The Story of God’s Explosive Grace

The one little Greek word that sparked a revolution

As one studies the Old Testament, one quickly comes to recognize a cycling effect. God’s people are first on the right track, then false teaching creeps in and spoils the truth and lives are ruined. Then God raises a man to challenge Satan’s work and return God’s people to the right path. In the 1500’s that man was Martin Luther. A church war broke out over the meaning of one little word with humongous meaning, that word was the Greek word, dikaióō, meaning to be justified.

At the time, The Catholic Church seems to have brought back everything that the Lord had abolished in the Phariseeism of His day.  Jesus decentralized His church, Catholicism recentralized it  Jesus removed legalism from His church, Catholicism brought legalism back  Jesus made salvation through faith, Catholicism made it through works

The Roman Church needed money for its building program and to the rescue in 1516 came a man by the name of Johann Tetzel. He was a Dominican friar who was sent to Germany to raise money for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Church’s doctrine of the day was that faith alone could not make you right before God, good works needed to be added to the equation. So Tetzel sold indulgences, a way of releasing family in purgatory into heaven. The saying went, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

 Lived: 1483 to 1546  In 1505, at twenty-two years of age, a lighting bolt struck close to him, in fear he cried out, “Help! St. Anna, I will become a monk.”  Occupation: Monk, priest, professor of theology  Over the doctrine of justification, Luther unwittingly started the Protestant Reformation  He nailed his infamous ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg door challenging the Roman Church  He translated the Bible into German and put God’s mighty word into the hands of all

Luther once said, “If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would certainly done so.” Martin fasted, prayed, confessed, practiced self-denial, pilgrimage, and penance by way of self-inflected punishment and pain to rid himself of sin and secure heaven. He out did his fellow monks by a wide margin. Unfortunately, nothing worked. In an act of desperation, Martin went to Rome, the capital of Christianity. There he crawled on his knees up the steps of a church, doing penance and anguishing over his desire for spiritual peace. Again, nothing worked. Later he confessed that he hated God for the cloud of judgment that he faced.

During this time of spiritual darkness, Luther could not get a verse from Romans out of his mind. 17 For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” Romans 1

“I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the justice 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 "justice 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.”

Watch a video clip of R.C. Sproul on Martin Luther’s awakening of the Roman’s meaning of justification. (This is one of two clips available under “Available Media”)

A comparison of the Catholic view of justification in the 1500’s and Luther’s Biblical view

The Catholic Church had taken simple obvious truths about salvation and turned them upside down to actually mean the opposite. The Church believed: When someone wished to become part of the Church and believe in Christ, the good news was that all their past sins were forgiven. The bad news was that future sins must be forgiven by a life-time of earning righteousness. God’s grace is infused into the believer to empower him to do this. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

Catholicism confused Justification with Sanctification: Because of a failure of the Church to understand this aspect of Christian theology known as Soteriology, darkness overshadowed Christianity and turned the good news into bad news like all the other religions. TERMPROCESSTENSE JustificationYou were savedPast SanctificationYou are being savedPresent GlorificationYou will be savedFuture

That justification is not an empowerment of God to make you righteous. Although God does this after true justification takes place and is known in the Bible as sanctification. But true Biblical justification is a judicial act whereby God declares the sinner not only forgiven, but now having the same righteousness as God Himself.

Imagine that on the day you became a Christian that you were transported to heaven. God said, “Your sin prevented you becoming my child. But now because of what Jesus did on the cross, I declare you righteous and holy! You are now Mine.”

You would think that to decide whether the Catholic view was correct or Luther’s view was true would not be that hard. Just call in the scholars, have them study thoroughly the subject, then have them vote on it, and there you have the answer. Not so fast! The truth of God declaring the sinner righteous is hidden by God in plain sight. To understand the Biblical truth of justification requires the Holy Spirit to illuminate the mind. The unregenerate mind cannot make sense of what Paul teaches.

TENSETERMUSEDSTRONGSGREEK Noun7G1342 dí-kai-os Noun33G1343 di-kai-o-sún-ē Verb15G1344 di-kai-ó-ō In the context of Biblical use:  Righteous: That which conforms to the standard of God’s holiness and His character.  Righteousness: The quality of being righteous  Justified: To be judicially declared righteous

The biggest trade ever in the history of the universe… We gave Jesus our sin Jesus gave us His righteousness

A believer will never really get the Book of Romans until he or she understands the role “justification” plays in this epistle. We are going to do a fly over of the majority of its uses in Romans to help us grasp its significance. (Note: The words are color coded to determine which word is actually used. The code is four slides up)

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness a 3.24b

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness a 4.11b

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness ,16,

RomansThe Biblical truth about righteousness