Solus Christus
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Turn the burden with grace. Good morning. My name is Spencer again. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in a series called the Five Solas. These are the five dividing lines of theology that ended up forcing the Protestants out of the Catholic Church and started the Protestant Reformation.
We are in the fourth sola today, which is Solus Christus, which is Christ alone, the very thing we just sang about. So we'll be looking at that. About a month ago, I went to Houston, Texas. I took Ben Johnson, who's one of our members. He's the director of a missions organization called 1040 Hope, and they plant churches across the Middle East and North Africa. He's actually currently over in North Africa right now.
And I took him there because I said, Ben, part of what he does here is he raises money for church plants and mission projects over there. I just said, Ben, if you want to raise money, I want to introduce you to something called Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the pockets of people who can give to plant churches. Let me take you there and introduce you to some people. So we went.
We had a good weekend. I got to preach at my longtime friend and mentor's church, a Methodist church in Houston. And at that church, I sat in the front right by the choir loft, which kind of felt nice to be a part of the choir because I'm never going to be allowed to do that up here. But I got to sit up there because, you know, in that tradition and other traditions, you have the pastor that sits up front the whole time. We don't do that here because not every face that stands up here is ready for prime time. You can guess who that might be.
But we... I got to stand up there. And because of that, Ben saw my face as we went through some of the liturgy that the Methodist church does. I came to faith in the Methodist church. I love the Methodist church. I'm obviously no longer a Methodist.
But I appreciate so many of the things that they do. And as we went through the liturgy, as we sang things like the Gloria Patri and things that we don't do here, I was very excited. Ben said your face was beaming, like you were glowing. And then we got to the Apostles' Creed, which is something that I grew up Presbyterian and I came to faith in the Methodist church. Both traditions say the Apostles' Creed every single Sunday. And as we said it, I just was so...
I was like, man, this is so good. Because it's a truth. It's a creed that goes back to the 4th, 5th century that binds us all in Christian faith. Whether you're Catholic or Protestant or whatever, like this binds us together. It starts with, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. That is the Father, right?
That's who we believe in. Then it gets to Jesus. It says, All of those statements are about Christ. And we, yes and amen, all of them. Like we believe that, yes, He came, was born of the Virgin Mary. That, yes, He did die a death on the cross for us that we deserve.
That He rose to new life in Christ at the resurrection. That He will come back as judge one day, but currently sits at the right hand of God the Father. We believe in all of that. And Catholics and Protestants would both say that our faith is in Christ alone. We both would say that. We both are bound together that Jesus is the centerpiece of our faith.
We don't believe in any other God. We believe in Christ. So if that is true, why is it that this is one of the five solas? Why is this one of the dividing lines for us? It has to do with how we define alone. As Protestants, we put a period there and say, amen.
In Catholicism, there's a bit of an asterisk in how you define that. And as we're going to see today, part of that is bound up in how we have access to Christ. That is going to be the difference. So I want to quickly go through the history of solas Christus, of Christ alone. I want to look at the power of it, why we believe it's good and how powerful that is for us. And I just want to leave us with some encouragements of what that means for us as Christians.
So let me pray for us and then we will dive in. God, I pray that you'd help us be present this morning. You would speak to us. You'd open our hearts to receive your word. And that you would help us see how good it is that Christ alone is whom we have. We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Okay, first I want to look at the history of Christ alone. So as we've said in this series, that there are, that the spark that lit the powder keg of the Protestant Reformation was Martin Luther. There were things that happened before him and after him, figures before and after that helped this come to being. But he was really the spark that lit it.
And the event that lit it, as we've talked about in the last few weeks, was when he posted the 95 theses, 95 objections, really, to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Now he had written some stuff before then. Check over that last week. He'd written some 97 theses before covering this. But the 95 that he wrote, well, this really lit the Protestant Reformation.
And there's a lot in there that deals with some of the things we talked about faith alone and grace alone. There's a little bit of what we see, the beginnings of this in Christ alone that later gets developed by the Protestants. In Thesis number 6, it says, the Pope cannot remit any guilt except by declaring and showing that it has been remitted by God. And what he's getting at there is that only God forgives sins. the only power that the Pope, the only power that a priest has is to acknowledge the work that Christ has already done. There is no one that stands in the middle here. And Luther and the Reformers began to develop this further in their theology as time progressed.
Chet last week talked about sola fide, which is faith alone. He talked about the cell of indulgences. The cell of indulgences were sold, indulgences were sold so that they could lessen their time in purgatory or get family or friends out of purgatory. So they bought these indulgences to do that. And Chet walked us through last week how problematic that is. You could actually buy and purchase salvation.
That is, that traveling preacher Tetzel said, he said, when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs. He walked through how that doesn't line up with the gospel of faith alone. But also, it's not just a problem that you could teach that someone could purchase salvation. That's not the only problem. What makes that doubly terrible is the idea that anyone could stand in the middle between us and God. That there is any mediator, someone who stands in the middle between us and the Lord.
1 Timothy 2.5 says, for there is one God and there's one mediator mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. That's what we believe. That's what the reformers continue to come back to. There's only one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, the man Jesus Christ. Now, we've talked about this a little bit in the past few weeks. I just want to make this more clear now.
Many of the things that the Catholic Church was doing at the time, they are no longer doing. Right? So what happened after the Protestants protested and had their objections and were forced out, the Catholic Church thankfully did look in the mirror at some of their practices. They had something called the Council of Trent that lasted for a couple of decades where they looked at the sale of indulgences. They looked at some of the inquisitions and some of the horrible things that they had done and they said, we can no longer do this. And thank you, Jesus, that they did.
They reformed a lot of their own ways. It's the reason why the Catholic Church is the way it is today and not how it was 500 years ago. We're thankful because there's lots of brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church. Absolutely, yes and amen. However, on some of these dividing lines of theology and specifically this one as well, they said no and that's why the Protestants left and did not come back. On this issue of Christ alone, we have a different understanding of how we have access to God.
We walked through faith alone and grace alone and how the Catholic Church, even the Council of Trent, very aggressively said no to that. They believe you're saved by faith and works. Well, how they define works is bound up in the means of grace. That's the language that they use. The means of grace that the priesthood administers. The Pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, that the grace is something that they control and administer and we find that incredibly problematic as Protestants.
I read one Protestant scholar, this is pretty thick but I'll walk through it, I think he absolutely nailed this. He said, outside the Roman Church there is no salvation, which, that is a standard Catholic doctrine, that we, because we are not a part of the Roman Catholic Church, at a minimum and their eyes are going to purgatory, which Protestants say purgatory isn't biblical, we don't agree with that, no, but that is Catholic doctrine. Outside the Church there is no salvation outside her walls, no infused grace can be found. As much as Christ is man's exclusive Savior, which we look at that and say, yes, Jesus is our only hope, He is our only Savior, yes and amen.
He says, the Church is needed as mediator of the grace that Christ gives. And we say, no, no, there is no mediator between us and Christ. No. He goes on to say, salvation cannot be based upon the work of Christ alone, solus Christus. Rather, Christ is in the Church, Christus in ecclesia, which is just Latin for Christ in the Church, and the Church is in Christ, ecclesia in Christo. Simple trust in Christ is not alone.
I think He accurately describes it there, but I read that, and I was like, but you are a Protestant. I said, I think it's fair. We spent a lot of time looking at different Catholic doctrine over the last few weeks. I was like, let me hear actually their arguments to see how they teach this. So I did it, I had some fun this week, and I went through the Catholic Catechism, which is very long, and was not as fun as I just described it.
But, I went through the Catholic Catechism, and I'll just show you a few places where they fleshed this idea out. In one section of the Catechism, the Catechism is the teaching that they give to the people. So the Catholic Church members have the Catechism that guides them in faith and practice. In the Catholic Catechism, in one section, it says, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith in baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time, hear this, the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door.
And what they just said there was, is that the Church is necessary for salvation, because they are the ones, and more accurately, the priesthood is the ones who administer baptism. And for Catholic faith, to enter into faith, you have to be baptized. That is initiation into faith. You're saved through the first work, which is baptism. So they're the ones that control that, the priesthood.
Then it goes on to say in a different part of the Catechism, through the ordained ministry, especially that of the bishops and priests, the presence of Christ as head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers. And that last part is beautiful. when it says the presence of Christ as the head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers, we say absolutely, yes and amen. We absolutely believe that, wholeheartedly. That we are, and yes, that Christ is beautifully made visible in this Church body right now. Yes and amen. But that's not what they said alone.
The qualifier on that is especially that of the bishops and the priests. That there is something special about the priesthood as a part of the Church. So, how specifically is the Church necessary for salvation? How specifically are the bishops and the priests the most necessary, especially necessary part of it? Because they are the ones that deliver the means of grace. And specifically, when they talk about means of grace, they mean the sacraments.
The sacraments. The language they use for sacraments are channels of grace. Alright? We, as Protestants, look at that. Sacraments are practices that Jesus ordained that are holy. We, as Protestants, said we think there's two of them in the Scriptures.
Baptism that we practiced last week is a picture of faith in Christ. And the Lord's Supper, which we'll practice this week, which is a reminder of what Jesus did for us. We look at that and we say that's what these holy practices are. The reminders of the goodness of the Gospel. But for the Catholic Church, they're more than that.
They are channels of grace that initiate and sustain faith. There's baptism, there's confirmation, the Eucharist, which is the Lord's Supper. There's penance, there's anointing the sick, there's matrimony, which is marriage, and there's the holy orders, which is ordination. But a few of those are especially really important, right? Because if you want to be saved, you have to be baptized. And you need a priest to do that.
If you want to take part of the Eucharist, which is the Lord's Supper, they believe in something called transubstantiation, which is just a big word of saying, that they believe that literally becomes the body and blood of Christ. And that gives you spiritual power as you partake of the literal sacrifice of Christ every week. If you want to sustain your faith, you have to take part in this. But the priesthood is the only one that can administer this. If you want to repent of your sins, you must take part in penance, which is going to confession, which is having the priest tell you, you should say, seven Hail Marys, go help a widow, and make good on your penance.
You need the priesthood for all of that. Do you understand how that is a problem? That have access to God, you would need someone in the middle to deliver these means of grace. As Protestants, we looked at that and we said, no. Like when they started to, I mean, Luther very early on wasn't objecting to this, but as they continued to search the scriptures, the reformers looked at the Bible and they looked at the practice of the priesthood being necessary for faith and for sustaining your faith, and they just said, no. Like they were zero days old when they realized this isn't true, which is one of those memes, the zero days old memes.
Like if you're zero days old when you figure out a thing. Like I looked at this week, there was one meme. A meme is a picture, y'all, that has words on it. There was a picture that had words on it and the picture was a picture of IHOP. All right?
And the word said, I was today years old when I realized there's a smiley face in the logo of IHOP. I was like, ah, that's cool. And I looked at another one and it said, I was zero days old when I realized that flames don't have a shadow. And I went, wait, what? And I had a picture of a match and behind the match there was no shadow of the flame. I was, my mind was blown.
Like I was in the office and I ran down, I was like, I grabbed Chet and Isaac and I said, Chet, Isaac, look at this. I had a lighter and I had my flashlight and we went to a dark room, probably a little, lit it, no flame, no shadow behind the flame. And I was like, there's no shadow behind the flame. And they were like, yeah, of course there isn't. It's a light source. Why would you believe that?
And I was like, don't act like you're not impressed. That is amazing, y'all. You're welcome. That, it blew my mind. They, they looked at this, the scriptures and said, no. And it blew their minds.
They said, no, we don't need a priesthood to have access to God. They ultimately said, we are the priesthood. That's why we believe we're the priesthood of all believers. That's the Protestant teaching. That we believe we all equally have access to God. That is what we believe.
That is what we maintain. That we have this access to Christ. That's the history of it. Now, I want to look at the power of this. Because I want us to see how this is unbelievably good news by looking at the power of Christ alone. In 1 Timothy 2, 5 again, it says, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man, Jesus Christ.
Here's the deal. You can read that on a Facebook post. You can see that on a billboard. Alright? You can open a Bible and read that. And if you are not a believer, you can look at that and say, I need a mediator.
I need somebody to cover my sin. I need the gospel. I need Christ. You can place faith in Jesus and get in your car to go tell your family or friends that you place faith in Jesus and then a semi takes you out and you are dead. And in that very next moment, you are standing in the presence of God for eternity. You did not need a mediator for that.
You did not need a priest to come and give you this. You read the word of God. God saves you, redeems you. Christ is our mediator. You don't need a priest to be baptized into faith. You don't need to take part of the Eucharist and thinking that the literal body and blood of Christ is what is going to sustain your faith.
You don't need a priest for penance. You have direct access to the great high priest in Christ. Look at the book of Hebrews that talks about this, this great high priest. I just want to show you two places. In chapter 4, it says, Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession that we have a great high priest that went Christian when you pray.
Offering prayers to the Father, Jesus stands at the right hand of God and He is our great high priest who is taking our prayers and our worship. It says, Verse 15, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. It's not just that we have a great high priest, which we do. We have a great high priest who understands what it's like to be human, who understands what it's like to be weak, who understands what it's like to be tempted. He was tempted and tried by Satan himself in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights after fasting.
He knows what it's like to suffer. He knows what it's like to lose. He knows what it's like to experience the sting of death. He understands all of it and He stands in the heavens right now and is able to sympathize with us as we pray to Him. Verse 16, Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. What that means is that you can approach our great high priest with confidence.
Like we don't have to because some of us look at our sin and our brokenness and our rebellion and we just you might think I can't approach God I gotta figure this out I gotta clean up my life I can't look at Him I just feel so dirty I feel so ashamed and the goodness of the gospel is that you get to in your sin approach Christ with confidence because the confidence isn't from our own it's from what He gives to us that we can boldly enter the throne room of prayer and offer up praises and prayer to Christ because of what He has done and not what we have done.