Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Monday, June 22, 2009 11:43:54 PM
For any who read the sermon by Lloyd-Jones, you know that his objections are not with individuals but with the system of Roman Catholicism. The system is no different now than it was in the sixteenth century, only more subtle in its deception.
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=lloydjones
For example, indulgences are no longer purchased with money, but they are earned by works. One way to obtain a ‘full indulgence of sins’ is to climb the restored Holy Stairs in Rome. The twenty-eight steps are so ‘holy’ that they can only be climbed on bended knee.
Now what was the Protestant objection against selling indulgences? Was it not that this practice saw the sacrifice of Christ as insufficient for the remission of sins? So with the substitution of works in exchange for money has this objection been addressed, or has it indeed been rendered more hideous. The works of men can have no merit toward the remission of sins, or else salvation would have come by the works of the Law. We are under the just curse of the Law, having been born in sin in Adam and become Law breakers according to our nature.
But Christ has become a curse for us, taking the sins of His people on Himself; the just for the unjust. His shed blood must cover us by faith alone or we are undone. Is this not the gospel of grace revealed to men in the Scriptures? If salvation is of human merit then it is no longer of grace; men are no longer dead in sin but have something in themselves to boast about; so they think. This is the broad way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go that way.
What was the contention between Jones and Packer and what can we learn forty years later?