Reformation Day 2018

When I was in my early twenties, working as a youth and worship pastor in a mid-sized church in Indiana, my struggle with depression drove me into hours and hours of Bible study. I coupled the personal Bible study with listening to preaching from good teachers and preachers who seemed to be trying to communicate Scripture in a clear way.  As I studied, I came to realize that growing up and even entering Bible college, I was a cultural Christian – Christian by being born in the Midwest, raised in a believing family, and well-connected in the youth group of my home church.  But I had no idea what the Bible actually said.  Instead, I assumed what it said.  And I assumed it said whatever I and all the people around me believed.  While Bible college was full of godly men and women who taught well, I wasn’t listening close, and I eluded the truth then.  Thankfully, the truth was resilient.

I read Scripture not only because I was responsible for Bible lessons for my youth group kids, but also because I just had the conviction that God’s truth was found there. I had never before taken the Bible seriously enough to find out what its message was, if it had one.  But emotional and spiritual concerns drove me into it.  

Finding Truth

As I read, I came to see certain doctrines emerge.  First, the radical fallenness of man.  I saw Moses saying man is evil in his intentions from childhood (Gen. 6:5, 8:21), the Psalmist saying no one apart from God’s grace seeks him (Ps. 14:2-3), Paul saying that the mind set on the flesh hates God and therefore can’t submit to him (Rom. 8:7-8), and Jesus saying that if one is a sinner, and all are, they are a slave to it until He sets them free (Jn. 8:34-36).  

I also saw that even in a rebellious world, God has a remnant, chosen by grace (Rom. 11:5), the remnant being chosen from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5, 2 Tim. 1:9).  Further, when a believer comes to embrace Christ by faith, two things have happened: First, they believe because they have been given to Jesus by the Father (Jn. 6:37, 17:2, 6) as no one comes to him unless the Father grants them to come (Jn. 6:65); and second, they’ve been justified, or declared righteous, in spite of their own fallenness, simply because they embrace Jesus (Ac. 13:39, Rom. 3:24-25).  This justifying is the crediting of God’s righteousness – which is found in Jesus alone, who has the only “A” of any man who’s ever lived in God’s classroom – to the sinner who has no righteousness.  God can work this transaction because the sinner’s sin was punished on Jesus, so that Jesus’ reward would be enjoyed by the sinner. Indeed this is why Jesus went to the cross: the joy of Jesus, the God-man, reconciling God and men together in Himself, though God and men used to be enemies (2 Cor. 5:21, Heb. 12:2).  I saw this as really good news, because all of the other religions in the world, including American Christian Religiosity, teaches that we save ourselves by our good works.  But here I was finding that God saves sinners by Christ’s good works, received by faith.  While we can say Biblically that we’re not saved by good works, we actually are in one sense saved by good works: Christ’s good works, on our behalf: His obedience, His perfect life, His righteousness, received by faith, for the fallen and undeserving in Adam (see Rom. 5:12-21).

Finally, I found that when one embraces Jesus by faith, something has so radically changed inside them that they are going to be secure in Him.  Jesus has become their Savior and Lord, so that while sin still wages war against their soul (1 Pet. 2:11), they, having heard the voice of Jesus the Shepherd (Jn. 10:27), are going to continue to listen to Him.  Therefore, while the warning of the New Testament is to not let sin overtake you so that you make shipwreck of your faith (Rom. 6:12, 1 Tim. 1:19), those who belong to Jesus will hear the warning and endure until the end, promised that, by enduring, they’ll conquer (Rev. 2:7).

A “System” Emerges

As I came to see this set of doctrines emerge from the pages of Scripture, historical study led me to see that the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century labored to articulate these doctrines as the core of Biblical Christianity.  The so-called “Five Solas” of the Reformation (Sola being Latin for “alone”) are: 

-Sola Scriptura– The Bible alone is the ultimate authoritative rule in all matters of life and faith.

-Sola fide (faith alone) – Man is justified before God by faith alone in Jesus.

-Sola Gratia (grace alone) – This justification by faith is by grace alone, apart from one’s own works or goodness – one brings nothing to Jesus except their need for Him to save them.

-Solus Christos– The sinner is saved by grace through faith, because Christ alone has upheld the Law in His own person and work; and therefore, a sinner, united to Christ by faith, can be received by a holy God into the family.  Salvation is only in Jesus, the God-man, alone.

-Soli Deo Gloria– This salvation, being wholly of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), is wholly to the glory of the Lord.

A Historic Faith

Being an American Christian who didn’t know that there was any church history between my day and the first century (Billy Graham's heyday excepted), it was life changing for me to see that the core truths that I saw in Scripture were articulated so clearly by the Protestant Reformers.  I later found that, though there were some doctrinal anomalies, the early church fathers also held to these truths (e.g. for Justification by Faith Alone in the early church, see Nate Busenitz’s Long Before Luther, pp. 165-90; for Salvation by Grace Alone in the early church, see titled sections of Steven Lawson’s Pillars of Grace; and for the authority of the Scripture alone in the early church, see Roger Beckwith’s The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, pp. 386-90).  A quick perusal of 1 Clement, written by Clement likely in the early second century will yield every one of the Solas above.*  Therefore I was convinced then, and am still convinced now more than ever, that this is "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).

Without accusing any one person in church history of purposely stirring up doctrinal confusion, it became clear to me that the time leading up to the Reformation was a time where a spirit of worldly pursuits had taken over the church.  And the labors of men like Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, and Bucer were orchestrated and used by God to recover the truth on which the true church has always been built.  As I came to embrace this truth, I saw myself as a recipient of grace like multitudes before, which no man can number.  Even the cultural Christianity which I critiqued earlier was a means of grace, God using it to keep me until He worked true saving faith in my heart.  Then Jesus saved me, and I’m secure in him because He promises to “sustain me until the end” (1 Cor. 1:10) and “keep me” until the day of his return (Jude 24).  

Or to borrow from Karl Barth, when asked to summarize his theology, my testimony became what every Christian's testimony throughout time is: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Is this your testimony?  I pray it is.  To know Jesus in truth is eternal life.  Embrace Him, now!  He’s willing.

Happy Reformation day! 

*As read in Early Church Fathers, Cyril Richardson, ed., pp. 43-73.  See also Richardson's inclusion of the Letter of Diognetus, written in the second century, where on pp. 220-21 (Diog. 9:1-3), a clear example of justification by faith in Christ's work alone is seen.

October, and Grace

“If you, oh Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” (Ps. 130:3-4).

Here the Psalmist gives us an overview of why sin is the main problem in the world:  If God were to justly hold people accountable for their sins, no man would survive.  Biblically, we are sinners by representationin Adam (Rom. 5:12ff), and we are also sinners by nature and choice ourselves (Rom. 3:23).  Since all are sinners, and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), man is desperate for a Savior and Mediator.

And that’s why Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law (Matt. 5:17), and, ultimately, He to whom the Law points (Jn. 5:39-46).  He lived life in the same fallen world in which we do, but maintained a sinless record, so that, while everyone else has an “F,” he alone had an “A.”  If one sees their own problem first and foremost as sin, and embraces Jesus by faith, they’re forgiven and, by Jesus’ “A,” are put into a state of grace before the same holy God before whom they were formerly condemned.  In essence, they are no longer condemned, but adopted, because Jesus the true Son of God took their condemnation at the cross – their sin and the punishment for sin.  He took their “F,” with it’s consequences, and gives them His “A” with it’s reward.

Being forgiven, the believer is then, in Jesus, made a worthy vessel of God’s Spirit.  This is why Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to His people who believe: so that they can follow Him, serve Him, and look like Him (Jn. 14:16, 16:13; 2 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 5:22ff).  Living with Jesus, they love God and fear God at the same time.  And that, as the Psalmist said above, is the point of the grace of God in Jesus: that God would be feared, which means reverenced and loved for who He is.

October

This Reformation month, I’m so thankful that this – the true Gospel – was recovered by faithful 16^thcentury men and women who believed, in a time when it was unpopular to do so, that the Scripture is the ultimate court of authority when it comes to truth.  In their day, they heralded the Scripture up against a culture that was all about tradition and the authority of those in positions of power.  Today, the Scripture is to be heralded up against a culture that is all about the feelings of fallen people and the fleeting opinions of the fickle and guilt-driven populace.  It doesn’t matter what people think about what is right and wrong.  What matters is what God the Creator thinks.  And God looks down from heaven on men and women and concludes, “No one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:11-12, cf. Ps. 14:2-3).  

Therefore the Apostle Paul’s aim in life was to labor that men would be reconciled with the God they hate and who is angry at them.**  So Paul says, “We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:20-21).  Paul couldn’t be clearer here that our main problem – regardless of what the modern day “theologians” say – is that we stand before a holy God who not only knows more than we do about our own hearts, but is perfectly righteousness in every sense, and expects the same perfect righteousness from us, because we’re made in His image.  But since we’re fallen in Adam, we need another righteousness.  And that righteousness comes from the last Adam, Jesus of Nazareth, who bore our sin and drank the cup of wrath dry, so that we can find grace and mercy in Him, that God would be feared.  In essence, the God who is justly angry at sin (like you would be if a drunk driver drove their car into your living room), extends His hand of reconciliation to the guilty, if they’ll lay down their vain self-confidence and trust in human reason.

Not Really Believers 

I read something recently from a Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermon, circa 1930, where he claimed that the reason this gospel was being rejected by much the church (even in his day)  is that people within many of the churches don’t even believe in God, but in a God who is little more than a figment of their unrepentant imagination.  They, like Israel (Numbers 15:39), were prone to listen to their own hearts when it came to God and His truth, instead of listening to God's Word.

That was the issue in the Reformation.  The church had shrink-wrapped God into manageable terms where his grace could be bought off by subjecting one’s self to the Catholic system, and staying in it all the way up until they finished their time in purgatory.  But the Reformers, reading and applying Scripture, saw that one isn’t saved by the things they do.  They’re saved by what Jesus has done.  And in repenting “from dead works” (Heb. 6:1), they come to embrace that, while they are saved by works, it is not by their works, but by Christ’s works: His performance, His good deeds, and His obedience. Therefore, Peter says during the Jerusalem council, “We believe we’ll be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus” (Ac. 15:11).  This is why Jeremiah said that the city of God will be called, “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer. 33:16): No one gets into the city unless God Himself, in the person and work of Jesus, is their righteousness.  That is why He came: to save a people who need Him.  

Rebirth doesn't happen in any other way than by realizing that even one's best deeds are tainted with Adam's proud flesh, and thus they need all of Christ.  So they embrace Him.

Eternal Life

When one embraces this offer, they, like Luther, “enter into paradise” here and now.  Seeing that at the cross, the wrath of God and the mercy of God meet in the person and work of Jesus our Mediator, the believer sees how the fear of God (2 Cor. 5:11) and the love of God (Rom. 5:5) can coexist inside of their own heart:  At the same time that they fear Him, they love Him.  In other words, they worship Him because they delight in Him, and, they being in the Son, know that He delights in them.

And that is eternal life.

**Jn. 3:36: “Whoever doesn’t believe in Jesus, the wrath of God remains on Him.”  “Remains” = Gk. Menei, present active.  This means the wrath was already there before the one who rejected Jesus rejected Him.

The Attitude Required to Hear God's Truth

“Speak, Lord, for your servant hears” – young Samuel (likely 10-12 years old), 1 Samuel 3:10

I gave a talk on this text the other day at our local Christian school’s chapel, telling the kids, aged K-8^th, that we can learn to hear God’s voice as we submit ourselves to the Scriptures like Samuel submitted himself to God’s audible voice. I told the kids that God doesn’t usually speak audibly today, but He speaks in the Bible, and as we behold Jesus’ glory as our Redeemer and High Priest, He gives us His Spirit who guides us into truth (Jn. 16:13), as He Himself leads us by His perfect providence (Phil. 2:14).  Just like Samuel had to learn to listen to God, we learn today to listen to God through repentance, humbling ourselves, and saturating ourselves with God’s truth in the Bible.  “Oh how I love your law!  It is my meditation all day” (Ps. 119:97).

But there’s something to be further gleaned from Samuel’s prayer here.  To say, “Speak Lord, for your servant hears,” is to, in essence, pray, “Lord, say whatever you want to say; I’m all ears.”  It is an attitude where the one speaking is putting himself under God’s authority to say whatever He wants to say, regardless of how well it fits with the pray-ers own personal assumptions or the cultural assumptions that surround him. Samuel’s ultimate goal is to have God speak, and to receive whatever He says.

A New Testament example of this attitude is Nicodemus.  He’d been living his life trying to climb the ladder to heaven, only for Jesus to come and tell him that even with how good a guy he (thinks he) is, he can’t even reach the first rung because of Adam's sin in him.  Thus He needs God to do a work in him which he can’t do for himself (John 3:1-8).  Nicodemus then responds, “How can these things be?”  (3:9)  I’ve always thought that this was him stubbornly refusing to accept what he’s hearing.  When preparing to preach this passage last week I came to the conviction for the first time that Nicodemus was actually hearing what Jesus was saying, and asking for help to understand how this works.  In saying, “How can these things be?” he isn’t saying, “It can’t be,” but rather, “How does this happen, then, Lord?”  He’s doing the same thing that Samuel did earlier: sitting within earshot of the very voice of God, and putting himself under God’s authority to reveal reality, however uncomfortable and paradigm-shattering it may be.**

I pray for and long for this attitude of submission to God’s Word in the church again.  The promise from Scripture for this attitude is this: Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you (James 4:10).  Required is an attitude that, like Samuel and Nicodemus, a) doesn’t assume one is correct in what or how they think (for, “whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,” Prov. 28:26), and b) doesn't assume the current cultural sensibilities are correct (for we are to not be conformed to the world around us, Rom. 12:2).  Instead what is required is a hunger for God’s righteousness, and a belief that what He has spoken is clear, true, and coherent.  This is exactly the attitude which Jesus described when He repeatedly said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark 4:9). 

How are your ears? 

**I realize many commentators disagree with this view of Nicodemus’ question, choosing instead to view it as a rebuke from a hardened skeptic.  But it seems to me to be the case, in light of the fact that his attitude has shifted from cutesy rebuke in verse 4 to a simple question in verse 9.  In any event, Nicodemus is wrestling.  I think he’s hearing and praying, like Samuel did.