Sola Fide

October 15, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Out of the Reformation came five sola statements—five statements that tried to bring people back to the purity of the gospel message. This week as I studied to prepare my message on sola fide (justification with God by faith alone), I was struck by how in need of another reformation we are today!

That shouldn’t be surprising, because satan is always trying to so sneakily get us off track. So he gets people believing that they don’t need faith in God, that God is a myth, or if He does exist, He’s really not that involved in our individual lives. For these people, satan tries to get them to buy into this lie:

Works > Faith

In other words, what you can do for yourself is more important than the faith you can place in anyone (or in The One).

Some people might accept that the approach to God is through faith, but then they feel they have to add something to their faith in order to stay in God’s good graces. These people have bought into the lie:

Faith + Works 

And then there are some that go to the far extreme of thought that faith means utter inactivity on their part. They have received forgiveness from God, so now they can just sit back and enjoy the ride to Heaven. They’ve bought into satan’s lie:

Works ⊈ Faith

In other words, now that I have faith, I don’t have to work anymore. Or even, the more faith I have the less work I have to do. (The mathematical symbol ⊈means faith is not a part of work, nor is work a part of faith.)

The Scripture is clear that you cannot buy your justification by working for it, nor can you keep it by adding works to your faith; however, faith does indeed require work for it to grow and mature. 

The Westminster Confession says it this way:

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

The bottom line:

Sola Fide = Faith Works

Faith works in justification. Faith works in the atonement. Faith works in sanctification. Faith works in love.

If you have missed any of the messages in this series, you can find them all here.

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Sola Scriptura

October 8, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Of all the other sola statements that came out of the Reformation, sola scriptura has to be one of the most foundational. Without a firm understanding of the truthfulness of God’s Word, all other doctrinal statements are without authority. Sola scriptura means that we use the Bible as our authoritative guide for everything in our lives.

Jesus confronted the religious leaders for their misuse and abuse of Scripture. The Sadducees had a tendency to ignore the parts of Scripture which didn’t fit their “theology.” The Pharisees, on the other hand, would over-exaggerate some Scriptures which would leave other passages dwarfed or forgotten.

In Matthew 23, Jesus took on both of these incorrect approaches. What I love is that Jesus didn’t share His opinion, He didn’t argue with them, He didn’t try to convince them to accept His viewpoint. Jesus just took them back to Scripture.

  • You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God (23:29).
  • Have you not read what God said to you (23:31).
  • David, speaking by the Spirt…says… (22:43).

When Jesus said, “You are in error,” the verb tense is the passive voice. This means it was something done to them, not something they did. These religious leaders were not purposely straying from Scripture, but by listening to men instead of God they allowed themselves to be lead astray.

That’s why this insight from Luke is so powerful:

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17:11)

This is great counsel for all of us. We should all listen to pastors and teachers, or read authors, through the filter of Scripture. We need to make sure we aren’t passively straying, and we do this by examining the Scripture.

If you have missed any of the messages in this series, you can find them all here.

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Sola

October 3, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

On October 31, 1517, a sea change in world history was begun. On that day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church, challenging the traditions of organized religion which he believed had strayed far from the instructions in the Bible.

The Reformation had been launched.

I truly believe that we all must be students of history, partly because all of his story is His Story. When we study history, we can see how God is working out His Story.

Second, we also need to know our history because as George Santayana rightly said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

A third reason to (re)learn the thoughts brought out during the Reformation is for doctrinal strength. It’s important to know not only what why believe but why we believe it. And there are some valuable doctrinal truths in the history of the Reformation.

Finally, I believe an important part of learning is unlearning. Sometimes we accept something just because it’s been handed down to us. That is in large part what Luther and other reformers were challenging, and calling us to unlearn tradition and relearn what the Bible has to say.

So beginning this Sunday we will be walking through the five Sola doctrinal statements the reformers taught. I am really looking forward to relearning and unlearning, and just outright learning the biblical truths of the five solas.

I hope you can join me at Calvary Assembly of God.

Here are the topics we covered in this series:

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