Before we stand for the reading of the Word of the Lord, a quote by John Owen, one of the framers of the Westminster confession of faith. The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father. The greatest unkindness you can do to Him is not to believe that He loves you. I found that very comforting this week. Jeremiah 31 and verses 2 through 4, He says, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.

Therefore, with cords of kindness have I drawn thee. The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him, is not to believe that He loves you. Live in His love. Believe in His love. Rest in His love.

Let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Galatians. We looked last week at the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ and today I want us to look at justification by faith alone. If you would stand with me for the reading of the Word of the Lord. We're going to read Galatians chapter 2 in verse 16. Galatians chapter 2 in verse 16.

Read together with me the Word of the Lord. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Let's pray. Father, high above the whole world, once again we ask that you might be pleased, O God, to do a work in the heart and the lives of your people through the preaching of your Word.

Oh God, that you might be pleased to give the Spirit once again to open our understanding as we open your Word. For we do ask it in Jesus name, Amen. Let's be seated. A lot of blood has been spilled over the doctrines of grace. How many are familiar with the doctrines of grace?

Those right now, write down to me the kind of the historical, what are the doctrines of Grace? How many would be able to write those down? The doctrines of Grace. That we are the solas, the five solas of scripture. How many are familiar with the five solas?

Great, hands up everywhere. Good. A lot of blood has been built over these doctrines, over these solas. Martyrs of the English Reformation under the reign of Queen Mary the first alone are estimated to be over 280. From Fox's Book of Martyrs, in her reign, that is the reign of Mary, the first of England, also known as Bloody Mary, the Gospel of Christ was so far oppressed that no place could be free from the bloodshed of the saints.

In the flames of fire, many noble and godly men, bishops and doctors were consumed to ashes, and multitudes of simple people who would not recant their faith. The reformed faith, remember this was Catholics burning Protestants, were burnt in diverse places to the great effusion of innocent blood. The Queen, who was a woman of most cruel disposition and as bloodthirsty as any tyrant, was known by her cruel deeds and violent persecutions." A close quote from Fox's book of martyrs. Three men who were martyred under the Catholic Queen were bishops in the Church of England. How many are familiar with the English martyrs under Bloody Mary?

You okay? These men were Bishop Hugh Latimer, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and then the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. These men held firmly to the doctrines of grace. Thomas Cranmer in a book that he wrote in 1550 said, We are justified by faith only, not by works. This is the doctrine of the Gospel.

The sermon that he preached on suffering shortly after that preceded his death. He wrote, We must not follow the multitude, but must stand for the truth. Archbishop Cranmer stood for the truth, and five years later he paid the ultimate price. Bishops Latimer and Ridley had been tied to the stake and burnt alive in the same place, in the same square on Broad Street in Oxford, England, five months earlier. Latimer's last words were, you're probably familiar with these if you've read this account, Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man.

We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." So it was. A pastor friend of mine from England, who ministers in England, the church in England today, has preached the doctrines of grace in the very spot where these men were martyred under order of the Catholic Queen. If there is a single word that separates the Protestant Reformation doctrine from Roman Catholic doctrine. More than any other word, it is the word alone. I wanted to bring in the board, I forgot to bring it in, I just wanted to write across it in big letters, alone.

Alone. That's the message of the Gospel, that we are justified by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. If there was a rallying cry of the 16th century reformation, it was this, justification is by faith alone. 600 miles to the south of Oxford where the English martyrs were laying down their lives, John Calvin was in Geneva saying, it is faith alone that justifies. But it was 650 miles to the east of England, in Germany, and 40 years earlier when the battle flag of Solafide, by faith alone, was planted by a young Augustinian monk named Martin Luther.

Quote, we are justified by faith alone without works, without merit, Luther wrote. He said this doctrine, the doctrine of justification Is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls? If it collapses, the church collapses. If the article of justification is lost, it's all lost. All is lost.

Why would Luther use such strong language in support of this doctrine? The doctrine of justification in the sight of God by faith alone. Why would men yield their bodies to a fiery stake in defense of this doctrine? Why? Because the doctrine of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, is the Gospel.

And if you don't have the Gospel, you don't have anything. All is lost, just as Luther said. Fifteen hundred years earlier, before the Reformation of England and Scotland and Ireland and Germany, the apostle Paul wrote in his opening salvo to the church of Galatia, If any man preach unto you any other gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Even if an angel from heaven were to come down and begin to preach another gospel other than the one which has been delivered to you and that you have received from us let him be accursed Let him be on a tamer anathema Let him be eternally condemned Earlier I said if there's a single word that separates Protestant the Protestant Reformation or Protestant Reformation doctrine from Roman Catholic doctrine, it is the word alone. It is the word alone.

I've always appreciated Dr. Sproul's charity. He's charitable with those with whom he disagrees. Have you noticed that? He's charitable with the Charismatics.

He's charitable with Roman Catholics. He's charitable with those that he would hope to win to the truth of the Gospel. In one of his lectures on the doctrine of justification, Dr. Sproul says this, and I agree, So often Protestants falsely accuse the Roman Catholic Church of teaching something they don't teach and have never taught. Some Protestants say, well we believe in justification by faith and Rome believes in justification by works.

We believe in justification by Christ. Rome believes in justification by the person themselves. We believe in justification by grace. Rome believes in justification by merit. That is pure slander against Rome.

And I heard that growing up. I heard those kinds of things growing up. And there was preaching concerning Roman Catholicism, but it was with laughter and mockery. And that is not the way to win those to Christ that you love. And we're to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And I just so appreciate it. That's pure slander against Rome. He goes on, Rome teaches now and taught in the 16th century. It is always taught that faith is necessary. Well hang on to my words here, hang on to his words here.

Necessary for justification. That faith in Jesus Christ is a necessary condition for justification. But though faith is necessary to be saved, according to Rome, It is not a sufficient condition. But that faith, but though faith is necessary to be saved according to Rome, it's not a sufficient condition. You have to have faith to get it, that is to be saved, but that faith is not enough.

Listen to these last words. It is not faith alone that gets you into Christ and into salvation according to Rome. In other words, while Rome affirms the necessity of faith for justification, it doesn't say you don't have to believe, and you don't have to believe in Jesus, it teaches that faith alone is not sufficient to justify one before God. With Rome, justification is a process. See, what do we believe?

Instantaneously, the moment that one puts their trust in Christ Jesus, they're saved, they're justified before God, The righteousness of Jesus is imputed to them. Their sins are imputed to Christ and His righteousness to them. We're clothed in His perfect righteousness. The sin burden is taken off of our backs and we're free. We're free and we're joyful.

Oh God, thank you for your salvation. Thank you for your saving grace. Thank you for sending Jesus. Thank you that Jesus said, if you believe in me, you'll have everlasting life. And whosoever believes in me will never perish.

Thank you God that Jesus said that I believe his words that's what we believe whosoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved that's what we believed we believe not sometime in the future after we've done some extra good things. But instantaneously, there is a legal right standing in the sight of God. We are now the children of God. We're the children of the adoption. And we are without sin in his sight, clothed in the righteousness of his son.

We're now able to stand before him unashamed because our sins were laid on Jesus and his righteous robe covers us. Our guilt is removed and our sin is removed. The burden is gone Praise God and we're clothed in his righteousness now and forever not the case with with Rome Not the case with Rome and I I don't I don't make fun of it at all. I have dear friends in Roman Catholicism. One thing that I've noticed about Roman Catholics over my 64 years now on earth is that many of them don't know what the Church teaches.

You begin to talk to them and and you will talk to them about the gospel and you talk to them about Christ and how he died for our sins and he rose from the dead the third day and how he He came to earth and he was born of a virgin and he perfectly obeyed the law in our place and how the scripture says that everyone who puts their trust in him will never be condemned. There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus and many of them will go right along with you. Yes, praise God, I've seen it many times. But many, many, many, many, many are under the burden of the system, the process, the sacerdotal system. Some know that by the grace of God we were justified the moment that we put our trust in Christ.

Some, many, many, Many are not sure of their salvation. They're not even sure if they will ever be saved. Some of them are hanging their hopes on post-mortem suffering and purification in purgatory. Some of them are hoping that maybe someone on earth after I die and I'm in purgatory for a million years for sins will light a candle for me or buy an indulgence for me or go to a mass for me. Can you imagine living like that?

Rome teaches that faith is necessary but not sufficient to justify one in God's sight. Rome teaches that baptism initiates the process of salvation. Grace is conveyed through the sacrament of baptism. It's infused or poured into the soul at baptism. But one must then cooperate with that grace and assent to that grace, and then they will be justified.

That grace of justification, now once they've attained it, however, it can be lost, it can be killed through mortal sin, but that can also be regained through the sacrament of penance, this is Roman Catholic doctrine, if the terms of penance are fulfilled through works of satisfaction, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Sproul again he says you have the first plank of justification in Roman Catholicism That is the first plank which is communicated sacerdotally, that is through the sacraments. The instrumental cause, the means by which justification is communicated to the person, the instrument that causes it, in the First instance, the sacrament of baptism. This is Roman Catholic doctrine. Don't hang your hopes on this please.

As baptism, the righteousness of Christ, the grace of justification at baptism, the righteousness of Christ, the grace of justification is poured in or infused into the soul of the person who receives that sacrament. Now the sacrament itself doesn't automatically save you, there's a sprawl, it automatically infuses the grace of justification but in order to be saved you have to do two things according to the Council of Trent. You have to cooperate with that grace and you have to assent to the grace of baptism. Then you are now in a state of justification. So this is the gospel process according to Rome.

The Philippian Jailer comes in crying and falls on his face. He cries out, what must I do to be saved? Well, again, I don't want to make anyone laugh, but can you imagine going through this with him? Baptism and infusion of grace, the sacerdotal system. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.

This role goes on. The good news is that now you're in a state of justification having done these things, baptism and the infusion of grace and the ascent to the grace and cooperation with the grace. Now you're in a state of justification. The good news is that now you're in a state of justification. The bad news is if you commit a mortal sin, you lose your justification.

You lose your salvation. It's gone. A mortal sin According to Rome, by the way, the sin is so severe that it kills the saving grace of the soul. That's why it's called mortal. And you lose your justification.

But there is a second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their faith. It can be restored again through a sacrament. In this case it's the sacrament of penance. First there's confession with that. You give your act of contrition and confession.

The priest pronounces your forgiveness. He absolves your sin. After absolution comes works of satisfaction. Works of satisfaction which are necessary to be performed in order to be restored to a state of grace. So now you have your faith, of course, plus works.

These works are called works of satisfaction because they're said to satisfy the demands of God's justice. In the 16th century, These included things like saying, so many Our Fathers, or Hail Mary's, or the giving of alms, through which you could receive these indulgences, which practices continue to this very day, says Sproul. You can go to Rome today to the Church of the Lateran and the sign on the door tells you how many indulgences you can receive by going up the stairs and saying, so many Our Fathers and such. These works of satisfaction were said to give the penitent sinner a kind of merit. And he goes through the different types of merit that the Roman Catholic system teaches.

You have congruous merit and you have a condign merit. So condign merit is a merit that's so high that it requires a reward from a just and righteous God. This is Sproul. Congruous merit is not so high, but high enough that it would not be fitting of God to keep you from the state of grace after you've done your works of satisfaction. Grace is there, but it's not grace alone.

Again, the word alone. It's grace plus merit. You see that. And Sproul says, God will never declare a person just unless or until righteousness inheres in the person. Close quote.

So that's the system of Rome to be saved, to be justified in God's sight. It involves faith plus works, grace plus merit, works of satisfaction, and inherent righteousness. But what does the Bible say? When we've been reading these passages, Paul says in our opening text from Galatians, a man is not justified by works. There is no justification through works, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.

Even as we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, not by the works of the law, nor by the works, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Again, the Philippian jailer. What must I do to be saved? Believe. Just believe.

Put your trust in Jesus Christ. Many theologians believe that the place where Rome went astray was with the translation of the Latin Vulgate. How many of you are familiar with that, the Latin Vulgate? So they use the Latin Vulgate, right, even today. So back in 382, a theologian by the name of Jerome, also known as Saint Jerome, he's commissioned by the Bishop of Rome, who would later be called the Pope, to translate the scriptures from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

The result was what was known as the Latin Vulgate, which is the only authoritative translation that is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. Over the centuries, it's become well known, even in modern Catholic theologians, that Jerome made a lot of mistakes in his translation. One of those translational errors was that of a Greek word. So he's translating from the Greek, okay, in the New Testament, into Latin, the vulgar, so therefore called the vulgate, language of the day, understood widely by many, but he mistranslates a very important word. And some say there wasn't even an adequate word that could have been used there.

They don't lay the blame on him. I don't think Calvin lays the blame on him. But Luther's the one that kinda really picked up on it and drove it home. And here's the problem. The word that he he translates from which we get our word justification or justified, he translated justificare, J-U-S-T-I-F-I-C-A-R-E, Eustafekare, which means to be made just.

But Paul wrote his epistle in Greek and the Greek word that he used, dikai, uh-oh, doesn't mean to be made just, it means to be declared just or pronounced just. So Paul wrote to the Romans, God is the one who justifies, he uses this word. Rome gets it right from Paul in the first century, but in the fourth century Rome gets it wrong from Jerome. Rome gets it wrong from Jerome. And what happens then because of the Roman Catholic doctrine here again and their system is you have you have popes that make these statements that are defining the faith and morals of the church and when they speak ex cathedra when they speak authoritatively concerning matters of faith and morals, that's equal to Scripture.

You cannot change that now down the line. You can't say, oops, oops, we made a mistake. You have to build on it. And so the doctrine was just built on and built on and built on and built on over the centuries, to where we even are today. But this misunderstanding that dikayaho, dikayaho means to declare or pronounce one to be just and not to be made just.

It's a forensic or legal term which denotes a legal standing before God, where a sinner is declared to be just on account of the righteousness of Christ imputed or set to his account. Some are familiar with Martin Luther's famous Latin phrase, simile justus et pacator. It means at the same time both just and center. You aren't made inherently righteous. You're declared righteous on account of the righteousness of Christ imputed to you.

Your sins imputed to Him and His righteous robe now covering you. You see how they got off track and now one has to be made righteous and we've got to have a system. How is one actually made righteous? And of course no one in this life is made righteous before God as it would have to be made to fulfill the demands of the law and the requirements of God's law for a perfect righteousness. Paul writes in Romans 4-5, to him who worketh not, but believes on him who justifies, declares just, the ungodly.

His faith is imputed, counted for righteousness. Everyone get that? That's Romans 4-5. To him who didn't do the works but believed on him who justifies, who declares just in his sight ungodly people. His faith is counted, imputed for righteousness.

Justification is a legal declaration of God by which ungodly sinners are declared just in the sight of God on account of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ received by faith. By faith. Ligonier defines justification like this. Justification is a legal declaration by God that a sinner, though guilty, is counted as righteous because of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. So when you think justification, declare just in the sight of God on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

That's your legal standing. That is your legal standing before God. Your filthy clothes of your sin were removed from you the moment you put your trust in Jesus. And what he alone did for you, for your acceptance with God, and His spotless robe of perfect righteousness is now your covering, your clothed in the righteousness of Christ. When we are justified, we're forgiven our sins and clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ.

A man at no time becomes actually inherently righteous before God, as though righteousness were infused into him, but he is declared legally just on the basis of a righteousness imputed to him that was worked out by another, which is completely foreign to him. In Philippians chapter 3 verse 9, the apostle Paul refers to this alien righteousness as a righteousness that is not his own. Philippians 3, 9, not having my own righteousness. Not having my own righteousness. Again, if you have a system where a person or a group of persons can never be wrong, Then all you can do when you make a mistake is build on the error.

And that's what happened with Rome. That's what most theologians believe happened with Rome. If the Scriptures however are your final authority on matters of faith and morals and not a man or an office. And you're always conforming to the Scriptures, or simple reprimanda, ever conforming to the Scriptures. Your foundation is secure on which to build.

And mistakes, when they happen and they do, can be repaired. Again, justification is a legal declaration of God in which ungodly sinners are declared just in the sight of God on account of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ received by faith. The effect of imputation, of that righteousness being imputed to us the moment we believe, is our justification. The effect of our sins being charged to Christ's account and His righteousness being credited to our accounts is that we now have a right standing before God and are accepted in His sight. And when He looks upon us, praise God, He sees us clothed in the perfect righteousness of His Son.

Man is justified in God's sight, saved by grace, through faith alone. By grace alone, through faith alone in Christ and what he alone has done. Now that is a doctrine worth dying for. The men that died preserved so many of these teachings, many who were martyred on account of their faith, men who were banished, praise God for them. Maybe one day that will come for us.

I don't know. I'll end with this. If I were to put my trust in Rome's system of faith plus works to be saved, Grace plus my merit, Christ plus the merit of others, Christ's merit plus the merit of others. If I had to put my trust in Rome's system to come to the place where I felt that I was unburdened of my sins, saved by God, I think I'd end up in therapy. The outworkings of such a system, if I attempted to fulfill it, would have me in such a state of uncertainty and really hopelessness that I'd be seeking consolation from sources outside of Christ.

Jesus said, come unto me, all ye that labor, labor. Oh, the labor of the system. All you that labor, and are heavy laden, got the guilt, got the sin on you that you can't lift off your shoulders. And no one can lift it off for you. And the sacerdotal system won't help you.

The sacraments are not lifting the burden from off your shoulders. The priests are not lifting the burden off your shoulders. Nothing that you do is lifting the burden from off your shoulders. You're having to continually repeat and repeat and repeat the process and the different elements of the system because you've got to have some relief. You've got to have some centipere relief.

Jesus said, now come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest I will give you rest take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easy and my burden is light amen and in me you shall find rest for your souls in me alone is what he was saying you will you shall find rest for your souls let's pray let's pray father we believe Jesus words we believe oh God then at Him alone we can find rest for our souls. We believe, O God, that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. We believe, O God, that it's by grace that we're saved, by grace alone, through faith that we're saved, faith alone, not of our strivings and our works, lest we should boast. We, Lord, We put our faith in Christ alone and what he has done alone. We thank you for his righteous covering whereby we could stand before you now and on the day of judgment, unashamed, uncondemned, because Jesus, we know, paid it all and did it all in our place.

Thank you God. Thank you God. It's in his name, in the name of our Lord Jesus. We thank you and praise you. Amen.