Sola Scriptura

Today the sermon series on our Reformation Roots, “Jesus, Friend of Sinners,” wraps up.  Since September 17 we’ve explored key New Testa­ment texts about:  • the Gospel, • the gift of God’s right­eous­ness, • justification by faith (not faith plus works), • salvation in Christ alone (not in Christ plus church), • assurance of our Savior’s love (God will finish the good work he’s begun in us), • the priest­hood of all believers (not just a select few who’ve taken ‘holy orders’; we need no human mediator in order to relate to God), • the church Jesus is forming (in which Peter was the primary first-genera­tion leader, not the first in a succession of infallible popes), • and the rightful place of good works in Christian life (works as the fruit of saving faith, not the root; as the overflow of gratitude for grace!).  For past sermons, click here.

We have so much to be thankful for, as the Gospel Coali­tion’s “Reforma­tion 500 Statement” sums up well:  “Wherever we find Scripture alone as the highest and final authority, grace alone as the only hope for resurrecting spiritually dead sinners, faith alone as the only instru­ment by which we are joined to Christ and justified by the imputation of his righteousness, Christ alone as the only atoning sac­rifice for sin, and God alone as the ultimate object of our worship—wherever we find these truths sung, savored, and celebrated, we have reason to rejoice in the Reformation.”

This Sunday we will step back and consider the Essential Source to which we appeal as Christians:  the Bible.  If the “material principle" of the Reformation was sola fide (justification by faith alone), the “formal principle” and bedrock founda­tion was sola Scriptura, meaning Scripture alone is the final authority for mat­ters of faith and life.  Not Bible-plus:  plus pope, plus bishops, plus church tradition (as Catholicism says, making the Bible just one more voice—and actually subordinating the Bible to church author­ities who infallibly deliver official, binding interpretations of texts).

But let’s be careful in the other direction too—sola Scriptura does not appeal to the Bible alone in such a way that disregards other leader­ship voices Christ has given to his church; sola Scriptura does not mean, “Just me and my Bible, stay away, thank you very much”!  Every thoughtful Christian will want to learn from Christian leaders and previous generations of faithful disciples of Jesus.

But the key point is that all human voices are subordinate to the inspired, divine truth of God’s Word (2 Timothy 3:16-17).  The church is not over the Word; the Word is over the church.  The Bible is not a parallel authority alongside the Roman Catholic magisterium and church tradition, but the superior and supreme authority over Christ’s church—in light of the beautiful fact that Scripture is the very Word of God.