Reformation Day – Does Anyone Really Care?

During the past week or so I’ve found one person, out of quite a few professing Christians, who knew that October 31 is the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. (While there is some discussion whether October 31 is the actual day, and that it may have been within a few days afterward, there is agreement that October 31 is the day that he sent letters to bishops expressing the concerns laid out in the 95 Theses).

Does it matter what we believe?

Ligonier Ministries recently commissioned a survey which, among other things, found that 97% of professing Evangelicals agree with this statement: “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”  However, 78% of these same respondents also agreed with this statement: “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”  

The two statements are, of course, contradictory, which doesn’t appear to have bothered 78% of the people. If Jesus is “created” then He cannot be God. What have we descended to in our Biblical and theological illiteracy?

Does it matter what we believe? Does it matter that we know who Jesus is? It mattered to Martin Luther, but it does not appear to matter to us. Give us a nice religious or “spiritual” experience and we seem to be okay. Rather than love “abounding more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that we may approve things that are excellent” (Philippians 1:9-10), we seem to be abounding more and more in all ignorance.

An earlier reformer, Jan Huss, was condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415 and on July 6 of that year was burned at the stake. Huss prayed, “Lord Jesus, it is for thee that I patiently endure this cruel death. I pray thee to have mercy on my enemies.” He was heard reciting the Psalms as the flames engulfed him. His ashes were tossed into a lake so nothing of his body would remain. His followers took soil from the place of his execution and took it to Bohemia from Constance.

Huss had been greatly influenced by John Wycliffe (died December 31, 1384). The same Council of Constance decreed that Wycliffe’s body be dug up and burned and his ashes thrown into a river in England. As John Foxe wrote in his book of martyrs, "…though they dug up his body, burnt his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the Word of God and the truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn; which yet to this day...doth remain."

From those in Bohemia who believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ which Huss preached came the Moravian Brethren, who were influential in the conversion of John and Charles Wesley. Huss’s writings also encouraged Martin Luther. John Wesley, walking into a Moravian Chapel in England heard Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans being read and, as Wesley writes, “My heart was strangely warmed.”

Does it matter what we believe? Ask Huss and Wycliffe and Luther and Wesley.

On 6 October 1536, William Tyndale was tried and convicted of heresy and treason and put to death by being strangled and burned at the stake. By this time several thousand copies of his New Testament had been printed and distributed in England. It was reported that Tyndale's last words before his death were "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."

Does it matter what we believe? Ask William Tyndale.

In Oxford, England on October 16, 1555, as Hugh Latimer and his friend Nicholas Ridley were about to be burned as heretics for their teachings and beliefs, Latimer encouraged his friend, “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Does it matter what we believe? Ask Latimer and Ridley.

Western Christians live in a prison of comfort and pleasure. Instead of souls being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, our souls and bodies are satiated with pleasure and comfort while our neighbors and coworkers and families live in spiritual death, alienated from the life of God. While our brothers and sisters elsewhere are suffering for the Gospel, and while many live on a subsistence level (even in our own developed nations) we seek teachers who will make us comfortable and require only that we acquiesce in entertainment and non-threatening man-centered “church” (2 Timothy 4:1 – 5). We preach a “gospel” that requires little if anything. We play intellectual theological games without risk to our lives or livelihood (thankfully there are exceptions).

Do we really want to know Christ in the koinonia of His sufferings (Philippians 3:10)? Do we really want to be conformed to His death? Do we really count everything as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8)?

Does it matter what we believe? Does it matter how we live? Or is today just another day?

Oh…that’s right…how foolish of me…it’s Halloween…what was I thinking. Forget the whole thing about Reformation Day and the Gospel.

Experience?

“It is not the sense of the [religious or spiritual] experience that is the main matter, but the source of the experience. It is not our experience we are conscious of, but it is Christ. It is not our experience we proclaim, but the Christ who comes in our experience.” P.T. Forsyth.

In commenting on the above, Arndt Halvorson writes, “To know Christ is to experience him, since he is a living person, for as we know, anytime we say we ‘know’ another person, we are saying we have experienced that person.”

Is it possible to work in Buckingham Palace and not think and speak of the Queen? I suppose there are two types of people in the Palace, those who know the Queen, who have a relationship with Her Majesty, and those who don’t. Then there are those who visit, and those who stand outside the gates and look in. Buckingham Palace would not have the same aura about it were it not the residence of the Queen.

I imagine that when those who know the Queen get together for tea or a pint of ale that they can’t help but talk about the Queen, about her desires, her wants, her personality, her sorrows, her joys.

How is it that professing Christians often refrain from speaking to one another about Jesus Christ? How is it that often, when we do talk of religious or spiritual things – that they are just that – “things” or “experiences” without reference to our Lord Jesus? Can we experience religion and not experience Jesus Christ? Of course we can. Can we focus on spiritual experience and not experience the Person of Jesus Christ…I think so.

When I was young I don’t know that Jesus was anything more than a romantic idea, an idealism. “Church” was more like a baseball team, meaning that there were many teams in the league and I needed to figure out which team I wanted to play on and root for – and for the most part every team had its recruiters. Did I want to experience the “long ball” or “small ball” – did I want home runs or bunts and steals and a barrage of singles?

I recently asked a professing Christian, “Tell me about Jesus.” Every verb he used was in the past tense. I said, “If I asked you to tell me about your Dad, who is still living, you would use the past tense for some things, but you’d also use the present tense to describe him and your relationship with him today. Jesus wants a relationship with you today.”

Are we conscious of Jesus Christ? Is Jesus Christ our experience?

My Master

“The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom, but its master…If within us we find nothing over us, we succumb to what is around us…He is not an other; He is my other.” P.T. Forsyth.

Our man-centered Christianity has led us to revolve our thinking around our “free will” and make ourselves the center of attention. I would like to know how a dead man or woman (Ephesians 2:1-3) can exercise free will. I would like to understand how a slave to sin (Romans 6:6, 17), whose nature is such that it is an enemy of God (Romans 5:10), can pronounce itself the center of the salvific universe, as if its will sits on a throne and bestows its approval on the work of Jesus Christ.

To be sure this is all a mystery, the workings of God in the hearts of men and women. But also to be sure, the Gospel is about Jesus Christ and His glory and not about us being the arbiters of our destiny. As someone once prayed, “Through grace let my will respond to Thee, knowing that the power to obey does not rest in me, but that Thy free love [and grace] alone enables me to serve Thee.”

If we could imagine the most abject condition of slavery, the most frightful conditions, conditions that would make us recoil in horror, become physically sick, and produce nightmares…we would not come close to our own condition of slavery outside of Jesus Christ. When darkness covered the land and Jesus Christ cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, it was because our darkness, our sins, our sinful nature, our own slavery…was placed on Him – the depth of that abyss on the Cross is such that we cannot penetrate it, and if we could it would kill us mortals.

The person who is the master of his or her own soul has a fool for a master. In Christ alone can we find that enigmatic slavery that makes us free (Galatians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18; Romans 6:11; 8:15).

Ponderings on this Week

I have been hearing that our nation is divided between Red states and Blue states; but where is the Christ-state? Where is the Church of our Lord Jesus? Surely we have failed in our testimony if we cannot be identified as a distinct people, a people separate and apart from the present age and a people consecrated and dedicated to our Lord Jesus.

I have heard talk of civil war. I find this hard to believe, I think most of my neighbors would just as soon be left alone to live their lives as they see fit. Let’s face it, civil war would interfere with football and I doubt that we would tolerate such an intrusion. However, for the sake of argument, let us grant that a shooting civil war is likely, then ought not the people of Jesus to be praying how they can witness to both sides? How we can serve both sides with the Gospel?

Perhaps there is a cultural civil war occurring now? Well then, ought not we to be seeking ways to witness to the Right and the Left, and to anyone remaining in the middle? Does not Jesus say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God”?

If we are strangers and pilgrims (1 Peter), and if we are citizens of the Kingdom (Philippians 3:20), and if we are a distinct people (1 Peter 2, Ephesians 2); then ought we not to be living like such a people? Ought not the Presence of God to be permeating our speech, our actions, our attitudes? Should we not be showing our generation a better way? A better way than arrogant leadership? A better way than mocking our enemies (who, by-the-way, we ought to be blessing and loving)? A better way than embracing winning at the cost of compassion, morality, holiness, kindness, propriety and faithful witness to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ?

Are we so foolish as to think that an alliance with the powers of this world can provide us a safe haven? That the powers of this world can further Gospel-witness? Do we think that we can ride the Beast with the Harlot and not become harlots ourselves (Revelation 17)?

Are we selling the soul of the professing church for a mess of potage? For access to power? (Whether that power lies in the Right or the Left or elsewhere). For money? (Perhaps we should just be forthright and replace crosses with dollar signs in our churches – at least that would be honest).

If we cannot say with Paul that we are determined to know nothing than Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2), if Jesus Christ is not our North Star, our center of gravity, if our very existence is not dependent on Jesus Christ…then can we please call ourselves something other than Christians, can we please call our organizations something other than churches…so that people earnestly seeking God will not be confused by us and the Gospel polluted.