Scripture alone, Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, and glory to God alone

At our church members’ meeting at the end of February, I spoke about Brighton Road being a community where anyone and everyone is made welcome, and how that means we should be a safe place where people from across the theological spectrum are accepted and made welcome and enabled to find a level of faith that is right for them.
 
Many of us have strong views or convictions on a whole range of issues that concern us deeply or which are precious to us. Let me run a list past you: can you spot what these things have in common? Predestination; baptism; the Lord’s Supper; the charismatic movement; seven-day creation; remarriage of divorcees; women priests; penal substitutionary atonement; support for Israel; same sex marriage. Over the years, these are all issues which have divided, and continue to divide, the Body of Christ. They are all, also, wrapped up with the question of how we read and interpret the Bible, as we look for meaningful ways to relate the contents of the Bible to our church traditions, our reason and our experience. But the Bible is king: traditions develop; we change our minds; our experience is undergoing a constant process of development. So Scripture is a given, but who gets to decide what the Bible means?
 
The authority of Scripture was one of the fundamental issues at stake during the Reformation. For the Catholic Church, the authority of Scripture was subordinated to the authority of the magisterium: only the living, teaching office of the church had the authority to determine how the Bible should be understood. Luther, however, said it was a ‘cursed lie’ that the church has authority over Scripture. He argued instead that the church was captive to Sacred Scripture: ‘This queen must rule, and everyone must obey, and be subject to her. The pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, an angel from heaven — these should not be masters, judges or arbiters, but only witnesses, disciples, and confessors of Scripture’ (Lectures on Galatians).
 
One of the reasons why Luther translated the Bible into German is that he wanted people to be able to read the Bible and understand it for themselves, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That meant that the church was no longer able to control how people interpreted the Bible. That in turn means that when I read the Bible for myself, I can expect to hear what God is saying to me at a personal level. But what then is to prevent me from reading the Bible selectively, treating it like a mirror that merely reflects my own prejudices and preconceptions?
 
To avoid this pitfall, we need to grapple with all of Scripture: the whole Bible contains the whole counsel of God; we can’t ignore the bits we don’t like. We also need to make sure that our understanding of the Bible is Christocentric and cruciform: in other words, we accept the authority of the Bible because and inasmuch as it points to Christ, and his cross is the place where all works of the flesh, including our own cherished and vested interests, are put to death.
 
So every time I stand up to teach from the Bible on any subject, whether that be at Brighton Road or the London School of Theology, I am deeply aware that I have to be subject to the authority of Christ, who is revealed in the Scriptures as Lord and Saviour, God manifest in the flesh. Christ shapes and moulds our understanding of Scripture, and in turn Scripture shapes and moulds our understanding of Christ. The Spirit who inspired the written word reveals Christ to us as the living Word and enables us to respond to him in faith and repentance.
 
Christ alone is the basis for our salvation, and as I said at the meeting, I am convinced that the basis of our salvation must be the same as the basis of our fellowship. If God welcomes anyone and everyone who turns to Christ and puts their trust in him and accepts him as Lord, then it is incumbent upon us to welcome them as well. All of us, without exception, are sinners saved in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone – there is no moral high ground in church on which any of us can take a stand. We stand on Christ alone, or we do not stand at all. And there is enough space available for us all to stand on Christ together.
Tim Carter