“By grace alone we receive forgiveness of sins and become righteous for Christ’s sake through faith.”
-Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV
The solas were not originally listed as five neat slogans during Luther’s lifetime, but they summarize the heart of the Reformation. As Luther and the confessors of the 16th century opposed both Roman errors and radical distortions, they recovered the gospel’s central truth: salvation is God’s work alone, revealed in His Word. Over time, the church condensed these Reformation insights into the familiar solas as a way of expressing the theological breakthrough of justification by faith in Christ.
What they Show and Accomplish
Scripture alone is the source that delivers the gospel.
Grace alone is the cause of salvation.
Faith alone is the means by which it is received.
Christ alone is the content and mediator of salvation.
To God alone be glory is the result and purpose of it all.
The solas are not optional slogans or historical relics; they are the necessary framework to preserve the truth of the gospel. If any one of them is lost, the gospel itself is obscured—Scripture becomes mixed with tradition, grace with merit, faith with works, Christ with other mediators, and God’s glory with man’s pride. Together, the solas uphold a clear and pure gospel: that sinners are justified before God by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith, as taught in Scripture, to the glory of God.
“What merit, then, does a man have before grace, by which he can be justified? When he has nothing good except what he has received, and he has received it from Him of whom it is written, ‘What do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?’ (1 Cor. 4:7). And again, ‘Being justified freely by His grace’ (Rom. 3:24). And again, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:31).”
-St. Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 9.15