The Evangelical Faith
Introduction
On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk nailed to the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church "95 Theses" or "Complaints" against abuses in the church of his day. Unwittingly Martin Luther started a revolution which forever altered the face of Western Civilization, and through it the world.
Socially, it gave to the individual conscience unprecedented freedom from external constraint freedom to believe, to speak and to write.
Politically, it led to the recognition of an essential equality among men and accordingly the creation of representative forms of governments.
Economically, it led to free-market economics and gave to workers a new sense of dignity in their labors.
Educationally, it gave impetus to universal literacy, as common people acquired the tools of literacy so that they might read the Bible for themselves.
In a word, the reformation led to freedom: The freedom of the individual conscience, freedom in the social order, and intellectual freedom.
But its chief effects were religious. Do you enjoy congregational singing? Then thank the Reformers for reviving it. Do you prefer having the Bible read in the vernacular? Then thank Martin Luther and his German Bible for paving the way for a host of new translations of the Hebrew and Greek Scripture into the language of the people. Is your soul spiritually fed by preaching? Then thank the Reformers for restoring the preached Word to its central place in the life of the people of God. Do you think communion should be taken in both kinds? Then thank Martin Luther for instituting it. Do you believe in the ministry of the laity? Then thank the Reformers for emphasizing it. Do you know the answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" Then thank Martin Luther for rescuing the Biblical answer to that question from the fog of superstitions by which it had been obscured for centuries.
Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, and other Reformers endeavored to do no more than restore the church to its Apostolic purity. Their's was called an "evangelical faith" because like the early church before them they stressed the "evangel," the Gospel, the Good news of Jesus Christ.
Evangelicals today continue to stand where they stood. The five cries of sola ("alone" or "only") which served as rallying-calls for their era continue as the fundamental principles of evangelicalism today. We affirm them, and now review them, not as a historical exercise but because they continue to be central commitments of our churches today. On the basis of them we uncover the heart of the gospel, and what it means to be an Evangelical Christian. Scripture alone, Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, God's glory alone, upon these the Reformers stood, and upon these we continue to stand today.
Scripture Alone
By what means do we determine the faith and practice of the church? This was probably the fundamental battle between the Reformers and the church authorities. The position of the late Medieval church was that faith and practice was to be determined by the Bible plus the tradition of the church. "Tradition" included a host of extra-biblical practices and beliefs which had been received into the church over the centuries whether by common acceptance or by the decisions of Popes and councils. Against the position the Reformers said sola scriptura. Scripture alone is to determine what we believe and what we practice.
Luther set the tone for the Reformation at the Diet of Worms in April 1521. There before the assembly of the German Princes and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Luther's theology was examined and condemned. It was demanded that he recant. As the hearings came to their dramatic close, Luther was asked:
Martin, how can you assume that you are the only one to understand the sense of Scripture? Would you put your judgement above that of so many famous men and claim that you know more than they all? You have no right to call into question the most holy orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect lawgiver, proclaimed throughout the world by the apostles, sealed by the red blood of the martyrs, confirmed by the sacred councils, defined by the Church in which all our fathers believed until death and gave to us as an inheritance, and which now we are forbidden by the pope and the emperor to discuss lest there be no end of debate.
Then finally knowing that his life probably depended upon how he answered, it was put to him,
I ask you, Martin - answer candidly and without horns - do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?
Luther answered:
Since then your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.
Evangelicals are thrilled by Luther's words because we endeavor to stand where he stood. We believe that God's "infallible" word (as Luther called it) is "the rule of faith and practice" (Westminster Confession of Faith, I.2.).
Every corruption of Biblical Christianity begins by compromising this principle. Every deviation from Christianity as Christ and the Apostles established it begins by adding to the Bible or by taking away from it. For them all it is the Bible plus or minus something.
For Christian Science, it is the Bible plus Mary Baker Eddy's Key. For the Mormons it is the Book of Mormon. For the Jehovah's Witnesses it is the Watchtower. For the Seventh Day Adventists it is the revelations of Ellen White. For the Roman Catholic, it is tradition. For many modernists, it is common sense, logic, or the latest scientific discoveries. Calvin's question of all extra biblical practices and beliefs is this: "by what word of God, by what revelation, by what example, is this done" (Institutes III V. 10). Unless it comes from the Holy Writ, it has no place in the church. Scripture alone determines our faith and practice. To depart from this position is to be guilty of the sins of the Pharisees who, "neglecting the commandments of God . . . hold to the traditions of men" (Mark 7:8).
This is why the Reformers translated the Scripture into the language of the people, and why we continue to encourage the so-called laity to study their Bibles for themselves.
Authority in the church is not based upon creeds or councils or clerics, not common sense, logic, intuition, science or even new revelation. Scripture alone - the infallible, inerrant, completely sufficient written word of God is our only rule of faith and practice.
Christ Alone
Where do these Scriptures everywhere and always direct us? To Jesus Christ alone! "How may a person be in the right before God," Job asked (9:2). This is the fundamental question of human existence - the question of the ages, the question of all questions. Universally people know that God exists. Universally there is a sense that He is not pleased and something must be done to please Him (Romans 1). The history of religion is the history of attempts to do so. Some religions direct one toward an "internal" sacrifice such as enlightened moral conduct or ascetic practices such as prayer, fasting, and physical deprivation in order to please the deity. Others devise "external" sacrifices, such as human or animal blood sacrifices, in order to satisfy God and begin the journey down the road of salvation, whatever the particular religion may conceive of that to be. The problem with approaching God on these terms is that one never senses that one has done enough. There remains the nagging reality of God's disfavor.
In this respect the Medieval church was much like the rest of the religions of mankind. The average citizen of Christendom viewed God as unapproachable and unappeasable. By his works he did all he could to please God. He attended church. He kept his 10 commandments. He observed the church calendar. He helped those in need. But for all of that, it was never enough.
So he enlisted help. He felt unworthy to approach God on his own so he prayed through priests, never directly. Still, it was not enough. Though he said his prayers, though he visited shrines and relics, though he purchased indulgences promising the forgiveness of sins, the church taught there would still await him hundreds and thousands of years in Purgatory.
With great zeal the Reformers jettisoned the vast bulk of this religious system and proclaimed in its place Solus Christus, by Christ alone we are saved. By this they meant,
1. Christ's sacrifice alone.
There is no other satisfactory way to deal with one's guilt. There is no other way to be right and reconciled to God. There is no other way, no other truth, no other valid approach to God. His sacrifice alone can remove the guilt that lies behind my guilty feelings. This was the position of the Reformers and as difficult as this is to maintain in our relativistic age, it remains conviction today. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me" (John 14:16).
Peter preached that,
There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
Jesus Christ is the only Savior for sinners. We, with them, look to no other and present no other. The writer to the Hebrews says,
But He having offered one sacrifice for sins for all times, sat down at the right hand of God (Hebrew 10:12, cf. Hebrew 7:27).
His atoning sacrifice was a once for all accomplishment. In His death He bore the sins of the whole world in the whole of history. It needs no supplementation. Nothing may be added to it. It is totally sufficient for all of our sins.
Because the Scripture teaches this, the Reformers rejected the Medieval concept of the mass as a re-sacrificing of Christ, or even as a re-enactment of that Sacrifice, because His death was once for all. It need never be repeated. They rejected the sale of "indulgences," whereby one could purchase the benefits of the "merits of the saints" toward the remission of one's sins. One need not go to saints for merits (even if they had any; they don't), because Christ's merits are sufficient. They rejected the doctrine of Purgatory, where the souls of believers are alleged to go to be purged of the guilt and stain of unpaid (or unatoned) for sins. In Christ there are no unpaid for sins. His sacrifice is for all sins for all time. They rejected prayers for the dead, because as Calvin put it "the entire law and the gospel do not furnish so much as a single syllable to pray for the dead" (III. V. 10). They did not pray for the dead because the dead are in eternity. Their future is sealed. Either by Christ's sacrifice they are in Heaven or because of rejecting Him they have descended into the Abyss. His sacrifice was once for all and sufficient for all our sins!
2. Christ's mediation above.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:5 that "there is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ." Likewise from Hebrews 7:24, "He always lives to make intercession" for His people. To whom do I turn to get what I need from God? Who can assist me in my search for the forgiveness of my sins, and peace of conscience? The answer of the Reformation and of the Scriptures and Evangelicals today is "Christ alone." He alone mediates the blessings of redemption. He alone justifies. He alone declares us forgiven. He alone sanctifies. He alone adopts us into the family of God. I go directly to God through Jesus Christ. I need no celestial mediators, such as angels, or saints, or Mary. I need no earthly mediators such as clergymen and priests.
Thus, the Reformers affirmed the priesthood of all believers. Each believer has the right of direct access to God in Christ. Peter says we are "a royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9). John says Christ "has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father" (Revelation 1:6). Our privilege, joy and right is to go directly to God through Jesus Christ without the help of any created being. The Roman Catholic church may be the single most important force for good in our world today. I thank God for the uncompromising stand that it has taken on a variety of moral issues, especially in the area of sexual ethics. But when Pope John Paul II dismisses the "widespread idea that one can obtain forgiveness directly from God" and continues to exhort the faithful to confess their sins more often to their priests, we must continue to say in return that to Christ alone we confess our sins and by Christ alone we are forgiven. When the Pope continues to say "Mary is the source of our faith and our hope," we must continue to say in response that our hope "is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." He alone makes us partakers of the blessings of redemption. He alone is the Savior. He alone is the Mediator. For these tasks He is entirely sufficient and without need of assistance. We Evangelicals look not to the saints, but to Jesus Christ alone.
Faith Alone
What must I do to receive what Christ accomplished on the cross? Luther struggled with this question for more than 10 years. In July of 1505, at the age of 21, while caught out in a rainstorm he was suddenly hit by a lightening bolt. In a flash he saw horrible visions of fiends in Hell and in terror cried out, "St. Anne, help me! I will become a monk."
That week Luther entered the monastery and began there his pilgrimage in search of the assurance of God's love and favor and escape from the terrors of His wrath and hell. An earnest young man, he thought that through ascetic practices he might please God. He fasted. He prayed. He slept without blankets. He deprived himself of all worldly comforts and pleasures. Yet all he did seemed to fall short. All his efforts could not compensate for the weight of his guilt. He could sense only God's anger and displeasure. He later said, "If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, it was I." Yet his best efforts, his greatest works, were not enough.
In November of 1510 he journeyed to Rome, the "Holy City," where he thought surely he would find peace with his maker. There he sought to appropriate the merits of the saints. He viewed relics. He conducted masses and he repeated the Pater Noster. He visited the Holy sites. While he earned considerable merits from the "treasury of the saints," he still could sense no satisfaction. Still, he felt alienated from God. While crawling on his knees up the supposed steps of Pilates Palace, saying the Pater Noster on each step, he arrived at the top and said, "who knows whether it is so."
April, 1511 Luther was transferred to Wittenburg. There he began to seek peace with God through the confession of sins. And confess his sins, he would, sometimes for up to six hours a day, terrified that he should forget even one.
Seeing the futility of this approach he then began to study the German Mystics. Their writings urged him to stop striving. Instead they urged that he surrender himself to the love of God. He must yield. He must surrender all ego and all assertiveness. He must let go and let God do it for him. Luther now was coming close to the answer, but not quite. It would work for a while. He would feel himself at peace with God and with himself for a season. And then it would crash. Again he would fall under the burden of his guilt. God's anger was too great! The distance was too far! The Holy God could not be satisfied with any of his efforts.
The turning point came when he was asked to study for his doctorate and to take the chair of Biblical Studies at the University at Wittenburg. The more he studied, the clearer the gospel became. He taught the Psalms (1513), then Romans (1515), and then Galatians (1516). Yet he continued to wrestle with the phrase "the justice of God," which he took to mean God exacting His pound of flesh, which everyone owed but no one could escape. Finally, Luther had what has come to be known as his "Tower Experience," where at long last he came to understand the gospel. Let us pick up his own account of his conversion:
I greatly longed to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, "the justice of God," because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage Him. Therefore I did not love a just angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by faith." Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before "the justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. . . .
If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will, that you should see pure grace and should look upon His fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see Him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face. (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, p. 65)
Evangelicals stand with Luther and the Reformers because this too has been our experience. What must I do to receive what Christ alone accomplished on the cross? Good works? Religious works? Social works? No! Never! What we must do is believe. This is what the Bible has taught us and what we have found to be true. It is the one "who does not work but believes" who is saved (Romans 4:5). It is by faith alone that we are saved. It is by faith alone that we receive Christ's word and forgiveness and assurance of eternal life.
What about our works? What about keeping the Ten Commandments, attending church, being helpful to others, and doing one's best? Isn't it faith plus works? Don't they contribute? We say with Calvin, "Assuredly we do deny that in justifying a man they are worth one single straw."
Why should God let you into heaven? Evangelicals continue to answer, only because of what Christ has done for you on the cross which you have received not because of any good works but through empty handed, beggardly faith. So again when John Paul II says "It would be . . . foolish, as well as presumptuous . . . to claim to receive forgiveness while doing without the sacrament of penance," we must respond "whoever believes in Him shall not perish." It is by faith alone apart from works that we are saved.
Grace Alone
Lest one be tempted to claim credit for your faith, the Reformers said in addition to "faith alone" that we are saved by "grace alone." The Reformers saw that to stop at "faith alone" could have the effect of turning faith into a work. In other words, if the one required response to Christ is faith, and we are saved because we have faith, then doesn't faith become a sort of work? It is an effortless work, but nevertheless a work, the exercising of which earns us salvation.
So the Reformers were careful to remove the last possible ground of human merit by saying that while faith is the means by which we receive eternal life, the ground or basis of our salvation is "grace alone." Faith does not save us. Christ does, on the basis of the unmerited mercy of God which He has shown toward the undeserving. Our response of faith is itself a part of what God gives in salvation. Far from being meritorious, faith is a gift. It is not even our own. If you believe, it is because God gave you the ability to do so. Paul says,
For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast (Ephesians 2:8,9).
We are saved "by grace . . . through faith." What faith? The faith that is "not of (our)selves." God gave it to us. Evangelicals affirm in addition to "faith alone" the unmerited mercy and grace of God alone.
"Grace alone" reminds us that "it is by His doing" that we are "in Christ Jesus" (1 Corinthians 1:30). If I believe, it is because God gave me the ability to believe. If I have chosen Christ, it is because He first chose me (John 15:16). If I love Christ, it is because He first loved me (1 John 4:10). It was while I was dead and blind and ignorant and helpless that Christ died for me and then began to work decisively in my life. The Reformers, and we with them, must never lose sight of the fact that it is by the sovereign, initiating, electing love of God in Christ that we were saved. Calvin in his only statement regarding his conversion, found in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, shows the Biblical perspective in our salvation in saying,
God drew me . . . God at last turned my course by the secret rein in His providence . . . by an unexpected conversion He tamed to teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years . . .
Why am I saved? Because "God so loved." And why did God so love? One can plunge no deeper than Deuteronomy 7:7 - He loves us because He loves us. Nothing we have done, nothing He might have seen or foreseen has attracted, earned, or merited His favor. Our salvation is of God's sheer mercy and grace alone.
God's Glory Alone
Patrick Hamilton, a noble blooded 24 year old Scotsman returned home early in 1528 from studying in Germany a convert to the Protestant faith. He returned knowing that his new convictions meant for him certain death. For six weeks he preached, and as Knox said,
Neither the love of life, nor yet the fear of that cruel death, could move him a jot to swerve from the truth once professed.
He was arrested, tried and condemned. On February 29, 1528, Patrick Hamilton was burned in St. Andrews. For six hours, on a cold and wet winter day the fire struggled to burn. Finally he cried out,
Lord Jesus receive my spirit.
Patrick Hamilton, with all of life before him, came to a tragic end.
Eighteen years later, February 28, 1546, George Wishart, a mighty preacher of the gospel and John Knox's mentor, was burned in front of St. Andrew's castle. The little book, Seven Men of the Kirk, describes his moving end:
When he came to the fire he prayed: "Father of heaven I commend my spirit into Thy holy hands." To the people he said: "For the Word's sake, the true gospel given me by the grace of God, I suffer this day by men; not sorrowfully, but with a glad heart and mind. For this cause I was sent, that I should suffer this fire for Christ's sake. This grim fire I fear not. If persecution comes to you for the Word's sake fear not them that slay the body, and have no power to slay the soul." The hangman knelt beside him and said: "Sir, I pray you forgive me." "Come hither to me," he answered and kissed him on the cheek. "Lo, here is a token that I forgive thee. My friend, do thy work" (p.25).
What possesses men to do such things? Certainly this is where the previous point, and indeed all other points have been leading us. The Reformers lived and died for Scripture alone, Christ alone, faith alone, and grace alone because they saw in these principles that which gave all of the glory to God and none to man. God's word and God's work alone were glorified by the cry of sola. Indeed, the goal of everything we do is to be God's glory - "for from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to Him be the glory forever and ever" (Romans 11:36).
The Reformers were among the most humble, self-effacing, God exalting men who ever lived. The Psalmist cry,
Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory (Psalm 115:1),
might be called the motto verse of the Reformation. Indeed Soli Deo Gloria was the motto of mottos for them, as they sought not their own glory but God's.
Calvin, by his instruction, was buried in a simple pine box and an unmarked grave. His grave site is unknown to this day. Why? Lest anyone should be drawn to him and not to God alone; lest in death anyone should make a hero of him and have their eyes drawn away from Christ.
It is our aim to stand where they stood. We seek not the glory of our church, and not the glory of our own names, and not our own fame and fortune. Our teaching is for God's glory. Our evangelism is for God's glory. Our giving is for God's glory. "Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). That is our motto. We are here to live, no longer for ourselves, "but for Him who died and who rose again on our behalf" (2 Corinthians 5:15).
We celebrate our Reformation heritage because we stand where they stood, squarely on these fundamental principles of Biblical, Evangelical and Reformed Christianity.