The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
Romans 16:20
Sola gratia! We are saved by God’s grace alone. As we look back to this cry of the Reformation, it is helpful to ask ourselves: What would a “grace alone” church look like today? What would characterize its life as a church? How might we recognize such a church when we see it? The answer to these questions, like the structure of this book, falls into two parts: the first doctrinal and the second practical. But these parts are closely connected. In what follows I offer ten points that show the interconnection and give hints as to the identity of a sola-gratia church.
1. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Sin Seriously. We have consistently seen in this study that grace is not simply a sentiment or attitude in God. It is God’s concrete response to human sin. This means that a proper understanding of grace depends on a prior, proper understanding of sin and the human predicament.
Americans are familiar with churches where the gospel is presented as a means of self-fulfillment. Obvious examples are the prosperity preachers who populate Christian TV channels and live with conspicuous wealth. But one does not need to believe in the prosperity gospel in its fullest sense to believe in it in an attenuated yet still dangerous form. If we attend church in order to feel good about ourselves or to learn some tips on how to live better, then we are missing the point. Such attitudes indicate that we see the human problem as one of human psychology or of a lack of knowledge. We fail to see where the real issue lies.
Our basic problem is not that we have low self-esteem. It is not the myriad problems that afflict ordinary people on a day-to-day basis—grim jobs, failing marriages, unhappy home situations. It is that in Adam we have all sinned, that we stand guilty before a holy God, and that our hearts in themselves are committed to rebellion against him and his rule.
That is the starting point for the church’s understanding of the human condition and for everything that flows from that. Until we see sin as the problem, we will not understand the nature of God’s prescribed solution.
A church that takes grace alone seriously will be known for the fact that she takes sin seriously. Her ministers will preach the holiness of God and call people to repentance weekly. The hymns and songs will reflect this reality, and the prayers will address humanity’s guilt before God. No grace-filled church will be unclear about the problem grace is meant to address.
2. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Christ Seriously. If sin is the problem, grace is not simply God’s benevolent decision to ignore it and pretend that the fall never happened. Grace in the Bible, and among the greatest exponents of grace in the history of theology, is embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is God’s action to deal with sin, in Christ and in the application of Christ to the individual by the Holy Spirit. A grace-alone church will not just talk about grace; she will talk about Christ. If we speak of grace without speaking the name of Christ, we are not speaking biblically of grace. In the Bible, grace is so intimately connected to Christ that Christless talk is graceless talk. One common danger among those who speak of grace is talking of it as if it is nothing more than the idea that God forgives sin. If we fail to set our understanding of forgiveness within the context of the economy of salvation and the person and work of Christ, we are not speaking about grace. A church that believes in salvation by grace alone—as the Bible teaches it—will ensure that Christ stands at the center of all that is proclaimed.
3. A Grace-Alone Church Takes God’s Priority in Personal Salvation Seriously. Predestination remains a contentious topic within the church, as ongoing debates within the Southern Baptist Convention indicate. As I have labored to show in part 1 of this volume, the emphasis on the sovereignty of God’s grace that we find in men such as Augustine and Calvin represents an important and nonnegotiable aspect of the Christian gospel. This side of glory we will not be able to answer all the questions that the doctrine of predestination raises, but Paul’s doxological statement in Romans 9 indicates that he, too, was acutely aware of the limits of human speculation in this matter. There comes a point when we must stop theologizing and speculating and simply declare God’s glory.
A grace-alone church will be one that unashamedly declares God’s sovereign priority over all of creation and his sovereign priority over the church and her people. Only in this way can ministers preach with confidence, knowing that it is not their eloquence that saves but the Spirit using the word to bring people to Christ. Only in this way can pastors confidently counsel people, knowing that, whatever the problem may be, our sovereign, gracious God is in control. Only in this way can the man whose wife of fifty years is descending into the fog of Alzheimer’s disease know that all is still well and that, if not a sparrow drops to the ground without the Lord knowing it, his agonies and those of his wife are seen by the Lord and are under his control.
4. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Assurance Seriously. Building on this last point, the grace alone church takes assurance seriously. This, as we have seen, was the point where the Reformers broke from the earlier anti-Pelagian tradition on grace. For them, God’s sovereign grace meant that Christians could be confident that God was their God and would love and care for them until they were safely home.
This again is pastorally crucial. To be able to point Christians to a sovereign God who has revealed himself to them as gracious in Christ is perhaps the single most important thing that a pastor can do. When the problems of this fallen world close in on us, as they will at some point, there can be a tendency to see our sin or our suffering or the evil machinations of the world around us as the last word. God’s grace in Christ says otherwise, and the church which takes that grace seriously will constantly point her people to that truth with the aim of reassuring them that, whatever comes to pass, God is both sovereign and gracious.
5. A Grace-Alone Church Takes the Corporate Gathering of the Visible Church Seriously. For the Reformers—as for the early church and medieval fathers—the gathering of the visible church was important. In fact, we can say that it was the most important thing for them. Certainly, it was so important for the medievals largely because of their high sacramentalism, something the Reformers rejected. But even so, the Reformers believed that the church was God’s creation, and that it was the place where grace was found through the proclamation of God’s word and the administration of the sacraments.
We live in age in which church is often regarded as an optional add-on to the Christian faith, or as a place we go to learn to understand the Bible, to make some good friends—a context for social interaction. A church which takes grace alone seriously knows that while all those things may be true, the primary reason we go to church is to receive God’s grace through the word and sacraments. Christians who take grace seriously know that the church exists before they do and is the place where they are to be discipled as they grow in grace. It is with the gathering of saints on the Lord’s Day that we receive what we need, strengthening us to go about our daily callings for the rest of the week.
The challenge for Christians is this: Do we, as individuals, take grace alone seriously? If we do, then we will take church seriously. We will be at church on Sundays. We will be committed to the local body. We will serve. For the local body is where grace in Christ is preeminently to be found.
6. A Grace-Alone Church Takes the Bible Seriously. If we take grace alone seriously then we will inevitably take the Bible seriously. The Bible is God’s revelation of the history and identity of his people and supremely of his purposes for them as they culminate in Jesus Christ.
Given this, we may need to spend time reflecting on how the Bible functions in our churches. Is there time given to the public reading of significant amounts of Scripture in the worship services? Do our sermons bring people back to the Bible again and again and again? Are the public prayers suffused with biblical references and biblical allusions? Do people leave church knowing the Bible better than when they entered?
7. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Preaching Seriously. Preaching was central to the Reformation because of how the Reformers understood grace. The word proclaimed is not merely information. Sermons do not simply help people to understand the Bible better. The word brings grace. Confronted with sin, people are either hardened or brought to their knees in repentance and then presented with Christ, the author and finisher of their salvation. The pastor needs to follow the Pauline paradigm: proclaim who Christ is, call on congregants to believe on him for their salvation, and then press home the need to live according to the identity they have in Christ. Any sermon that lacks the great indicatives of the Christian faith and fails to press home their existential urgency and practical outworking for the church and for the individual is really failing to preach biblical sermons.
And remember: preaching is supernatural. The words of the preacher are taken by the Spirit and applied as the word of God to the hearts and minds of the congregation. It is God’s primary appointed means of bringing people to faith and of nurturing them in the faith. To understand biblical grace is to understand the means of biblical grace and to take them seriously. The preaching ministry will be central to any grace-alone church, and the training of preachers will be central to any grace-alone theological seminary.
Furthermore, the congregation will take preaching seriously. We live in a world in which listening has become a passive activity. We sit in front of computer screens and televisions, passively watching movies or the news. Some suggest that the clickability of the Web has reduced our attentions spans, and we roam from channel to channel or webpage to webpage, rarely engaging at any level with the material served up to us as so much informational fast food. Yet when we come to church, we must act differently. When the preacher preaches, if we take grace seriously, we need to listen actively to what he is saying. We need to follow their argument, think about the text being addressed, and listen to what the Lord is saying through him. In that way, we will truly benefit from the grace that is there given to us.
The church that takes grace seriously will take preaching seriously. And that means not only making sure the minister preaches the word faithfully but that that proclamation is central to the church’s life and that the congregation listens actively to what the minister is saying.
8. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Baptism Seriously. I am an apostate Baptist, now a Presbyterian, and one of the reasons for my move was the conviction that baptism is all about God’s grace, not our response. There are Baptists, for example of the 1689 Confession variety, who agree with me on this. Therefore, in writing this book I have tried to avoid pressing a strong line on the mode or timing of baptism. Why? Because theologically I think there is room for those who disagree on the subject of baptism to find agreement on the meaning of baptism.
Baptism is important. Churches that regard infant baptism simply as an elaborate way of giving thanks for the birth of a new baby are not taking it seriously at all, nor are those Baptist churches that rebaptize people every time they fall away and then return to the faith. And in the world of parachurches, there are few things more theologically depressing than being told that baptism is a minor, secondary issue that we can all agree to differ on. Baptism is part of the Great Commission, and in the New Testament it is spoken of in terms that seem quite significant! Baptism is part of God’s gracious economy, to be taken seriously by all Christians. And we can find agreement in saying that God is the agent in baptism, baptism is a means of his grace, and all Christians should take their baptism seriously. Baptism reminds us that there is judgment for those who fail to take the obligations of the covenant seriously and fail to make use of the grace which God has given to us in Christ. Baptism is something God gives to us, not something we offer to him or to our fellow believers.
Grace alone churches should teach about the importance and significance of baptism. Pastors should remind people of their baptism and what it signifies. As Paul would point people back to the fact that they were baptized as the basis for pressing home their new identity in Christ and the great imperatives of the Christian life, so we should do the same.
9. A Grace-Alone Church Takes the Lord’s Supper Seriously. If baptism is a means of grace, we can say the same about the Lord’s
Supper. As our brief survey of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin has shown, the Reformers took the Lord’s Supper very seriously—even allowing their disagreements to split the Protestant movement down the middle. That might have been excessive; but perhaps it would have been worse if they had simply dismissed it as a matter of no importance.
Today we need to recover an understanding of the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace. Yet far too often we find little to no teaching on the Supper in our churches. And when preachers do teach on the Supper, it is more out of a sense of obligation than a proper understanding of why they are doing it. As with baptism, we need to take the celebration of the Supper seriously, and we need to make sure that there is proper instruction given to congregants over what the Supper means.
Many evangelicals recoil from this on the grounds that it smacks too much of Romanizing tendencies. But we must not allow the excesses of one group to lead us to overreact. Reformers such as Calvin saw the Supper as a means of grace, as something that makes a difference for believers in their daily Christian life. While the Supper is not necessary for salvation, many things that are not strictly and absolutely necessary for salvation are still desirable and helpful. Think about the importance of fellowship with other believers or the practice of daily Bible reading. If that is true with these practices, how much more is that the case with something that the Lord has commanded should be done? The Lord’s Supper gives us Christ—in a different form from the word, but gives us Christ nonetheless, and a church that believes in grace alone will be a church where the Lord’s Supper is considered to be important.
10. A Grace-Alone Church Takes Prayer Seriously. Finally, a church that believes in grace alone will inevitably take prayer seriously, both public and private. This is because a church that takes grace seriously knows that she exists only in complete and total dependence on the Lord who bought her. Such a church will know that it is vitally important to call out to the Lord for all things, that conversions, Christian growth, discipleship, and worship all depend on God himself. Like Aquinas, Christians who understand grace know that their prayers are one of God’s chosen means for accomplishing his purposes and thus prayer will characterize their lives, corporately and as individuals.
Grace is a vital doctrine, not simply for the church’s theological confession but also for the church’s theological practice. It is a doctrine with profound theological, existential, and practical consequences. This is why the idea of salvation by grace alone has spoken so powerfully to believers throughout the ages. It also explains why grace alone came to the fore at particularly critical junctures in church history, such as the fifth century and the Reformation. It exalts God as sovereign, points to the desperate and fallen condition of sinful humanity, and connects the two in the all-sufficient and powerful saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can there be a sweeter sound than “amazing grace” in the sinner’s ear?
This is one reason why we need to pick up the doctrine again today and give it the central place in our theology that it has had in times past. Ours is an age in which cultural casualness and a predilection for the categories of therapy have infiltrated many wings of the church, simultaneously lowering our view of God’s transcendent holiness and of our own sinfulness and inability to stand before him in our own strength. We have made God trivial as we have made ourselves important. Grace counters both. It places the Lord back on his throne, and it forces us to realize the depth of our own moral depravity.
But we also live in an age that attempts to provide trivial answers to our deepest needs. We might deny our sinfulness and God’s holiness for a time. We might temporarily distract ourselves from the reality of our own mortality and the judgment that is to follow. But sooner or later we all know that we need something more than entertainment or a self-help book to address the deeper issues of life: evil, suffering, death. In this context, we need a serious theology and a serious understanding of human existence. And at the heart of any such lies a biblical doctrine of grace, one which does not deny the very real problems of life in a fallen world but which nonetheless asserts God’s loving sovereignty over his people come what may.
Yet, as we noted in this final chapter, to say that one believes in “grace alone” is only compelling if that is accompanied by a certain form of church life—with preaching, sacraments, and prayer right at the center. These things, simple as they are, are the divinely appointed means of bringing the grace of God into our lives. Grace is a doctrine that should grip our whole being because it confronts our whole being in these simple things: the words of pastor, water, bread and wine. Each Sunday as we partake of the means of grace, we are being transformed into that which God would have us to be, strengthened for challenges that lie in the week ahead, and being drawn closer to heaven, our eternal destiny. Such is the power of God’s grace given to us through his church.
No church can ever be perfect—who is sufficient for these things? Only those who are made so by the grace of God.