The great danger is that we make ourselves the center of concern, and we steal the glory of God. In all that we do, the driving passion of the Christian must always be Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. And the only way for this passion to be realized is to honor God as God, to understand Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word and not according to the mere opinions of fallen creatures.

At the church I co-pastor, Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, we are deliberate about making sure that both our church members and visitors understand the doctrinal basis of our fellowship. As a small way of helping to further that end, we note in our church bulletin every Sunday morning that “we affirm the solas of the Protestant Reformation.”

By way of reminder, the five solas are five points that summarize the biblical theology recovered and proclaimed during the Protestant Reformation. As we note in our bulletin, these five solas are:

• Sola Scriptura: The Bible is the sole written divine revelation and alone can bind the conscience of the believer absolutely.
• Sola Fide: Justification is by faith alone. The merit of Christ, imputed to us by faith, is the sole ground of our acceptance by God, by which our sins are remitted, and imputed to Christ.
• Solus Christus: Christ is the only mediator through whose work we are redeemed.
• Sola Gratia: Our salvation rests solely on the work of God’s grace for us.
• Soli Deo Gloria: To God alone belongs the glory.

Each sola is important, but the first four really exist to preserve the last one, namely, the glory of God. By sola Scriptura, we declare the glory of God’s authority by noting that only His inspired Word can command us absolutely. Sola fide, solus Christus, and sola gratia all exalt God’s glory in salvation. God and God alone—through His Son, Jesus Christ—saves His people from sin and death.

We need the glory of God to be reinforced because it is the hardest truth of all for people to accept. The refusal to glorify God in an appropriate and proper way is basic to our corrupt state. As Paul says in his penetrating description of human fallenness in Romans 1: “They did not honor him as God” (Rom. 1:21).

So often when we talk about God, we describe Him in such a way that He isn’t recognizable as the God of the Bible.

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