation was not a tragic mistake I want to say that the Reformation was a glorious thing and we hope that in time down the road as God blesses us there will be ecumenical reunion but not ecumenical reunion that is ok lists paper over our differences that that Martin lloyd-jones once said that there there's a certain kind of ecumenical person who thinks he's going to bring about a resurrection by putting all the corpses in one graveyard that's not that's not ecumenism and i found in again I'll echo Lewis again he says he says in a particular place that he's found that the people who are at the center of their communions often have more fellowship with one another than the people who live on the periphery of their own communions give me any day a debate or discussion with a man who wakes up in the morning knowing what he thinks as opposed to people who seems to be and I'm not quite sure today and I'm never so I would like to encourage you those of you who are Protestants to be convinced decided well taught thorough Protestants and that doesn't burn that doesn't burn any bridges with anybody provided you love them all right if you if you're loving your brother and sister you can talk about all these things should be able to talk about all of these things so let's thank the Lord father we thank you for your kindness to us we come all this to you we are very grateful for your kindness to us we're very grateful for all the things you've given us and we thank you in Jesus name and amen

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Length: 38min 3sec (2283 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019