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lecture 48 and handout theology justification part 1 1 faith is the heart of salvation and here is why it brings justification 2 and this was the heart of the Reformation 3 for Luther this was the article or doctrine by which the church stands or Falls for for John Calvin it was the quote hinge of the Reformation and Roman Catholicism though opposing it agreed on it's crucial t 5 the Protestant church stood on it and the Roman Church at the Council of Trent 1546 to 63 fell by rejecting it 6 the doctrine being so inseparable for Christianity from Christianity let us make sure we understand it and here I give a little diagrammatic outline of the four main interpretations one the liberal which teaches that works bring justification - faith without any faith being necessary to the antinomian view that faith brings justification without any works being necessary the Roman Catholic is that faith plus works brings justification and the Protestant biblical view faith brings justification plus works eight liberalism is anti supernatural Christianity as we've said a contradiction in terms because Christianity is founded on a supernatural person Jesus Christ and his supernatural Word the Bible nevertheless liberalism though it is anti-christian makes up the largest number the nominal Christians it's way of justification is entirely by what you do salvation by works pure and simple a do-it-yourself religion liberalism is for practice not faith deed not Creed life not doctrine in the diagram we write - faith not meaning that liberalism is opposed to faith in general but - faith in Christ as a divine person and his atonement as a divine work 9 antinomianism widespread in fundamentalism believes in a supernatural Christ and supernatural Bible without any question but it stresses by faith alone in such a way that the works which was follow need not notwithstanding there is supposed to be justification by faith this is anti-biblical an anti justification because faith without works is dead James 2:26 and finally on to Roman justification in the next lecture but first of all faith is the heart of salvation and here is why it brings justification we gave you several lectures you know on faith and because it's absolutely indispensable it is the point at which you come in saving contact actual union with Christ that's the reason it brings all its blessings and it's great blessing is justification being brought right by the removal of sin and the endowment of righteousness with God number two historically speaking this was the heart of the Reformation also you see the Reformation time there was no great debate about the Bible because the Roman Church believed in its inspiration just as truly as the Protestant church did the difference there was the matter of the authority of interpretation but not the book itself there was no debate about the Trinity because the existing church believed in that as much as the Protestant church actually did they all agreed on the virgin birth on the Incarnation on the death of Christ on the cross as a sacrifice they even believed in the necessity and faith they differed on the justification by faith alone as you'll see more particularly as I say here in 3/4 Luther this was the doctrine by which the church stands or fall he used to say he had take the Pope if he could have salvation by grace he didn't like that particular type of church government and we revisited Rome he was sickened by some of the things that went on there but he wasn't so hostile to the concept of papacy and he couldn't have lived with that if he could have had justification by faith alone and in the early days of his Reformation activity he really believed the reason the Pope was opposing it was because the Pope wasn't well-informed and he crowder hopefully expected that when he and others made that doctrine clearer the head of the Church of Rome would recognize that survival truth and vindicate Luther and he would become st. Martin rather than excommunicated from the Church of the time but this was indispensable he would keep the papacy if he could have justification but if he couldn't have justification with the papacy the papacy and everything else had to go because this was non-negotiable this is the way of salvation you're not going to come to God any other way here I stand you see number 4 for John Calvin who stood really on Luther's shoulder who learned the gospel indirectly through Lew sir but what's much more of a student of the Bible once he did that even Luther was it too in his opinion was the hinge of the Reformation at all turned essentially on this he wrote a great dissertation on the necessity of reforming the church he made many criticisms on the claims of Rome to having authority that he didn't think it had and misinterpretations of the sacraments and great abuses of celibacy and matters like that but he too would have agreed with Martin Luther that justification by faith was the heart of the matter Luther had said you know that earlier reformers had tried to trim the branches but he had put the axe at the root of the tree which is justification by faith alone Calvin never used that language but he shared that viewpoint if I understand him at all correctly he did a good deal of the trimming of the branches but he would have agreed with Luther that the axe had to be put at the root of the tree this was a fatal fall this wasn't calling just for cosmetic surgery this had to be a change of heart if any but Christianity was to be preserved number five the protestant church stood on it and the roman church at the council of trent 1546 263 fell by rejecting it the opinion of luther and calvin and all the other reformers you see what happened here 1546 you may notice is a very date of Luther's death 63 as a year before calvin died so you can see that rome is facing the Reformation and the issues it raised including and recognizing as central this matter of justification now by the time the major reformers have left the scene Roman Catholicism has rejected the Reformation root and branch but especially root at this particular matter of justification which and everybody's of Protestants opinion was essential to the existence of the church there couldn't be any salvation without it and it couldn't be any Church without salvation so it had to be and when Rome refused to be reformed refused to acknowledge the error of opposing it and actually rejected Protestant doctrine as the error itself then Rome fell into the state of a non Church and not a proclamation of the faith some changes are going on at the present time I don't have time to give you a historical lecture on this subject I'll let it drop with this simple remark about the present situation it looks as if the two churches are coming together again and actually are agreeing on justification that's a ruse that's merely on the facade it's a farce there is no real meeting of the issues but sometimes say what's going on here are Roman Catholics who aren't Roman Catholics talking with Protestants who aren't Protestants and of course having perfect agreement without touching the issue at all no one can dispute that the Protestant churches including the Lutheran seemed to be moving toward an acceptance of the Roman view and the Roman the acceptance of the Lutheran view and the opinion of this particular historian you are now listening to that's a farce it isn't real at all there is no true facing of the question actually what is happening is that the Protestant church has fallen away from the doctrine so badly that they can't really see the difference with the Roman view and Rome doesn't really understand in the representatives who are arguing the case for her what the heart of the Reformation issue was I'll have to leave it with that you may doubt it because it is such a summary comment about a that's been going on for decades now that looked as if on the surface of it there is a genuine rapprochement six the doctrine being so inseparable from Christianity let us make sure we understand it so with that little bit of historical resume let's look now at the doctrine itself and here I have presented it in terms of these four diagrams which I believe are generally accurate though they have of course the inevitable limitations of a diagram for something as profound as the doctrine of justification by faith alone I'd say the liberal view and IO take time for the liberal view because even though liberalism ought not to be in the church as I've said a half a dozen times it is in the church and it's numerically the greatest and it has its views and this is what's being spread as the idea of salvation or justification where they know the name and so on by liberalism works bring salvation or justification - faith now I've already said before that that doesn't mean that they're opposed to faith they believe in faith of always talking about faith what they are opposed to is faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ which is what is meant by justification by faith alone therefore you have to be careful when you're listening to liberals talk about their view they would sound as if they believe in justification by faith alone and they could be quite outraged at my representing them as not believing in faith I know they believe in faith but they don't believe in the faith which the church thinks justifies they reject that out of hand they don't believe as liberals at Jesus Christ as the virgin born son of God they don't believe he's any second person in the Trinity they don't believe he shed blood for the remission of sin that kind of faith is utterly reply to them so when they talk about faith it ought to be put in quotes they're talking about faith in the fact that the Sun will rise tomorrow or in the marital vows of a spouse or something like that they are not talking about this thing at all the only kind of gospel they know is the works gospel it's a do-it-yourself religion as I mentioned there you should if you're a Christian follow in the footsteps of Jesus you should do what's right you should practice the golden rule you should love your enemies you should go the Second Mile and touch and turn the other cheek and so on all of these things are quite cruel all of these things are right but these things are the ones which actually justify you or make you acceptable to God they rarely use the word justification but when we're talking about how we are acceptable to God in the opinion of the liberal we're born well and as long as we continue to do what we ought to live according to our conscience and observe the Golden Rule we are pleasing to God we're acceptable to God we are justified by God let me tell you an experience I had just to make you realize in case you don't already though I suppose you do that this attitude that I'm describing here the liberal view of justification get very widespread in Orthodox churches churches which ought to know better and we're talking you remember now about the doctrine by which the church stands or Falls the doctrine by which an individual stands or Falls I'm saying now and I'm going to illustrate in a moment that this particular doctrine which is an absolute travesty on the biblical doctrine and what Luther and Calvin lived and died for and so on has percolated through to the rank and file and people who would be reared not as liberals but as conservatives ever Jellicle x' and even reformed and so on are talking this way the thing I'm thinking of is this one time you ago in Omaha Nebraska I was to supply to pulpit in a Protestant church I got there a little bit early in time for the Sunday school and so they asked me if I would be willing to teach the Sunday School class of these young couples about 30 of them there's 15 or so couples I said I'd be glad to and I got some papers and I distributed them to the people and I asked them to do one thing for me write down on the paper what is the heart of Christianity not this truth of that truth of the other truth but what is the gospel what's the very central message of the Christian religion what's the good news it's right in your own language sign the paper if you want it doesn't matter to me you just tell me what you as individual professing young Christians in a church where the pastor was a very faithful minister of the word understood the heart of the Christian religion to me now I got about 30 replies back 28 of those told me about the golden rule they're going the Second Mile the loving people the doing good to people and so on all of the things they mentioned not lying being honest fair kind and so on every one of them was a teaching of the Christian religion but there were only two in that group who said anything at all about salvation by grace who even mentioned the good news what they were talking about simply this duty and that duty and the other but that they were justified by faith alone the real heart of the religion that were saved by Christ laying down his life washing away his our guilt in his blood that got on 2 out of 30 papers that particular type of thing now mind you that was a conservative Church conservative pastor in the pulpit well let's take a minute to say something one time I had my father-in-law who was an evangelical pastor visiting with us and he got into a conversation with our next-door neighbor who was a member of the Church of which I was the pastor and since the conversation went on right under my study window I couldn't help hearing it and you know what I heard I heard my parishioner who had been sitting on the mice instruction for about two years telling my father-in-law that salvation was by works and when my father-in-law tried to tell him about the gospel and all I had been teaching the gospel I had thought I had articulated clearly and emphatically and you know me because I wasn't teaching anything essentially different than than I'm now with you and so on I would never have given anybody the impression that he saved by doing this and doing that and doing the other thing but by trust in Christ alone though he do all those other things and there is the man with great conviction telling my father-in-law at the heart of the gospel is the doing this and doing that just as if he were an arch liberal and he had learned that from my father-in-law son-in-law so on there you are see how easy it is to go into the liberal pattern on this matter so I'm saying to you as I presume are mostly conservative people listening to these tapes ask yourself what are you trusting in what do you understand the gospel to be so much for liberalism let's look at antinomianism before we finish this part of the lecture here antinomianism has this particular pattern faith brings justification - works we call us officially antinomianism because it means against the law ISM it means it's against the idea of the works of the law or the acts of obedience being that necessary it's called easy believe ISM because believing in Christ you are justified without doing anything at all and that you are justified at this moment even if you never do a good work in your entire life now this you understand is not only not liberal it is anti liberal these people are fundamentalist always they believe in real faith they believe in a virgin born son of God who shed his blood for the remission of sins and they are singing constantly about their being power in the blood and all those glorious emphatic statements in music and in testimony and so on that Jesus died and we glory in the cross and our salvation is by him alone and nothing in my hands I bring to make you feel very very good because these people get the message about Christ and faith in Jesus Christ and they recognize that that brings justification you don't contribute anything to it you see it's Christ with whom you're united by faith who is the justifier nothing in my oh they love that him nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling these people are fundamentalist there are evangelicals they believe all the things that liberalism rejects and as such there are brothers of ours but at the same sisters but at the same time - works now here again we have to understand what that means that doesn't mean that it works refer to serving Christ preaching Christ spreading the gospel about Christ trying to win people to Christ doing good for people etc all the acts that this particular they're talking about works just all the rest of us talk about honesty and integrity and kindness and going the Second Mile and so on but when they say - here they don't mean they're hostile to them they don't mean that it's wrong to practice them but what they mean is that though you ought to practice them and it's a duty to practice them and that you'll get a reward if you practice them and that if you don't practice them you'll be saved so as by fire and you really be embarrassed before the judgment seat of Christ but you'll be saved without them that they will say so understand me here they're not against works in a sense they're for them and many of them work I do they roll up their sleeves they really labor for the Advancement of the gospel as they know it but what they mean by this - is it is not necessary as one thing these people will not take it will not accept and that is the idea that the works are necessary that's the battle work that's the code term you tell these people that it is necessary for you to engage in acts of obedience to Jesus Christ or you are not justified they will be fighting mad now some of them are capable in spite of their anger at this point of listening academically as it were I remember once I was with a group out there in Colorado a group of very bright young people and discussing this in connection with the Reformation they were sharpies they were college students and bright ones engaged in conservative Christian work and for about two hours in one of the classes we didn't do anything but just discuss this one point I was maintaining works are absolutely necessary if you are too be saved and they were fighting me every inch of the way but before the thing was over they finally realized and it was very hard to admit it that they really did agree with me yes this is what I was showing to them see the reason they resisted it the reason all fundamentalists who do resist it resistant is because they think that when you say the works are necessary if they think that you necessarily assume that they are contributing to your justification and I was saying to them no no no justification is by faith alone but the Bible is insisting that faith without works is dead this is in other words a working faith it's faith but it's a true faith it's a working faith and if it isn't a working faith there's no justification if those works are not they're not contributing to justification but at definite expression of the reality of the faith which is a working faith that it's not a working faith it's a dead faith and if it's a dead faith no one is going to be justified by a dead faith as I say it took two hours of grinding careful close analysis what the students used to call being put on the hot seat my cursor I just made them think it through and they were not willing for a moment to say when they once faced it that it was possible for an individual to believe truly in Jesus Christ unless he was giving evidence of it and once they got it clearly in their mind that that's all that we're saying that's involved in faith true faith it has to be working faith oh that work is there and if it works are not there this isn't here if that isn't there this isn't here and this isn't here you see how very important this is you see as I say I always feel kind of tenderness toward my conservative friends who differ here on the other hand I get even angrier with them because and I do with the Liberals because the Liberals are lost souls they're just out of no man's land they don't conjure with the Bible at all but here are people who live and die by the Bible nevertheless teaching something which actually cuts a heart out of the cross here again I've said about one as theologian here who actually will defend this sort of thing his fundamental problem is it cannot understand the difference between necessary work and meritorious work we are saying these works are necessary not that they have any value in actually saving a person they don't have any merit the merit is all in Jesus Christ and Christ alone and I say if a person can't understand the difference between necessary works and meritorious works he may be a Christian but he ought never to be in a Christian pulpit this is a false gospel the idea that a person can be saved and maybe I can squeeze this one remark in before we have to end this lecture just to show you how this thing can be carried out realistically and dreadful deeds that are associated nevertheless with a true Christian state one time when I was lecturing at a Christian college I won't mention because I don't think the college believes this or champion this at all nevertheless I was more or less on this subject at somebody somewhere or other got a note sort of 3x5 card circulating up to me some very circuitous route had ultimately gotten the Dean stand up on the platform and even while I was speaking it was given to me and this is what it said apparently I was supposed to read it while I was lecturing somebody was registering a vivid protest this is what it said I am having sex with this girl every day I'm not married with her I'm having sex with her every day I have been born again by the Holy Spirit and I have the joy of the Lord in my life because II was justified by faith the fact that he was living in open defiance of the will of God showing by his avowed behavior that he didn't have any faith at all because he was living on this proposition it was possible to have faith without any works he not only devoid of works but actually practicing the grossest kind a violation of the commandment of Jesus Christ was yet wanting me to know he had been born again and he had the joy of the Lord in his heart that's is how serious this thing can be now obviously a person like that has not been born again he is not justified by faith if he doesn't repent he will most certainly perish God grant that none of you will fall into any such trap as this you