Five Solas - Session3(2025.07.20)
Scott leads a discussion on the Five Solas, fundamental principles that emerged from the Protestant Reformation and continue to shape evangelical theology today. He explains that although the Five Solas—Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and the glory of God alone—are widely recognized within Protestantism, many people may not know their historical context or fully understand their deeper significance. The conversation highlights how these concepts evolved over time, starting as a challenge to certain church practices and later forming the doctrinal backbone of various denominations.
He also discusses the Five Solas to key biblical passages, especially the book of Galatians, drawing out their relevance to questions of salvation, authority, and the believer’s relationship with God. He also talks about the implications of these doctrines, addressing topics like assurance of salvation and how the traditions and authority of the historical church interact with Scripture. The episode wraps up with a reflection on the transformative impact of Christ’s work and a blessing for listeners.
Download the Insight Sheets Here:
Blank Insight Sheet:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/100hDS54Gd9vJNYki6-h78gYHm5FGriGS/view?usp=sharing
Insight Sheet With Answers:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UFKz52GT2P71zfTLrJ2sMfyG2MQ9-JEz/view?usp=sharing
Key Topics Discussed:
The Reformation's influence on modern Protestant beliefs
• The meaning and importance of “alone” in each Sola
• Scripture and church tradition: sources of authority
• Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s contributions
• The Council of Trent and Catholic responses
• Divergence within Protestantism and denominational differences
• The doctrine of assurance and security of salvation
• Biblical foundations for Christ alone and faith alone
Transcript
Hi. If you're looking for greater hope, assurance and confidence through the shifting sands of life, then join me on today's episode as we dig deep into the Bible to discover rock solid truth for life and living from the God of the Bible. I'm your host, Scott Keffer. Hi and welcome to today's episode. As always, for a deeper experience, you can go to the show notes and download the blank insight sheet. Fill in the blanks along with the group. Depending on how you're listening to this, there will be a link to the episode website@beholdingbibletruth.com and a sheet with the answers is included as well. Enjoy today's episode.
Scott Keffer [:Okay, so this is session three on the five solids. How many in here was this sort of brand new, Totally brand new stuff? Yeah. Good, that's good, that's good, that's good. Good to know. I think we in the evangelical world tend to not put a lot of stock in history and go back layer foundation, partly because we're Fairly new. Right. 500 years in the, in the scope of, of things. So I think this is good because these are foundational, doctrinal foundations as we go through here.
Scott Keffer [:So I'm going to walk through a little bit of history. I hope you don't have any other questions because I'm not good at Bible history. I'm probably more dangerous than I am anything else. I haven't studied a whole lot, but this lays some foundation on why this is critical and kind of where it came from. 5 SOLAs are foundational concepts which flowed out of the Protestant Reformation. So they weren't the core of it necessarily, but they flowed out of it and they percolated over hundreds of years and came to be what they are today, which is largely ignored because you didn't, most of you don't know anything about them. So. But they are woven through the theology of certainly all evangelical Protestants.
Scott Keffer [:So microcids are being made spiritually alive. Spiritually alive. If you underline that this is the question of how are we made spiritually alive? Which would suggest we were dead at one point in time. And of course this is about the death as a result of the wrath of God, which is, comes against our sin. Right. So it's the core problem for all humans which are in Adam and that we are, are spiritually dead, we are under the wrath of God and we are doomed. So he said, and, and God's becoming 100% for us. God becoming 100% for us.
Scott Keffer [:That means there was a time when God was Not for us. And he was not for us because we were dead in our sins and trespasses. We were spiritually dead under the wrath of God, which means we were not his friends, we were his enemies. So how does, how do we become 100% for us? Well, we do it in Christ. Underline in Christ. So these are the five, even though they're numbered six through ten. Because there's a. There's a.
Scott Keffer [:There's an answers page and there's a blank page. So this just numbers it. So this is. These are still 5. Sola Gratia G r a t I a sola gratia by God's grace alone. And then Christas. Right, Solas Christas C h r I s t u s C h r I s t us on the basis of Christ alone. Solaf I d e F I d e Receive through faith alone.
Scott Keffer [:Solo dea gloria D e o capital G L O R I A so that all things lead ultimately to the glory of God alone. And sola scriptora s c r I p T u r a gloria. Okay, so what's the deal with the sola? So you would say grace Christ, Right? Faith, glory of God, Scripture, of course. Aren't all Christians for all of those things? Yes, pretty much anybody who's a Christian would be for those. So the big deal was sola alone only that stood in opposition. That's where the sola is, is really critical. Sola is really critical because it changes when you say only or it changes when you say alone, as in none other. So these concepts were not new in the 1500s.
Scott Keffer [:Not new. So in 1517, Martin Luther. Martin Luther, post the 95 thesis, good German disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences to church authorities. Traditions say he, after he posted on the door, right, nailed it to the Castle Church in Wittenberg, marking the start of the Reformation. Emphasize faith alone and Scripture alone directly challenging indulgences and church authority. Understand that his primary issue was not doctrinal. His primary issue was the misuse of indulgences. Wagons were going around.
Scott Keffer [:You want to buy prayers for your dead relatives, right? Buy favors, that kind of stuff. That was his. That was his primary and misuse of church authority. Those were his primary issues. And it was not new for the time. Hus had brought up same issues a thousand years earlier and was burned at the stake. Others were burned at the stake at the time, which is not unusual because even after the Reformation, the reformers burned others at the stake. So that was kind of A common thing.
Scott Keffer [:It generally quelled any kind of opposition. Imagine if you said, well, Keffer is a problem again. We just burned him at the stake. Okay, well, I'll keep my comments down. Right. So three years later, he has. He's now publishing multiple works. Right.
Scott Keffer [:He's having them printed and distributed. So the timing was critical that they had the ability to print. Right. Printing press and being able to. To pass it around. And so at that time, he was emphasizing Scripture as the only authority. As the only authority. Which means that the Church at the time wasn't saying that Scripture didn't have authority, but it sat in essentially equal authority with history.
Scott Keffer [:Equal authority with history, which had some merit because when the Church was born, you didn't have the printing press, you didn't have the Word of God. So it was a verbal faith, a lot. Right. So they would memorize. Right. And pass on messages, memorizing it and passing it on. And Christ as the only mediator. Christ is the only mediator, all right.
Scott Keffer [:The sole mediator rejecting papal and priestly authority over believers. And then in 1521, this is not. As opposed to, like keto and some of the other things. Worms. This is how you lose weight and get. Luther declares, my conscience is captive to the word of God. Underline the word of God. And his journey was interesting because he was a person, a priest, and he was, well, how do you say, increasingly convicted of his sin.
Scott Keffer [:So that he was going to other priests and he was confessing every minute. He went from every day to multiple times a day to every hour to. Because he said, I just started to see my sin, the depth of my sin. So I was. And did I need to confess it all the time? Confess and confess it. And so it sent him into, you know, depression and into Romans where God kind of exploded things for him. So this is kind of unfolding for him. And of course, he was told to pull apart, but standing firmly on Scripture, reinforcing.
Scott Keffer [:Sola Scriptura 1521, again, 1530, there's a presentation at the Augsburg. That's the Augsburg Confession, 1530. So you can see, right, this is 13 years after he nails the thesis. So this is unfolding over time. Battle's going on. And if you look, there's all sorts of things going on in Europe and the. The kings and how it's transitioning. This could happen, that he wasn't burned at the stake, because that was the challenge.
Scott Keffer [:Was he going to be burned at the stake around. So all of this is happening. And then once. And it was not never. From what I understand, it was never Luther's belief to, to extricate himself from the, the Catholic Church. That was never his intent. It was a, it was a reforming what was going on. But it became.
Scott Keffer [:Now you're, you know, now you're out. Now you're out. And then once you're out, everybody started going into different directions. Well, this is what I believe. This is what I believe. This is what I believe. And so you had the beginnings of the current Protestant church, which is 5,291 denominations with every nuance that you can believe in. Right.
Scott Keffer [:So we've got all sorts of denominations. So it wasn't until 1536 that John Calvin published the Institutes of the Christian Religion. And John Calvin was the Doctrinal Reformation, where he put doctrine to work. His seminal work was first published in Latin Systematic Theology. Systematic theology, where he pulled it all together into a system. And now you have various systematic theologies and essentially Scripture, faith, grace, Christ, glory to God, they're all kind of wrapped in there, adding particularly glory to God. And then Years later, in 1545-63 of the council of Trent, which they rejected the alone, they would not reject grace, of course, they would not reject Christ, of course they would not reject faith, of course. They would not reject to the glory of God or Scripture.
Scott Keffer [:Not that it's the alone, it's the soul and only. And the implications of what does that mean? That makes sense. So this is the nature of salvation and this is the nature of authority. So the Catholic Church would say Scripture stands in equal footing to history because God reveals himself through the church, in the history of the church and Scripture. Any questions on that? I hope not, because I don't know more than that. Do you have any questions on that? But hopefully you see how. So this did not start as a doctrinal reformation. It was not a move to leave the Catholic Church.
Scott Keffer [:It unfolded into that and then became a doctrinal reformation. Reformation under John Calvin, who really put the, the pen to the paper, say that history and Scripture should be aligned and that God reveals himself through. Through the church. Right, the history of the church doctrinally. The tradition. Yeah, the. The tradition of the church and scripture. And that those two are.
Scott Keffer [:They would say they're intertwined. Yes, that traditions are that part of the way. Because again, Scripture didn't come until after the birth of the church. So that's how it grew by tradition as people were sharing the story verbally. So it wasn't right. Scripture wasn't put in place Right away. So it came over time. So here's the question I would have, which I did, to look at.
Scott Keffer [:Does the solar. Right. The alone show up written in Reformation time and print or was it surmised over time? That was my question as I look back. In other words, did. Did the Reformers say sola fide? Did they write sola fide? The answer is yes. They wrote sola fide by faith alone. So that is in. If you look at the writings, you can see sola fidelity prominent in Luther and melanctha.
Scott Keffer [:Did they say sola scriptora? Yes, verbally. Right, verbally. Did they say sola gratia? Somewhat, kinda occasionally in melanctha. And then Calvin. Did they say. Go ahead. Solus Christas. Rare.
Scott Keffer [:Rare, of course. Could not. It's not published or, you know. Right. So I wanted to say, were these statements in the Reformation writing or did they come over time? More. They came over time, you can see. And lastly, sol dea gloria was no in the Reformation period, but yes, after. Hard to argue with those.
Scott Keffer [:Right to the glory of God only. But sola fide and sola scriptura. Absolutely. So you can see at the very beginning, that was the core. Right. Of some of the doctrinal question. Faith alone. Is it faith alone? Right, faith alone.
Scott Keffer [:And then you can historically look at the Baptist, the Anabaptist and all of that, because then they went in different directions, including, you know, beliefs about the Eucharist. You know, Luther believed in transubstantiation. He believed the. This became the body of Christ. And then there others said, no, it doesn't. It's around, surrounds it. No, it's, you know, and then it morphed into memorial, which is where we are. So that happened right away as they started scattering, which is part of the, the, the thing you would point out without, without a central church authority, you've got everybody going in all sorts of directions.
Scott Keffer [:And now you've got 5,280 denominations. And if I don't like it here, I'm just going to go down to the corner and start my own church. The police, some version of this, which is where we are today, right? Yeah. There's a lot of people from churches that don't really know necessarily what they believe. Right. Catholic Church, Lutheran Church. Right. Doctrinally, the parishioners may or may not be well informed for an evangelical.
Scott Keffer [:That's our, that's our pride spot, which is good. It's the word of God. Right. Every believer is pushed into the word of God. Right. Every week you hear the word of God. You'd be in the Word. Be in the word.
Scott Keffer [:Substantiation mean it's, I think they would say consubstantiation, but transubstantiation, it literally becomes the body and blood of Christ, which is why you can't fall on the floor, which is why you can only take it if you're a believer Catholic. Consubstantiation, I guess, is actually in with around.
Roger [:And they're two different things.
Scott Keffer [:They are, yeah. Originally, Luther would. Would have been transubstantiation, but I think it's morphed over time. But then they're defining what does that mean? And we believe Memorial. We're just remembering some, some version of that. We could go lots of directions. But I'm going to pull up Dr. John Piper for in Christ alone.
Roger [:And yeah, this whole lesson echoes the theme of Galatians, Acts 15, about the Jerusalem Council was addressing this issue. And then Paul writes in his letter in the first chapter of Galatians about the Judaizers wanting to add something. And even Peter was sucked in to the idea. But that's what the entire book of Galatians is about. And I realized that our preaching series is on two verses at the end of chapter five. But after spending a little time, I decided to do a full study of chapter five. And for those of you who get my other mailings, you can see that I did a markup and then I did a full outline of chapter five that addresses this issue of attempts to find holiness through the law. And the two passages that verses that he picks out in chapter five said, if you embrace one part, you must embrace all.
Roger [:And you can't do that. You can't keep all 613 laws. And so by definition, you end up in need to just stick with Christ alone as the source of righteousness and not try to add, because you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't keep it all.
Scott Keffer [:So.
Roger [:If you didn't read through all my outline of chapter five, and I realize it's a lot of words, but it lays a really important groundwork that starts in chapter one of Galatians and continues on through. And he's picked up some other passages here in this whole book. So I think all I'm saying here is that, boy, Galatians 5 really speaks to this issue all the way through. And then these two passages that are for the preaching series is the outcome, the response to, not a condition of.
Scott Keffer [:Well said. Amen to the response too. Yeah. Any other Thoughts or questions on that. He's. He's giving us different ways to look at the inexplicable, which is how does the divine right, sinless Son of God. Right. In a way that's righteous and just for the Father to lay upon him sin in such a way.
Scott Keffer [:Right. That he bears it for us without being sinful himself. The answer is, I have no idea. It's a, It's a divine interaction that is miraculous and inexplicable. It's one of those things that it just. I have no idea how that's the case made him to be sin. How did he become sin? How did the Father in righteous and just way. Right.
Scott Keffer [:Which is the complaint about that. That the Father lays his wrath upon his son. How could it do it? What father would do that? I mean, all of that, that stuff that we can't figure out. But the, the, the, the method to me, because we'd love to explain the method. Not as important as the outcome, which is that he became sin in such a way without being sinful that he took our sin. That God's wrath fell upon him. God was justified. So what do we get on the other side? We get the righteousness of God.
Scott Keffer [:We are made righteous. It says in him. Right. And we become sons of God, which is the complaint. Oh, you'll say, oh, you must believe once saved, always saved. That's what you'll hear about this Rob. This is the one saved, always saved stuff. Yeah.
Scott Keffer [:Because that doesn't make sense to us. Where you can be in him and then you can be out of him. What's the deal? Well, nobody says once adopted, always adopted. Is that the. Is that that once adopted, always adopted belief? Could you be once adopted and then not adopted? Can you un. Adopt somebody? I don't know. Once born again, always born again. Can you be unborn again? Because scripture gives us pictures.
Scott Keffer [:Hello. Picture gives us scriptures. What did I say? Yeah, yeah. I have a bit dyslexic. Yeah, Scripture gives us pictures. So once born again, always born again. Can you be unborn? Because they would say once saved, always saved. Can you be unsaved? How about once redeemed? Always redeemed.
Scott Keffer [:Once bought, you've been bought with a price. Once bought with a price. What do they do? Take back for a refund? See, we even say once bought with a price, always bought with a price. So go through the pictures. Once made righteous, always made righteous. So we were made righteous. Can you be unmade righteous because you were made righteous? So can you be unmade let's start thinking about it. Once not a people of God, now God's people.
Scott Keffer [:You're un people, right? Now you're mine. I have engraved you on the palm of my hand. Now I'm going to take it off to go right? I'm going to remove it. Once received his mercy, now it takes his mercy back. Once a son, always a son. So if you, if you, if you go through. Because the conundrum for us is what about so and so? Who said they were, you know all of that question. But understand what the scripture is saying.
Scott Keffer [:What happens in God's right, in God's world, in the kingdom of God? What has happened in the kingdom of God? Can it be unwound? You walk through all the pictures. So he's given us a lot of pictures to understand this right? The number of them was myriad upon myriads, thousands upon thousands, saying, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing, and every created thing which is in the heavens and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea. I heard all things in them say to him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever. So we bless you, heavenly Father, for what you have done from eternity. And as a result, we join you in eternity through your Son, the Lord Jesus, and indeed in Christ alone. And we bless you, Lord Jesus Christ, for all that you are and all that you've done and all that you continue to be for us, your people. We're grateful to be yours, to be in you, to have received every spiritual blessing and the heavenly places in Christ. Now may the Lord bless you.
Scott Keffer [:May the Lord keep you. May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you. May he lift up his countenance and grant you his shalom deep in your soul. And that you'd walk in Christ and know that you are his eternally. Eternally, eternally. May he bless you and keep you. Amen.
Scott Keffer [:Thanks for listening. I hope you have greater hope, assurance and confidence in your life and a deeper trust in the God of the Bible and His Son, Jesus Christ. Until next time. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you his peace, his shalom in your soul and in your life. Until next time. May God bless you and keep you.
