Five Little Words That Still Matter

Welcome back to Rooted in the Reformation! Every Sunday this month, I’ve been walking through a piece of the Reformation story, and today we’ve arrived at Reformation Sunday, just days before Reformation Day on October 31. If you’re joining us now, you can catch up on week one, week two, and week three. We’ve covered the world before Luther, the monk and the theses, and the reformers who carried it all forward. Today, I want to bring it home.

I have to tell you how much I love this day. At my church, we pause our regular sermon series for Reformation Sunday to look back at church history and remember how we got to where we are. I wish every church did this. It’s easy to treat our faith as if it dropped out of the sky last Tuesday, but it didn’t. People paid dearly so that I could open a Bible in my own language and read it for myself. When I look back, I can see God’s hand all the way through it.

Now for the five solas. Here is an honest note first: the Reformers did not sit down and write a tidy list of five Latin phrases. The list came together later, as a summary of what they recovered. But each conviction was there from the start, and each one is rooted in Scripture. And that word matters, because I want us to look at each verse in its context and not as a bumper sticker.

Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone. Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14-17, and the context is a young pastor facing false teachers and hard times. Paul points him back to the Scriptures he had known since childhood, which are breathed out by God and make the believer complete and equipped. The Bible is our final authority because it is God’s own Word.

Sola Fide: faith alone. In Romans 3:21-28, Paul builds the case that all have sinned and that righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law. Read the whole stretch, not only the verse you’ve memorized, and the logic is hard to miss.

Sola Gratia: grace alone. Everyone knows Ephesians 2:8-9, but look at what comes before it. Ephesians 2:1-3 tell us we were dead in our trespasses. Dead people don’t contribute. Salvation is a gift from start to finish, and the passage ends by reminding us that we are His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10).

Solus Christus: Christ alone. 1 Timothy 2:5-6 says there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all. Hebrews 10:11-14 adds that His sacrifice was offered once, and by it He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. His work is finished.

Soli Deo Gloria: to God alone be the glory. Romans 11:33-36 is a doxology that closes three chapters of deep theology. Paul runs out of words and breaks into praise, ending with “to Him be the glory forever.” R.C. Sproul pointed out that the first four solas exist to protect this fifth one.

That is what the Reformation recovered: the right and the joy of opening God’s Word, reading what it actually says, and letting it shape what we believe. Acts 17:11 commends the Bereans for exactly that, searching the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

So this Reformation Sunday, I’d encourage you to do the same thing. Pick one of these passages, read the whole chapter around it, and see what you notice.

Happy Reformation Day, friends.