"Sola Fide"

(Galatians 5:1-9)

Bringing the sermon home:

A foundational commitment of every healthy church is the commitment to affirm that faith in Christ is the only means by which we are saved. This was also part of a 2-part mini-series, “Recovering the Light of Truth”, connected with the 504th anniversary of the event that many point to as the start of the 16th century Reformation of Christ’s church.

Focusing primarily on Gal 1:6-9; 2:15-16; 3:6-7; 5:1-9, 13-16, the question we’re asking is this: How can a sinner receive Christ’s righteousness? The answer recovered in the 16th-century Reformation is this: through faith alone. The false teachers in Galatia were teaching that you needed to observe certain ceremonial aspects of the Law of Moses, but Paul reveals that salvation through faith plus anything is a distortion of the gospel and, ultimately, a way of attempting to establish your own righteousness (Rom 9:30-10:3).

Faith plus anything leaves us with nothing, for salvation is either by grace or by works, but not by both. Freed from any form of a works-based righteousness, we are enabled to lift our eyes off of our own spiritual state and on to others, for true faith breathes out neighbor-love.

May we hold firmly to Christ alone for our salvation and, thus, be moved to serve one another in love!

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

(See a follow-up article here.)