Lux Lucet

Luther’s 95 Theses.

“How arrogant,” I said to myself the first time I heard the Calvinist doctrine of election, “I’m glad I’m not one of those people.” Looking back many years, it strikes me as funny to think about my reaction the first time I heard about the sovereignty of God. I didn’t like it. No, not one bit. Those Calvinists. They were insufferably conceited. How could anyone be so audacious as to claim he was chosen by God? What I didn’t see at the time was the plank in my own eye, the pride of believing I had the good sense to believe in Jesus Christ all on my own steam. I was a Christian, or so I thought, because I chose of my own freewill to receive Christ into my heart. I chose God, he didn’t choose me.

Fast forward about twenty years and by God’s grace, and much to my surprise, I found myself becoming one of “those people,” a Christian who understood and agreed with the Biblical doctrines of election and reprobation. I came to love the Reformation, its people, its history, and eagerly took to reading all I could about it.

With that in mind, here are a few of my thoughts on Reformation Day and why I love it.

The Faithfulness of God

At the dawn of the 16th century, the church was in pretty sorry shape. Steeped in superstition, the officials of the Roman Catholic Church-State had buried the Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone so deep under the rubble of works righteousness that it was all but impossible for anyone in that church to be saved. But God still had his people. John Wycliffe, a Roman Catholic priest, was a great champion of the Bible at a time when its teachings were scarcely known by the most learned, let alone by the common people. In their secluded valleys, the Waldensians maintained a faithful Gospel witness for centuries throughout the dark ages. Yes, the world may go to rack and ruin. But though they may be as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, God’s faithful remnant has always persevered.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ

“Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy laws demands,” wrote Augustus Toplady. Good words, those. The natural man, if he thinks about it at all, supposes he can earn God’s favor by his own good works. It was its denial of the doctrine of justification by belief alone that prompted Rome to develop the complicated and costly system of masses, confessions, pilgrimages, purgatory that so burdened the people of Europe that, prior to the Reformation. the whole continent was sunk in poverty, superstition and ignorance.

The widespread preaching and acceptance of the Gospel – the good news of the finished crosswork of Jesus Christ – at the time of the Reformation delivered millions of people from the power of darkness and conveyed them into the kingdom of God’s Son. Men were saved, not by the work of their own hands, but by simple belief that Christ had perfectly fulfilled the demands of the law of God, that the punishment due their sins were laid on him at the cross, and that by God’s grace Christ’s righteousness was credited to them.

Not since the days of the apostles had the Word of God gone forth with such power.

“Be of good cheer, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England, as I hope, by God’s grace, shall never be put out.” Hugh Latimer to Nicholas Ridley while both were being burned at the stake, 1555.

Perseverance of the Saints

God’s people rejoiced in his Word and their deliverance from sin. But the world, not so much. As the Reformation

grew, the Roman Catholic Church-State and its puppet kings saw power slipping from their hands and were not about to take this lying down. Thus began the persecutions of the Counter Reformation. From the unwavering courage of Hugh Latimer to the all-too-human struggles of Thomas Cranmer, the martyrs of the Reformation left a legacy of faith and courage that inspires still today.

Foundation for Freedom and Prosperity

The doctrinal errors and accompanying gross superstitions of Rome impeded the development of freedom and prosperity for a millennium, but the Reformation brought this to an end. According to one historian, there were six ways Protestantism fostered freedom and prosperity in the societies to which it came,

1. Protestantism permitted the intellect to be devoted to secular pursuits, not just religious;
   
2. Protestantism brought education to the masses;
   
3. Protestantism did not encourage indolence and distaste and disdain for labor as Roman Catholicism did;
   
4. Protestantism championed independence and individual responsibility;
   
5. Protestantism created a higher type of morality;
   
6. Protestantism fostered the separation of church and state (Felix Rachfahl, Kapitalismus und Kalvinismus in John W. Robbins, Christ and Civilization).
   

Christ enjoined his disciples not to worry about what they will eat or wear. Instead, he directed them to seek first the kingdom of God, promising that God would supply their physical needs. It is little appreciated today, but the historically unprecedented prosperity and freedom enjoyed by the nations which embraced the Reformation is testament to the faithfulness of God to this promise.

The Good Guys Win

Luther at the Diet of Worms. April 17, 1517.

April 17, 1521. How I wish I could have been present on that day at the Diet of Worms. For it was there that Martin Luther gave the forces of darkness a beat down for the ages. “Revoco,” I recant, was the only thing Rome wanted to hear from Brother Martin. But with the power of the whole world arrayed against him, by the grace of God Luther refused to fold. When Rome demanded that he repudiate his books in which he taught the Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone, Luther replied,

Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of either popes or councils by themselves, for it is plain that they have often erred and contradicted each other – in those Scriptures that I have presented, for my conscientious is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me, Amen.

Luther’s words were a very thunderbolt bolt from heaven, the echoes of which resound to this day.

Comfort for the Present and Hope for the Future

We in the West live at a time when things once again are going to rack and ruin. We are witnesses to a civilizational collapse. And hardly a day goes by but that the collapse doesn’t further manifest itself. Edward Gibbon famously chronicled the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and often the present situation in the West is likened to that event. But closer to our current experience is the civilizational collapse of the Hebrew nation recorded for us in the pages of the Old Testament.

Birthed by the Reformation, Western Civilization was founded on the Word of God. And as did Israel, the people of the West have forgotten their God. Should it come as any surprise if God visits upon us the same disasters he visited upon his people in the days of Jeremiah and King Zedekiah? The rampant immorality, out of control debts and military hubris of the West in general and the United States in particular practically beg for God’s judgment. And no doubt it will come.

It is tempting to despair of the current state of the world. But the Reformation’s teaching about the sovereignty of God is a strong tower for God’s people. God is in control. He always has been and always will be. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can take place that God himself has not ordained, for He alone works all things after the counsel of his will.

Nothing, neither height nor depth, neither principalities nor powers, not even the workings of Antichrist himself, can snatch God’s people from his hands. This fallen and dying world is not our home. Come what may, the elect in Christ will reign with him in the new heavens and new earth. This is our sure hope.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.