FOUR GOSPEL SLOGANS

EDWARD FUDGE

Four hundred years ago God used some humble men to point to His grace in Jesus Christ, and medieval "Christianity" was shaken to its roots. Those reformers summed up their gospel message with four Latin slogans. A sinner's justification before God, they said, is solely by grace (sola gratia), solely by Christ (solo Christo), solely by faith (sola fide) - and these truths rest solely on the authority of Scripture (sola Scriptura). All these mottoes actually said the same thing in different ways: Salvation is "of the Lord." God, not man, is wholly responsible - and therefore due all the glory. This flew directly in the face of the established religion of the day, for it had gradually become thoroughly man-powered, man-pleasing and man-praising.

Yet to much of Protestantism today, the Reformation slogans of justification have lost their gospel ring. Many who affirm them with their mouths would be shocked to know their original meaning, and the venerable reformers would likely turn two somersaults in their graves to see how the phrases have been abused since their death. Today some reject the mottoes altogether, because of extreme and unscriptural implications that others have drawn. Yet these slogans of justification contain gospel truth, properly understood, and they still can be usefully employed as a summary of biblical teaching.

A SINGLE STRING OF GOSPEL PEARLS

Justification, the reformers insisted, was by grace alone, through the work of Christ alone, established by Scripture alone, and received on the principle of faith alone. By this they took a firm stand in terms of choices. If we envision a ballot with two columns, they were marking the God-honoring side of the ballot in clear repudiation of the Man-honoring side. Each motto sounded a challenge to the humanistic system of medieval Catholicism. Properly understood, they challenge all humanistic religion today -- whether in Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, or in other religious groups and movements which see themselves as unique.

Someone may say, "but these words have no meaning in my brotherhood. Why should I bother to give them thought?" We are part of history, and it is naive indeed to think we are not. We are what we are, to a large degree, because those before us were what they were. No man is an island; at best we can be aware of the fact and try to remain as objective as possible in our human condition. To refuse to do this is the height of arrogance and foolish self-deceit.


Solely Grace. Justification is by grace alone (sola gratia), the reformers said, and by that they checked the ballot under gift, not merit. It is by grace, not of debt. It is given, not earned. Paul explicitly affirms this truth at least two times. In Romans 4:4 he says, "Now to him who worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt." And in Romans 1 1:6 he repeats, "And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work."

At this point we have but two choices. Either God saves us because we deserve it (debt), or He saves us although we do not deserve it (grace). There is no middle ground. It is altogether deserved, or else it is altogether undeserved. It is finally a matter of grace or merit. There can be no compromise. The reformers therefore insisted on sola gratia -- solely by grace -- and took their stand with Paul.


Solely Christ. But how does God justly give this free gift to sinners who deserve wrath instead? The answer is in the second slogan: it is solo Christo -- solely by Christ. For God is a holy and just God who can ignore neither sin nor His own law. Humanly speaking, "grace" is an impossible dream. For God's law demands constant and total obedience (Gal. 3:10; Jas. 2:10), and by its side it carries the sword of divine wrath against those who break it (Rom. 4:15; 7:10).

Our situation is dark indeed. "By the disobedience of one man" [Adam, our first representative head] we "were made sinners" (Rom. 5:19). We are therefore "by nature children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3), and by our own sinful choices in word and deed we have proven ourselves Adam's true descendants (Rom. 3:23; Tit. 3:3). Our predicament as sinners is plain. God demands perfect obedience to His law, but instead we have broken it and sinned. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), and that is our just reward. If God is to "justify the ungodly" -- and at the same time be "just," both these realities must be taken into account.

God did this in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As "Immanuel," the offended came to the offenders. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." Once again, God dealt with mankind representatively -- through the Last Adam, Jesus Christ. In a human body, created for that purpose, Jesus gave God the perfect human obedience His law had never before received (Heb. 10:510). He "magnified the law and made it glorious" (Isaiah 42:21). He embodied every word of God's law in His earthly life, giving it absolute and perfect expression in a human body. In this way Jesus "fulfilled" it all, dotting every i and crossing every t (Matt. 5:17,18). In one of His last prayers, Jesus could say, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4). He offered that life "for sin," in the blood shed on the cross, again fulfilling the Isaiah prophecy of the Suffering Servant who would "make his soul an offering for sin" (53:10). On the cross He could shout, "it is finished!" and with the satisfaction of an accomplished work give up his breath (John 19:30; Isa. 53:11).

By His perfect doing and His perfect dying Jesus enabled God to be both "just" and "the justifier" of sinners. This was prefigured centuries earlier in the Tabernacle, where the Mercy-seat, rested between the cherubim of glory and above the tablets of stone in the ark of the covenant (Ex. 25:21). So it was at the cross. There Jesus became the "mercy-seat" -- the propitiation for sins. But He had first revealed God's absolute glory, as He perfectly embodied all God's laws in His own life now poured out in a bloody offering. Justification by grace was no cheap affair. Its price was a sinless life dying a sinner's death. In the flood of God's wrath, the dove of divine grace can find no place to rest, except in the unique person of the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth. A sinner's justification is solely by Christ (solo Christo). Of this there can be no dispute, and on this there can be no compromise.

In the work that accomplished salvation, there is no such thing as "God's part" and "man's part." For it was wholly God's work to reconcile, justify and redeem, and He did that in Jesus, once for all. Man's work comes after God has finished His work, and it is totally a response to God's work -- of grateful obedience and praise. Not until man has accepted the "it is finished!" concerning Jesus' work is he ready to hear "It is beginning" concerning his own work. And God's saving work is what He did in Jesus, not something He does in us. It was outside of us, for us.

This, too, is prefigured in the sacrificial system of the earlier Testament. None but the high priest could come to the mercy-seat to atone for sin, and when he came, it was as covenant representative for all his people (Lev. 16). The people brought their offerings only in response to what God had done -- in redeeming and saving them from Egypt and in forgiving them at the mercy-seat.

Jesus is our high priest, and He alone can come before God to deal with sin. This He did once (Heb. 13:9-12). As high priest, He presented the atoning sacrifice in the most holy place of heaven itself (Heb. 9:7-14, 26-28). Yet we also have sacrifices to offer -- of gratitude, praise and good works (Heb. 13:13-16). As royal priests (I Pet. 2:9, 10; Rom. 12:1), we bring these to the altar of thanksgiving. For us even to approach God, other than through our representative high priest, or for us to try to bring anything for our own propitiation, is the highest presumption, and is certain to end in death (Heb. 10:26-29).


Solely Faith. Because the work that accomplished salvation and reconciled us to God was done solely in the representative I ife and death of Jesus, it is a finished work. Since it was done completely in Jesus Christ, outside of us and before we were even born, we cannot contribute anything to it. We can do nothing to make it more acceptable than it has already been declared to be by Christ's resurrection (Rom. 4:25). We can do nothing to make it more certain than it already is seen to be in Christ at God's right hand (Eph. 2:6). Because it is done, we cannot do it, whether by climbing as high as heaven or stooping as low as hell (Rom. 10:6-8). We can only confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God has raised Him from the dead -- and be counted righteous and saved (Rom. 10:9, 10). Or we can refuse to believe and continue under judgment.

Properly understood, "solely faith" does not decrease good works but multiplies them. It puts them in focus. Works are the fruit of new life, not the root of it. We are not saved by our good works, but we are saved unto good works (Eph. 2:8-10). God pronounces the sinner righteous on the principle of faith, and that alone, but the faith that justifies never remains alone! The gospel phrase is not "faith plus works" (Rom. 3:4, 5). It is not "faith without works" (Jas. 2:20).* It is "faith which works" (Gal. 5:6).

There is no room for man's pride if God "justifies the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5). It deflates man's ego to hear that "Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Rom. 4:3). It is a hard saying to human vanity and boasting that "it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for [lit. "because of"] our transgressions and was raised again for [lit. "because of"] our justification" (Rom. 4:23-25). These are hard sayings indeed, but Paul says them nonetheless. And they are gospel sayings -- good news for sinners who are "dead" (Eph. 2:1) and "without strength" (Rom. 5:6) to help themselves, improve their situation, or escape God's approaching wrath against sin!


Solely Scripture. All this we learn in Scripture alone, and the authority of Scripture is sufficient to teach us the gospel regardless of what any man or group of men may say. Justification is therefore sola scriptura, the reformers said, completing the string of gospel pearls. What they said was not original. It was but a well-phrased summary of a single text in Romans 3:21, 22. For there Paul makes these same four points about our justification or acquital before God. It is a righteousness, he says, which is (1) "of God" (sola gratia); (2) "by faith of Jesus Christ" (solo Christo); (3) "unto all and upon all them that believe" (sola fide), (4) "witnessed to by the law and the prophets (sola scriptura).

THE RESPONSE OF NEW LIFE

Whenever Christ is truly preached, the Holy Spirit comes riding" (as Luther put it) "in the chariot of the gospel." Through the preaching of Christ, God gives both faith (Rom. 10:17; Acts 16:14) and "repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18). Although men may of themselves join churches and do many acts which appear to be obedience, no one can truly come to Christ unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). And Jesus added for our assurance that "every one who hears and learns from the Father comes" (6:45). By the gospel the Spirit convicts the world, of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8-11). The gospel is therefore God's power for saving those who believe (Rom. 1:16).

When sinners are "pricked in their hearts" they cry out, "What must we do?" Then -- and not until then Jesus ordained the answer -- "Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:37,38). Gospel baptism is the response of faith to the good news that in the representative person of Jesus Christ, God has saved us already. It is man's formal appeal for a good conscience (subjectively, inside himself) on the grounds of what his faith perceives (objectively, outside himself) in Christ's resurrection (I Pet. 3:21).

Baptism is like the flood-water which saved Noah from his sin-filled generation, by standing in his own experience between it and him (I Pet. 3:19-21). It is as the waters the Red Sea (I Cor. 10: 1, 2) through which God saved Israel from Pharoah's army (Ex. 14:13, 30). By faith Noah was righteous, perfect in his generation and walking with God before the Flood ever came (Gen. 6:9; 7:1), but God's purpose called for Noah also to be saved from the old world by water. Israel had passed from death to life by faith through the blood of the lamb, when God's judgment came on Egypt (Ex. 12), but God's purpose also called for Israel to be saved from Pharoah's army by water (Ex. 14). And God's purpose today is that one who believes and receives Christ (John 1:1 2) and lives (John 3:15,16; 5:24) should not hesitate for a moment to be saved by water from his own crooked generation (Acts 2:40; 16:33; 22:16)!

Yet much of evangelical Protestantism has played down and treated lightly Christ's command that the believer should be baptized, for fear it might weaken the gospel message of free salvation through faith in Christ! Others have faithfully stressed the command but unintentionally have neglected justification by faith. Let us be daring enough to proclaim all God says about faith without apology or "explaining it away," and let us be humble enough to instruct all He commands of the penitent believer. If we cannot "harmonize" all God has said it is not our problem, but His, for He wrote the book!

How can we understand all Jesus says in John about the blessings of the believer, and at the same time understand ail the apostles said in Acts about the need to be baptized? Certainly not by "interpreting" either to actually do away with the truth of the other. How can we explain a man being born a second time? How can we explain the wind! (John 3:4-8). How could God promise to bless the world through Isaac, yet command Abraham to offer him on the altar? It is not ours to explain first and only then to obey. As dependent creatures it is ours to trust all God promises, then obey all He commands. To do otherwise is to walk by sight, not by faith, and that is the essence of creaturely independence and sin.

Go preach the gospel, Jesus commanded. Tell the good news of a finished salvation! Baptize those who believe. Then teach them all things. This is the divine order. Some have preached the gospel and failed to baptize believers. Some have expended every energy to baptize people without truly preaching the gospel. And many have baptized believers and neglected to nurture them in the apostolic doctrine afterward. Let us pray that God will grant us grace to believe all that He has promised, obey all He has commanded, and rejoice in the salvation that He alone has accomplished through Christ alone, to be received by faith alone as testified in Scripture alone.