Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Romans 3:21-26; Hebrews 11:8-13

Theme: Lost sinners are saved by faith alone, and not by their own merits and/or good deeds.

Sola Fide was the truth that set Luther free.

Date: 11/10/2019 File name: SolaFide-2.wpd

ID Number:

There are lots of important questions we need to ask of ourselves as we mature ... questions that will affect the course of our lives.

What vocation will I choose, and what kind of education or training will I need to do that job?

What kind of person do I want to share my life with, and how do I meet such a person?

What are my values, and am I living them?

These are some of the most important questions you’ll every ask of yourself, but THE most important question any person will ever ask, is the one Martin Luther wrestled with in his early twenties: “How does a person get right with God?”

That question has eternal implications.

For Martin, this question became all-consuming.

It was so consuming that in 1505, at the age of twenty-two, Luther abandoned law school, and a very promising career as a lawyer, and joined the most austere monastic group in Europe—the Augustinians.

Obedience, poverty, and chastity were the foundation of the order and strictly adhered to.

Luther plunged himself into monastic life, assuming that it would help him find peace with God.

It didn’t.

For many years Luther was afflicted with what the Germans call Anfechtugen —afflicting trials.

But for Luther, these were more than trials, but spiritual attacks of the devil, that nearly paralyzed him with anxiety and fear.

Luther wrote of these attacks, “Then I was the most miserable person on earth, day and night was pure howling, and despair, ... In this moment, it is strange to say, the soul cannot believe that it can every be redeemed.”

During those attacks, he would sweat so profusely that he referred to it as an anxiety bath.

These attacks sent him into deep depressions, and made him doubt God’s love and goodness.

What caused such spiritual terrors in Luther’s life?

He perceived God as a righteous judge who stood ready to execute His wrath on all those who didn’t measure up, and Luther was convinced he could never measure up.

He feared that he could never, ever be good enough to merit God’s salvation.

But he tried hard.

Luther would later write, that "If ever a monk could get to heaven by his monkery, it would have been I." Yet, Luther still did not feel right with God.

His despair deepened.

1.

One of his fellow monks told Luther that a man becomes right with God through confession.

Doesn’t the Bible say that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins?

So confess your sins and all will be made well.

So Martin did just that.

He would go into the confessional, and ransack his mind attempting to think of every sin no matter how trifling.

So scrupulous was he in confessing every known sin in his life, he would keep his superiors in the confessional for hours on end dredging up every idol word he had said, or foolish thought that had entered his mind.

But confession and absolution still left him troubled.

How could he be sure that he had confessed every sin?

His spiritual gloom was not eased by confession.

2. Another well-meaning monk told him, “Martin, you can find peace with God through self-denial.

Doesn’t Jesus say, ‘If any man will be my disciple, he must deny himself?’”

And so Luther sought to deny himself with vigorous asceticism.

He would fast for days on end, taking nothing but water—and sometimes not even that.

One fast was so serious that when he didn’t show up for vespers, fellow monks went looking for him and found him in his room passed out.

He cast aside his blankets, shivering in the cold of his cell.

During the winter he would sometime sleep in the snow.

He would flog himself bloody.

Asceticism, however, did not make him feel accepted by God.

3. A third friend told Martin that he needed to go on a pilgrimage to Rome to visit the Vatican, and venerate all the relics that could be found in the city’s various churches.

So Luther went to Rome.

Listen to what Martin writes: “When I got to Rome, I ran around like a madman visiting all the churches, and places of note.

I said a dozen masses, and I almost regretted that my mother and father were not dead that I might had availed myself of the opportunity to draw their souls out of purgatory by offering masses and good works on their behalf.”

But his trip to Rome left Luther even more frustrated then ever.

His sense of guilt before God grew worse and worse.

It was not until Luther began to teach the Book of Romans at the University of Wittenburg that he came to understand how a man is made right with God.

He came to a passage of Scripture that would change his life.

It was Romans 1:16-17.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

17 For in it [that is, in the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”"

(Romans 1:16-17, ESV).

That verse delivered him.

Luther came to understand that God’s righteousness is a free gift that He imputes to the sinner when he simply believes, and has faith in God’s redemptive work in Christ.

Luther would later testify: “It seemed to me as if I had been born again and as if I had entered paradise through newly opened doors.”

There is only one way that a person can be right with God.

In Hebrew 11:6 we learn that, “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”

In last week’s sermon I shared with you Sola Gratia—We are saved by Grace Alone.

This morning, I want you to understand that the way we receive that grace is through Sola Fide—Faith Alone!

This morning I want you to understand three important facets of saved by faith alone.

The Source of our justification

The Ground of our justification

The Means of our justification

I. THE SOURCE OF OUR JUSTIFICATION IS THE GRACE OF GOD

“and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

(Romans 3:24, NIV84)

1. God is righteous, and this is what brought terror into Luther’s life, because how does a mere mortal fulfill the demand, Be ye holy as I am holy?

a. this is what Luther tried so hard to do and couldn’t

b. but through his study of the Book of Romans, Luther discovered the God is a gracious God who gives the free gift of righteousness through His grace

2. Luther discovered three life-changing characteristics of God’s grace

A. 1ST, GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS IS A FREE GIFT

1. you cannot earn, you cannot merit God’s grace

a. in fact, the Apostle Paul tells us that if you could merit grace, it would cease to be grace

2. our unrighteousness so deeply saturates every part of our character that if God is going to save sinners He is the one who is going to have to do it

a. and He has to do it by giving us a gift that we do not have

b.

God credits righteousness to our account when we believe upon his only begotten Son

ILLUS.

J. I. Packer, in explaining grace, writes, "the grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.

It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and had no reason to expect anything but severity."

B. 2ND, GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS IS A PERFECT RIGHTEOUSNESS

1. nothing can be added to God’s grace to make it more effective, and noting can be subtracted from God’s grace that will diminish it in any way

2. Luther calls the righteousness that comes from God through sheer grace an alien righteousness — a righteousness from outside ourselves

a. the theological word for this is imputation—God imputes righteousness to us by faith, and it is ours always and forever

b. and even the faith required to believe on Christ, and receive God’s grace is a free gift

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”

(Ephesians 2:8–9, NIV84)

1) God leaves nothing to chance in the sinner’s salvation!

3. the righteousness that God imputes to sinners belongs to Christ, and when I come to him by faith, God credits to me our Lord’s righteousness

a. and on the basis of that imputed righteousness, God declares you justified at that very moment, so that if you died you would go heaven right then because you’ve received all the righteousness you’ll ever need to get there

“It is because of him [i.e.

God the Father] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.”

(1 Corinthians 1:30, NIV84)

b. please, please, PLEASE understand that our justification—that comes by faith alone—is more than simply pardon for sin

1) most people—even Christians—hear the word justified and think, “Oh, that means God has forgiven me.”