Smashing Icons: Roman Catholicism and True Godliness | Selected Scriptures

We are doing something unique today.

We finished Titus last week, and I've just been praying, and I I've felt led to do a study on Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

So this is this is something unlike you normally won't see here at the King's Chapel.

Normally we're going verse by verse, book by book, uh studying God's word.

So we're doing something different, and I've and I've done something today I've never done as for seven years as a pastor here in Raleigh.

And that is I did a PowerPoint presentation for you guys.

Okay?

So you you have you have your handout, you have the PowerPoint, so there's, and you have your Bible, so it's all right there.

There's there's no excuse whatsoever uh not to get the information right.

But before we begin, let me pray.

Heavenly Father, help us to focus our minds and our hearts in this study.

Lord, may you be honored and glorified.

And it help me to be clear, help me to be fair, uh, help me to be kind and loving the next two weeks as we engage Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

And Lord, we pray for those who are here today listening, who might not know the biblical gospel, Lord, we pray that you would open their eyes to the truth.

We pray, Lord, for those who might watch online for that as well.

Uh, Lord, we know that when we address a controversial issue, um, that that all sorts of things are exposed, Lord, we pray that for your glory you would expose them and lead people to a knowledge of the truth.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, the title of this series, and I think it's only going to be two weeks, maybe two weeks, is Shattering Icons or Smashing Icons.

Now, that is a provocative title, isn't it?

Isn't that provocative?

I did not come up with it.

Jim Briggs came up with that title.

So if you're frustrated by that, go to Jim.

But but I I was talking to the staff this week and I said, what should we call this, you know, this short series?

He came up with that, and I thought about it, you know, because there are icons in Roman theology, but it's more present as we'll see next week in Eastern Orthodoxy.

But as I was thinking about that, I said, you know, there's a Pauline element to this.

There's a Pauline element to this.

Uh Paul says this, uh, listen to these verses.

This is 2 Corinthians 10 4.

The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

Now listen to what Paul says.

We destroy arguments.

Listen to that strong language.

We destroy, we dismantle, we shatter, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

So here's Paul's mindset and Paul's apologetic is anything that prevents you from knowing God properly and truly, he wants to destroy.

Anything that could be a hindrance to you entering the gates of heaven, he wants to get rid of in your thinking so that you can think properly about who God is and who Christ is, and so you can know the truth, and as Jesus said, you can be set free.

So, in that sense, if there's anything, any man-made tradition in our thinking, it needs to be torn down and destroyed.

And I would submit to you, within Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, there is much, much that hinders people from entering heaven's gates, and it needs to be addressed.

Well, why did I feel led to do this these next two weeks?

One, a lot of young people, and especially young men right now are streaming into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

It is very much a thing.

It is very much a rising movement, especially amongst young people.

There's Roman Catholic apologists, Eastern Orthodox apologists on YouTube, online, and they're gaining a following, especially with young people.

What are they looking for?

Why are young people streaming into Catholicism and Orthodoxy?

What they want is tradition.

They want institutional stability.

And quite frankly, what they don't want is effeminate church feelings that they find in evangelicalism and lower forms of worship.

And so they're streaming into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

And so I think it's very important.

This is a cultural phenomenon right now, that we understand what's taking place and know how to address it.

Secondly, secondly, it's important as Bible-believing Protestants that we know and understand what we believe.

And sometimes the best way to do that is by understanding what we don't believe.

And so my hope is that if you are a gospel-believing Protestant, that your faith would be strengthened the next two weeks in understanding what you believe.

And then third, as a pastor and evangelist, this is my heart.

So if you're here today, and I've heard that there are Catholics that came because they heard that I was going to address this.

I know that there's going to be Catholics online that are going to watch this.

Listen, friend, my heart for you today is that God would open your eyes to the biblical gospel and that you could know with a hundred percent certainty where you stand before God because you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

I came across this quote.

I have a book, and the book uh is the testimony of hundreds of Catholic priests that have come to faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is a quote from John Preston, one of the Catholic priests.

He says, It is my heart's desire and prayer to God that many Roman Catholic people might see the light of the gospel as I have seen it, and come to rejoice in the knowledge of Jesus as their own personal Savior.

So, friend, that's my heart.

My heart isn't to come and condemn you this morning.

Quite the contrary, my heart is that God might open your eyes to the truth and you would know the joy that I have found in Christ in the biblical gospel.

Our jumping off point this morning will be in the verses that I read a few minutes ago.

So I invite you to turn back to John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

To John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

And y'all know the context.

We we went through the Gospel of John a few years ago.

Jesus is speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well.

The Samaritans, remember, were part of the, they were, they'd come out of the ten northern tribes, the Judah, Benjamin in the south, the other ten tribes in the north.

The ten tribes in the north worshipped on a mountain called Mount Gerizim.

They did not go down to Jerusalem.

The the those of the tribe of Judah, they worshiped on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

And so she asked our Lord this question, uh, which mountain is the right mountain that we should be worshiping on?

And Jesus' response begins in verse 21.

Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

And by that he's referring to Pentecost, when he would send the Holy Spirit, and it would not matter anymore if you worshiped in Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim.

Jesus said, You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews.

In other words, we have the truth.

But then he says, important verse, but the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

The verb for worship is the Greek word proskunio, and it literally means to be bowed down.

You think of somebody being prostrate on the ground, laying down.

Think of Moses at the burning bush, laying down before God.

And that's the verb Jesus uses.

And it speaks more than just an outward physical posture, does it not?

It speaks to bowing down in your heart, truly worshiping the Father in the heart.

And he's saying the time is coming when the true worshipers, those who truly worship, he says they will worship in two ways.

They will worship in the spirit and in truth.

And by spirit, he means from the heart, from the soul, from the from the spirit, in your mind, in your affections, in your in your will.

In other words, it's not merely external duty, it's inward devotion.

And then he says it's also in the truth, that it's according to the way that God has commanded that he be worshipped, and that the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

So what we're going to talk about today, I want to approach Roman Catholicism from these two aspects truth and the spirit.

Truth and the Spirit.

Truth.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Truth is a character quality of God.

The closer that you get to the truth, the closer that you get to God.

And there, and he says, the closer that you get to God, you will be set free.

So it's so important that we understand what the truth is, on what we are basing our religious experience.

Because if we don't know the truth, then we will not know how to properly worship God.

Now, a little side excursion in church history.

There was a fellow, a very bright scholar named Jerome.

And at the end of the fourth century, he moved to Bethlehem, to where we have the church of the nativity today.

In fact, if you go to the church of the nativity in Bethlehem, there's some caves underneath that church.

And in one of those caves, they believe that's where Jesus was actually born.

Now we don't know for certain, but that's what's claimed.

But it is in those caves that Jerome translated from the Hebrew and the Greek the Bible into Latin.

And it was called the Latin Vulgate.

And really, for the next 1200 years in the West, that is the only Bible that we had.

This Latin Vulgate that Jerome translated.

And that was, I mean, it was a wonderful, amazing achievement.

Absolutely.

The problem that happened over the centuries is people stopped speaking Latin.

And so the Bible was in Latin.

And then as Christianity moves west and into Germany and Hungary and into England, people don't know Latin.

And then furthermore, the very priests who are orchestrating religious services, they don't know Latin either.

And so people are dependent upon their priests because they don't know their Bibles to instruct them in the truth.

And then the very priests that are supposed to be instructing them don't know the Latin Bible that's been handed down to them.

And this becomes a huge problem.

Why is this such a big problem?

I read this week, I was I was reading through 2 Timothy, and Paul says this, this is 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 14.

2 Timothy 3:14

But as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, how from childhood you have been acquainted, listen to this, with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Did you see that connection?

The sacred writings.

What's he talking about?

Sacred means holy or set apart, transcendent.

He's talking about God-given writings.

The reason why I know that is because Paul explains it in the next verse.

Look at verse 16.

All scripture is breathed out by God.

It's the Greek word theopnustos, means God's breath.

All scripture is like God's breath, it's God's very word.

And he said, it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so there's a corollary between the sacred writings, or what we would call scripture, God's God breathed truth and salvation.

How did the writers of Scripture write?

Well, Peter says this is 2 Peter 1 21, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

So Scripture is given so that we might know God truly.

That's why it's given to us, that the man of God, the woman of God, may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So what happens if you don't have the truth of Scripture?

Can you truly come to know God?

No, you cannot.

How will they believe if they have not heard?

How will they hear without a preacher?

That's what Paul says in Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

So we need an encounter with the Word of God in order to believe.

Historically, here's what happened over the course of the centuries.

So the Bible is essentially eclipsed behind a Latin curtain.

And over time, especially in the 1200s, the 1300s, what began to be established alongside Scripture was this idea of a holy tradition.

This is the oral tradition, so to speak, that was passed down from the apostles, from Peter and James and John and Paul.

This is the tradition that was passed down from the apostles to the church fathers to the bishops, so on and so forth.

And this tradition is a living word in Roman Catholic theology.

So scripture is a written word, the tradition is a living word.

And over time, the tradition became a dual authority on the same level as the Holy Bible.

That is very important to understand.

So as Protestants, we understand the term sola scriptura.

Sola means we have our word solo.

This by the way developed, like I said, eight, nine, a thousand years ago, eight, nine hundred, a thousand years ago.

But this is from the Catholic Catechism.

This is uh I was in the Catholic Catechism all week this week.

This is paragraph eighty of the catechism.

Sacred tradition and sacred scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other, for both of them flowing out from the same divine wellspring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal.

Each of them makes present and fruitful in the church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own always to the close of the age.

So in other words, it it's it's both what what what that paragraph is saying is that the tradition and the Bible are both God's word.

Do you understand that?

Then, two paragraphs down, this is paragraph eighty-two of the catechism, as a result, the church to whom the transmission and interpretation of revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy scriptures alone.

Both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.

So there you have it.

Scripture and tradition on the same level of authority.

And you ask, well, how can Roman Catholics support this?

And they support, they go to various verses in the New Testament.

For example, in Jude, talks about tradition.

Uh there's two verses in 2 Thessalonians.

Let me read one of them to you.

This is 2 Thessalonians 2.15.

Paul writes, So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by spoken word or by letter.

And so our Catholic friends say, see, there it is.

You have the traditions that Paul speaks about that were by letter, and then you have the traditions that Paul speaks about that were by word.

They were given orally.

So what are we to say to this?

How do we respond to our Catholic friends?

First, as the canon was formed, we're talking about the canon, we we're talking about the New Testament.

As the New Testament was formed, remember.

The book of Revelation is probably written after A.D.

90.

And many of these Pauline epistles and other letters are being written around A.D.

50.

And so there's a period of 40 years where you do not have the New Testament.

And Thessalonians, by the way, those are some of the earliest letters that Paul wrote along with Galatians.

What is happening as the apostles are going around the ancient world is there's not yet this New Testament authority, and so the authority is being given orally.

People are going into the church and they're saying, this is what you're supposed to do, this is what you're supposed to believe, so on and so forth.

But over time, all of the apostolic traditions were subsequently recorded in the New Testament.

So by the time Paul writes 2 Timothy, he says that the scriptures are given so that the man of God may be equipped for some good works?

Like, do we need to go to the other outside traditions to find out some good works?

No, he says, for all good works.

The scriptures are given for all good works.

Everything you need to know for life and godliness in the end, Paul says, is in the scriptures.

And so when John writes Revelation, he says, if anyone adds words to this book, let him be anathema.

And he was the last living apostle.

So with that, the authoritative proclamation of God came to an end.

What else are we to say about these so-called traditions?

Well, have you ever played the game of telephone with your kids?

Have you ever done that?

And and uh you say uh you know to the first kid uh tonight we're gonna get a pizza from Mellow Mushroom.

And by the time it goes around, it's like something about a tuna fish in the restroom, you know?

The message completely changes.

Well, how would you have any certainty of what came down from the apostles and what didn't if it wasn't recorded in Scripture?

Also, the early church, and scholars have gone and studied this, the early church fathers did not teach that there was a tradition on the same level as Scripture.

In fact, this is Irenaeus of Lyons, he said, We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public.

So there's the proclamation in public, the oral tradition, and then he says, and at a later period by the will of God handed down to us in the scriptures to be the ground and pillar of our faith.

So that's the that was the process, Irenaeus is saying, is that at one point the tradition was given orally, and then at a later point it was all written down in Scripture.

The Apostolic Fathers will talk about tradition.

We can talk about even creeds and confessions in the Reformed Church.

But there was an understanding that every creed, even the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, Chalcedonian Creed, all of these creeds are subservient to Scripture, a subservient authority, and not an authority on the same level as Scripture.

Fourth, we would say to this, that some traditions and councils contradict Scripture and even each other.

Some councils contradict scripture and even each other.

And this really gets to the matter of the Protestant Reformation.

There was a fellow by the name of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

And Erasmus was known as a humanist.

A humanist was somebody who went back and studied ancient text.

They studied Latin, they studied Greek, they studied Hebrew, and Erasmus was a brilliant scholar.

And he went back and he translated, uh, he produced a Greek New Testament.

And this was remarkable because people had just been reading Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

And Luther and others, Calvin Zwingli later on, they were all humanists, so to speak.

They were all reading these ancient texts, and they go back and they're reading, for example, Matthew 4.17.

Matthew 4.17 says, From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Metanoia, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And in that word, metanoia, they saw that it meant a change of the mind, a change of the heart.

As we read in the catechism, it's putting to death the deeds of the flesh and putting on Christ.

And they saw that in the text.

And then they looked at how Jerome had translated it, and they realized Jerome had mistranslated that.

And Jerome had translated that phrase, repent, as due penance.

It wasn't something that was in the heart and in the mind.

It was something that you were to project outward, something that you were to do.

And the Roman Catholic system had built an entire theology and an entire system on this idea of doing penance.

And so in arguments and debates about that, the Luther and the other reformers are having these discussions with Rome, and Rome just kept referring to, whether it's Cardinal Cajutin or others, to the tradition.

This is what the tradition says.

This is what the tradition has taught, that you're supposed to do these acts of penance, so on and so forth.

And so what they realized is that they had a formal disagreement about the nature of authority in the Christian life.

Are these traditions authoritative, just like Scripture?

And Luther was called to this place called Vorms, where there was essentially a trial that was put on, and Luther was called to recant the writings that he'd written that contradicted these traditions.

And this is Luther's response at the Diet of Worms.

He said, This is famous.

This is, I mean, this is bold right here.

This is Holy Spirit boldness.

He said, unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other.

My conscience is captive to the word of God.

I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here I stand, I can do no other.

God help me.

Amen.

How do we know what God has said?

How do we know what God has communicated to us?

Well, we believe that God's authoritative word to us is found, as Paul told Timothy, in the sacred writings, which make us wise unto salvation.

So it is to that now that we turn, worshiping in the spirit.

Worshiping in the spirit.

How do we worship rightly in the spirit?

Or you could ask it this way is anybody here perfect?

No, I don't see any hands.

Thank goodness.

How does sinful man relate to a holy God?

How does sinful man relate to a holy God?

Our problem in the 21st century is that we've forgotten about the holiness of God.

People aren't afraid of judgment, the judgment of God, because they've forgotten that God is a holy God who is righteous.

And if there's one thing that this idea of the righteousness of God and the holiness of God was very present in the day of Luther.

And this was something that Luther wrestled with.

He grew up in the Catholic system in Germany.

His father, Hans Luther, was a miner, and he accumulated wealth, and he wanted his son to advance, and he wanted his son to be an attorney.

And so he sent him to school to study law and to be an attorney.

And one day he was out riding his horse and a thunderstorm came upon him.

And in the middle of that storm, he fell off his horse and he said, Help me, Saint Anne.

Essentially, if you save me, I will become a monk.

Well, he lived, and so he joined against his father's wishes, an Augustinian monastery and became a monk.

And he's immersed in this Catholic system.

He's going to confession nearly every day.

He's he's in despair.

He has all this angst.

What do you do with a person who has all these questions and angst?

Well, they didn't really know what to do him, so they sent him to seminary to become a priest.

So he goes and he studies and becomes a priest, and his father's very disturbed by how all of this has happened.

And he uh eventually he's he's um he's christened as as a priest, he's ordained, and at his first mass, his father, Hans Luther, comes to the Mass, and Luther comes out with the bread, and he's so petrified and terrified because he believes that he is about to be holding the holy body of Jesus Christ.

Because Roman Catholics believe that in the Mass the cup and the bread become the very body and blood of Jesus.

And he's so terrified to be holding the body of Jesus, he puts the bread down and basically runs from the chapel.

Because Luther was struck with this existential angst of how does a sinner, and he knew that he was a sinner, how does somebody who is a sinner, how can that person be truly right before God?

How do you be right?

And in the Roman Catholic system, he didn't find the answers to that, not the answers to his satisfaction.

So what does Rome teach about how a sinner is made right before God?

What do they teach?

Well, they teach that salvation is facilitated through the church through seven sacraments.

Seven sacraments.

Those sacraments are baptism, confirmation, penance, the Mass or the Eucharist, marriage, holy orders, and extreme unction.

Extreme unction is when somebody's dying and the priest comes and prays over them.

So if they have committed a mortal sin, they will not go to hell.

That's their view of extreme unction.

So this is straight from the Catholic Catechism.

This is paragraph 739.

Through the church's sacraments, Christ communicates his holy and sanctifying spirit to the members of his body.

In other words, and you have to understand this salvation comes through the sacraments.

You are saved by the Spirit through the seven sacraments of the church.

And the word that Catholics use, the Latin phrase, ex opera operato.

By the working it works.

It's almost like a lever.

When you pull the lever, the lever springs.

By the working it works.

By the use of the sacrament, salvation inevitably comes.

If you're a kid, I was thinking about this, you ever get those Pez candies at the grocery store?

You know, it has the like the Darth Vader head on top or something.

And you pull it back, and what happens?

The candy pops out.

The candy pops out, and you eat it, and then you pull it back again, the candy pops out.

And I know that's kind of a crude illustration, but that's the view of how the sacraments work.

You pull the lever of baptism and salvation happens.

You pull the lever of penance and grace happens.

You pull the lever of the Mass and grace happens.

So they view the sacraments in that way.

The first and most important plank of salvation in Roman Catholic theology is baptism.

In baptism, they believe that you are saved and that you receive faith.

So in Roman Catholic theology, the way that one enters into right relationship with God is through the waters of baptism, that the Holy Spirit infuses faith into the child or the adult that moment that they are baptized.

Catholic Catechism, paragraph 977.

And I'm quoting these just so you know, like this is what they teach.

This is official Catholic dogma.

Baptism is the first and chief sacrament of forgiveness of sins because it unites us with Christ, who died for our sins and rose for our justification, so that we too might walk in newness of life.

So you're baptized, you're infused with faith, and now you can begin to do good works.

In Roman Catholic theology, the baptism, the work of the Spirit in baptism, neutralizes original sin.

So Catholics do believe in the doctrine of original sin like we do.

They believe it's neutralized in the waters of baptism.

So now you are able to do good works, though you still battle against the flesh.

In Roman Catholic theology, you are saved, or you could say justified by faith and works.

So it's not just works.

We need to be fair.

They believe we are saved or justified by faith and good works following your baptism.

Now, what happens if you commit a grievous sin against God after your baptism?

What happens?

In Roman Catholic doctrine, you forfeit your salvation.

You lose your salvation, you lose your grace, and you have made shipwrecked of your faith.

And so to get back onto the boat of salvation, so to speak, there is a second plank that you must climb aboard and reboard the vessel of salvation, and that is the sacrament of penance.

If you commit a mortal sin, you must do this sacrament.

This is Catholic Catechism, paragraph 980.

The sacrament of penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after baptism.

And there's three parts to the sacrament of penance.

Three parts.

First, contrition.

This means that you're really sorry for what you've done.

You're contrite over your sin, even in the heart.

Second, you go to the priest and you confess your sin to the priest.

Now, the priest, to be fair, in Catholic theology, they in them of themselves do not have the power to forgive sins, but as an expression of the church, as an expression of the authority of Christ, they pronounce a word of forgiveness.

They say de absolvo, that you are absolved of your sin, that you are forgiven.

And they then they pronounce the third part of penance, which is called satisfaction.

Satisfaction.

After the priest pronounces forgiveness, the words of absolution, the penitent must perform works of penance.

And again, remember where we we said this came from?

Jerome's translation of the Latin Vulgate, this idea of doing acts of penance.

The penitent must make, quote, satisfaction for their sins.

It's an activity.

And the way that you would do this is maybe the priest would say, I want you to recite a hundred our fathers, or I want you to say, fifty Hell Marys, or I want you to go do a certain number of good works in the community.

I want you to volunteer at the food kitchen, uh, things like this to make some sort of satisfaction for your sin.

But then they also might say, you need to give alms to the poor.

And, you know, the church always needs money too.

You might need to give some alms to the church to make satisfaction for your sin.

So what you see is that to enter heaven, to enter heaven, all of the satisfaction for your sin must be completed.

All of the satisfaction for your sin must be completed.

What happens if you haven't satisfied all of the penalties that have been levied against you for your sin?

You go to a place called purgatory when you die.

And there you are purged, you are purified, the sinful aspects of your character is paid for, and then after a period of time, then you can enter heaven.

And so it is very important that this satisfaction for your sin must be made.

Otherwise, you will go to this place called purgatory, this holding ground before you enter into heaven.

So with all this, so are we clear on how penance works?

You come, you confess, the priest says you must make satisfaction, and then you must do these meritorious works to satisfy this penalty for your sin.

Well, coming on the heels of that was this idea that some people, some people were so righteous and so holy, and and and and just so wonderful in how they carried out their life that they had extra merit, that they had done extra good deeds.

And these works were called works of super arrogation.

That these works went over, above, and beyond the call of duty, so to speak.

And when they died, the merit that these folks had accumulated went into this bank.

It's not a real bank.

It's an ethereal bank.

This bank of merit that then the Pope could control and give to us poor people who don't live those types of righteous lives in order to get out of purgatory and get into heaven.

So maybe you didn't satisfy, you didn't do the works of satisfaction that you needed, but these other people, they did.

They lived these amazing lives, and their merit can then be given to you.

And this was done through what was called an indulgence.

So an indulgence is where for a sum of money, you give money to the church to purchase an indulgence which acts as the satisfaction for either your sin or future sins, or this is really good, grandma sins too.

Because we don't want to think about grandma or our great aunt in purgatory.

And so the Pope in his kindness makes it available for you to buy an indulgence so that your sweet Aunt Mary can get out of purgatory and into heaven.

And by the way, at the same time in the 16th century, the Pope is building St.

Peter's Basilica in Rome and needs to raise a lot of money.

And so they sent out these indulgence sellers throughout the Holy Roman Empire, and they would go out and they were selling these indulgences, and they were really abusing the system.

And people did not know better, and they were uh they they were trying to raise as much money as they could.

For example, there was this one indulgent seller named Tetzel, and his famous saying, I know some of you could say it, when a coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory springs or flings.

So when Luther wrote his 95 theses on October 31st, 1517, at the door at Wittenberg, it was attacking the cell of these indulgences and this whole idea of how penance was working.

That's what Luther was attacking was this whole system.

And again, when you go to Scripture, which Martin Luther is doing, they're going to the sources.

Where do you find the system?

Where is it?

It's nowhere to be found.

It's nowhere in the Word of God.

And in fact, Luther is reading verses like Romans, this is Romans 8.1.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Wait a second.

No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?

None at all?

How could this be?

How is it possible that sinners might not be condemned and Luther is wrestling with this?

And the Reformers are wrestling with this, and they're going back to the scriptures and they're reading verses like let me give you another one.

Second Corinthians 5 21.

Look at that verse.

Open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 5.21.

Paul writes, For our sake, he, the Father, made him the Son, to be sin, who knew no sin.

What's he talking about there?

He's talking about the atonement.

He's talking about the cross, that when Jesus was on the cross, he was suffering the sin penalty for those who had sinned.

And then look at this next phrase.

So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Well, how is this received, this sin sacrifice and this righteousness of God?

Luther would read verses like Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

Not faith in works, but faith.

And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

But in the gospel, here's what Luther came to understand.

Here's what Luther came to understand is that when Jesus died, all the penalty for his sin had been paid for.

All of it.

And moreover, the righteous life of Jesus is given as a gift.

So it's called a double imputation.

If this is you and this is Christ, all of your sin was credited to Christ on the cross.

And if this is you, this is Christ, all of his righteousness is given to you.

His righteous life is credited to you as a gift.

So Luther called it extra nos or an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is not your own, a righteousness outside yourself that's given to you as a gift.

And the way that you receive this gift of Jesus' righteousness is by faith alone, apart from works.

When you trust Christ, his perfect life is credited now to you.

And if Christ's perfect life is credited to you, you can know with a hundred percent certainty of where you stand before a holy God.

You can know right now, friend, where you stand before God, if you trust in Jesus Christ and Him alone and not your good works.

You see, when you be when you trust in your good works just a little bit, inevitably what you're not doing is trusting in Christ.

And that negates your faith.

And the final analysis, you're trusting in your good works and not in Christ.

So it's so important to trust in Christ and Christ alone.

And the moment that you do, the moment that you believe in Jesus, an amazing thing happens.

God credits all your sin as being paid for and all of his righteousness as being your own.

And that, my friends, is the good news of the gospel.

That it's, and the word that was used was solus Christus, that it's merited by Christ alone, not your good works.

You don't have to earn it, you have to receive it.

Good works that we do are the evidence that we've believed, but they're not the grounds of our justification.

They're the fruit of the tree of salvation, they're not the root of the tree of salvation.

And we have to get that right.

We have to be clear on that.

That salvation is by grace alone through faith.

Now, here's how Luther discovered it.

He was meditating on Romans chapter one.

He was up in this tower.

It's called his famous tower experience.

Luther said, I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience.

I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction.

I did not love.

No, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners.

In other words, you hear that language of satisfaction?

When the priest would give me works of satisfaction, I didn't know if that if that actually appeased God.

I didn't know.

And I was angry at God that he would punish me more for my sin.

In silence, he says, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God.

I said, Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners lost for all eternity because of original sin are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments?

Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the gospel, and through the gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?

This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience.

I constantly badgered Saint Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.

I meditated night and day on those words until at last by the mercy of God I paid attention to their context.

The righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written, the righteous lives by faith.

I begin to understand that in this verse the righteousness of God is that by which the just person lives, listen, by a gift of God that is by faith.

I begin to understand that this verse means, he's talking about Romans 1, 16 and 17, that the righteousness of God is revealed through the gospel, but it is a passive righteousness.

It comes to us from outside of us, that by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, the righteous lives by faith.

And this is beautiful.

All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates.

That's what I want for each one of you.

That you would know the beauty and wonder and truth of the gospel, that in a moment, if you will simply trust in Jesus Christ, call out to him and say, Lord, I trust your work for me, your life, your death, your resurrection for me, God promises that all who call upon his name will be saved, will be justified and saved to the uttermost.

Praise be to God.

So would you do that?

What's hindering you today from trusting in Christ?

Maybe your pride, maybe your tradition.

Do not wait another moment.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Lord, we trust in the gospel, the good news, that salvation is given not by works, but as a gift to be received by faith.

That it's not our work that saves us.

We can never save ourselves.

We can never undo all the bad things we've done, but it is the work of Christ, and the work of Christ alone that saves.

His death for sin, his righteous life credited to us in faith.

So it is to Christ that we look now.

Lord, we look to you, we profess our faith in you.

And Lord, if there is someone here who has not yet trusted Christ, open the eyes of their heart now, and may they repent of their sins and believe the gospel for the very first time we pray.

Amen.