Why the Reformed Faith?
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Romans 11:33-36
Introduction
I would like for us to consider why one should be an adherent to the Reformed faith. By "Reformed" I mean that tradition which traces its roots back to Calvin, and perhaps, one might argue, Augustine before him. But mainly we refer to the 16th Century reforms of the corruptions of the late Medieval and Renaissance church, and the movement that it spawned. We refer to the Calvinistic heritage emanating from Geneva, resulting in the Swiss, Dutch, and German Reformed churches, and in the English-speaking world, the Scottish Reformed Church, known as Presbyterian, English Puritanism, New England Puritanism, and well, Old Princeton.
But I do not wish this to be a history lesson. Much as I might relish the opportunity to examine the exciting historical events surrounding the Reformation: Luther being hit by a lightning bolt; Luther before the Diet of Worms crying, "Here I stand;" Knox protecting the fiery Scots preacher, George Wishart, with a two-fisted sword; Knox serving as a galley slave on a French warship; Hooper, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer being subject to fiery deaths, the latter turning to his young friend as they burned saying, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day, by God's grace, light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out." There were giants in the land in those days!
Rather what I wish to do is examine the Reformed faith itself, its ideas, its foundational principles. For generations the Reformed faith has captured the hearts of men and inspired them, sending them, ironically, into battle as well as into the mission field. As one who was reared in another tradition, it was the ideas and ideals of the Reformed faith which seized my imagination as a young seminary student. I was thrilled by what I saw as a purer grasp of the Biblical view of God and of created things, with each in its proper place. "Biblical religion in its purity," it has been called. Yet today there are so few who have even heard of the "Reformed faith." At the time of the American Revolution, 85% of our national population was of the Reformed tradition. How the mighty have fallen! How its demise has hurt and weakened the American Church! I have to admit, I don't like the gospel as I typically hear it today. The old gospel is dead. The liberals have replaced it with a this-worldly, politicized version. This is not late-breaking news. They've been doing that for decades. The surprise is how even Evangelicals have traded the gospel in for a self-help, self-realization replacement. The themes of sin and salvation have been replaced with trendier ones borrowed from modern psychology. There are a thousand lessons in self-improvement (e.g. marriage, work, family, contentment, etc.) for every one on the atonement. We have lost our way in our day, and I believe it is the distinctives of the Reformed faith which will point the way back for the church. What are its foundational ideas?
The Greatness of God and His Glory
This is where it all begins. The God of the Reformed Church is a great God indeed. B.B. Warfield, the greatest of the Old Princeton theologians, said, "It is the vision of God and His Majesty . . . which lies at the foundation of the entirety of Calvinistic thinking" (Calvin and Augustine, 491). If one were to isolate one distinctive characteristic of the Reformed faith nearly everyone would agree it is the sovereign greatness of God.
What one finds in Reformed thinking is a willingness to let God be God. When others try to apply logic to the questions of divine decree and human responsibility, we merely bow our heads in silent reverence. When others plunge into fatalism on the one hand, or virtually knock God off of His throne on the other, we praise God in the words of the Apostle Paul,
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (Romans 11:33)
One finds a willingness amongst the Reformed to close one's mouth and let God speak for Himself in His word and believe what He says, no matter how difficult to understand, or when understood, how uncomfortable it makes one feel. In doing so we have found a God who is greater than the simple categories in which one wants to place Him. Try as one will to put God into a manageable box of comprehension, He does not fit. He emerges again and again greater, more glorious, more commanding, more awesome, more frightening, and more comforting. "Behold the goodness and severity of God," says the Apostle (Rom 11:22). "Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?" (Rom 9:20). This is the God who made all things, who plans all things, even "whatsoever comes to pass," as our Confession teaches, who governs, sustains, and preserves all things. He is a great God. And He is the only God who can sustain my allegiance!
Perhaps you can identify with this experience. At one point in my college years I found myself losing energy for discipleship. God, as I knew Him then, was great, only in the sense of being a larger version of ourselves. I was not here for Him, He was there for me. I was not His servant, He was mine. The Christian life was precisely inverted for me at that time. It was only when I grew into this Biblical, Reformed view of God that a "Copernican" revolution occurred, and I was thrust out of the center of things, and God was understood as being on His throne. I had understood God as friend. I had not understood God as king.
This is the fundamental principle of the Reformed faith. It animates all that we do. We gather to worship not to please ourselves, or as is too often the case, to be entertained, or to "get something out of it," as it is frequently put, but to glorify and exult in the Lord our God. We come not to hear a good talk, or to hear a speech on an interesting subject, but to humble ourselves, our thinking, our lifestyle, our practices under the word of God, and to obey His word as our law. This is the attitude with which we live all of life. He is not king merely of the church, or less, of the prayer closet, but of the whole world and every aspect of it. Life is a continual offering up of ourselves as living sacrifices, to the praise of the great and glorious God whom we serve (Rom 12:1,2).
The Lowliness and Depravity of Man
Where does this vision of the greatness and glory of God lead? It leads to a profound understanding of the lowliness of man. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" asks the Psalmist (Psalm 8). When one sees God in his glory, one becomes aware of one's own insignificance - "We are but dust" (Psalm 103:14). When Moses was granted the glorious vision, not of God's face but only of His "backsides," we read of his response:
And Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. (Exodus 34:8)
This is the Copernican revolution referred to above. We come to understand that we are not the center of the universe, but God is, and relative to Him, we are but specks upon the scale (Is 40:15). This is hard for human pride to swallow. We love to hold such exalted views of ourselves. How important I am! We take ourselves so seriously. We dress ourselves up. We give ourselves titles. We are the honorable and the most excellent, the Reverend, the executive, the chairman, and the president. God says to us, "You are but dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). In our collective strength as nations He says,
All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless. (Isaiah 40:17)
The Reformed faith puts human pretensions in their proper perspective. They are foolishness.
But beyond this, the Reformed faith, like no other, understands the sinfulness of man. If one were to ask what is the other typically cited belief of Calvinists, the answer usually is "the depravity of man." We are the last word in pessimism about unaided human nature. How has sin affected us? When others speak of sin as an influence, we speak of it as slavery. When others say sin distorts one's perspective, we say it blinds the eyes and closes the ears. Man is not sick; he is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1). "There is no good thing in me," says the Apostle Paul (Rom 7:18). How profoundly negative is our view of fallen human nature! Who but the Reformed would say that man is,
"wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body . . . and utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil" (Westminster Confession of Faith, VI. 2,4)?
Why do we say that man is so bad? Because we understand that God is so gloriously holy and pure, and once having caught a vision of that, we cannot but see ourselves as pervasively defiled, in thought, word, and deed. Like Isaiah we see God in His glory, we hear the seraphim crying out, "Holy, holy, holy," and we cannot but conclude with him, "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips" (Is 6:6). Man is not only lowly in creaturely terms, he is degraded because of sin. Sin has left us in a helpless and hopeless condition, blind, enslaved, dead. No other school of thought flies so furiously in the face of human pride - especially post-Enlightenment and modern views of supposed human greatness - and asserts unambiguously the total depravity and degradation of humanity.
The Graciousness of Christ's Redemptive Work
Obviously man in such a condition is in desperate need of a deliverer, a savior, to rescue him. Whereas others might assign to God a part, and to man a part, in accomplishing salvation, the Reformed faith stands alone and asserts with Jonah the fullest implications of the word, "salvation is of the Lord." No other view so exalts the work of Christ upon the cross. What has He done to secure our salvation? Only everything. He died for our sins. Whereas others stop there, we go on to say that He then caused us to come to life, to be "born again." He "regenerated" us, as the theologians say, and worked faith in us, which He gave as a gift (Eph 2:8,9). By this faith we are justified, adopted, sanctified, preserved, and will be glorified. We contribute nothing, and so Christ receives all the glory. If we are saved, we can take credit for nothing. We cannot boast in this. Paul says,
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 Cor 1:30, 31).
This expresses the point. It was "by His doing." So how could you boast? Salvation is a gift which Christ earned by Himself and which He gave to us of His own free will and not for anything in ourselves.
R.C. Sproul once debated a man who said salvation is like the experience of a man drowning to whom Christ throws a rope. What the man must do is grab the rope. God's part is to provide the rope. Man's part is to grab it and hold on. Sproul countered, salvation is not like a man drowning, but like a man who has already drowned, and is unconscious on the bottom of the lake. Christ's part is to dive in, drag the man to shore, perform artificial respiration, and bring the man to life. What is man's part? Only to come to life. It is not a part at all. Would you say that such a person contributed to his rescue? Of course not. The same is true of salvation. Christ alone saves us.
We give all the glory to Christ, and none to man. While others like the image of Christ passively knocking at the door of the sinners heart, waiting to be let in, our picture is that of Christ kicking the door in and storming the gates of our hearts, as well as the gates of hell. He is a great Savior, who does not merely make salvation possible, but actually saves!
An Optimistic Outlook on the Future
In Christ, man is restored to his original exalted role in the creation. In Christ we are remade,
Thou hast made him for a little while lower than the angels; Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, And hast appointed him over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. (Heb 2:7,8; cf Ps 8)
Made in God's image, and restored to God in Christ, we have dignity and possibilities that never were achievable under the tyranny of sin. Jesus Christ defeated the devil, and triumphed over the principalities and powers (Col 2:15). He sits on His throne in heaven as possessor of "all power in heaven and earth," and He sends us out as "more than conquerors" (Rom 8:37). He "gives us the victory," and therefore "our labor is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Cor 15:57).
Therefore we cannot but be optimistic. Into this wretched world of evil Christ marches forth "conquering and to conquer." He is gaining the victory. He is leavening the whole loaf. The mustard seed is growing into dominance in the garden. We can serve Him in the confidence of gospel success (Rev 6:2; 1 Cor 15:57; Matt 13:31-35).
This is our heritage. Think of the optimism of William Carey, the father of the modern missionary movement. After five and a half years of pioneer mission work in India without a single convert, he wrote to his friend, Samuel Pearce,
"The work, to which God has set His hands, will infallibly prosper. Christ has begun to besiege this ancient and strong fortress, and will assuredly carry it."
Then when, finally, Krishna Pal converted to Christ, his first and, at that time, only convert, he wrote,
"He was only one, but a continent was coming behind him. The divine grace which changed one Indian's heart could obviously change a hundred thousand."
Similarly David Livingstone, the great pioneer missionary to the interiors of Africa, who though he saw little in the way of conversions in his time, said,
"Their (the missionaries) great idea of converting the world to Christ is no chimera: it is Divine. Christianity will triumph. It is equal to all it has to perform."
When we see the great flood tides of ungodliness in our day, we are tempted to despair. Evil runs loose across the length and breadth of our land, unchecked, and seemingly unstoppable. Is there any hope? Can the great indifferent mass of people ever be brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ? Is there no stopping the devil? Can the situation not be turned around? Others might give up. We cannot. We know that God can change human hearts. He can take the most indifferent and apathetic man, who sits in front of his TV night after night, drinking beer and watching games, and make him a zealot for Jesus Christ. And what God can do for one, He can do for a whole nation. "Jesus shall reign, wher'ever the sun, does his successive journeys run," wrote Isaac Watts. Surely, "every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess, that Jesus is Lord" (Phil 2:10,11).
Roland Bainton, the eminent Yale church historian, said that Calvinism "bred a race of heroes." Our dream is that it will do so again. Our prayer is that the Reformed vision of the majesty of God may become your own, and inspire you, and inspire all Christendom again to believe God for great things, and to attempt great things. I once read an article entitled "Presbyterian Seek To Bolster Church Through Evangelism," in which church leaders were lamenting "our younger people are leaving the church in droves." What will stop it? When we begin to preach the gospel - not the pathetic T.V. gospel of health and wealth; not the bankrupt liberal gospel of political and social salvation; not the shallow self-realization gospel of others, but the "glorious gospel of the blessed God," the gospel of His greatness, our depravity, and the Savior's grace (1 Tim 1:11). When we preach that message and believe God will use it to change hearts, then we'll see revival in Savannah and in America. We, as heirs of the Reformed tradition, must take the lead in broadcasting those distinctives so desperately needed in our churches and nation today.
(This sermon was first preached by Rev. Johnson on October 29, 1989)