Preview(S): The Five Solas...You gotta have faith, faith, faith
'Cause I gotta have faith / I gotta have faith / Because I gotta to have faith faith faith /I gotta to have faith, faith, faith...
At no point has George Michael ever been accused of being a theologian (he has been accused...and convicted...of a few less savory things) but you have to hand it to the man. He has a point. In fact it's one of the principal points of the Reformation: you have to have faith. "Faith Alone" does not mean that there isn't anything else important but it does mean that faith, not acts of the law, are the the means by which we receive God's grace (you remember "grace"...we talked about it last week). I am constantly amazed by Christians who read this, understand it intellectually, and even speak it aloud as their personal belief...then live entirely law bound, works-righteous lives.
Ok, I feel the need to post some warnings right here and
now. Don't let the George Michael reference fool you. Today we are going to dive into some really deep water theologically. I know I try to keep it light and accessible usually but today we are going to get reealllllyyy Lutheran. We live in a world that likes to dumb stuff down and insult our intelligence by assuming that we can't handle depth, but I know you all can handle some deep water. So let's grab those theological goggles and swim fins and dive in.
What do I mean when I say "works righteousness"? Let's talk about that. There is the law, and none of us Lutheran-type-people are denying that the law has a role. God gave us the law and it serves an essential purpose. But, like most useful tools it can be used or it can be abused. Everyone knows a pipe wrench is an essential tool for doing plumbing...but everyone knows you can also use it to kill Professor Plumb in the Library. Lutherans look at the law and the notion of righteousness and have a good bit to say. If you look at one of our central documents "The Epitome of the Formula of Concord" (pulling out the big Lutheran guns on this one) then you can see that we have always held that there are really two kinds of righteousness:
- First: Righteousness in the Eyes of God. This one comes from Christ and Christ alone.: "we poor sinners are justified before God and saved alone by faith in Christ, and thus Christ alone is our Righteousness. (Epitome of the Formula of Concord, Article 3). Nothing you or I can do, have done, or will do makes us righteous before the perfection of God. We are broken sinners who cannot clothe ourselves in wholeness...but by God's grace we have been clothed before God in the very righteousness of Jesus through faith. So, in case there is any question here, when we show God our awesomely impressive good deeds God is not impressed. If we were to stand before the throne of God and demand entry into the Kingdom of God based on our perfect attendance at church or our gold stars for Biblical studies, God is not impressed. If we were to demonstrate how amazingly we all avoided drinking, smoking, swearing, and eating sweets between meals...God is not impressed. To be clear, when us sinners (and we are all sinners) stand before God, he is not impressed...except that we have faith in Christ Jesus. THAT is something else altogether. In that we receive the very grace of God that forgives all our sins...and then only by faith. The law cannot inform us on how to receive this sort of righteousness, only show us that we need salvation through faith in Christ alone and that without that grace all hope is lost.
- Second: Righteousness in the eyes of the world. This one has to do with whether or not we are living lives worthy of our calling in the eyes of the world. It is an active sort of righteousness. This is certainly what God requires of us through his word. This is what the law DOES serve to inform us about: how we are to behave in obedience to God. It does not produce salvation, it does not assure us of pardon, it does not produce any eternal life....but it is what God asks of us. This is where we have perfect attendance at church, and gold stars for Biblical studies, where we demonstrate how amazingly we all avoided drinking, smoking, swearing, and eating sweets between meals. God requires that we follow his law righteously not because he is a cruel task master, but because failure to do so will always land us in the deep and treacherous waters of "natural consequences". That's right: when we break God's laws, there are natural consequences. Get drunk and miss work....you get fired. That is not the wrath of God, that is a natural consequence. If we are living righteously in the eyes of the world remember this is still not righteousness in the eyes of God, so we don't get to pat ourselves on the back about it, or look down on our less successful neighbors as a result of it. We are merely doing what is expected of us. There are no participation trophies in the Kingdom of God....righteousness is an expectation, not a salvation... but instead we rely on faith for our salvation. Paul says to the Romans in Chapter 4 "Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness."
And Paul was quick to point out that while we are called to live lives that respect God's law, it is not by that law that we are saved:
Galatians 3:1-9
You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.Your salvation is not produced by your worldly righteousness...nor is it canceled out by your lack thereof. So, you may ask, "Are you are saying is that if I am willing to live with the awful consequences of my non-righteous life, but
still have faith in Jesus then I can go to heaven?
Kegger at my house tonight, we're gettin' un-righteous!"
No, that is not what I am saying...because if I was saying that it would be heresy. Specifically, it would be a kind of heresy called antinominanism. I am not saying that because your salvation is assured through Jesus Christ that you are not bound by the requirements of God's law.
an·ti·no·mi·an [ˌan(t)ēˈnōmēən] ADJECTIVE Of or relating to the view that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law.I am saying that by faith alone you are saved, but let's look at what that means. If you say you have faith in Jesus as your savior and Lord but choose to live in opposition to his law what sort of faith is it that you have?
Let's do a little thought experiment here and see if we can get to the bottom of why antinomianism might be heresy. If I say to you, "I put a deadly snake under your chair when you weren't looking and boy does it look mad!" You may have one of three reactions:
- You claim to have faith that I am telling the truth....and perhaps you shout out, "ARGGGGHHHH SNAKE!" leap up and run away. You have faith in my statement.
- You know that I am a kidder, laugh and go back to sipping your coffee, safe in the knowledge that, despite the fact that I grew up in West Virginia, I don't handle snakes. You have no faith in my statement.
- You claim to have faith that I am telling the truth...but inexplicably go back to sipping your coffee leaving us all to wonder if you really had faith in my warning...or just reallllllllly love coffee. A conundrum that none but God and you have any insight into.
In the end, faith without action is dead faith...or no faith at all. So, when I say that faith cannot abide inaction we can see that the inaction of antinomianism is a repudiation of faith itself. By the way, did you think to look under your chair?
So, when the early reformers wrote about faith they used the words, "Sola Fide", or "only by faith", in Latin. When they wrote this they meant that we Christians needed to understand that when it comes to salvation, "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) Only through faith, and faith alone, do we receive the grace of salvation, but that salvation changes us and frees us to follow God's law in new and deep ways.
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