Reformation No Less
504th Anniversary of the Great 16th Century Protestant Reformation [1]
Today, 31st October 2021,
marks the 504th Anniversary of the great 16th Century
Protestant Reformation. Many Reformed churches would have marked this day to commemorate
this great event and surely the name of the great reformer, Martin Luther,
would be named. The events leading to his nailing of the 95 theses on 31st
October 1517 to protest the selling of indulgences and his eventual break with
the Romish church would be soundly recounted.
The question you may ask is whether
this event should be commemorated today.
The short answer is a resounding “yes”!
This is so as the Protestant Reformation is about the recovery of the good news,
or the gospel, of what Jesus Christ had accomplished as found in the Bible. As
we know, the gospel not only defines the Christian faith, but it also defines
what it means to be a Christian, namely, how sinful man and woman can be right
before the thrice holy God. There is therefore no more advanced teaching beyond
the gospel for the individual Christian. Now is therefore a good time to
reflect if we truly understand the gospel of grace individually and call upon
God to help us in our churches in this season of Reformation commemoration.
The Protestant Reformation centres
around two major issues. Firstly, the issue of where the church derives her
authority and secondly is the subject of Justification, how man, woman, boy and
girl can be accepted by God,
Let’s begin with the issue of authority,
namely, “the standard or rule by which we are to answer all religious
questions”[2].
Over time, the Romish Church has built up a “pretentious infrastructure” to
support the idea that the “Word of God” consists of both Scripture and sacred
oral traditions and that this “Word of God” is authoritative for the faithful
mediated through the teaching authority of the church. This pretentious
infrastructure is based on the fallacious idea of apostolic succession beginning
with the primacy of Apostle Peter, which finds no basis from the Scripture
(Eph. 2:20). Hence, the Reformers rejected all this nonsense and affirmed that
only Scripture is the only infallible and inspired Word of God, and it is the
Scripture, as the whole counsel of God, that speaks to and has authority over
God’s people. This clear understanding of Authority deriving from Scripture
gives rise to the slogan of Sola Scriptura, that in turn gave impetus to
the publications of the Bible in vernacular tongues aided by the invention of
printing, such as the English translation by William Tyndale.
Beside the issue of Authority that
comes from the Scripture, the Romish Church then and now teaches that men and
women are not totally depraved spiritually, and they can contribute to their
own salvation through good works, and that Christ’s death on the cross is NOT enough
for one to be accepted by God. The whole teaching of the Romish Church
therefore revolves around salvation by works by adding something to what Christ
had done, be it penance, the intercession and the merits of the saints, mediation
of Grace through physical means such as Baptism or the consecrated host (bread)
at Mass, which is considered a re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Christ at Calvary.
Since human merits are never enough, the poor souls must suffer in purgatory in order to purge their sin
before they can enter heaven. All these
additions to faith in Christ are partly motivated by greed as well since the Romish
Church and her prelates stand to gain financially.
So, what triggered Martin Luther to
protest (who by then had known by experience what it meant to be saved by Grace
through faith in Christ) was the absurd idea that grace can be procured by
money, to shorten the time the faithful need to spend in purgatory from the
accumulated merits of the departed saints, in the form of indulgences dispensed
by the Romish Church. This is not surprising, because the Romish Church teaches
that the doctrine of justification means that Justification of individuals
before God can be acquired by oneself through a process of inner renovation of self-effort.
As one speaker puts it, salvation by works mean that one develops one’s own
righteousness and then presents it to God and God therefore owes one eternal
life! This differs from what the Bible teaches as Luther had discovered as he
meditated on Romans 1:16-17, namely, that justification before God for a
believer is based on the imputed righteousness of Christ on account of his once
sacrificial death on the cross and his perfect life and on that basis a
believer is declared just before God as if he or she has never sinned. In other
words, biblical justification means that God’s view on the believer is changed on
account of what Christ has done when one has come to trust in Christ! This is
indeed a gift, a gracious act of God (Eph 2:8,9). This is indeed the Gospel of
Grace. In fact, Luther has a phrase for this state of a believer, in latin it
is “Simul Justus et Peccator”, namely we are justified and sinner at the
same time! This idea has powerful implications in a believer’s life.
Put it in another way, the Gospel
of Grace comes to individuals in three logical steps, namely, (1) Believe, (2) Saved
and (3) Obey. In other words, once we truly believe in Christ, we are justified
and therefore saved and, because we are saved, we will have the desire to obey
the commandments of God. Obedience is the fruit of Salvation. However, given
our sinful nature, we have the propensity to self-justification and boasting
(Eph 2:8,9). A lot of us don’t quite understand these three logical steps and
think that one is saved in the following way, namely, (1) Believe, (2) Obey (3)
Saved. This understanding could be in some way attributable to the “altar call”
approaches of soliciting a response to follow Christ. In other words, it is Christ
“+” obedience before one is saved. As such. salvation is not by faith
alone, not by grace alone, not by Christ alone! The linchpin in this equation
is your work righteousness. We are back to the pre-reformation era! That is why
when you ask someone
if he or she is Christian? He or she might say I am trying! Something is
wrong in this reply! Such a situation could also be due to poor preaching of
the Gospel of Grace, when folks from Reformed Evangelical churches simply
repeat the Reformed truth as shibboleth in their preaching without
contextualizing the biblical truth as expressed in the Reformed creeds to
tackle the challenges of unbelief in modern forms. While the Reformed Creeds
are designed to deconstruct the Romish teachings, we will miss the mark if we
fail to contextualize the truth of the Reformed Creeds and apply it to modern
expressions of unbelief. It seems that such a view of Salvation as in believe,
obey, saved is quite widespread. Let me explain. It is not surprising, for
example, that in a recent poll by Probe Ministries, “nearly 70% of
born-again Christians say other religions can lead to heaven”! This could
imply the acceptance of the notion of Salvation by works since all other
religions are based on salvation by works. Two other symptomatic expressions
that speak of such inroads of legalistic or moralistic religious views are if
you live a moral life, God will reward you and if you face troubles in life,
you must have sinned against God, pretty much like the sentiments expressed by
the friends of Job (Job 8:20). For example, if you have a wayward child, it
could be suggested to you that you are not serving God and God is punishing you.
I have heard this happening in our midst. Among the Charismatics, a form of legalism
is also taking place in the guise of the prosperity gospel. The idea is that if
you give to God’s church, you would be rewarded. It sounds like buying of
indulgences except it is in a positive sense. I literally heard it with my own ears,
when I asked someone from a charismatic church that subscribes to such teaching,
why he expressed desire to give to a particular organization. He said that the
more he gave, the more real estate deals he closed!
From the above, it is incumbent on
us that we do two things. As a church, we need to examine if we proclaim the
Gospel of Grace rightly and to do it so often so that both members and visitors
can walk according to the truth of the Gospel (Gal 2:14). We are people who are
not only forgetful but also have sinful propensity of just justification
especially those who are well endowed and therefore we should heed the call of
Martin Luther (from his commentary of Gal 2:14) acknowledge that, “… the truth of gospel is the principal article of all
Christian doctrines, most necessary is it that we know this article well that we
teach it to others that we beat it into their heads continually…”.
Secondly, on an individual level, we need to examine ourselves if we have imbibed
the moralistic religious view of life and even salvation itself. One tell-tale
sign that you are in this camp is that your life may be very religious; there
is, however, little joy, love or power, and everything in your Christian life is
motivated by duty. Only when we find Christ precious and hear God’s pardoning
voice, would we then be motivated in our actions by gratitude towards God and
hence we will first jettison our own effort of self-justification. Then duty
will become pleasure and choice as we walk as a justified sinner as the poet
John Newton would have it.
To
see the law by Christ fulfilled, to hear his pardoning voice,
Changes
a slave into a child and duty into choice.
Other References
[3] "The Essence of Protestant Reformation", Kirste Birket
[4] "Justified Sinners", A sermon by Timothy Keller
[1] Published in First Evangelical Reformed
Church Weekly, www.ferc.org.sg
[2] “The Crux of the Reformation”,
Collected writing of John Murray, Volume 1, page 298.
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