“In the medieval and later Romanist program, God was said to recognize as just those who are completely sanctified. The Protestants rejected that scheme as contrary to the biblical teaching that sinners are justified by divine favor alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide) which rests and trusts in Christ alone as the Righteous One.”

The Reformation was a return to the Word of God unencumbered by rationalist, a priori assumptions about what the nature of things must be. The church had always read the Word of God but it had done so under the control of a set of assumptions chief among which was that God can only call a human “righteous” if he is, in himself, properly, inherently, intrinsically righteous. So, the medieval church set up a scheme whereby a sinner might progressively become righteous by medicinal grace and cooperation with that medicine infused into us by the sacraments. In the medieval and later Romanist program, God was said to recognize as just those who are completely sanctified. The Protestants rejected that scheme as contrary to the biblical teaching that sinners are justified by divine favor alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide) which rests and trusts in Christ alone as the Righteous One. According to the Protestants, Christ alone is intrinsically, inherently, personally, actually righteous. He alone has condign merit and his righteousness and merit is credited to or imputed or reckoned to and counted to those who believe.

Because of the scheme set up by the medieval church and adopted by Rome at the Council of Trent (1545–64) required our personal sanctification as the precondition to justification and that by grace (and cooperation with grace) Rome had a powerful incentive to multiple the sources of medicinal grace. Thus, between the 9th and 13th centuries the number of “sacraments” grew from the two instituted by our Lord to seven. Well, formally there are seven but in reality Rome is a veritable fountain of medicine and, as my colleague Dan Borvan said recently on the Theology You Should Know podcast, a “factory of merit.” Rome manufactures sacraments, spigots of grace, at will. Most recently, in the papal bull (from bulla or a seal) Misericordiae vultus (the countenance of mercy) Rome has declared that on December 15, 2015, the door to the Basilica of St John Lateran “the Holy Door will become a Door of Mercy through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons, and instils [sic] hope.”

This is a terrific illustration of why the biblical, Protestant doctrine of sola fide is so important. Without it the church is rootless, aimless and left to its own devices, to what Paul, in Colossians 2:23 called “will worship” (ἐθελοθρησκίᾳ):

These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting will-worship (ἐθελοθρησκίᾳ) and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are aof no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

The ESV translates this the noun ἐθελοθρησκίᾳ as “self-made religion.” That’s just right but I use “will worship” because that ‘s the way our forefathers spoke. They wanted to highlight the difference between worshipping God the way he has commanded and worshipping God the way that we think is right. They called the latter approach “will worship” to capture the centrality of the human will as opposed to the divine will. The noun is composed of two roots. The first is the root word for the will or “to choose” and the second for worship.

Rome is all about man-made, self-imposed (or rather church-imposed) worship and theology. In contrast, the Reformed churches confess that we made in worship only that which God has commanded (see Belgic Confession articles 7, 32; Heidelberg Catechism 96–98; and Westminster Confession ch. 21).

What hath will worship to do with justification and salvation sola fide? Much in every way. Just as God has revealed and appointed the way he will be worshipped, so he has also appointed the one instrument through which sinners can become righteous. Whereas Rome says that justification is sanctification and the faith is itself a powerful virtue, i.e., it is sanctification because it is formed by charity, Scripture teaches no such thing. Rather Scripture repeatedly contrasts faith, in the act of justification, as trusting, resting, leaning, receiving Christ and his righteousness.

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