Introduction - Deceitful Ambiguities

The passage we just read exhorts us to contend earnestly for the historical faith. And that is all that Reformation Sunday is about. It’s about protesting, fighting, and contending. It is easy to grow weary of arguing, weary of defending, weary of contending, and weary of negativity. It’s much nicer to focus on pleasant things and the things that we agree with. But Jude warns us that it is dangerous to stop fighting for the faith. We live in a world where depravity exists, and if you aren’t fighting it, it is so easy to be influenced by it. You could call this the spiritual second law of thermodynamics. At least part of the second law of thermodynamics states that in an isolated system, entropy (or moving from order to disorder) tends to occur without energy from outside the system being applied. It's not a perfect analogy, but I would say that without energy from outside the system (from God Himself), spiritual systems tend to degenerate theologically and morally. And you can see this law illustrated in the denominations that have become corrupted over the past 100 years. And especially in the last 50 years the church has forgotten the old paths, and we need to fight for a Reformation all over again. Entropy will not automatically reverse itself.

Anyway, I want to take the next 40 minutes or so to remind all of us of the importance of the word “alone” in the reformation - and that without it, Christianity is in deep trouble. Truth, antithesis, and morality is being eroded in evangelical circles, and even in some Reformed circles. And it is critical that we keep this doctrine before our minds. Let me give you a brief quiz to test your knowledge of Reformation theology. Don’t give your answers out loud. I don’t want to embarrass you. But try to answer each question in your head.

Question #1 – True or false: the Roman Catholic church believes in justification by faith? Believe it or not, the correct answer is, "True." They do. If you read their new catechism or even their old Council documents you will see that they affirm justification by faith. Even the Council of Trent (which pronounced anathemas against the Protestant church), affirmed justification by faith. In section VIII it says, “…man is justified by faith.” What they don’t believe in (and what was anathematized) is justification by faith alone. So the agreement in language is an illusion. When you read controversial books on this subject that seem OK to you, check for this word “alone.” This is usually one of the first words to go. And the reason is that the word "alone" is a combative word that doesn't just affirm truth; it also rejects error. That ain't cool in the post-modern world.

Question #2 - Does the Roman Catholic church believe that apart from grace no one can be saved? And the answer again is: “Yes, they do.” They absolutely insist on the need for grace. They believe we are saved by grace. What they deny is that man is saved by grace alone. Instead, they believe in synergism. Synergism comes from two Greek words: sun (together with) and ergon (to work), meaning that salvation is a cooperative venture of God and man working together – synergism – we both contribute to salvation. In contrast, we believe in monergism. Monergism is made up of two words: mono (only one) and ergon (to work), meaning that God alone produces salvation. We can only work out what He has 100% worked in us. Or as the fantastic video that Tim posted words it, works are the fruit of Gospel, not the foundation of the Gospel. So, unlike Rome, we believe in monergism, not synergism. So you have learned two ten dollar words.

Question #3 - Does the Roman Catholic church believe that Christ is our mediator? They do. But they also believe in other mediators like Mary, the saints and the church. They just didn’t like that nasty little word “alone” that the Reformers attached to Christ. This is why many of us smelled a rat when Promise Keepers took the offensive word “alone” out of their doctrinal statement decades ago.¹ It was a 100% capitulation to the Roman Catholic position. Several Roman Catholic leaders quickly declared that they found the Promise Keepers doctrinal statement to now be compatible with their doctrinal statements. It began in 1998 with Archbiship Charles Chaput giving a thumbs up, followed by Father Christian Van Liefde, and others who stated that the doctrinal statement of Promise Keepers is compatible with Romanism. Most evangelicals don't realize that the leaders of that organization deliberately left out the word "alone" to be more inclusive, and therefore they deliberately compromised the Gospel.

Question #4 - Does Rome believe that Scripture is inspired and infallible and is the foundation for our Christian life and practice? You might be surprised by this, but they do. What they deny is that the Scripture is our only authority or only rule for faith and practice. They deny that it is sufficient for faith and practice. They believe it needs to be supplemented. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, #88 says, “the Church… does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. [Get that word “alone” that they are denying. They go on] Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” They deny the doctrine of sola Scriptura. And the Council of Trent anathematized people who held to this word “alone” - despite the fact that the church of the first 1000 years believed in all of these solas that I am going through. Rome in effect anathematized the church of the first millennium. They had abandoned the true catholic faith. The Protestant position is the true position of the first millennium of church history, and the Reformation was simply trying to bring the church back to its historic position.

Listen to this quote. The following statement was made at the Council of Trent, an official Roman Catholic Council that condemned the Protestant Reformation – and they have never renounced it. They said: “that God justifies the impious by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (VI, p. 92). Now that sounds good till you realize that they leave out the word alone so that they can also add some poison in - poison that is explicitly added in. This illustrates that it is never enough to affirm something positive, but we must also reject falsehood. We must contend with falsehood. This is true in the Prolife movement. It's not enough that a bill makes some forward progress if it also makes exemptions on the murder of babies for rape, incest, the life of the mother, the first trimester, etc., and thus affirms that abortion is acceptable in some situations. That's not godly incrementalism like Bradley Pierce and Jeff Durban hold to. That's voting for something false and evil. I think that Jeff Durbin and Bradley Pierce did a nice job of explaining that in the first section. By the way, if you didn't see the debate on Friday, both sides presented very well and were very respectful of each other. But I think that debate will give you a good idea of where the ambiguities in this debate are at. And if you have any questions on it, I'll be happy to talk to you.

In any case, some people say, “If you can’t say something positive, then don’t say it at all.” Well, sometimes that can be good advice, but it’s not always true. It is not until you start saying, “That doctrine is wrong” that you are earnestly contending for the faith in obedience to Jude 3. Affirmation of truth is not contending. It is not fighting against something - which we are commanded to do in Jude. The Protestant Reformation is called Protestant because it protests something. And unfortunately many evangelicals are no longer willing to protest, which means that they will eventually no longer be Protestants in their distinctives.

You see, the Scriptures don’t just condemn those who refuse to affirm truth. The Bible also condemns the person who does not reject what is wrong. Actually, Psalm 36:4 is even stronger and condemns the person who "does not abhor evil." We cannot celebrate an abortion bill that has explicitly stated exceptions since those exceptions constitute evil. If the bill has untruth or evil in it, Psalm 36:4 calls us to abhor it.

We need to realize that Satan affirms all kinds of truths, but mixes those truths with error. In fact, if Satan didn't mix in some truth, the error would not be as palatable. It's the presence of truth that makes heresy so sneaky. Reformation day has fallen out of favor precisely because it is a reminder that error must be exposed. And that is no longer politically correct in evangelical circles. People think: “It’s not loving and gracious.” Well, I beg to differ. Failing to rescue people from hell is not loving and gracious, and the Reformation exposed error precisely for the purpose of rescuing souls from hell. I’m giving this lengthy introduction because I want you to see how critically important this little word “alone” really is.

If I placed two glasses of lemonade in front of you, one having lemonade plus deadly poison and the other having only lemonade or lemonade alone, you would think that the word “only” is a pretty important distinction, wouldn’t you? It could spell the difference between life and death. And wouldn’t you wonder about my sanity if I told you not to focus upon the differences between the two glasses. “Don’t be so negative. These glasses have so much in common. They both affirm lemonade.” That would be absurd. And yet that is precisely the absurdity that is being promoted by the modern ecumenical movement that wants to include Rome - and Eastern Orthodoxy for that matter. Listen to this statement written by Evangelicals and Catholics Together. It says,

“We give thanks to God that in recent years many Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them, have been able to express a common faith in Christ and so to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”²

And they go on to outline the points of agreement that they have. Now let me clarify: I think we would all agree that there are some saved Roman Catholics. But they are saved precisely because they do not believe Roman Catholic doctrine, but have instead believed the messages they hear from the Bible, protestant radio, blogs, podcasts, and books. But this document goes way beyond that. It says that these so-called “brothers and sisters in Christ” are “Catholics who are conscientiously faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church.” They are affirming that the two glasses of lemonade are sufficiently the same that you can drink from either glass and survive. And now there are Reformed people who are saying the same thing. And it shocks me. By the way, you will be shocked when you see some of the Evangelical leaders who signed on to that Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement. Some of them have drifted further downhill in recent years and have begun to promote Critical Race Theory and aspects of the Woke movement. It's sad.

Well, interestingly, an almost identical statement was made at the time of the Reformation for Luther to sign onto. But he refused. It was the Colloquy of Ratisbon. You ought to get a history book and read about that. History keeps repeating itself. Luther rejected the Colloquy of Ratisbon as heresy. And he said that the heresy wasn’t so much found in what it said in that document, but in what it left out. Luther insisted that the lemonade had poison and the lemonade needed to be rejected until the arsenic was removed. The compromisers wanted to keep a foot in each camp by focusing only on what everyone could agree on. They said that the Roman church agreed that the Bible is our standard and our authority. They said, “We are in agreement.” But the Reformers shot back that unless the Bible is our only standard for faith and practice, it loses its authority. They said to Rome: “You believe in Scripture plus tradition, plus the church, plus extra continuing revelation, plus the authority of the Pope.” It was a similar position to what the Pharisees held to when arguing with Jesus. They emphasized that they too believed in the Bible. But in Matthew 15 Jesus said, "you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition." Jesus said that their authoritative church tradition undermined the authority of Scriptures. And we can say the same to Rome. Rome was not offended by the word “Scripture” so long as you didn’t attach to it the offensive and exclusive little word sola (which means "alone" or "only"). Think of that word as the gloves needed for the boxing match.

Let’s see what happens when the alone’s and only’s of Scripture are taken out of a handful of doctrines.

Jesus is the Only Sinless Man

What difference does it make whether or not we believe that Jesus is the Only Sinless Man? This is not one of the main five solas. It might be helpful to know that the Reformation actually had many solas. But this sola was an important one - a foundational one. Martin Luther’s book, The Bondage of the Will, was considered by all the Reformers to be the lynchpin on which the Reformation hung. I love that book. It is well worth reading. If you once buy into the doctrines of total depravity and God’s total sovereignty (both of which are beautifully discussed in Luther's book), everything else in the Reformation falls into place. But the Romanist church not only denied the Reformed doctrine of total depravity, but even denied that every person was polluted by sin. Did you know that? The Catholic catechism affirms that Mary was conceived completely free from original sin, and from any stain of original sin, and that for the duration of her entire life she was kept free from any sinful thoughts, motives, words or actions. She was perfect. Some Roman Catholics assume the same for John the Baptist (because he was full of the Holy Spirit while in the womb before he was circumcised or baptized, and their semi-Pelagian view of human nature makes them believe that he was spared from original sin). But it is only the sinlessness of Mary that has become official Roman Catholic dogma. And I hate to use the word "Catholic" for them, because we are the true catholics. The word "catholic" was coined by Ignatius of Antioch around 110 AD to describe the true unified worldwide universal church. Well, Rome had by the time of the Reformation abandoned many of the cardinal doctrines that the church universally held to for the first millennium. They are not catholic. Not at all. Anyway, that Mary was free of all sin became church dogma in 1854 in a doctrine known as the immaculate conception of Mary. 1854 is pretty late; you won't find that dogma in the church of the first millennium. Anyway, the Romanist catechism says,

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

The catechism continues:

The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God ‘the All-Holy’ (Parnagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.’ By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.³

So they say that her creation was very similar to the creation of Jesus. Well, let’s test this against the Scripture. Revelation 15:4 says, "Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy." For you alone are holy. If that "alone" had been insisted on, then Mary would not have been elevated to the status of co-redeemer and mediatrix. Mary herself confessed that she needed a savior in Luke 1:47. Why? Because she was a sinner in need of redemption just like everybody else. Revelation says to God: "You alone are holy." Christ in Mark 10:18 says, "No one is good — except God alone." So Jesus was covered because He is God. He is the only man who is God. And He wanted to see if the questioner really believed that. No one is good – except God alone. His mother was living at that time, so He obviously thought she had sin. Psalm 14:3 says, "They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt, there is none who does good, no, not one." And Paul repeated that in the New Testament, so it continues to be true of even Mary. 1 Sam. 2:2 says, 'No one is holy like the LORD, for there is none besides You." If God alone is holy, and if man has no good that he can contribute to salvation, then that means that salvation is 100% of God. Some people think that God builds the bridge of salvation most of the way over the grand canyon, but that we must supply at least some of the timbers to complete the bridge. (And of course they say that Mary, the saints, the church, and others help to supply some of the timbers as well.) But if every action of man apart from grace is polluted by sin, it means that anything we supply is rotten timbers that will let us down - yes, even our good works are polluted by sin, and they can only be seen as good works because they are covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I loved the image that Doug Wilson gave in his open letter to President Trump - that repentance means turning away from the shelving unit containing our bad works and our good works and turning around and looking at the shelving unit of Jesus that has all of His good works and trusting what He accomplished to save us. If you start walking on that bridge of synergism, you will fall through. That’s why the Bible insists that God must grant repentance to the Gentiles, and why faith is a gift of God. In other words, there are no timbers that we supply, not even faith. Even faith is said by Scripture to be a gift of God - as Martin Luther so clearly showed.

So what difference does this point make? One implication for us is that even we who are already saved should take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on the Lord. When people doubt their salvation and wonder if their faith is strong enough to carry them through, Satan’s common trick is to make them look at the weakness of their faith. He wants us to focus on the shelving unit of all of our good and bad works. Assurance of salvation only comes when we realize we have nothing to offer God but a corpse and our focus for salvation is not on what we have done, but turning around and looking at the shelving unit filled with Christ's good works. There is a big difference between trusting the timbers you have put down and trusting the timbers that He has put down. God doesn’t want us to have faith in our faith. He wants us to have faith in Jesus. True faith always looks away from self to God. Later we will look at another application - that only God gets the glory.

Sola Scriptura

But let’s move on to one of the five solas that has become famous from the Reformation: sola Scriptura. Turn to James 4:12. This is a powerful Scripture. Rome gave authority to the pope, to councils, and to priests to make new laws (what they call tradition - filled with new laws), and these news laws go way beyond anything you will find in the Bible. So look at James 4:12. It says, "There is one Lawgiver [Fourteen of my translations have it - “there is only one Lawgiver” - but either way, it has the same implications - "there is one Lawgiver"], who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?" It’s not enough to say that God is our Lawgiver. Roman Catholics and evangelicals agree. But we must also be exclusive and rule out any other lawgiver. Why do modern Eastern Orthodox and Romanists insist that the church can make new laws? It is because they can't back of their tradition from the Bible - and they know it. But you know what? Evanangelicals sometimes do this too. It may seem like an innocent thing to add rules to Bible like, “Don’t smoke, don't drink, don’t dance, don’t go to movies, don’t wear lipstick,” or other unbiblical definitions of sin that I grew up with. But if we (with our new defintions of sin) become the judges of men’s consciences rather than letting God be the judge through Scripture, then verse 11 says we have actually rejected the law’s authority to judge. Of the four governments that God established (self-government, family government, church government, and state government), only church and state are said by the Bible to be subject to the Regulative Principle - that they can only do what they are explicitly authorized to do. For the first two governments (self-government and family government), we are free to do anything that we are not prohibited by the Bible from doing. So let's apply this to the state. To politicians who think they can ignore God’s laws for the state and make their own laws completely independently of the Bible, God says in verse 12: No, no, no. "There is only one Lawgiver…" When church sessions add rules that are not found in Scripture we must say, “There is only one Lawgiver.” It’s not just Roman Catholics at the time of Luther who bound men’s consciences. We need Reformation today as well.

Well, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 4:6. This verse clarifies by indicating that Sola Scriptura is compromised when the church goes beyond anything in Scripture. 1 Cor. 4:6 - "Now these things brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other." To be puffed up is to be prideful. It says law-giving and pride go hand in hand. But notice especially that phrase, "that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written…" It is Sola Scriptura; Scripture alone which must govern the theology and conduct of the church. The Reformers wanted the Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible for the church. And this was not just an academic pursuit. This was a deeply held belief that revolutionized Reformation countries.⁴ I won't get into how this also made Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin evaluate all truth claims by the Bible in all areas of life. I think that is an interesting subject as well. Instead, I want to focus on ethics and theology. The Reformers refused to just say that the Bible is “true” (as if our minds are the judges of what is true or not). Instead, they quoted God as saying that the Bible is “truth.” That may not seem like a big distinction, but it is. If we say that the Bible is true, we are judging the Bible by another truth standard. On the other hand, if the Bible is Truth, then all that we might think is true still has to pass the judgment of Scripture. The Reformation principle means that the Bible is the standard by which all other truth-claims are judged and evaluated. Otherwise our knowledge is just theory. It may be true (but unproven) theory, but it is not truth. Truth is a standard or benchmark.

Well, the implications of that are profound. If sola Scriptura is our guide, then the Reformers (and early church) concluded that Scripture must be sufficient. And that’s exactly what 2 Peter 1 says. It says that the Scriptures have given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Paul says that the guidelines for life are so clearly laid out in the Bible that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says that the Scriptures are sufficient to make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Why do we need a Reformation in the church today? Because there are so-called evangelicals like Alan Johnson who deny that the Bible is sufficient for every good work. Alan Johnson says this (and I quote):

Therefore an evangelical ethic… will never be merely a Biblical ethic. [Do you see the jettisoning of “alone”? He says, “an evangelical ethic… will never be merely a Biblical ethic.”] Not all moral obligation is rooted in Scripture… Evangelicals must come to grips with this more complete understanding of the Christian ethic, especially in the area of social ethics.⁵

That is a major compromise. And my studies seem to indicate that it is a compromise held to by a majority of Protestant leaders today. We are in desperate need of a Reformation. They are saying that we have to go beyond the Scripture for ethics - in other words, for knowing what is sin and what is not sin. And they are doing so not because the Bible is incomplete, but because they are ashamed of the ethics portrayed in the Bible. But if we take the word “only” or “alone” away from Scripture, than we have affirmed no more than Rome has affirmed. We would just be a different kind of compromiser. And the statement on Scripture by Evangelicals and Catholics together is a nice statement, but it is a scandal to leave it there in the face of the multiple competing authorities found in Rome, the emerging church, and even in the evangelical church. Without the “only” everything is up for grabs.

Solus Christus

The third “only” is Solus Christus, or Christ alone. This was a critical doctrine at the time of the Reformation because Rome had elevated Mary to the status of co-mediatrix - a title made dogma at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.⁶ Again, you can see how late some of their key doctrines became official doctrines. They are not the teaching of the ancient church. What does Scripture say? 1 Timothy 2:5 says, "there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." And yet Rome taught (and this is a direct quote), “nothing comes to us except through Mary’s mediation, for such is God’s will.”⁷ Wow! Nothing comes to us except through her mediation??!! That means that she is just as much a mediator as Jesus. Rome went on to say, “...every blessing that comes to us from the Almighty God comes to us through the hands of Our Lady.”⁸ Can you see why we cannot treat this as true Christianity? It is not. It is a blasphemous, false religion.

Scripture affirms the exact opposite of Rome. It says, "Who can forgive sins but God alone." And yet Rome teaches, “Christ empowered Catholic priests not merely to announce that sins were forgiven, but actually to forgive sins.”⁹ We rightly reject any such idea, yet we can in more subtle ways forget that Christ is sufficient for all that we need. The Baptist writer John McArthur wrote a wonderful book several years ago called Our Sufficiency in Christ which I think is absolutely must reading on this subject. In fact he has written several good books along these lines: one of which is entitled Ashamed of the Gospel. (By the way, Voddie Baucham's fantatistic book, Fault Lines, which he wrote just before he died, shows how Critical Race Theory is another religion that eviscerates the Gospel. It's a marvelously written book.)

But anyway, if you are united to Christ, Ephesians 1 promises that we have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. We don’t need other mediators to receive His blessings. And Ephesians 2 tells us that we have authority in Christ since we have been raised with Him and seated with Him in the heavenlies. We must never forget that when we have Jesus, we are not paupers, and should not act like paupers. The reason Rome constructed prayers to Mary, and to various saints is because they felt they were too unworthy to come directly to Christ. They didn’t see this doctrine of our union with him. Pope Leo XIII said, “...just as no one can approach the highest Father except through the Son, so no one can approach Christ except through His Mother.” In other words, you can't come directly to Christ. But it gets worse. Romanists also felt unworthy to come to Mary (since she was so exalted), so they prayed through saints and even through non-saints. They had (and continue to have) a whole hierarchy of mediators.

But Scripture affirms that we can come boldly to the throne of grace because of Jesus. This is important because without the doctrine of Christ alone, we no longer have the privilege of a personal relationship with God. Romanist doctrine requires multiple mediators because their teaching makes us so distant from God. But if our relationship to God has to be mediated through numerous layers of other people, then the personal dimension is taken away.

But you don't have to be a Romanist to be messed up on this. What about you? God intends for you to have a personal relationship with the Father. I know many Protestants whose relationship to God is not an “Abba Father” relationship. Some have translated "Abba Father" as “Daddy Father” to get across the idea of the intimacy implied in that phrase. But many Protestants don't have that kind of an intimate "Abba Father" relationship. Their relationship with God is just as formal and distant as the Roman Catholic relationship. And these Protestants may have joy in their Christianity, but it is a second hand joy, mediated through what other people are doing in the worship service. If other people rejoice, they catch the contagious joy by association. But when they get into personal private devotions, their relationship with God is dry as dust. We can fall into the same trap. Phil Kayser is not your mediator. Your parents are not your mediators. Your favorite preacher, musician, or podcaster is not your mediator. Each of us can have direct access to the Father through Christ. God wants each of us to have a personal relationship with Him. It is Jesus only who is sufficient to be redeemer¹⁰ and mediator, and when we are united to Him, we are united to the Father - as close as could be.

Sola Fide

There is another sola: sola fide – or faith alone. Rome affirmed long ago, “without faith no one has ever attained justification.” So Evangelicals and Catholics together are saying nothing new when they say, “We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith.” Rome is conceding nothing with that statement. But Paul calls that another Gospel if that is as far as you go. Romans 4 insists that we are justified by faith apart from any works. And to claim that we have the same Gospel as Rome is nothing short of deceitful. At the Council of Trent, Rome said in Canon IX, “If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified… let him be anathema.” Anathema means “let him be accursed. Let him go to hell.” This is the great gulf between Rome and the true faith. It is that word "alone." The apostle Paul pronounced an anathema against Rome and Rome (without realizing it) has pronounced an anathema against the apostle Paul. Guess who’s anathema I am going to be scared of? Paul said "God imputes righteousness apart from works" (Rom. 4:6) and he also said, "a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ…" (Gal. 2:16). In Galatians 1 Paul said,

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. [that’s the Greek word anathema. He goes on.] As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed [anathema]. (Gal. 1:8-9).

So we are left with two anathemas: the anathema of Paul and the anathema of Rome, and that conflict hangs upon the word “alone.” That’s all it hangs on. That is all it hangs on! When you read the modern controversies over justification (like Auburn Avenue), over whether baptism saves, and over new versions of covenant theology (such as Full Preterist so-called covenant hermeneutic that explains away Genesis 1), tell me if you see the word “alone” there. Federal Vision has messed up the Gospel too. And I was so glad to see Doug Wilson distancing himself from Federal Vision's view of justification in his fantastic open letter to President Donald Trump. You should read that open letter. It is marvelously written. He's got some other issues, but at least he has rejected Federal Vision theology (sometimes known as Auburn Avenue theology). That theology has messed up on that word "alone." There is a glaring hole in much modern theology. And it must be patched, or the floodwaters will sweep away the liberties we have enjoyed since the Reformation. There must be reformation - even in the Reformed Church.

Worship Only God

Another “only” that the Reformation reintroduced was that we must worship God alone or only God. In Matthew 4:10 Jesus said, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'" The Romanists at the Reformation ignored this command by conveniently redefining worship, and they continue these deceitful distinctions to this day. Their distinctions are very interesting. They teach that there is dulia worship of the saints, protodulia worship of Joseph, hyperdulia worship of Mary, and latria worship of God. Nice distinctions, but you won’t find any of those distinctions in the Bible and you won’t be able to figure out the distinction in their actual liturgy. They bow the same way to a statue of Jesus as they do to a statue of Mary. (And by the way, their holy statues and icons are a violation of the second commandment anyway.) But back to the worship of saints, they have the same beautiful words and ascriptions to Jesus and to Mary. Their prayers to each sound the same. For example, take the following well-known prayer and see if you can distinguish a difference of latria, dulia and hyperdulia worship for Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Here’s what it says:

“Jesus, Joseph, Mary, I give you my heart and soul; Jesus, Joseph, Mary, assist me in my last agony; Jesus, Joseph, Mary, I breathe my soul to you in peace.”

It’s the same liturgy for all three persons. Hundreds of prayers to Mary, the saints and even to popes show the idolatry of that wicked system. And it is wicked. The following blasphemous words were said to Pope Innocent X when he was coronated as pope of the Romanist false church:

"Most Holy and blessed father, head of the church, ruler of the world, to whom the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed, whom the angels in Heaven adore, and the gates of hell fear, and all the world adores, we especially venerate, worship and adore thee."¹¹

That’s blasphemy. I don’t bring these things up to be meanspirited. I do it to warn the faithful that Rome is a harlot church and unfit to be called a church, and (contrary to Doug Wilson) we cannot say that Rome is in outward covenant with Christ or that her baptism is therefore a legitimate baptism. It is not. The Protestant Reformation excommunicated Rome from the true church. And if you look at how John the Baptist treated the baptism of the false church of the Pharisees, and insisted that they be rebaptized, you have a hint of how we should treat Romanists. The Pharisees were outraged that John insisted on repentance and proselyte baptism. But we should treat Rome the same way John the Baptist treated apostate Israel. And our confessions do treat Rome that way. The Westminster Confession calls the Romanist church a synagogue of Satan [not a true church; not a true synagogue, but a synagogue of Satan] and it goes on to call the pope an antichrist (that's chapter 25:6). There is no escaping that language. The Westminster Assembly did not treat Rome as a true church. And you can see the same language in the London Baptist Confession, the Hungarian Confession, the Nausau Confession, and other historic Protestant creeds and confessions. That's why (contrary to Doug Wilson) we don't accept Roman Catholic baptism, and why we always baptize Romanists when they convert to the true faith. This was why John the Baptist rebaptized the Jews of their day with proselyte baptism. John the Baptist was declaring that Israel was apostate and he was establishing a new Israel - a new church.

In any case, Protestants have no business partnering with Romanist priests in their evangelistic ministries (such as the Billy Graham Crusade has done for years - and the Luis Palau Crusade, and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Youth With A Mission, some Young Life chapters, and Promise Keepers have done).¹² There is this whole movement in the USA toward acceptance of the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which has the same blasphemous worship of relics and saints. These compromising Protestants only want the apostles creed to be the basis for unity. Well, it's a wonderful creed that we too believe in, but there were issues that came up after that creed that also needed to be addressed. Again, it is important to affirm that the Roman church was excommunicated at the time of the Protestant Reformation, and they have never repented or renounced Trent or the later blasphemous councils. The Romanist church is under Paul’s anathema and must not be seen as a true church. It is certainly not catholic since at the Council of Trent it abandoned and anathematized the true catholic doctrines of the first twelve centuries.

But I bring this up for another reason. We all have a tendency toward idolatry just like the Romanists do. And we have our own rationalizations. We have idolatry of the state, or the Republican party, or the Constitution, but when confronted we think, “But I’m not bowing down to a graven image.” Because we don’t have carved images, we think we can get away with trusting idols of money (which Jesus called mammon), idols of power, idols of knowledge, idols of pleasure, relationships and other idols. It’s easy to rationalize. And this is where Herbert Schlossberg’s book, Idols for Destruction points the finger at us. We need Reformation. Because of spiritual entropy, we must always be on guard and always be contending earnestly for the faith once and for all time delivered to the saints.

Soli Deo Gloria

There are a lot of other “alone’s” that we could look at. For example, there is only one final judgment (which Full Preterists now deny), one bride, one blood, one destination we instantly go to upon death (and it’s not purgatory and then heaven - its straight to heaven). And there are other ones and onlys. The Reformation took them all on. But I want to end by talking about my favorite sola – to the glory of God alone. God says, "My glory I will not give to another" (Is. 48:11). He is jealous for His glory, and yet so many modern Evangelical doctrines give glory to man instead of to God. God says, "My glory I will not give to another."

The Reformation cry was Soli Deo Gloria. And there are many Scriptures which indicate that if God does everything, then God gets all the glory. 1 Corinthians 3:7 says, "So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." When people sought to glorify Peter, Peter said in Acts 10:26 “Stand up…I am only a man myself.” He didn't treat himself like the popes do. When we realize that we are only men and women, then we are more likely to give glory to only God.

Now, I will admit that this morning's sermon has been a challenging exercise, but the only’s of Scripture continue to have relevance for today. We must recognize that because of our depravity only God is holy and only God can help us. We have only one Lawgiver, One Mediator, One means of salvation, one baptism of the Spirit (not a second work of grace, as some Pentecostals believe). Only Jesus can save us and we receive His salvation only by faith - a faith also given to us by God. We worship God only and give only God the glory. And with modern compromises in the Prolife movement, we must affirm that there is only one true definition of life, and when it starts, and there is only one definition of the true justice for the murder of babies. Let’s be Reformed and always reforming, and let’s spread the news of the Reformation far and wide. Amen.

Charge: Children of God, don’t succumb to the pressure of modern definitions of niceness. Contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Uphold that word “alone.” Amen.