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
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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.
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