By Faith Alone

Galatians 3:6-11

The key to the 5 Solas: How can a sinner get right with God?

God is holy, we are sinners. So what hope do sinners have of restoring their relationship with God? This was the question that haunted Martin Luther.

Luther felt and experienced the awfulness of sin.

“If anyone felt the greatness of his sin he would not be able to go on living another moment, so great is its power.”

Luther would go to the confessional, then moments later remember another sin, and return to confess it too.

“My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would pacify him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him.”

Side note - We need more weeping over sin.

We fail to grasp what sin truly is. Radical sin, deadly and truly mortal, is unknown to men in the whole wide world.…

Ron Smith - There was a time when people went to Church, heard the Truth, and wept over their sins. Today people go to Church, hear a motivational speech, and ignore their sins.

Did Christ over sinners weep, and shall our cheeks be dry?

An understanding of our sin is fundamental, for we will never have enough confidence in him unless we become deeply distrustful of ourselves.

Then Luther found in Scripture - “the righteous shall live by faith.”

“I grasped that the justice of God is the righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, He justifies us through faith. Immediately I felt myself to have gone through open doors into paradise.” Luther came to understand that faith is the only way a sinner receives God’s grace and is declared righteous.

Luther’s Bible, this passage has a note: “The very center of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible.”

Justification by faith in Christ alone is the very heart of the gospel. Since we have no righteousness in ourselves that allows us to stand blameless before God, we need a righteousness outside of us, a righteousness that is earned for us; the righteousness that Christ provides.

Understanding Sola Fide

What we mean when we say that we are justified by faith alone: Exploring Romans 3:21-26. God’s Righteousness revealed, provided, and proven, and how faith informs our life of discipleship, fellowship and mission as Christ’s Church.

Sola Fide and Romans 3:21-26

The Righteousness of God is Revealed (vs 21-22)

The Righteousness of God…

Righteousness of God as an attribute/quality

Ps 11:7 For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.

The Righteousness of God is not simply a quality possessed by God, but is also His saving activity toward sinners.

Ps 68:20 Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.

The goal of salvation is that we would become the righteousness of God.

1 Cor 5:21 for our sake God made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Revealed apart from the law - but through grace

This means that no human effort, obedience, religious observance, or moral achievement can make us right with God. The righteousness that saves comes apart from the law - it is not earned but given as a gift.

The law and the prophets testified to it.

The law and the prophets had two primary responsibilities: judging sin and condemning sinners, while pointing beyond themselves to God’s righteousness.

The Righteousness of God is Provided (vs 23-24)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All = both Gentile and Jew, every race, tribe, and tongue.

All are made righteous by God’s gracious gift. There is only one way to be right with God - through faith in Jesus.

Jesus was put forward as the propitiation by his blood

Exodus 25 - the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the blood of the atoning sacrifice was sprinkled, where God met with man.

Heb 9:12 - Jesus brought the blood, not of goats and calves, “by his own blood, securing an eternal redemption.”

Received by Faith

WSC 86 - Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel.

Faith is receiving Christ, it is the channel through which God’s grace is known, accepted, and lived out.

Faith wholeheartedly believes the truth of the gospel. It flees in poverty to Christ’s riches, in guilt to Christ’s reconciliation, and in bondage to Christ’s liberation. It lays hold of Christ and His righteousness, uniting the sinner with his Savior. It embraces Christ in belief, clinging to His Word and relying on His promises. As Luther wrote, “Faith lays hold of Christ and grasps Him as a present possession, just as the ring holds the jewel.” Faith wraps the soul in Christ’s righteousness, enabling the soul to live out of Christ. It commits the total person to the total Christ.

Luther - “Faith lays hold of Christ and grasps Him as a present possession, just as the ring holds the jewel.”

Faith is resting in Christ’s completed work, not striving in our own.

Faith is alone, the only way to receive and rest in Christ, but faith is not inert (lacking ability to move).

Faith alone - Not faith and works, not faith and family

James 2 - faith without works is dead. Saving faith is a living faith. Because we believe, we live.

What is the gift?

The gift God gives human beings is his own righteousness, his own character. The righteousness of God in Jesus Christ is, as we will see, imputed to believers. In the cross of Jesus Christ, then, both the saving and judging righteousness of God are revealed.

Faith does not save, God saves by grace in Jesus Christ, whom we receive by faith.

The Righteousness of God Proven (vs 25-26)

God proves He is righteous by passing over former sins, patience and faithfulness, so that both all may come to him.

God proves He is righteous by being both just, and the justifier of those who believe.

Maintaining righteousness, requiring justice. The cross displays both God’s justice (sin must be punished) and His mercy (the punishment falls on Christ instead of us).

God still saves by works, but they are the works of Christ graciously applied to us.

What’s at heart here?

We must be righteous to stand before God - we have lost the righteousness in which we were created, we need the righteousness of God to overcome our sin and bring us to victory. This righteousness has now been revealed outside of our own works, but in the gracious gift of Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him. God is righteous, and he makes those who are in Christ righteous too.

By Faith the Righteous Shall Live

Discipleship

Repent and Believe: See your sin, grieve it, and look to another for your salvation

Grow in a deepening appreciation of the righteousness of God for you in Christ. It is not your faith that saves you, it is God who saves, and faith is the acceptance of His gift and the reliance upon it unto salvation. It is not your righteousness that saves you, it is the righteousness of God, given in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Fellowship

Heb 10:23 - We are to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful…

Encourage one another in the faith: Like coals on the grill - trusting in the Lord, growing intensity in our devotion to Him - comes by being with and around other believers

Mission

Habakuk 2:4; Rom 1:17 “The righteous shall live by faith… “

Gal 5:6 - what matters is faith working itself out in love. Live like you believe, live out your faith: True evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant, but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love. It dies unto flesh; seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; comforts the afflicted; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those who injure it; prays for those who persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound.