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Before we begin today's episode of Renewing youg Mind, we invite you to stay with us through the end of the program to hear how you can request today's featured teaching series from Ligonier Ministries.
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In the work of redemption, all the credit, all of the honor, all of the glory belongs to God and to God alone. The Scriptures tell us some salvation is of the Lord, and God is glorified in his plan of redemption. That's what the Reformers had in mind when they advanced this notion of sola de that we can take no credit whatsoever for our salvation.
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God declares that he will share his glory with no other. Yet if we get the gospel wrong, we may be guilty of attempting to share in that glory. Hello and thank you for joining us. For this Saturday edition of Renewing youg Mind, we come down to the final message in this series by R.C. sproul on the five SOLAs of the Reformation. So who should receive all the glory for our salvation? And what role do we play? Let's join Dr. Sproul now.
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Today we come to the last of the five SOLAs that we are studying in this series, and this one is Soli Deo Gloria. In one sense, this is the overarching sola that captures the whole spirit of the Protestant Reformation, because this one means to God alone is the glory. Now, when I was a boy, I had to study the Westminster Catechism in order to join the church that my parents belonged to. And we had to memorize the Shorter Catechism. And the very first question of that catechism was this, what is man's chief end? Now, of course, the word end here does not mean destination, but what is man's chief purpose? For what end or to what end were we created in the first place? And the answer to that first catechism question is man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And of course, when I was a child, I couldn't quite put those two together. It didn't seem to me to be a joyful thing to try to glorify God. But that is the purpose of human existence. And I like that catechism question because I think it, in a very simple and succinct manner, sums up the entire purpose of human existence that we exist in to glorify God. And we are to do that in all that we do or say in this world. Paul, when he wrote to the Corinthians, told them that whether they eat or whether they drink, whatever they do, they were to do all to the glory of God. And I'd like to take a moment or two to explore with you the meaning of glory or to glorify. The English word glory comes from the Latin gloria, which we see in the phrase soli Deo gloria. And it also reflects the Greek word doxe, from which we get the term doxology. We sing the doxology in church, and from the Hebrew term kabod. Now, if we look at the Semitic roots of that word, kavod or kabod, we see that it means basically weightiness or heaviness. So the way it's used in its metaphorical sense or spiritual sense for God is that the glory of God refers to his importance, his dignity, his significance, where he is the most substantial being of all, because he's the being who has the power of being within himself. He is not a creature where his essence or being is derived from anything else. Now, we use that language the same way in English. If we hear something that we think is profound, we might say, whew, that was heavy. Or if somebody treats us in a frivolous way, we may say they took us lightly. That is, they regarded us as not having any weight, as not having any substance, but rather being lightweights, as it were, while the supreme heavyweight of all reality is God himself. And when the Bible speaks about his glory, it speaks about his dignity, his importance, his significance. And when we are called to glorify him, that means we are to treat him with ultimate weight and ultimate importance. So when we say sola dea gloria, that means to God, and to God alone receives the ultimate ascription of honor. We read in the Scripture that God says, I will share my glory with no man. Again, glory is given to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. But that glory is not to be given to any creature whatsoever. However, that may seem a little bit problematic if we turn our attention to what Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15. In 1 Corinthians 15 39, Paul writes as all flesh is not the same flesh. There's one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. But the glory of the celestial is one, the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars. For one star differs from another in glory. So here the apostle Paul uses this term, glory, to describe various aspects or elements of the created order. Now, if that's true that there is a glory to the Son, glory to the stars, glory to us, glory to animals. How can it be said that God will share his glory with no man? Well, even though God assigns a certain glory to the created world, the created world is called to reflect the glory of God. And God plants the stamp of his glory upon his creation. Nevertheless, at no point does he share his deity with the created order. That is, it's not that God says, I won't give any glory to anything but myself, but he's saying, I won't share my glory with man. That is, I will not see myself on equal footing with my creatures whom I give my image to whom I impart dignity, and so on. That's what it means to be in the image of God that we are called to mirror the glory of God. There are two very important episodes in the Scripture where this glory concept is vivid. We think back to the Old Testament experience of Moses. When he went to the mountain and he spoke, as it were, face to face with God, even though he wasn't able to see the face of God. And when he came back down from that mountain, his face was shining in a powerful radiance. Now, where did that radiance come from? It didn't come from within Moses. It was a reflection on his face from a brief encounter with the refulgent glory of Almighty God. You'd fast forward to the New Testament and you see the singular experience that the apostles had. At least three of them, Peter, James and John, on the mount of transfiguration. When suddenly in their midst, Christ was transformed or transfigured, a metamorphosis took place. His clothes became dazzling white, and this bright light, brighter than the noonday sun, emanated from Christ to such a degree that Peter, James and John fell to their face in fear and trembling. Now, where did the light of the transfiguration come from? This was not the refracted reflected glory of God, but rather the light in the transfiguration came from within. In other words, the deity of Christ burst out in this display of glory. And so when Moses reflected the glory of God, he was doing what we're called to do in creation. And when the author of Hebrews describes Christ, he said he was the express image of his person and the brightness of his glory. And when John wrote his gospel, and he talks about the incarnation of the word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us, he said, and we beheld his glory clearly was referring to the mount of transfiguration, where the Glory of God was made visible to his people. Now, usually when the phrase sola dea gloria is used historically, it has a dual reference. The first reference has to do with our salvation. That is to say that in the work of redemption, all the credit, all of the honor, all of the glory belongs to God and to God alone. The Scriptures tell us salvation is of the Lord, and God is glorified in his plan of redemption. It is God who initiates salvation. And when we talk about the different steps of salvation that are wrought in this plan, the very first step that takes place is regeneration, where God, working through the immediate power of the Holy Spirit, enters into the human soul, supernaturally, divinely changes the disposition of your soul, quickens you from spiritual death, raises you from spiritual death, changes the disposition of your heart. Where formerly you were estranged from God, you didn't want God in your thinking, now all of a sudden you have a desire for the things of God. And before, where you were not interested in Christ, now you embrace Christ, you come to Christ and you receive him in your heart. But you do that only after God initiates, through his grace. That's part of sola gratia that we talked about. But sola gratia, if sola gratia is true and sola fide is true, then sola dea gloria must also be true, because the glory for your salvation belongs to God. What does Paul say? Let him who boasts, boasts of the Lord. But so often views of salvation are such that even the beginning of our salvation is seen not as a monergistic work that God brings to pass in our soul, but as a joint venture between God and man, where in the final analysis, the ultimate decisive input to our salvation rests with us. And this we call a anthropocentric view of salvation, or a man centered view, where man gets at least some of the glory, which glory belongs to God and to God alone. That's what the Reformers had in mind when they advanced this notion of sola dea gloria, that we can take no credit whatsoever for our salvation. All of the honor, all of the praise, all of the glory goes to God and only to God. Now, when we think of the Protestant Reformation, we have a tendency to think that the whole concern was over the doctrine of justification or how we are saved. But that's not accurate. There was also a profound concern for the way in which God is to be worshiped in the Church, and particularly in the Reformed wing of the Reformation. That was of central importance because God and God alone is to be glorified. In our worship. Now, it's been said by church historians that of course, the overarching passion that Luther had that provoked the Reformation in the first place was sola fide, the doctrine of justification. And that's what provoked the firestorm initially. But it was not the defining passion of Calvin. What drove Calvin was to reform and purify the church and its worship from the intrusion of idolatry. Calvin's also famous for saying that the fundamental sin of fallen humanity is the sin of idolatry. And he said, we are by nature idle factories. In a sense, we mass produce them. And the oldest and again most primordial sin of fallen humanity is moving towards idolatry. And let's take a look at Paul's teaching in Romans 1, where he indicates this as the case in the first chapter of Romans. Paul, in setting up the introduction for our understanding of the Gospel, talks about God's revelation of his wrath against the whole world. And the reason why God's wrath is revealed against the whole world is because the whole world is guilty of unrighteousness and, and ungodliness. And the particular type of unrighteousness and ungodliness that the apostle identifies is that mankind takes this knowledge that God reveals to all of us and stifles it or hinders it, or suppresses it, or represses it, and refuses to acknowledge God or to honor God as God. And now here's where I wanted to pick it up. Verse 20. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen. And that sounds like a contradiction. How can you see that which is invisible? If it's able to be seen, then it's visible, it's not invisible. But what Paul is saying is that the invisible God, his attributes are, are made manifest through and in the creation which is visible. And so that by observing the creation, we see and confront the revelation of the invisible attributes of God. And he goes on to say, for his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, that is his Godness, his deity. So that they are without excuse. You see, people think that if they were born in a different culture from a Christian culture, or they'd never heard of Christ, that somehow they have an excuse that they can carry with them a note from the Teacher when they go to Judgment Day. But it won't work because there is no excuse for rejecting the Father, because you can't plead ignorance, because the Father has manifested Himself clearly. And that knowledge, of course, has penetrated into our Heads. And it is effective so that they are without excuse. Why? Now listen carefully to this. Because although they knew God, see, the sin is not a failure to come to a knowledge of God. The sin is what happens after we have a knowledge of God. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. See, the last sola to be embraced by a fallen creature is sola Deo gloria. Because the basic point of our corruption is we refuse to glorify God. God in an appropriate and proper way. They did not glorify him as God. I mean, so many times we talk about God and we describe him in such a way that it's not God we're talking about. I've said to people, if your God is not sovereign, your God is not God. If you don't acknowledge the sovereignty of God, if you don't acknowledge the justice of God, if you don't acknowledge the omniscience of God or the immutability of God, then whatever God it is you are acknowledging is not God. You're not glorifying God as God. You're glorifying something less than God as if it were God. And to glorify something other than God or less than God as if it were God, is the very essence of what? Idolatry. The essence of idolatry is putting a substitute in the place of God and worshiping something that is less than God as if it were God. That's what idolatry is. Well, let's listen to what the apostle says. Because although they knew God, they didn't glorify him as God, nor were thankful. But they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up to uncleanness and the lusts of their hearts to dishonored their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. This is our most basic sin. An exchange, a swap, a trade is made. God reveals his truth about Himself. We trade in the truth and walk out with the lie. We exchange the glory of God for the glory of the creature. And that can be done in a crass way of worshiping a bee tree or a totem pole or something that we craft from our own hands. A statue or an icon, something like that. That's the crass form of idolatry. The more sophisticated, the more creation of idols is when we do it intellectually, when we reconstruct our doctrine of God in such a way as we strip him of those attributes with which we are uncomfortable. We reconstruct a God who is not holy, a God who is not wrathful, a God who is not just, a God who is not sovereign. And then say, well, our God is a God of love, and he has no place for justice or judgment or any of those things, but he just simply is pure love and mercy and grace. That is, we take the attributes of God we like and reject the attributes of God we don't like. And when we do that, we are as guilty of idolatry as a person who's worshipping a totem pole. Now, we've gone through what's called a worship war in America, and it's been declared that the battle's over. And we minimize expository preaching, we minimize the music of the ages that exalts God, music that's been tested by time. We now discern worship according to age groups. And we want to make sure that whatever music we use is meaningful to this generation. Whereas in all of church history, the interesting thing about classical church music is that it was used by every generation. And my generation doesn't ask that church worship be determined by Benny Goodman by bringing in the music of my era into the church. Rather, I want to know the music that Luther sang, that Ambrose sang, that Augustine used, the music that links and connects us to the church of all ages. Because when we enter into worship on Sunday morning, we're entering into heavenly sanctuary. We're involved in the communion of saints where God is present, Christ is present, and the spirits of just men made perfect, they're also present. It's not just for us. And the great danger in our day is that we make us the center of concern and we steal the glory of God in salvation, in worship, in all that we do. The driving passion of the Christian must always be Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone, the glory.
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Amen. What a great way to end this Saturday series on renewing your mind. Soli Deo Gloria. This is the final message that you'll hear from this series. It's titled God Alone. It's actually a 10 part series and we'll send it to you on DVD and unlock all 10 messages and the study guide in the free Ligonier app as our way of saying thank you for your generous donation@renewingyourmind.org and when the DVD arrives, you'll also find a Renewing youg Mind notebook. You can use it to take notes from the series or sermon notes at your church. So respond now with the donationnewingyourmind.org, but be quick, as this offer ends at midnight and will not be repeated next Saturday. Well, when we discover that God gets all the glory and salvation and that we can't come to Christ without the Spirit's work in our hearts, that raises questions about free will. That will be our topic next Saturday here on Renewing youg Mind.
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Sam.