In Recognition of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation: The Reformation and the Restoration of Honour - Part 3

In parts One and Two of this blog series, we looked at three ways in which the Reformation, sparked by Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door, was about restoring significant issues of honour. And here we come to the final part:

Honour of God's People

One of the main reasons that such God-dishonouring doctrines were perpetuated in the church in the centuries prior to the Reformation, was because God's people were treated as inferior in knowledge and spirituality.  And the Roman Church leadership were assured the people could be kept that way by with-holding access to God's word.  Most people could not read or understand Latin (the language the Scriptures were in at the time, and was not what the people spoke in their daily lives), and even if they could they would be told that only the 'church' could properly interpret the Bible.  Not until shortly before Luther's theses, the printing press had not been invented and a person also would have had to be wealthy to own a bible or bible portion.  Only the noblemen - those in places of high honour in the society - even had a chance to get access to a bible.

We are told in the book of 1 Peter (2:17) to 'honour all men' - in other words there is no special category of people who have any 'higher' honour requirement than another. Everyone should be given equal due honour. As far as our place in God's family - the true church - is concerned there is no position of greater or lesser honour. Our nationality, gender or social position is irrelevent. In Christ we are all equal heirs of his riches in glory (honour).  (Phil 4:19, Col 1:27, Rom 8:17) We are all the saints (set apart) of God, and we are all members of a kingdom of priests with direct access to God (known as the term 'the priesthood of all believers').

The Reformation and the lead up to it with Bible Translator John Wycliffe (often called the Morning Star of the Reformation who lived 1330-1384)), gave to God's people the honour of equal access to the Scriptures, and the honour of an individual being able to come to the Scriptures to learn and know God's truth without always looking to the church for Scriptual knowledge and interpretation.

It restored the fulness of the honour of being able to access God in prayer through Christ without the need of other mediators. 

It restored the honour of the ability to come to God directly in confession of sin and for forgiveness of sin.  

It brought again the truth of the honour of truly being 'in Christ' - the assurance of individually being God's child eternally, safe and secure in Christ forever. 

It restored people to a place of knowing and seeking honour from God alone through Christ alone, instead of the church dictating who was shamed and rejected, and who was honoured and accepted.

It restored the honour of being able to access, read, study and learn from God's word - an honour we so easily take for granted. The average person could know more of the honour of being God's child by having access to God's word in their own language.  No longer did speaking only the local language and not the Latin language of the educated elite, place them in the lower and less honourable position of exclusion from knowing the truth of God's word for themselves.

This all in turn spurred on the ideas we are familiar with today of education and literacy for all, of individual freedom to be creative and innovative, of using one's money and time to develop, invent and build rather than having to spend all one's time and money on the church and securing salvation through buying indulgences.

Rejoice in the Reformation

As Protestant post-reformation Christians, we have so much we can easily take for granted.  But what we take for granted we can also easily lose.  No, it is true no earthly authority can remove heavenly realities and many before the reformation had God's assurance of their salvation even if they in themselves doubted it.  But in the process many people had the truth withheld from them which resulted in confusion, fear, shame, and for some, eternal death because they did not know the Truth which could have set them free. False teaching brings false hopes and false fears.  

We can rejoice that we have access to God's word, can read it for ourselves in our own language, and can buy and own our own full copy, and even multiple copies. 

We can rejoice that we have been able to know the honour of God's salvation in Christ, the honour of access to God's word, and the honour of being one in Christ Jesus as believers together.  

But let us guard the gift we have been given, that many lost their lives fighting for, ….and remember that just like the church became oppressive when it lost sight of the Scriptures many centuries ago, so individual freedom alienated from the authority of God through His Word can, will and has resulted in our current century,  just yet another form of destruction. 

So, as we remember what happened 500 years ago today, let us like Luther, be careful and diligent to be true to the authority of the Scriptures, whatever our nationality, generation, or era, and let us not only know God, but as Romans 1 says, honour Him as God in all things, with thanksgiving!

…..ps

In case you think that this event is saying what the Roman Catholic church was like 500 years ago and its not like it now, please read this article or check out this little video and be challenged that we still need to bring the good news of salvation in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone to those who are falsely and hopelessly looking to the Roman Catholic church edicts, rules and requirements to save them. 

And if you are interested...take a look at this list of 5 ways in which this event impacted the wider world for the centuries following up to our present day!

In Recognition of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation: The Reformation and the Restoration of Honour - Part 2

As we continue to look at the honour issues of the Reformation, sparked by Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door on the 31st October 1517, following on from Part 1, we come to the next two significant categories of honour restoration:

Honour of God's Word

When we don't honour God as God, we are consequentially not going to honour what God says the way we should. If we honour a human being, human leadership or human systems and rules above God, we are going to honour what they say as authoritative above what God says as authoritative.  And that is what was happening in the Roman Catholic Church.  The church was adding to Scripture's requirements. Words and concepts and regulations and warnings and systems were developed that had no basis in God's word whatsoever. Teaching on such things as Purgatory became central to church doctrine yet are not even mentioned in Scripture, let alone supported.  

God's word had become secondary. The focus was on the teaching of the church and authority of the Pope.  In fact they had gone one step further and made the teaching of the church of equal authority, infallability and holiness to Scripture.  Of course when that happens it is inevitable that the teaching of the church becomes elevated above Scripture.  When supposedly two 'equal' pieces of information conflict, and the church's teaching says that the church leadership speak as the voice of God, no-one is going to question what the church leadership says, and any Scripture that disagrees will be put aside in favour of what the church leadership says. 

To thus treat God's true word with such disregard, is to despise God's Word.  And as God accused and reminded king David when he sinned (2 Sam 12:9-10), to despise God's Word is to despise God Himself. 

There was also an understanding by the Reformers that God's word would lose no honour by being translated into the language that the people spoke.  The honour of God's word was not in it remaining in the Latin language accessible only to those of high church rank and status.  The honour of God's word was founded on its nature and source, not what earthly language it was in. Luther's translating the bible into German, like John Wycliffe before him in England translating it into English, was because they believed God's word would have greater honour in the hearts and lives of the people if they had access to it in a language they could understand and which they spoke on a daily basis.

The Reformation sought to restore God's word to its rightful place, that it might be once again honoured as God's supreme and ultimate authority shared with no other human authority, person or organisational rules, but that it could have the honour of being accessible to everyone in their own language.

Honour of God's Son and Salvation brought through Him

I remember sitting in a Christian Convention as a teenager, many years ago, and hearing the speaker say "Christ+ = Christ- = not Christ"! (ie Christ plus equals Christ minus equals not Christ)

God sent His Son, His only Son to be the only way of salvation for sinful humanity. 

He sent His Son to be the one and only Mediator between man and God.

We are not saved by any other name, only Jesus' name.

When we pray, we are to only pray to God the Father and only in the name of God the Son.

There is only one who sits at the right hand of God the Father, Jesus Christ. Only He is the firstborn from the dead.

Only Christ is the Messiah, only Christ is Immanuel God with us.

And I could go on…..

Mary is not Christ, she is not a mediator between God and humans, she does not hear and answer prayer. 'Saints' of the Roman Catholic Church are not deity in human form, are not elevated to some higher spiritual power after death, and have no power or influence over creation or life on this earth.  To say such things is to say we need more than Christ, which is to say that Christ is not enough for God's saving, sanctifying and sustaining work in a Christian's life.  A view of Christ that says this, is a view of Christ which does not equal who God tells us Christ is.

We are thankful for Mary's availability, obedience, humility and submission to God's will in God's plan, but we don't need her for salvation or answers to prayer.  She has no more powerful or special spiritual connection to Christ, than you or I. 

We are thankful for the lives of great Christians of the past and their example of godly actions but they too are not in any different spiritual catagory from anyone else…..if they truly came to Christ alone as sinners and accepted His full finished work of salvation for them, they were saved just like you and I can be, and if they did not they are just as lost eternally as you or I can be.

Not only was the Roman Catholic church denying the priesthood of all believers which allows us to all access God's throne in prayer directly through Christ, and not giving sole Mediator status to Christ, they were giving authority to priests to forgive sins, an authority that was only God's. 

The 'church' was also saying that salvation was not assurred in Christ.  The 'church' taught that to be saved, or have a good chance at being saved, you had to do good works. You had to participate in the seven sacraments of the church which were believed to be the channels of receiving God's grace including the Mass/Eucharist and Confession. The church had also invented the unbiblical category of 'purgatory' between life on earth and heaven, a category in which the church was telling people if they were to give money to the church (called indulgences) it could help them reduce their time in purgatory and to get relatives out of purgatory and into heaven.

From beginning to end the 'church' was promoting a works based salvation in which people often had no sense of assurance of salvation before or after death, and definitely no assurance if the priest hadn't given it. They had to hope that their 'good works' outweighed their 'bad works', or that they had paid enough indulgences or had relatives who would keep paying after your death.

To think there are some additions needing to be made to salvation in Christ alone, is to not honour God as God, because you are not accepting that God's way of salvation through Christ's once for all sacrifice, is enough.  It's saying you don't believe God when He says it is enough. That, in adddition to saying that the 'church' and its leadership know better, is thorough dishonour of God.

The Reformation was to restore to God's people a right and true understanding that they could be saved by faith alone and grace alone in Christ alone.  It was about restoring the honourable rightful place of God's Son as the sole means and assurance of salvation from sin.

To be continued in Part 3…..

In Recognition of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation: The Reformation and the Restoration of Honour - Part 1

This is the year of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation - or rather the event that was the major trigger for the Protestant Reformation.

It was October 31, 1517 that Martin Luther, the preacher and professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door, which served as a bit like the community notice board. It seems he did not intend to start a new church or radical movement, but simply to put forward some issues on which he wanted to spark further discussion about matters in the church he was concerned about. But that wasn't how it turned out.

Yet there is so much to be thankful for because of that event.

When we think about the Reformation, we most readily recall the events themselves, the people involved and the tangible results it brought about of greater access to God's Word and greater awareness of the biblical basis of salvation and a greater assurance of salvation. But underlying the Reformation were actually foundational matters of honour.

In Romans 1, Scripture tells us that we can know about God but fail to honour Him as God. When we fail to honour God as God the way He says to honour Him, we fail to live the way He wants. Even worse is the situation, when the church and its leaders are the ones failing to honour God as God.

The word 'honour' may not have been prominent at the time, in regard to the Reformation, and not really be mentioned even now, but the principle was permeating the whole process. In fact we use the simile of of the word 'honour' all the time when we talk about the Reformation….the word 'glory'. 

The fifth all encompassing 'sola' of the five solas of the Reformation, is Soli Deo gloria: "to the glory of God alone"

The Reformation was all about the issue of 'glory' - the issue of honour, and I see it permeating in four significant ways. Over the next few posts, we will have a look at these.  Firstly we see the…..

Honour of God

By 1517, the church leadership and system had more and more overstepped its role and place. It had set itself up in the place of God. It saw itself as the one to decide if a person's sins would be forgiven, if a person could go to heaven or not, and what rules and regulations should define sin and as the only ones to interpret scripture. It saw itself as the voice and authority of God in the lives of people and in society. 

Not only that, but it was promoting idolatry by having people bow at carved images of Christ and Mary the mother of Jesus, at the feet of church leaders and of religious 'relics'. It set Mary up as a sinless human being to be venerated and as a mediator, encouraging people to pray not only to God but to Mary.  The dishonour of God went even further as certain people were elevated after death into a category of an unbiblical definition of 'saint', appointing them to some mystical position of great spiritual power over earth's events.

The Reformation was about wanting God to be honoured as God.  It was about a desire for God to get the glory He deserved. It was about wanting the Roman Catholic church and its leadership to ascribe the full honour to God that was and is due Him, instead of taking it for themselves. When the church refused, it was time to honour God and the true church of His children, above any earthly organisation that set itself in God's place. 

The Roman Catholic Church might have been saying that they honoured God above all, but in reality they were putting themselves in the authority position of God in the life of the church corporately and the lives of people individually, and that does not honour God as God. 

The Reformers were seeing a church giving more honour to rules and rituals than understanding the reality of God.  The Scripture that comes to mind is 'They honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me' (Is 29:13, Matt 15:8). The honour of the church system and the honour of its leaders had overtaken the honour of God. The Reformers were zealous for God and His honour above all.

To be continued in Part 2…..