Our Blog

Hold the Line on Sola Fide

 BY BENJAMIN R. LEE, Assistant Pastor, Oakwood Presbyterian Church 

     It’s October again. I love October. Like most people, I love October because I get to pull my favorite jackets and sweaters out of the closet, carve pumpkins with my boys, and then eat their trick-or-treat candy in early November. What’s not to love? But that’s not what gets me most excited every year when October rolls around. Maybe “excited” isn’t even the right word. In October I get hyped, energized, even a tad chippy because in October I’m reminded of the Reformation.

     Reformation Day falls every year on October 31. It’s the day we remember that neurotic monk turned devil-defying preacher, Martin Luther, who nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517 in defiance of the Pope, lighting the spark that blazed into Reformation across Europe. Luther had been a monk for a decade before giving the last 30 years of his life to the Reformation. It was in those days in the monastery at Erfurt when, through great inner turmoil, Luther rediscovered the gospel of unmerited grace. Luther once said if anyone could have been saved by his monkery, it was him. He took his monastic vows seriously, and not without reason. He knew of God’s holiness. He knew better than most the depths of his depravity. He was tortured by the question of how a just and holy God could forgive him. He tried everything to find peace: confession, penance, indulgence, good works, even self-flagellation. But peace remained elusive. In such great despair was Luther he would later write that had the light of the gospel not broken through, he surely would have killed himself.

     But breakthrough it did. As Luther pondered and studied the Scriptures, he discovered that great doctrine, sola fide. He found that the holy God can and freely does justify the wicked not according to their works or manner of living, but only according to free grace received through faith alone. Just a year after writing the 95 Theses Luther penned a work I would argue is of even greater theological and historical importance, The Heidelberg Disputation. In Disputation 24 Luther wrote, “He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.”

     It’s no wonder sola fide spread like wildfire across Europe. No one had heard this before, at least not for hundreds of years. That God justifies, or declares sinners righteous, freely and completely without the aid of our works or merit, but only on account of Christ, was anathema in the church in those days. That’s why the Roman church reacted so harshly against the doctrine, and why Luther would spend the final 30 years of his life holding the line.

     It cannot be overstated enough that both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers viewed sola fide as a central issue. From Rome’s vantage point sola fide undercut their entire religious system, in which everything from the Mass to the penitential system was built on the belief that justification was not a once-for-all declaration of imputed righteousness based on the sufficient work of Christ. Rome taught (and still teaches) that justification is a process whereby God infuses grace into sinners in order to progressively make them inherently righteous, so that they may in the end be righteous enough to attain heaven. The chasm between these two views could not be wider.

     This is why Luther famously said justification sola fide is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. The second-generation Reformer, John Calvin, would later add that “justification is the hinge on which all true religion turns.” The Reformation wasn’t just some theological spitting match. It wasn’t merely a bunch of ivory-tower intellectuals attempting to outduel one another to win the crowds. The Reformers, and the Catholic Church for that matter, believed this was a battle for the church, a battle for souls, a battle for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

     That’s why I find myself a tad chippy come October. It’s because every October I’m reminded that though it’s been 500 since Luther began the protest against Rome, the protest still continues. We must keep holding the line on sola fide. The Apostle Paul warned us against turning to another “gospel.” Since Paul’s day, Satan has hurled myriads of false gospels upon the church, the errors of Rome being only a small fraction. Martin Luther understood this better than most. He wrote in his commentary on Galatians that, “The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all of our heart.” Luther knew how easily the gospel can be obscured in our hearts by the world, the flesh, and the devil.

     The errors of Rome resurface in every generation in numerous ways. It was barely 20 years ago that our very own Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), along with the rest of NAPARC, held the line against the errors of the Federal Vision which challenged the Reformation doctrine of sola fide. Today even popular preachers (perhaps unknowingly) go terribly sideways on this central doctrine. One has even said we do not “attain heaven” by faith alone. For that, there are “conditions” we must meet.[i] How tragic. That’s not to mention “the frailty of our flesh” in believing deeply the promise of free forgiveness in Christ, or the devil’s continual assaults upon our consciences where he terrifies us with threats of wrath and hell, tempting us to look to our works for assurance of God’s love. Sola Fide is always under siege.

     So we hold the line. As Luther would tell us if he could, “we do not believe our conscience above the word of God.” And when he comes with accusation and threat “the best thing you can do is rap the devil on the nose at the very start.”[ii] You have to get a little chippy with the devil sometimes. The same is true with every false gospel that places the burden of merit on the backs of sinners. We will not stand for it. We say alongside Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and alongside all the Reformers who followed him, from Calvin and Bucer to Lloyd Jones and RC Sproul, “here we stand.” Try as the world, the flesh, and the devil might, the protest for sola fide will not move an inch.

     This October, spend some time studying this great Reformation doctrine. On our website’s resource page you can find a document entitled Reformation Era Creeds and Confessions on Justification in which are compiled discoveries and teachings from the Reformation on justification. Drink in the riches of free acceptance in Christ. Then get a little chippy. Let’s hold the line of protest in our generation and lay the groundwork for the next. Because just as October rolls around every year, so do those “other gospels.” Don’t be hesitant to keep pounding nails into church doors.

Covenant Hope for Empty Arms

BY BENJAMIN R. LEE, Assistant Pastor, Oakwood Presbyterian Church 

     It happened again. For the second time in 9 months, there was no heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor. Two beautiful image-bearing babies. Two traumatic hospital stays. Two pairs of empty arms. It’s hard to put into words the heartbreak Maggie and I, our three boys, and our parents have experienced over these last 9 months. How can you? We hadn’t finished grieving the first baby yet. It’s only been a few months since Annie’s due date passed. Annie – that’s what we named her. Our first daughter. We only buried her last Thanksgiving. When we found out Maggie was pregnant a few months back, we feared it might happen again. It seemed like a bad dream that couldn’t come true, but it did. Now here we are again; waiting for another due date to come and go, thinking of all we’re going to miss out on. I’ll never hold those babies in my arms, or dry their tears, or sing them to sleep. I’ll never play dolls with Annie, or send her off to college, or walk her down the aisle. Our arms are painfully empty.

     There was a time when Abraham’s arms were painfully empty, not through miscarriage, but through infertility, an equally acute pain that remained with Abraham for many years. However, at the age of 75, God made a promise to Abraham, a promise that would continue to sustain him for another 25 years until the birth of his son, Isaac. The promise is the covenant of grace. Even when Abraham’s hands remained empty for those 25 years God promised, “I will be God to you and to your children forever” (Genesis 17:7). The covenant of grace was a promise to Abraham that he would be saved from his sin by grace through faith in Christ, and that his children would be included in the covenant community. It was a promise that God would care for Abraham and for his children, for “to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).

     During those dreadfully sad hospital stays, it was this promise that filled me with hope and gave rest to my soul. This same promise is, after all, given to us in Christ. While we are not Abraham’s physical descendants, we are his spiritual children (Galatians 3:7), so the same promises belong to us. God will be God to us and to our children forever.

     It is not wise to pry into God’s sovereignty. We could never comprehend all He is doing through our suffering. I don’t know all the reasons God planned for this to happen. But the covenant promise tells me that one of God’s purposes in this is in his kind sovereignty, God allowed my precious wife to carry these two babies for a short time so that they could be counted as belonging to the covenant of grace. In other words, God used my wife’s womb as an ordinary means by which he grew his kingdom. Through stillbirth and miscarriage, we’ve come to be able to say with the Apostle Paul that what has meant death for us has meant life for our babies, who are now enjoying life to the fullest in heaven (2 Corinthians 2:14). Our arms are empty, but Christ’s aren’t. “Let the little children come to me,” he said…and they have. Our two little babies have been brought safely into the arms of Christ and he will hold them forever.

     But we have an even greater consolation than this in the covenant of grace. God promised Abraham that he would give the promised land to his descendants (Genesis 15:18), but even Abraham knew God wasn’t speaking about an earthly home. The promised land was just a picture of a new and greater promised land – the new heaven and earth (Hebrews 11:10). When we said goodbye to these two little babies my greatest consolation wasn’t even knowing they are with Jesus, but that one day I’ll see them again. That’s why John reiterates the covenant promise in Revelation in his vision of the new heaven and new earth: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). We were given a painfully short time with our two babies, and oh man, I feel like I’m going to miss out on so much. But I know my Redeemer lives, and at the last, he will stand upon the earth (Job 19:25), and my babies will be standing with Him. On that day, and for another 10,000 years, it will seem as though we never missed a thing.

     In the meantime, as we wait, our empty hands can hold onto nothing more steadfast than the covenant of grace. In spite of all the promises and hope the pain is still real. The tears still burn. Empty arms ache. But we hold on to Jesus because the promise of his covenant is that just as Jesus holds our babies, he’s holding us too. We were not alone in the ultrasound room, or at the hospital. We were not alone when we wept at the graveside. Jesus has been holding us in his mighty hands, and He’s not letting go. His Spirit keeps on whispering the promises through His word. He tells me it won’t be long now. Just a while longer. One day, when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.