According to Roman Catholic teaching, the Lord will give us grace as long as we do our best. Today, Michael Reeves repudiates this view with the true vision of God’s grace presented gloriously in Scripture. Get Michael Reeves’ teaching series Reformation Truths on DVD, plus lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide, for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3660/reformation-truths Meet Today’s Teacher: Michael Reeves is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in the United Kingdom. He is the featured teacher for the Ligonier teaching series The English Reformation and the Puritans. He is author of many books, including The Unquenchable Flame, Delighting in the Trinity, and Rejoice and Tremble. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
God is not one who builds on our foundations. He creates life out of nothing. And it meant that instead of looking to God for assistance, but ultimately relying on self, Luther was turning to rely entirely on Christ, in whom all righteousness is achieved.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. We sing of God's grace, but do we marvel often enough at just how amazing it is? As Michael Reeves just said, the good news is that we can rely entirely on Christ for salvation. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.
Clarifying the depths of our sin yesterday really prepared the way for today's message. Where does a wretch turn? To the amazing grace of God. Before we hear from Michael Reeves, remember that you can own this series and add it to your collection when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.
Well, here's Dr. Reeves, the president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology on the grace of God.
Years before the Reformation, in his days as a monk, Martin Luther had begun lecturing on the Bible at the University of Wittenberg. And there, years before the Reformation, he taught his students that salvation is by grace. I quote, he said, Not because of our merits. Salvation is given out of the pure mercy of the promising God. No alarms went off.
Not a single eyebrow was raised among all the inquisitors in Rome. And why not? Because Martin Luther the monk was still then upholding Rome's own theology. He was loyally teaching standard medieval Roman Catholicism that salvation is by grace. Now, eyebrows might not have arched in Rome, but yours might have done.
For it wasn't the whole point of the Reformation that medieval Roman Catholicism falsely taught salvation by works. And that certainly is how many see it. But that idea actually fails to grasp quite how things were. And more importantly, it fails to grasp the true wonder and acuteness of the Reformers' message. So let's see a comparison.
Let's compare grace in medieval Roman Catholicism to grace as the Reformers understood it. First then, what did Martin Luther the monk before the Reformation mean when he taught salvation by grace? He could teach that salvation, I quote, is not on the basis, said Luther, of our merits, but on the pure promise of a merciful God, which all sounds very reformational, until he goes on to explain that
Luther said, as a monk, the teachers correctly say that to a man who does what is in him, God gives grace without fail. To a man who does what is in him, God bestows everything gratis and only on the basis of the promise of his mercy, although he wants us to be prepared for this as much as lies in us.
So according to this, God does save by grace, but that grace is given to those who are prepared for it, who do what is in them to be fit for grace. Or as the teachers of his day like to put it, God will not deny grace to those who do their best. Romans chapter 5 verse 5 is perhaps the single most helpful verse for understanding this view of salvation by grace. And we'll return to it a few times.
God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us, writes the Apostle Paul. So instead of being read as a verse about the transformative work of the Spirit in those who Romans 5 verse 1 have been passed, have been justified by faith. That's the context of Romans 5 verse 5. It's talking to those who have been justified.
Romans 5.5 was taken in medieval Roman Catholicism to be an account of salvation, meaning that God pours his love and grace into our hearts, transforming us internally, making us holy, ultimately holy enough to merit heaven. And our problem, according to this theology, is that while God is holy, we're lazy and And only holy people belong with a holy God in heaven.
But while here's our problem, while we might recognize we really ought to be holy, we really can't be bothered. Not quite enough. We don't seem to be able to muster up the energy that we need to be holy. But don't worry, said the Roman Catholic theologians, God in his kindness gives us grace. And so grace here was a bit like a can of spiritual Red Bull, an energy drink.
So I find myself, I can't be bothered to pull myself together and get holy, and God gives me grace. And I suddenly, I take in this grace, and I find myself a lot more eager and ready to go out and be holy. This then, it was a theology of salvation by grace. So without the grace... We could never become the sort of holy people who belong in heaven.
But it was absolutely not a theology of salvation by grace alone. Here, grace provided the necessary boost, the fuel we need to earn eternal life, but it didn't actually give or guarantee eternal life. The Red Bull of Grace would be given to those who want it, who pursue it, and it only saved insofar as it enabled people to become holy and so win their salvation.
Luther's Reformation message of salvation by grace alone that he came to later could hardly have looked more different to that old pre-Reformation teaching of his about salvation by grace. This is how Luther began to talk. Luther said, He is not righteous who does much, but he who without work believes much in Christ. Here, said Luther,
Grace is not about God building on our righteous deeds or helping us to perform them. No, God is not one who builds on our foundations. He creates life out of nothing. And it meant that instead of looking to God for assistance but ultimately relying on self... Luther was turning to rely entirely on Christ, in whom all righteousness is achieved.
He wrote, the law says, do this, and it's never done. Grace says, believe in this, and everything is already done. And here Luther found grace. a message so good it almost seemed incredible to him. It was good news for the repeated failure. It was news of a God who doesn't come to call the righteous but sinners. See, deep in our psyche is the assumption that we will be more loved
when and only when we make ourselves more attractive, both to God and to others. And into that, Luther speaks words that just cut through the gloom like a glorious and utterly unexpected sunbeam. Luther wrote, the love of God does not find, it creates that which is pleasing to it. And rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good.
Therefore, sinners are attractive because they are loved. They are not loved because they try to make themselves attractive. There's the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, glorious message of the Reformation that we need again today. And for the rest of his life, Luther took this message as good news that needs to be continually reapplied to the heart of the believer.
Because from his own experience, he found we are so instinctively self-dependent. that while we'll happily subscribe to salvation by grace, our minds are like rocks drawn down by the gravitational pull of sin away from belief in grace alone. And so he would counsel his friends. Here's a letter he wrote to one friend. saying, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him.
And despairing of yourself, say, you, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness. I am your sin. You've taken upon yourself what is mine, my sin, and given to me what is yours. You've taken upon yourself what you were not and given to me what I was not.
Now there is far, far more than first meets the eye standing between the Roman Catholic idea of salvation by grace and the Reformation's message of salvation by grace alone. And the fact that just one little word alone distinguishes them can make you feel like this is a difference only the fussiest theologian can notice.
But the difference actually involves even more than where we should look to for confidence before God. In reality, the very meaning of the word grace is different in each. See, in Roman Catholicism we've seen grace was seen as a thing. A force or a fuel like Red Bull. And so Catholics would pray, Hail Mary, full of grace. Because Mary's got a lot of this grace in her.
She's wired with spiritual caffeine. And that was nothing like how Luther and his fellow reformers saw grace. For them, grace was not a thing at all. It is the personal kindness of God by which he doesn't merely enable us, but by which he rescues and freely gives us himself. or to be even more precise, there is no such thing as grace. There is only Christ, who is the blessing of God given to us.
And that being the case, Luther actually tended not to talk that much about grace in the abstract, preferring to speak of Christ himself.
For example, he said, therefore faith justifies because it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ, the Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart of the true Christian righteousness on account of which God counts, asks righteousness, and grants us eternal life.
In other words, the grace and righteousness we receive in the gospel is not something other than Christ. I quote Luther again, Christ is the divine power, righteousness, blessing, grace, and life. So for Luther, God does not give us some thing other than Himself. In His grace, He unites us to His Son by His Spirit that we might share the life and righteousness of the Son.
Instead of throwing out some enabling blessing, Christ makes Himself ours. and so totally that we may plead what is his as ours. Now, what difference does it make living under grace alone? We've seen a very different understanding of grace, but what difference does it make?
Now clearly, anyone who can know that they are accepted and loved by God because of Jesus, and not because of how well they feel they've done, they can know a confidence as secure as Jesus Himself. In Him they have an unsurpassable righteousness that is, like Him, the same yesterday, today, forever. Might that lead them to be a little too confident?
With heaven in the bag, might they feel we can continue in sin, that grace may abound? Couldn't they argue, I like sinning, God likes forgiving? And that was just what many Roman Catholic theologians wondered when they heard the Reformer's message. And ever since, it's not just been Roman Catholics who've felt the dangers.
In the 20th century, surrounded by a people and a church that had so easily capitulated to Hitler, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt it was a wrong attitude towards grace that was partly to blame. And on the eve of the Second World War, Bonhoeffer wrote a scolding attack on what he called cheap grace.
The cheap grace he believed had allowed such moral spinelessness on the part of the church in facing the Nazi regime. Now Bonhoeffer defined this cheap grace and called it grace without Jesus Christ alone. For grace without Jesus Christ was the problem in Bonhoeffer's day. But grace without Jesus Christ was precisely what the Reformers were stepping away from.
With the Reformers' message of grace alone, they were not offering more of grace as stuff, as spiritual fuel. They were offering Christ. In other words, salvation by grace alone is just another way of saying salvation by Christ alone. Luther wrote, Through faith in Christ, Christ's righteousness becomes our righteousness. All he has becomes ours, or rather, he himself becomes ours.
And that puts a world of difference between the message of grace alone and cheap grace. It remains simple. Nobody can receive the Christ who justifies without receiving the Christ who makes us holy. That means holy living is not an awkward small print of the gospel, the catch hiding behind the good news of grace alone. Now, this is wonderful good news.
Through this gospel, God acts to free us not only from the horrifying future penalty of sin, but also from its present enslaving power. Grace alone is the most potent message of liberations. Total and absolute liberation from hell. And gradual liberation even from its foul but addictive foretastes.
which is why Paul can write in Titus 2, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of
of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Because true grace is never grace without Jesus Christ, It means the apostle has no intellectual difficulty in putting free salvation alongside good works.
Ephesians 2, he writes, For by grace you've been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It's the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them, there's no difficulty. For that is the only true life.
The life for which believers are freely saved to be freed from the captivity of sin, to know God and share his good, pure life. and holy life. And there is a consistent testimony down through the centuries. Those who have accepted that God saves by His grace alone have found the message to be one of unutterably sweet liberation.
Martin Luther wrote, I felt I was altogether born again, then to paradise itself through open gates. And so it remains today. The reformers tenacious insistence on grace alone is no relic of the history books. to be looked on with embarrassment as the sorry squabble of pernickety theologians. It remains as the only message of ultimate liberation.
The message with the deepest power to make humans unfurl and flourish. For by grace alone, all those who know themselves as failures can know not just a bit of enabling from God, helping them to do a little better, they can know a wholly new and victorious identity in Christ. They can know assurance, relief from guilt, and sweet intimacy with an almighty Father who cares for them.
And knowing that, they begin to find a hearty desire rising up in them to follow the one who is the source of all grace and every good. See, once they would have attempted holiness out of the desperate desire to earn eternal life. With this gospel, They do so out of a heart transformed to want Christ, to see the beauty of His kindness, His goodness, His generosity, and all His holy ways.
What an incredible gospel we believe, such good news, and a message that we have the privilege to proclaim to the nations. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and this is the Wednesday edition. Michael Reeves has recorded a number of teaching series with us at Ligonier Ministries and this one is titled Reformation Truths.
It's eight messages and you can walk through those messages with the study guide when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Perhaps use this series to encourage your family to cherish the truths that were rediscovered during the Reformation in time for Reformation Day next Thursday.
While you wait for the DVD to arrive, we'll unlock the series and study guide in the free Ligonier app. So give your gift today by using the link in the podcast show notes or when you visit renewingyourmind.org. But don't delay as this offer ends tomorrow. We'll conclude our time in the Reformation Truths series tomorrow as Michael Reeves considers the doctrine of justification.
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