What Is the Gospel?

Today on Renewing Your Mind… We'll be right back. What is the gospel? What is this gospel that was so important, so vital, and so controversial in the sixteenth 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, sinlessness, 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? The Roman Catholic Church had a very complex answer to that question. And in trying 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.

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 was 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 required 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 that was either written on paper or 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 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 sculptor might 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 sixteenth 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 opere operata 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, but it was the cardinal issue of the doctrine of justification in the sixteenth century because the sacrament of penance included various parts, confession, 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 in 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 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 dative, 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, solace 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. Martin Luther and the Reformers rediscovered the biblical gospel.

As we listen to R.C. Sproul today here on Renewing Your Mind, we're reminded that in our own day there is a desperate need for our churches to return to this gospel found in Scripture. That's why Dr. Sproul wrote the book Luther and the Reformation.

In it, R.C. guides us through several crisis moments in the life of Luther. Those difficult circumstances led to his recovery of the gospel revealed in Scripture. Justification by faith alone was a liberating truth.

It still is. And when you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will send you this book plus the ten-part teaching series by the same title. Request R.C. Sproul's Luther and the Reformation online at Renewing Your Mind, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. When Luther posted those 95 theses, he didn't do it out of arrogance or ignorance. Luther knew what it meant to live in the darkness of unresolved guilt. Once he discovered that his acceptance before God is a gift received by faith alone, Luther was set free, and he would not rest until the light of that truth went out to the world. You'll learn all about this when you request Dr. Sproul's book, Luther and the Reformation. Just contact us today with a gift of any amount, and we will send you both resources. Our number again is 800-435-4343, and our online address is renewingyourmind.org. Well as we wrap up this week, I'd like to take you back to that Reformation 500 celebration.

Our president and CEO, Chris Larson, invited Dr. Sproul and our teaching fellows to the stage for a question and answer time, and let's listen in on that. We often talk about recovering the gospel. How was the gospel lost in the first place, and how can we avoid losing it again? Probably shouldn't surprise us that in the 16th century the gospel was obscured. We see this in the first century. We see it in Paul's churches in his epistle to the Galatians.

He's astounded. He's marveling that they were entertaining a different gospel. Then he quickly adds, it's a false gospel. So, if we see it in the first century in the churches of the apostles themselves, it really shouldn't surprise us that in every generation there's that temptation then to improve upon God's gospel, as it were, or to obscure the gospel. And so, where we found ourselves in the 16th century was the need to recover the gospel, and we find that is true of every generation of every age of the church.

There is a predisposition, I think, in the heart of every individual to self-justification, to begin with the Spirit and to be made perfect by the flesh, as Paul says to the Galatians. And so, not just at the Reformation, but today also, there is that tendency to revert to self-justification, which is why the rediscovery of the gospel is something that is a continual and daily need and not just something that occurred in the 16th century. I think one might add to that, that the Reformation is needed wherever the church hides the Bible. Martin Luther had not actually seen a Bible until the first year of his novitiate when he was becoming a monk, and he was lent a Bible for a year only, and that's a real indication of how ordinary men and women knew nothing about the Scriptures, absolutely nothing about the Scriptures.

There was a martyr in Scotland who during the course of his trial, his accusing priest pulled a New Testament out of his sleeve, held it up to the court and said, this is the book that is causing all the trouble. He was right, of course, but it's a real indication of the need of Reformation and renewal wherever the church hides the Bible. And sad to say, there are many churches in the contemporary world where the Bible is being hidden either in ignorance or actually quite deliberately.

And perhaps there's never been such a time of need for Reformation and renewal as there is today in that respect. I couldn't agree more with Dr. Ferguson, and I think that in many churches today, churches, pastors, and the people in those churches would profess to know the gospel, and they say, well, of course we believe the gospel. The gospel is core to who we are as a people, but when you listen to the sermons and the Sunday school lessons down to the teachers in the children's Sunday school classes, you don't actually hear the gospel. It becomes sort of displaced by entertainment and by stories and sociocultural anecdotes and pop psychological anecdotes, and the gospel sort of gets pushed to the side.

It's still there, and people still say, well, we believe it, but you don't hear it. It's not part of the warp and woof and the core being of the church. What are the differences between sins, inequities, and trespasses? Well, there are different words in the Old Testament. Most of us are familiar with the Greek term hamartia, for sin, which conveys the ideal of falling short of the mark. We are made for the glory of God, but what sin does is it causes us to fall short of the mark.

Transgression has the very basic idea of crossing the line that God has given us His law, and we cross the line. And iniquity has the sense, for example, in Psalm 51, of twistedness – that there is a twistedness in us as a consequence of these. And all of these words are different angles on one and the same reality of our disobedience to God, our againstness, our hatred, our diversion from Him. They say that the more important something is, the more words you'll find in that culture for that something. And there is an abundance of vocabulary in the Hebrew Old Testament for sin, and the great thing is there's also an abundance of vocabulary for the idea of grace. So there's bad news and there's very good news. We've heard tonight about the last written words of Luther, we are beggars.

This is true. But when we talk about debt and transgressions, the Scriptures say that we are debtors who cannot pay their debts. God and God alone has the absolute right to impose obligations to His creatures, and He has done that.

He has said, you must do this, you must not do that. And imposing those obligations, we owe it to God to perform those obligations. If we don't, we become debtors to the law and debtors to the God of the law. And the problem that we face, as we learn in the New Testament, is that we're debtors who can't file for chapter 11. There's no way we can pay the debt. It's a hopeless task. It's a fool's errand to try to pay the debt that we owe.

But this is what's basic to our human thing is we can't stand that. We want to be able somehow to pay the debt and meet the obligation rather than to say, I'm helpless. I'm a debtor who can't pay my debts. The only way I can stand before a just and holy God is if somebody else pays the debt. And the only one who has earned the right to pay somebody else's debt is the Son of God. And that's why we talk about justification through Christ alone, who alone has the merit to pay for us. He is the treasury of merit.

Nothing could be added to or subtracted from that treasury that is in Him. Well, our focus on the Reformation continues next week with an interview I had the privilege of doing with Dr. Sproul on the goal of the Reformation. I hope you'll join us for that Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind.