Sola Fide

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We’re going to be in Luke chapter 23 this morning. Luke chapter 23. I was thinking last night as I was putting my chili on to simmer, I had to open some cans of Rotel to put in there.

Don’t worry, it’s not too spicy. Use the mild. And it made me think of the first sermon really that I ever preached.

I was 14 or 15 years old, and it was at a Friday morning before school meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at our school, which for some reason I was brought in to be a part of in spite of the fact that there’s nothing athletic about me. And so preparing this message to preach to about 200 kids, I decided to bring an object lesson on there being only one way to God, only one way to salvation, which is what we’re going to talk about this morning. And I don’t know that I really stole, but I don’t know that I asked either.

I swiped, I’ll put it that way. I swiped a can of Rotel out of my mother’s pantry and took it for my object lesson, fully intending to bring it back. And what I did in showing these kids, I pulled out of my backpack, I’m amazed I was allowed to bring these things into the school, but I pulled out of my backpack a screwdriver and showed them as I was talking that no matter how hard I tried this flathead screwdriver, I could not open this can of Rotel.

I said, you know, if you want what’s inside the can, there’s a certain way you’re going to have to get it. And then I pulled a hammer out of my backpack and put it on the table and began lightly hammering this can of Rotel. And probably the only thing a lot of those kids remember out of that is that it did tear a small hole in the seam of the can, and a kid got pepper juice in his eye.

It shot across. But you still couldn’t get the stuff out of the can. And then I showed them the can opener.

I said, there’s only one way to open this can with the food intact and get out what you want from it. Now, don’t be a smart aleck and tell me there’s another way. I said, with the food intact, okay?

I could take a chainsaw and open the can, but you’re not going to want to eat what’s in there afterwards. And there’s one way, and it was with the can opener. And I was thinking about that last night as I was opening those cans of Rotel, just like there’s only one way to open that can with the food intact and get what’s inside out.

So there’s only one way to come to God, and he outlines for us what that is. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning as we look at Luke chapter 23, is that it’s only through faith that we can stand justified before God. If you want to come to God, you have to go through Jesus Christ and come by faith, faith alone.

We’ve at Reformation and looking at the life of Luther and some of the biblical doctrines that were rediscovered during that time. Some of the things that we take for granted, this is just what we believe and everybody should believe, that almost nobody believed up until that time. And as I’ve told you, there were pockets of believers, there were pockets of faithful people who kept the flame of truth alive in the hills and the valleys and deep in the forests, but for most of the western world, these things that we’ve talked about, that God’s word, the authority is from scripture alone, not from church tradition, that was almost unheard of for most people.

The idea that we’re saved by God’s grace alone, and that it has nothing to do with what we earn or deserve, that was almost unheard of until this time. Well, so too was the idea that we are saved through faith alone, and we’ve talked some over the last few weeks about Martin Luther and him nailing the list of 95 protests against the teaching of the Catholic Church to the door of his castle church. But it was earlier in his life that this whole thing got set in motion.

He spent most of his early life trying desperately to find peace with God. This was a man who, unlike so many in our day who just flaunted, he was acutely aware of his sin. It bothered him.

And it seems like a lot of people today are immune to realizing their own sin. Whatever I want to do is fine. Luther looked at his own life and saw every sin that he committed and felt like it just dragged him further and further from God.

And he saw God as being full of judgment and full of wrath, and he feared falling into punishment. And in some of his writings, I believe it was, he talks about seeing the stained glass and seeing the paintings and things in his boyhood church and the monsters, the demons of hell, and being afraid of God’s judgment, being afraid of falling into those things. And he was so overwhelmed by this that every sin he committed, it was like he was obsessed with finding peace with God.

And he just couldn’t do it. His father sent him to school to become a lawyer. His father had struggled as a minor and wanted his son to go into a profession where he could make lots of money and support his parents in old age.

So he sent him away to college to become a lawyer. and one day while he was traveling to school, he was caught outside in a thunderstorm. This thunderstorm changed his life.

The lightning struck either a tree or the ground near him. It’s one of those thunderstorms. You know, we get thunderstorms all the time in Oklahoma. It’s usually not a big deal, but there have been those thunderstorms that, I mean, just rattle you to the core.

And this is one of those. And the lightning, he was already afraid that the lightning struck either a tree or the ground near him somewhere where the lightning just cracks and explodes and sent him to the ground in fear. And while he was there, he pled with God and some of the saints, and he promised that if God or these saints would spare his life, then he would become a monk and serve God.

And so he returned to school, but much to his father’s annoyance, he returned to school to study theology instead. His father wanted him to go and make millions as a lawyer, and he decided, I’m going to go where the big money he is and go into ministry, which is not true unless you’re one of the big TV preachers. And he thought and he hoped that this would help him to find peace with God.

That was what Luther was driven by. He realized what a sinful creature he was and realized the wrath and the judgment of God. He didn’t really understand the love and grace of God that goes along with that, so he only saw half of God’s nature.

But he thought, maybe this will help me to find peace with God. And the people who were around him at the time said he worked harder than anybody they had ever seen to try to find salvation. Luther even wrote of himself that if anyone could have earned heaven by the life of a monk, it was I.

He was the hardest working man in ministry in his time. He gave away all of his possessions. He gave away everything he had, not that it was that much, but he gave away everything and gave it to the poor and lived on nothing.

He would pray for hours every day, almost obsessively confessing every sin he could think of. Because in Luther’s mind, if I forget one, if there’s one that I’ve committed and I’ve forgotten, if there’s one that I’ve even thought and forgotten, and I don’t confess it, then God will damn me to hell for eternity. And so it was this obsessive thing where he had to pray for hours trying to make sure he’d come up with everything and make sure that he’d confessed correctly.

And he would fast for long periods of time, hoping that that would help him to earn God’s favor. He would even punish himself for his sins, thinking that maybe if he punished himself, God wouldn’t punish him. So he’d deprive himself of sleep, and he’d even subject himself to harsh cold, refusing to use a blanket at night, because if he suffered enough, maybe God would forgive him.

And folks, he would even whip and beat himself. He’d whip and beat his own body, which there are still people who do today. He would whip and beat himself, hoping that his suffering would free him from his sins, but none of it worked.

I mean, most of you will understand that. It didn’t help. He grew more and more desperate, and he grew more and more frustrated as he tried everything he could think of doing, and still it just made him more desperate and more terrified, and he felt the weight of his sins even more, and he felt the condemnation and the judgment of God even more, and Luther even said later on that during this period of time, his soul ate and drink nothing but eternal punishment.

It’s a pretty bleak existence, isn’t it? Imagine the guiltiest you’ve ever felt and multiply it by 10 and then say you feel that guilty over everything you’ve ever said, done, or thought, and imagine carrying it around with you every day. That gives you an idea, and the idea that God could never forgive you or you could never work hard enough for God to forgive you.

Imagine carrying that around with you every day, and that’ll give you some idea of what Luther was going through. But his life was changed when he had graduated with his degree in theology, and he became a professor at the University in Wittenberg, and he led a study on the book of Romans. He encountered Romans 1.

17, which is written on your bulletins at the back. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Those who were just before God were those who came to God by faith, Luther realize.

This was also a quote from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2. 4. As he was reading this passage, and it took him a while to wrestle with this passage and to understand it, but eventually God opened his mind and his understanding to realize what this passage was teaching, and he said that he felt as though the gates of heaven had been flung open wide and his soul had been born again.

Have you ever felt those times that you just feel weighted down by something, either guilt or stress or worry or what have you, but something just presses down on you, and then that moment that all lifted away, and you feel like you’re a new person. You ever experienced that? Am I the only one?

I’ve felt that, where that worry is just gone in an instant. It works out. That’s how he felt spiritually, that he was a new man, that he was practically born again in that moment.

And he discovered as he studied this, and as he began to study the word, the rest of the scriptures, in light of this passage, he realized that his efforts, all his efforts, all the work that he did could not move him one step closer to God. The same is true for us. All our efforts, all the stuff we do, all the religious whatnot, cannot move us any closer to God.

And as we read last week, the Bible proclaims, it says very clearly that God offers salvation to undeserving sinners for one very simple reason, and that’s that God himself is gracious. It’s not because we deserve it, it’s because grace is his nature, it’s who he is. He is gracious, therefore he shows grace.

Salvation is offered to by grace alone. And we receive that salvation. God offers it by grace alone, and we receive it through faith alone.

There’s not a shortcut. There’s not an extra several steps we go through. We receive it by faith or through faith.

We receive it when we believe in his promises. So it’s by faith alone that we’re justified, the Bible teaches. And justification, don’t get hung up on the big theological roads.

Justification just simply means that when God justifies us. We know that we’ve heard the phrase that people try to justify things to themselves all the time. To make it okay.

Well, he did such and such that was wrong. He tried to justify it. The policeman pulls you over for going 90 and a 50 and you start making excuses.

You’re trying to justify going 90 and a 50. You’re trying to make it okay. Justification for us means that God looks at us and says, all right, you’re off the hook.

Your slate is wiped clean. That’s justification. So don’t get too hung up on that word.

It just basically means that we stand with a clean slate before God. We stand forgiven before God. And that comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone.

And it means that God forgives our sins, that he chooses to no longer hold it against us, and that he deliberately views us as being righteous, not because of what we’ve done, but because Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, and because we believed in God’s offer and God’s promise of salvation. So through his sacrifice, Jesus paid for man’s sin, and his righteousness can be credited to our account. The Bible tells us that we have no righteousness of our own, even the best of us.

Even Luther, as much religious stuff and good works and prayer and fasting and giving as he did, Luther had no righteousness of his own. It was the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was credited to Luther’s account and can be credited to yours today. It’s the righteousness of Jesus that he puts in us and puts on us that allows us to stand whole before God, to be at peace with God.

It’s through faith that we’re justifying. It’s taught throughout the Bible. This isn’t something new, a new idea that was developed in Romans.

It goes all the way back to Genesis. We look at one of the earliest men that the Bible says much about, who’s Abraham. We go back and look at him, and Genesis says, I like the way it’s written in the Christian Standard Bible, so that’s what I’ve written down here.

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited, that is a hard word to say, credited it to him as righteousness. Abraham was not a perfect man, was he? Abraham, not a perfect man, did some things that were really wrong.

God promises you a son, and you decide, well, God hadn’t moved quite quickly enough, so I’m going to take matters into my own hands and have a child with the maid. That’s the kind of thing that could or should wind you up in trouble and out of office if you’re a politician, and is getting some guys sued right now in Hollywood. That kind of behavior.

Abraham was not always a good man, in every portion of his life. But the Bible says that God looked at Abraham and called him righteous because of faith, because he believed God. So this is not a new idea.

This is taught from the earliest pages of the Bible all the way through the last, the idea that we stand righteous and justified God before, excuse me, righteous and justified before God for one simple reason, faith. Faith is the reason. Throughout his ministry, Jesus taught the importance of faith.

The day of his crucifixion, I think is one of the things that best illustrates the importance of faith. So if you haven’t turned there with me already, I’d like you to turn there to Luke chapter 23, starting in verse 39. One of the best illustrations of how Jesus viewed faith, especially as it relates to justification.

And in this passage, we’re going to look at Jesus had been nailed to the cross, and there were two thieves that were crucified with him, one on either side. And Jesus prayed for these accusers while they mocked him, or prayed for the accusers that were down there. After they hung him on the cross, that wasn’t enough for him.

They mocked him. They beat him. They abused him in every way they could imagine.

And eventually, one of the men being crucified on either side of him, one of the men began to mock him too, which is kind of a bizarre thing to do when you consider that he was being crucified as well. And verse 39 says, When one of the malefactors or evildoers, when one of the malefactors which were hanged, railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save us and thyself. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Does not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

So this thief who was mocking Jesus, he had enough problems of his own, didn’t he? He’s been nailed to a cross too, and he hangs there mocking Jesus. Just like I tell my children when they complain about the other one, they’re not doing it right.

Okay, you have a full-time job, and there’s one right on cue. You have a full-time job just being Benjamin. Don’t try to be in charge of Madeline as well.

And really, it’s more the mother hen. You have a full-time job just being Madeline. Okay?

Don’t worry about what the other one’s doing. This guy had more than enough on his hands, more than enough on his plate to keep him busy without worrying about what Jesus is doing, but he decides to pile on his will. And I don’t know what his reason was.

Maybe he feels like it justifies him a little bit if he can make Jesus look as bad as he is. Hey, look, I may be a thief, but at least I’m not a lunatic who thinks I’m the son of God. I’m with you people.

That’s not going to do anything for him. Whatever his motivation was, he begins to mock Jesus. And he says, if you’re the Christ, that’s not his name, that’s his title.

That means the Messiah. If you really are the Messiah, if you’re really the promised one of God, then come down off the cross and bring us with you. But don’t mistake that and think that’s a request for him to take him off the cross.

That’s not a plea for mercy. That’s just, it’s more of an accusation. Because when he says, if you are, if you are the Messiah, that if you are really means you’re not.

You’re not the Messiah because you can’t take us down off the cross with you. It’s almost like he’s daring Jesus while he’s mocking him. And he’d forgotten who he was and where he was, but the other thief hadn’t.

The other thief had a little more sense about him, and he rebuked this guy. He said, what are you doing? He says, do you not even fear God?

How could you sit there mocking this guy when you’re in the same boat he is? And he asked him, how can you not fear God? Because they were receiving the physical consequences of a life of sin, and he realized that they were about to receive the eternal consequences as well.

This man realizes he’s at the end of a life of sin, and it has not ended well for him, but where the life he’s about to go into as well, things are going to be even worse. This is a guy who realizes I have messed up. This is somebody who realizes that his life of sin has not gotten him anywhere positive and still won’t.

And he says, starting in verse 41, And we indeed justly, for we received the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. See, the second thief recognized that he was a sinner.

He wasn’t throwing a fit about the consequences that he was receiving. He wouldn’t say, oh, this is not fair. He was admitting that he had done wrong.

See, when somebody does something crazy, when somebody does something evil nowadays, society likes to sit around and say, well, they were a victim of their environment. You know, it was their poverty. It was their lack of education.

No, it wasn’t. It was the sin nature. When I do something wrong, it wasn’t because my parents spanked me and they hurt my little feelings when I was a child and now I’m acting out.

It’s the sin nature. And let’s get clear on that. I was reading Charles Coulson’s book, The Faith, this week.

I was talking about this idea. Charles Coulson, if you’re not familiar with him, he was one of Nixon’s hatchet men during Watergate and went to prison. And he said, I deserved it.

And he spent time in prison. He encountered Jesus Christ while he was there, became a Christian, was born again, and spent the rest of his life. He’s now gone on to be with the Lord, but spent the rest of his life in ministry to people who were in prison.

And he said as he’s talked to people in prison about why are you here, he said more often than not, the answer he gets is because of sin. See, they understood the reason why they were in prison. Even if society wants to say, well, it was lack of education, it was poverty.

And I don’t deny that those things cause problems for people. But ultimately, our problem is the sin nature. And this guy recognized it.

The guy on the other side trying to make excuses, mock Jesus, all that. This guy says, no, I’m a sinner. He says, we’re here justly.

We’re here rightly. We should be here. And he says, we’re receiving the due rewards of our deeds.

This is what we deserve, he says, which I would actually say crucifixion is not what you deserve for stealing. But in their legal system, it was. He said, this is what we get.

But he says, this man has done nothing in this. This man did nothing wrong. How can you mock him when we’re up here receiving the same penalty he is?

We’re about to die and we deserve it and he did nothing wrong. How do you justify that in your mind? Are you that unafraid of God?

This was a man who realized what an awful human being he had been. What an awful life he had lived. He realized that it was a life that was tainted by sin and that he deserved every consequence that he incurred.

Now that’s a sobering point to come to, to realize your sin and to realize what you deserve for your sin. And yet he admitted Jesus had done nothing wrong, as I said. Now, what this tells me is that he believed Jesus was who he claimed to be.

Because the charge that Jesus was crucified for was for blaspheming by claiming to be the Son of God. Now, the Romans had their own reasons for putting Jesus on the cross, but it was the instigation of the Jewish leaders for losing their minds because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. But they pressured the Romans into crucifying him.

Jesus was not there for being a revolutionary. Jesus was not there for any other reason, but that he blasphemed according to them and said he was the son of God. That was the charge.

And for this man to say he didn’t say or do anything wrong, he’s admitting that he believed Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. Even in his sin, he believed that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. This is one of my favorite stories in all of scripture.

And one of the books I’ve written, I wrote a few paragraphs about it, and I’ve got them here in my notes because I want to read them to you. I don’t think I could have said it any better today, just off the top of my head, than I did deliberately then. This is what I’ve written.

In his desperation, this thief, he turned to Jesus with a humble but audacious request, remember me. This man had lived the life of a common criminal. He was no one, nothing. He thus found himself caught, condemned, and despised by society.

This pitiful creature was facing the end of his earthly life, and he knew it. He had only one hope. He saw Jesus Christ about to suffer in the same manner as him, but he knew that Jesus was innocent and believed that he really was the Son of God.

With that, he cried out to the Savior. He had no good deeds upon which to bargain with the Almighty. He had with him no incentive with which to earn God’s favor, and he had no time left to reform his life to serve God and to do great things for the kingdom.

Empty-handed and with no other hope, he simply placed all of his trust in Jesus Christ. He called out to him in great faith, the faith of one who saw the gravity of his situation and clung to Jesus as his only resort for rescue. And he asked with no right to do so, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Master, don’t forget me, was his presumptuous request. That’s what he was doing.

He was putting his entire faith in Jesus Christ. He was putting all of his eggs in one basket, as we like to say. And what you need to understand this morning about this exchange is that the thief is expressing here nothing but faith. As he talks to Jesus, he’s expressing nothing but faith.

I talked to you last week about the prodigal son, and he had this whole speech where he didn’t get to give it, but he had this whole speech rehearsed where he tries to offer his father a deal. Hey, maybe I can come back as a servant. This guy doesn’t even have that. There’s no time left for him to be a servant of Jesus.

He has nothing. There’s nothing for him to give but faith. He believes that Jesus Christ is his only hope for salvation, and he’s placing all of his bets, if you can allow me to say it that way, He’s placing all of his bets on the Savior who’s about to die for him.

You’ve seen on TV shows. I hope none of you have seen it at the casinos. Maybe you’ve seen it on TV, though.

They’ve got the roulette wheel, and somebody says, I want to go all in on this number, and they take the big stack of chips, and they put it all in. And it’s either win or lose. There’s no going back at that moment.

That’s what he’s doing here with Jesus. He’s placing all of his bets on Jesus. And Jesus said to him, verse 43, Verily I say unto thee, I tell you the truth, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

It’s a pretty amazing interaction there. What did the thief have to offer him? Nothing but faith.

In spite of that, what was Jesus’ answer to him? You’re going to spend eternity with me. Not only that, but it starts today.

Today, you will start eternity with me. Notice what this conversation means. This man has been given the greatest gift that any of us could ever be given.

He’s been given eternal life. He didn’t deserve it, but he was given it. His sins were instantly forgiven.

Instantly. Jesus didn’t have to say, well, let me think about it. His sins were instantly forgiven, and he was promised eternity with Jesus because Jesus’ blood was the payment for his sins.

Jesus did all the heavy lifting here. Jesus did all the work. The only thing that was required on the man’s part was faith.

And he came to Jesus completely empty-handed. Because of his faith, Jesus said, today you’ll be with me in paradise. You’ll spend eternity with me.

The man didn’t have to work for it. He didn’t have to work for it. He didn’t have to jump through hoops.

He didn’t have to play religious games. All he did was have faith and his slate was wiped clean. And yours can be today too.

And it still puzzles me why that’s so difficult to accept. Why that’s so difficult for us to receive. I can’t remember who said it.

I want to say Brother Greg or Brother Ken. It may have been Brother Tim. Somebody has said this in the last week to me.

That if the Bible told us that the way to salvation was to get out on I-40 and push a peanut with your nose all the way to town, you wouldn’t be able to get down the highway because everybody would be saying, yes, that’s what I need to do. Does anybody in here want to admit you’re the one who said that? Because I think it’s brilliant.

That was you. Okay. I could not remember who had said that to me.

It’s brilliant. That’s the truth. If the Bible said get on one leg and hop up and down and turn around counterclockwise every Thursday until you pass out, everybody would be trying to do that because we think there’s got to be something for me to do.

It’s a pride thing. There’s got to be something for me to do. God’s made it so simple.

If we can just get past our pride and realize there’s nothing we can do and realize Jesus has done everything necessary for our salvation and just take him at his word and believe. Believe that it’s all true and place our bets on him. Say, I’m not going to try to trust in my works.

I’m not going to try to trust in the fact that I’m a church member or that I give or that my dad was a preacher or my grandpa was a deacon or that I’ve done nice things, I’ve been baptized, I’ve taken the Lord’s Supper, I’m kind to animals. Whatever it is that you’re thinking, oh, I could get into heaven that way. Stop trying to put your trust in that and place all your bets in the fact that Jesus Christ died for you.

Take your faith and put it there entirely. It’s that simple. It’s that simple.

This story illustrates for me in just, I can’t imagine that it could be any clearer. It illustrates for me in a very clear way God’s treatment of those who respond to his offered grace with faith. God has offered grace to us today.

God offers to forgive us even though we don’t deserve it. And those who will look at that offer and respond in faith, God stands more than ready to forgive and to accept you into his family. And folks, you need to know this morning that sinners are justified by faith alone.

Jesus didn’t come to justify good people. He came to justify sinners and he doesn’t do it through works. He does it by faith alone.

And here’s the bottom line. We are incapable of doing anything so good that it erases the sin that we’ve done. And mark my words, actually not my words, mark the Bible’s words, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

There’s nobody sitting in this room or nobody who’s ever walked the face of the earth and breathed the air on this planet other than Jesus Christ who was without sin. We’ve all disobeyed God and we’ve all disobeyed God many, many, many, many, many times. and when we come along and do something good, we don’t get extra credit for that.

We’re only doing what we’re supposed to. I give the example all the time that if I were to kill somebody and stand before Judge Ralph back there and he said, what do you have to say for yourself? And I said, look at all the other people I didn’t kill.

I don’t get extra credit for that. That’s just what I’m supposed to do. So when we look at God and say, look at all the other good stuff I’ve done and bad stuff I haven’t done, it doesn’t erase the wrong that we’ve done.

We’re justified not by works, but by faith alone. Galatians chapter 2 verse 16 says, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. He said you can’t do it.

You can’t follow the law. You can’t follow the Ten Commandments. You can’t follow the law well enough for God to accept you.

That’s really the point of the law is to show us is something we can’t do. And I forget how many pages long the federal code is, the list of laws and regulations that the federal government has, but I’ve heard a statistic that the average American, without knowing it, violates dozens and dozens of federal laws and regulations every day. I’m starting to think that the point of the federal government is to show us that we can’t follow the law, okay, because it’s so complicated.

That really is the point of God’s law in one sense is to show us how far short we fall of God’s standard of absolute perfection. We can’t do it. We cannot be perfect enough or be good enough for God to accept us.

Sinners are justified by faith alone. So the question we need to answer this morning very q