Soli Deo Gloria

Since God is the One who initiates and accomplishes the redemption of His people, all glory in our salvation belongs to Him alone. Today, R.C. Sproul explains the Reformation principle of “soli Deo gloria.”

In the work of redemption, all the credit, all of the honor, all of the glory belongs to God and to God alone. The Scriptures tell us salvation is of the Lord, and God is glorified in His plan of redemption. It is God who initiates salvation.

And when we talk about the different steps of salvation that are wrought in this plan, the very first step that takes place is regeneration, where God, working through the immediate power of the Holy Spirit, enters into the human soul supernaturally, divinely changes the disposition of your soul, quickens you from spiritual death, raises you from spiritual death, changes the disposition of your heart. Where formerly you were estranged from God—you didn’t want God in your thinking—now, all of a sudden, you have a desire for the things of God. And before where you were not interested in Christ, now you embrace Christ; you come to Christ and you receive Him in your heart. But you do that only after God initiates through His grace.

But if sola gratia is true and sola fide is true, then soli Deo gloria must also be true because the glory for your salvation belongs to God. What does Paul say? “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.” But so often, views of salvation are such that even the beginning of our salvation is seen not as a monergistic work that God brings to pass in our soul, but as a joint venture between God and man, where, in the final analysis, the ultimate decisive input to our salvation rests with us. And this we call an “anthropocentric” view of salvation, or a man-centered view, where man gets at least some of the glory, which glory belongs to God and to God alone. That’s what the Reformers had in mind when they advanced this notion of soli Deo gloria: that we can take no credit whatsoever for our salvation. All of the honor, all of the praise, all of the glory goes to God—and only to God.