"'Your thoughts of God are too human,' said Luther to Erasmus." ( J.I. Packer, Knowing God )
Since the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is celebrated on October 31st, the historical day when Martin Luther, in 1517, famously, and officially, and courageously, kicked off the Reformation, unaware at the time of the blaze he was igniting, by the nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany in protest and hopes of debate over the Catholic leadership's corruption and abuses, I thought that it would be a good and right thing to highlight in my October blog posts.
To give you some idea of just how ubiquitous the Reformation was, Dr. Robert Godfrey, the church historian I sited earlier said that he had a harder time condensing the material of the one hundred years of the Reformation into lectures than he did the first one thousand years of church history.
That's how much historical potency is packed into the Protestant Reformation, and I believe what makes the Reformation so powerful is its density of biblical truth.
For me the Reformation started as a teenager, in a sense, when I was confronted with one of the main arguments of Martin Luther's life and the Reformation, his famous debate with Erasmus over the bondage verses the freedom of the human will; although, I wouldn't understand it or even know about the debate until later in life.
And even though it would also be years before I came to true saving faith in Christ, I had these gnawing, confusing, theological questions in the back of my mind that never seemed to go completely away no matter how many churches I attended through the years.
I eventually tucked the questions away because I began to believe they were simply unanswerable.
On the one hand I had been raised until the age of twelve saying the Apostle's Creed and Lord's Prayer each Sunday. Unbeknownst to me it was a progressive Presbyterian church; however, at least at that time in the late sixties and early seventies, the church was still reciting prayers and creeds as a congregation. Furthermore, I had a sweet, old Sunday School teacher who took our young class through the Westminster Shorter Catechism. ( To my delight Dad recently found a church directory from 1971 when he was digging through old papers and documents. )
When Dad got saved our family left the Presbyterian church because Mom had joined the charismatic renewal movement that was sweeping the country at that time. Dad did not grow up in a Christian family. Up to that point, he had never opened a Bible in his life, so all of this Christian stuff was brand new to him. Thankfully, my parents eventually came out of the movement and into the light. They reformed, you could say.
All of us come to faith in Christ with our background beliefs and life experiences wedged firmly under our arms like luggage for a summer, beach vacation. But no worries, the Holy Spirit through our sanctification process begins to unpack each complicated piece of baggage at a time as He transforms us into the image of Christ. ( 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Corinthians 6:11, 2 Peter 1:3 ) Another truth the Reformation defined with more clarity:
Salvation is not a work of man, cleaning up his outward appearance by putting his best foot forward and making an all out effort to behave and obey once he decides to be a Christian, no, salvation is a work only God the Holy Spirit can miraculously perform in the sinful human heart granting us repentance and faith to believe. Our heart is our problem, and the solution isn't on the inside of us. The "solution" to the human condition comes supernaturally from the outside in, by the work of Christ alone. ( Jeremiah 17:9, 31;33, Ezekiel 36:26, Hebrews 8:10 )
On the other hand, during those formative years and beyond I often heard, and I've shared this before in my blog, but I would hear during times of prayer for our unsaved friends and loved one, "We're praying, but you know, Rebecca, God can't violate their will."
And whenever I heard this my default mode would reset to: "I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of heaven and earth," from the Apostle's Creed that I could say in my sleep.
The sovereignty of God was also at the forefront of the Reformation.
"He's God," I would think, "Why can't he 'violate' the human will if he wants?"
I mean, He made everything. He can't sin. We know this. He's light and in Him is no darkness, but if he wants to "violate" the human will He created, why can't he? Sometimes church people would say to me, He "can't" and at other times they would say, He "won't." Either way, it was confusing.
"Why pray at all then?" I would think.
Often people would say, "God does his part, now you must do yours." If this notion of freewill is correct, then following the assertion to its logical conclusion would mean that God can't interfere with our "decision." It must be completely our decision - God can't tip the scales, so to speak.
If this is true, why do we bother praying for the lost? God can't help them. It must be their "decision." If God helps them, it's not their "decision."
And it begs the question, "What about 'any' choice we make?" Does God have to stay out of those as well if he can't "violate" the human will? How does that work?
But we do pray for salvation because in Romans 10:1 Paul clearly states that he is praying for his Jewish family to be saved. Human "freewill" raises a lot of questions, doesn't it? It's not cut and dried.
More than one thousand years before Luther was debating the bondage of the will with Erasmus, Saint Augustine had defended the doctrine of original sin against Pelagius which I shared earlier. Augustine argued from the Scriptures that all mankind did indeed inherit Adam's sin and corruption, and we are unable to avoid sin and are desperately in need of God's grace for salvation. ( Romans 5:12, Ephesians 2:1 )
God's amazing grace - another truth the Reformation clarified. God's grace alone saves us and not something we must add to his saving grace.
Why does this even matter? It matters to me because I want to know how God loves me.
Did Jesus die to actually redeem me for God as Ephesians seems to say, "even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world," or did Jesus die just to make my redemption "possible?"
That matters to me. Does God love me because he knew I would first love him? ( I don't see this taught in the Scripture. ) Is that why he chose me? Did he choose me because of some prior decision he saw I would make or some good in me or good works I would do to add to his grace?
If I have the good sense to "decide for Christ" and my neighbor doesn't, don't I have something to boast about?
I mean, why can't she see to choose Christ like I did? What's wrong with her?
Did Christ's atonement actually save anyone or just make salvation possible?
Then what if no one chose him?
"Oh, but God saw down the corridors of time who would choose him."
That notion never set well with me either. First it strikes against God's immutability - the Scriptures teach that God never changes. He doesn't limit his knowledge. If God has to look somewhere to find something out then that means God can "learn" things. No, God is all-knowing. God is sovereign. God is all-powerful. This is taught so much throughout the Scriptures, on every page practically.
If God could change then how can we trust his promises to us?
And anyway if God did look down the corridors of time and see who would choose him, that means he saw who wouldn't choose Christ and would end up in hell, and he went ahead and created them anyway. That doesn't sound very merciful, and the Scriptures teach us that God is merciful.
I'm simply saying that there are "problems" on both sides of the argument for salvation.
If Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, atoning for everyone who ever lived, shouldn't hell be empty? But that's universalism, something Jesus did not teach. If they go to hell, isn't that double jeopardy since Christ atoned for them already? Are there people in hell now that Christ atoned for? If so, wouldn't that make God unjust because he received two payments for their sins? What is the nature of the atonement? Do I need to add my "decision" to the work of Christ to make it effective? That seems like a weak atonement and a weak God. We're missing something. Or a lot of something.
In the last few years these questions have come to the surface again in my mind, and I want to know everything that God allows us to know through the Scriptures about Him, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
What I'm saying is that there are no easy, pat answers to these questions. At one level the Bible is so easy a child could understand the Gospel, but it is also at the same time a never ending well of living water. It's both. How could it not be? These are God's words.
Just like the antinomy of God's sovereignty and human responsibility will in this life always be a mystery to us. Another truth brought out in the Reformation.
I believe the deeper we are "willing" to dive into those waters of life, the Bible, the more we know God and his grace and love. Studying God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ will stretch our minds to the outer limits of our understanding like never before, no brain cell will be left behind.
We have to hold onto the core doctrines of the Christian faith with a white knuckle grip, and at the same time be willing to take a hard look at our church traditions to see if they align with Scripture.
In other words, the Church should always be reforming. I should always be transforming into the image of Christ.
The Reformation was a rediscovery of biblical truth and the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone has the power to save. The church had become so corrupt in the Reformers' day and the Bible so obscured underneath that corruption that the people were coerced into believing false teaching and underhanded practices, such as the selling of indulgences, as the shepherds devoured the sheep instead of tending and feeding Christ's flock.
But the power of God's Word was underestimated because what God says in sacred Scripture can't be hidden or forgotten.
God's Word is a light that forever breaks forth dispelling the darkness.
Just like the light of the Protestant Reformation broke forth out of the darkness of the Medieval Age.
Friends, most of us now have a copy, and in most cases more than one copy, of the Bible in our homes, and the precious privilege of reading the holy, revealed truth that God says in Deuteronomy 29:29 is for us and our children!
Yes, "the secret things belong to the LORD, but the things revealed belong to us and our children." How beautiful is that? So much is revealed to us of God's love in Christ and his divine nature in the Scriptures, so that the things we can't understand, we gladly release and trust into our Father's capable hands.
Many Reformers gave their lives for the Scriptures and the truth that they alone are supremely authoritative above church tradition and all church clergy, inerrant and sufficient for all we need to live a godly life, including the astounding and liberating truth that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.
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