Category Archives: The Gospel

The Divine Exchange

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Surely he has borne our griefs (lit. sicknesses) and carried our sorrows (lit. pains); yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah 53:4-6

My friend, Dr. James White once wrote, “One of the most eloquent testimonies to the error of Dan Brown and the ridiculous and outrageous claims of The Da Vinci Code regarding the “creation” of the deity of Christ by Constantine is found in the sermon on the Passover preached around twenty years before the end of the second century by Melito, bishop of Sardis. I included my translation of this tremendous section in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, and reproduce it here. Remember, this sermon was preached approximately 145 years prior to Nicea, 130 years prior to Constantine’s battle at the Milvian Bridge (where he allegedly saw the sign of the cross in the sky and the phrase, “in this sign, conquer”). As you read these words, rejoice, as I rejoice, at the thought of this ancient believer and the fact that he reveled in the truth about the God-man Jesus Christ just as we do today! Oh that we had more preaching like this in our land today!” Continue reading →

Luther’s Gate to Paradise

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In the last 1,000 years, what came to be known as “The Tower Experience” of Martin Luther might well be the most significant historical event in the Western world for all the ramifications which ensued. Here are Luther’s own words as he describes what happened as he was studying Romans 1:17 (and reading the insights of Augustine on this verse from a fairly obscure article he had written centuries before):

“For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” – Romans 1:17

“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression “the righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust.

My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage Him. Therefore I did not love a just angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the righteousness of God and the statement that “the just shall live by faith.” Then I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven…”

Justification By Faith Alone (Quote)

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“The doctrine of justification by faith alone does not imply that you are justified before God because you managed to work up enough faith in and by yourself to believe in Christ, which is impossible in the first place. Rather, the doctrine contrasts faith against works, emphasizing that we are justified by God through faith apart from works. This faith is itself not a work — that is, not a work of man, but a work of God in man.

Faith is a gift of God purchased by Christ for all those whom God has chosen for salvation. It is a gift even though it has been purchased by our Mediator because it is God who sovereignly decreed to save us through this Mediator in the first place. It is God who has sovereignly chosen those whom he would save by his grace through Christ, so that all of salvation is a gift of God — it is a sovereign gift of God, unmerited by man, that at the same time fully satisfies divine justice, since it has been merited by Christ. Thus salvation is from the grace of God alone, through the work of Christ alone, and by means of faith alone (that is, in contrast to works).

Therefore, when discussing the doctrine of justification by faith, we must not portray faith as a condition for salvation that God requires from us, as if we could produce faith in and of ourselves prior to regeneration and apart from the Spirit’s power. So, although it is correct to speak of faith as our necessary response to the gospel, this “response” of faith is in fact one of the very things that Christ’s atonement purchased for his elect, and that God bestows upon his chosen ones by his Spirit. In other words, God is the one who produces this response of faith in his elect.

When Scripture says that salvation is by faith and not by works, it is not throwing out works just to make faith a condition that man must fulfill in order to obtain salvation from God, although this is precisely how the doctrine is frequently but mistakenly portrayed, either by explicit statements or by implication. Faith is not a good work or a condition for salvation that God requires from us before he would do anything to save us; instead, God has already decreed and performed all that is necessary to secure the salvation of his chosen ones, and faith in the gospel is precisely one of those things that he has secured for the elect by the work of Christ, and that he sovereignly produces in their minds when he commands them to believe and summons them to himself by the gospel. There is therefore no place for boasting. Salvation comes from God through Christ alone. We cannot even boast about our faith, since it is a sovereign gift of God, merited by Christ for the elect.” – Vincent Cheung