The Five Solas

Alone Means Alone

The Five Solas

The Reformation did not recover five slogans. It recovered one gospel, and these are the five hinges it turns on.

Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone

Scripture is the only infallible rule for faith and life. Tradition can be useful and pastors can be gifted, but only the Bible binds the conscience. Everything else is weighed and either received or set aside.

Sola Gratia, grace alone

Salvation begins in God, not in you. You did not contribute the deciding factor. Grace is not God meeting you halfway once you make the first move. Grace is God coming all the way down to a dead man and giving him life.

Sola Fide, faith alone

You are justified by faith, apart from works of the law. Faith is not a good deed that earns a reward. It reaches out and takes. Even the faith is a gift, which is why no one will boast in heaven.

Solus Christus, Christ alone

There is one mediator between God and men. No saint, no priest, no sacrament, no sincerity of yours stands in that place. Christ obeyed where Adam failed and bore the wrath his people owed. He rose, ascended, and prays for his people now.

Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be glory

If salvation is by grace, through faith, in Christ, according to Scripture, then the credit has only one address. This is not God being vain. It is God being honest about who did the saving.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (KJV)

At the center of all five sits justification. God declares the guilty righteous, not by making them righteous first, but by pardoning their sins and counting Christ’s righteousness as theirs.

Those whom God effectually calleth, He also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone.

Westminster Confession of Faith 11.1

Sanctification follows that verdict. It never props it up. You obey because you are accepted, never in order to become accepted. The gospel page works out the imputed righteousness of Christ at length.