The guardians of ‘free-will’ have exemplified the saying: ‘out of the frying-pan, into the fire.’ In their zeal to disagree with the Pelagians they start denying condign merit, and by the very form of their denial they set it up more firmly! By word and pen they deny it, but really, in their hearts, they establish it, and are worse than the Pelagians upon two counts. In the first place, the Pelagians confess and assert condign merit straightforwardly, candidly and honestly, calling a spade a spade and teaching what they really hold. But our friends here, who hold and teach the same view, try to fool us with lying words and false appearances, giving out that they disagree with the Pelagians, when there is nothing that they are further from doing! ‘If you regard our pretences, we appear as the Pelagians’ bitterest foes; but if you regard the facts and our hearts, we are Pelagians double-dyed.’ (Luther, Bondage of the Will)
On other points, they [Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer] had their differences; but in asserting the helplessness of man in sin, and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them, these doctrines were the very life-blood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s great work underscores this fact: ‘Whoever puts this book down without having realized that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain… The doctrine of free justification by faith only, which became the storm-center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformer’s theology, but this is hardly accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed with varying degrees of adequacy by Augustine, and Gottschalk, and Bradwardine, and Wycliffe, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only. The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace;’ (“Historical and Theological Introduction” to Bondage of the Will)
Can it be true that there are those (perhaps many, and perhaps many professing Reformed) who teach justification by faith alone and that men are saved by grace alone who are worse than those who openly teach salvation by works? According to Luther, that would be the case. In any day one must be careful about the work of deceitful men and the devil who loves to hide and distort the Gospel with some truth. In the modern day it seems that a great deception has been passed off using many things to hide the truth. One, the truth of justification by faith alone has been hidden or obscured by not showing how it is linked with the truths it is meant to protect and set forth. Two, the truth of love has been replaced with niceness and the idea of what it means to be tell the truth in love has been replaced with being gracious and winsome.
Luther is so very clear that it is worse to say you are not teaching something and then teach the same thing though it is hidden underneath the use of words. That is precisely what is going on in the modern day. The truth of the real nature of justification by faith alone is being hidden from people by using orthodox language of justification by faith alone. This requires prayer and the wisdom that will only come from meditation and prayer. The Gospel that thundered forth in the days of the Reformation was a Gospel of the sovereign grace of God and justification by faith alone was intended to preserve that. But in our day we have “Reformed” people who accept words and doctrines of justification that not only do not preserve the sovereign grace of God in justification, but in fact can be held by those who hate it.
The truth of the Gospel was defended and set forth by Luther in his The Bondage of the Will. “The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace.” Those who teach justification by faith alone and do not safeguard the principle of sovereign grace are not teaching the same Gospel as Martin Luther and John Calvin did. To put it in different words, those who do not defend the sovereign grace of God in salvation are not defending the heart of the Reformation Gospel. Those who do not defend the sovereign grace of God in salvation are not defending the life-blood of Christianity (according to the Reformation). Those who do not stand and defend the sovereign grace of God as an essential part of the Gospel are part of “Evangelical” theology falling to the ground. In our day where graciousness and niceness have replaced speaking the truth in love, we must be awakened to the great old truths of the Gospel in order that we may speak in love and in the love of truth and in the truth of love. There is no love apart from truth.
God Loves... Himself 
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