We've heard already this evening an emphasis on the recovery of the gospel.
And so, it's almost an unscientific postscript for me to ask the very simple question, what
is the gospel?
What is this gospel that was so important, so vital, and so controversial in the 16th
century?
Let me begin by saying what the gospel is not.
The gospel is not our personal testimonies.
Our personal testimonies may be of interest to people and may be used of God to introduce
a conversation about the gospel.
We may have methods of evangelism that we've learned, such as the evangelism explosion,
diagnostic questions—"have you come to the place in your thinking where you know for
sure that when you die, you're going to go to Heaven?"
And then it's followed by "if you were to die and stood before God tonight and God said
to you, why should I let you enter my Heaven, what would you say?"
Those questions aren't the gospel.
They're a wonderful introduction to discussions and conversations about the gospel.
Or you may have heard the idea that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
That may or may not be true, in the final analysis.
The reprobate won't find the plan so great, but in any case, that also is not the gospel.
What is the gospel is found on the pages of sacred Scripture.
And there are two distinct aspects about the gospel.
And those aspects are what I would distinguish between the objective content of the gospel,
and then secondly, the subjective appropriation of the gospel.
In very simple terms, the controversy of the 16th century did not focus on the first part,
on the objective gospel.
The objective gospel simply is this: it's Jesus.
Who He is, and what He has done.
His life of perfect obedience, sinless-ness, His substitutionary atonement, His resurrection,
His ascension into Heaven, His promise of His return.
But when we get to the subjective aspect of the gospel, that's where the controversy raged.
And that's this question: "How does the life of Christ, how is the work of Christ and its
benefits, appropriated to us?"
Now the Roman Catholic Church had a very complex answer to that question.
And it tried to answer that question.
They went back in history to use the language that was first formulated by the philosopher
Aristotle.
In antiquity, Aristotle was concerned about many questions of science, many questions
of physics and metaphysics, and one of the questions that really puzzled the philosophers
of that day was: "what is motion?"
Some even questioned whether motion was actually real, there were skeptics who challenged the
very notion.
But Aristotle applied his keen mind to the question of motion, and what he was looking
about was he noticed that everything in the world was subject to change, mutation.
And so, he tried to analyze the motion of change.
He realized that change itself was motion.
And so he, in his analysis, distinguished several different causes for motion.
And to simplify his analysis, as he did himself, he used the illustration of a statue.
How is it that a statue comes into being?
A statue is something that results from tremendous change from the original matter out of which
the statue is made.
And so he spoke about the material cause of statues.
And he defined the material cause as that out of which a thing is made.
But then he discerned several other aspects of the causality involved in the production
of the statue.
He said what's the efficient cause of the statue?
The answer is simple, the efficient cause of the statue is the sculptor, who moves and
changes and forms the matter, and turns it into a beautiful piece of work.
And that efficient cause also requires a sufficient cause, that cause that was able to do the
actual work and bring it to completion.
But in addition to that, Aristotle noticed even different causes.
He spoke of a formal cause.
And he described the formal cause as the plan or the blueprint.
It was either written on paper or it was simply in the mind of the sculptor.
Later on, Michelangelo, perhaps the greatest sculptor of all time, had a series of unfinished
statues that he called the Prisoners, because he would look at a block of Carrara marble
and he would see, before he would even pick up his tools, the finished product.
And he thought that his task was to chisel away at that block of stone and release the
form that was already contained within it.
And Aristotle also noted what he called the final cause—the purpose for which these
changes take place.
And in the case of sculpture, he said that the purpose of the sculpture may be to beautify
the gardens of a wealthy merchant, or to adorn the property of a pope.
But then in all that definition of different kinds of causality, he focused on another
kind of causality, which he described as the instrumental cause.
The tools or the instruments that the sculptor uses to form, shape, and change that block
of wood into the finished product.
Well, you didn't come here to hear about Aristotle.
But the language that was used by Aristotle in this regard was incorporated into the church.
And so, the church used all these different definitions of causality.
And at the very heart of the dispute in the 16th century was this question: What is the
instrumental cause of our justification?
What is the means by which our salvation and our justification takes place?
And Rome was very clear in their definition of what the instrumental cause of justification
was.
They found the instrumental cause of justification in the sacraments—two most importantly.
Initially, the sacrament of Baptism.
This is why we speak of the Roman Catholic view as being sacramental and sacerdotal,
something that is accomplished through the working of the priests who used the instruments
necessary to bring people to a state of grace.
And the first instrumental cause of our justification, they said, was the sacrament of Baptism.
Which Baptism worked "ex opera operato," by the sheer "working of the works" that the
person who was baptized in this sacrament received the infusion of justifying and saving
grace.
And that grace put them, at least temporarily, in a state of grace, in a state of justification,
until or unless that person committed mortal sin.
And mortal sin was defined as sin so egregious, so severe, that it killed or destroyed the
grace of justification in the sinner, so that the person who was baptized, if he died in
mortal sin, would go to Hell.
But there was a recipe to recover justification for the person who committed mortal sin, and
that was called "The second plank of justification, (comma) for those who have made shipwreck
of their souls."
And the second plank of justification, according to Rome—and I don't mean to use a pun—it
was a cardinal issue of the doctrine of justification in the 16th century, because the sacrament
of Penance included various parts: confession, absolution, acts of contrition, absolution
from the priest, and then finally—the controversial part—works of satisfaction.
And one of the works of satisfaction could be the giving of alms for the poor or to the
church, which was the foundation for the whole process of indulgences.
And so, the paying of indulgences was to make use of one of the ways in which one could
achieve congruous merit, merit that would make it congruous for God to restore the sinner
who has lost the grace of justification to once again be in a state of justification.
And so, Rome stood firm on this principle, that the instrumental cause of justification
is found in the sacraments.
First the sacrament of Baptism, and then in the sacrament of Penance.
That was the clash.
Because when Luther came to his understanding of justification by faith alone, the affirmation
of the Reformers was this: that the instrumental cause of justification is not found in the
sacraments, it's found in faith.
Faith is the instrument, indeed the sole instrument, by which people are justified.
And that was the battle.
That was the fight.
And again, the question justification, the meaning of justification by faith, as it's
already been intimated to you this evening, was only shorthand for justification by Christ.
When we say that justification is by faith, we are talking about the instrumental datum—the
means by which a person is justified.
And justification by faith simply means that the instrument of our justification is that
with faith and by faith and through faith, we are linked to Jesus, so that all that He
is, and all that He has done, is given to us.
Justification is by Christ alone.
You know, again, in terms of this language of causality, the Reformers used another term
that Aristotle never thought about in his day, and that was the meritorious cause of
our salvation.
And when the Reformers spoke of the meritorious cause of our salvation, they spoke of the
merit of Jesus Christ alone.
Solus Christus—justification—the means is the instrument by which we're linked to
Jesus and His righteousness is given to us by faith.
That's what Paul was saying in Romans 1.
That's what Luther was repeating in the Reformation—the just shall live by faith.
The alone instrument by which we are justified.
Amen.