In Psalm 115:1, the psalmist declares, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!” No treatment of the Solas of the Reformation could be considered complete if it didn’t acknowledge Soli Deo Gloria (To the Glory of God Alone) as its very center. From the Scriptures, through the Pre-Reformers, to the Reformers themselves, and continuing among all Christians who embrace the Reformation ethos of semper reformanda (always reforming), this Holy Spirit-wrought conviction that all glory belongs to God alone in the salvation of His people sits firmly at the heart of the movement.
As the early Reformers were recovering the theology that would become the Five Solas, a key impulse driving much of their thinking was the question of whether their theology led them to give God the glory for the salvation of His people or whether man retained some of that glory for himself. The word glory is one that, within our Christian circles, is quick to be used in our worship, prayers, and conversations but slow to be defined. Throughout the Scriptures, the words translated as “glory” (Hebrew: kavod; Greek: doxa) convey not only the inherent radiance, holiness, and majesty of God's being but also the ideas of ultimate honor, esteem, and worth. That said, again the question is, in the salvation of sinners, does God receive all the credit, or does man contribute to his own salvation in such a way that he can claim some for himself? While it might seem obvious to expect anyone who claims Christ as Savior to emphatically answer that the glory belongs to God alone, the Reformers emphasized an inconsistency between this confession and the practice of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Reformers would insist that even though the Roman Catholic Church claimed to glorify God, its theology of the sacraments, indulgences, purgatory, and penance actually served to rob God of His glory by claiming that a person's active participation in these contributed toward his ultimate justification and salvation. John Calvin makes this point explicitly in his response to Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto:
“You, in the first place, touch upon justification by faith, the first and keenest subject of controversy between us. Is this a knotty and useless question? Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.” [i]
Even though Rome claimed Christ's merits as the sole and infinitely sufficient source of righteousness through which a person attains salvation, that righteousness was understood to be applied through their participation in the Church's sacramental system. If dependence on such works contributes in any way to a person's salvation, then they necessarily receive some portion of the credit or glory for their own justification and ultimate salvation.
This, rightly, was a position the Reformers could not abide, as it shifted the glory in salvation from God to man. Not only did it put man in a position where he could retain some credit for his own salvation, but it also placed him on a desperate treadmill of ritual and works in hopes of meriting God's favor. Luther, reflecting on his own experience, wrote:
“But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners.” [ii]
Luther had come to recognize that he was, as Paul describes to the Ephesians, “dead in [his] trespasses and sins” (2:1). Dead men cannot, in any way, revive themselves or contribute through works or sacramental means to their own salvation or justification. If they could, they would certainly deserve some glory for such a feat.
This is why we can say that Soli Deo Gloria is the heartbeat of the Five Solas of the Reformation. Once again, as Paul makes clear in Ephesians 2, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” In reference to our salvation and the grace that saves us, Paul excludes any means by which we can claim glory for ourselves. Where Luther's recognition of his own deadness in sin caused him to hate “the just God who punishes sinners,” it was ultimately the truth that God, by His own power in Christ, receives the glory in salvation that freed his heart to love Him.
So, it is with us this Reformation Day. Praise God that, by His grace, He has accomplished everything we need in the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ Jesus on behalf of sinners like us, securing our salvation despite our deadness in sin and desperate helplessness before His righteousness. May we, in ceasing from our striving, rest in His grace. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).
[i] John Calvin, A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply, ed. John C. Olin (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 66.
[ii]Martin Luther, “Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Works” (1545), German History in Documents and Images, https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi:document-4232
