Here We Stand

Here We Stand

Exactly five hundred years ago, on the evening of Friday 18 April 1521, Martin Luther was brought before Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in the city of Worms.

The hall was packed, and in the gathering gloom torches had been lit, making it stiflingly hot. Luther was perspiring heavily. Looking at him, everyone expected an abject apology as he begged forgiveness for his heinous heresy. The alternative was death. But the moment he opened his mouth it was clear that was not to be. In a loud and ringing voice, we are told, Luther declared:

I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen.

Luther seemed to be standing on the word of God against the whole world. The lines were drawn. The Reformation had begun. And Luther had thrown out a challenge for every generation. 

Five hundred years later, we sorely need another Reformation. Large numbers of self-confessed “evangelicals” are not robustly evangelical in their beliefs. In country after country we hear stories of abusive and self-serving evangelical leaders. And they are surely only the more noticeable symptoms of a deeper malaise. The same spiritual emptiness that causes dramatic and high-profile falls from grace also stifles heartfelt worship in the pew. It leeches courage in the face of opposition. It opens the gates to charlatans who offer counterfeit gospels. It encourages a defensive maintenance mode of church management and a hollow, functional approach to the Christian life.

Today, of course, we face new issues and a different context. But at its heart, the Reformation we need in our generation will not involve new truths but three old ones that have always rung out through the centuries at times of church revival.

Revelation

The first truth is the supremacy of Scripture, a truth Jesus himself fought for against the Pharisees (Mk. 7:1-13). Jesus’ conviction is plain: Scripture is divine in origin. What “Moses said” (v. 10) is the totally trustworthy “word of God” (v.12). As such, Scripture’s authority is supreme. Any human reasoning or tradition (which is human in origin) is subordinate to Scripture, and we must reject any thinking or tradition that is in conflict with Scripture, and not vice versa.

Without this principle of the supremacy of Scripture there would have been no Reformation in Luther’s day and there will be none in ours. The Bible must be acknowledged as our supreme authority and allowed to contradict and overrule all other claims, or else it will itself be overruled and its message hijacked.

Redemption

The second truth concerns the exclusive identity and sufficient work of Christ. “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), and therefore “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And because Christ’s redeeming work really is entirely sufficient, there is nothing for us to add for salvation. Thus true Reformation must mean the clear teaching of justification by faith alone, which is the litmus test of belief in the sufficiency of Christ as redeemer.

Justification by faith alone is at the centerground of the biblical gospel, the beautiful and essential consequence of the all-sufficiency of Christ the only saviour. It tells of the majestic goodness of Christ and the sweet security we can have in him. It can transform the vicious, the sad, the despairing and the selfish into joy-filled, radiantly generous and kind saints.

Regeneration

The third truth is that our problem is not superficial or small. Naturally we are lost, blind, dead (Eph 2:1-4). We need to be born again (Jn. 3:1-8). We must enter the new and eternal life by the Spirit who will transform us at every level into the image of Christ so that one day even our poor bodies will be like his glorious, resurrection body.

There is therefore no such thing as a Christian who is only justified. Those to whom the Spirit gives new birth will live according to the Spirit and find themselves loving, thinking and acting differently. For that reason, the heirs of the Reformation have never been about doctrine alone. We must apply our theology and so care about orthodoxy (right doctrine) and orthopraxy (right practice) and orthocardia (right heart).

Humility and Valour

What effect should these truths have on us? The more we hear them, the more the three persons of the Trinity (and their work of revelation, redemption and regeneration) are glorified, and so the more we diminish. Without God’s revelation, we are left groping in the darkness of ignorance. Without the redemption of the Son we are utterly lost in our guilt and alienation from God. Without the Spirit’s work of regeneration, we are helplessly mired in our sin. In the gospel, God is exalted, and we delight to be abased before him. And only then, when he is lifted up, are people drawn to him (Jn. 12:32).

Times of reformation and renewal in the church have always been marked by this perspective. A fresh sight of the glory and grace of God awakens people both to who he is and to who they are. Unlike how they once thought, they realize that he is great, glorious, and beautiful in his holiness—and they are not.

The humility we learn at the foot of these gospel truths, glorying in Christ and not ourselves, is the wellspring of all evangelical health. When our eyes are opened to the love of God for us sinners, we let slip our masks. Condemned as sinners yet justified, we can begin to be honest about ourselves. Loved despite our unloveliness, we begin to love. Given peace with God, we begin to know an inner peace and joy. Shown the magnificence of God above all things, we become more resilient, trembling in wonder at God, and not man.

This was the evangelical transformation Martin Luther experienced through the gospel. Luther often described himself as an anxious young man being so wrapped up in himself that everything frightened him. Even the sound of a leaf blown in the wind would make him flee (Le. 26:36).  That changed through his encounter with the gospel of Christ, as Roland Bainton recounts in the splendid final words of his biography:

No longer did Luther tremble at the rustling of a wind-blown leaf, and instead of calling upon St. Anne he declared himself able to laugh at thunder and jagged bolts from out the storm. This was what enabled him to utter such words as these: “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”” 

The evangelical humility Luther found before the majesty and mercy of God was not gloomy or timid, forlorn or feeble. It was full-throttled, joyous, and valiant. 

That is the stamp of the humility that is found in the gospel, and the look of evangelical integrity. It is the bearing of one refreshed by the gospel. Captivated by the magnificence of God, such believers will not be so drawn to man-centered therapeutic religion. Under the radiance of his glory, they will not want to establish their own little empires. Their tiny achievements will seem petty, their feuds and personal agendas odious. He will loom large, making them bold to please God and not men. They will not dither or stammer with the gospel. But aware of their own redemption they will share his own meekness and gentleness, not breaking a bruised reed. They will be quick to serve, quick to bless, quick to repent, and quick to laugh at themselves, for their glory is not themselves but Christ. This is the integrity found through the lifting up of Christ in his gospel. 

Too Grand a Dream?

Yet is dreaming of a new Reformation too grand, given our mess and given our numbers? It surely would be if it depended on us. Reformation means raising the dead, and there is no voice powerful enough to wake the dead. No human voice. But a divine voice, heard through the impassioned preaching of the word, can.

And when you look at Luther’s Wittenberg and Calvin’s Geneva, it’s striking how small they were. They didn’t have great numbers of students. But between the graduates of the small university at Wittenberg and the graduates of the small Academy of Geneva, the world was changed. The church of Jesus Christ grew in health and breadth to spread the glories of Jesus.

In the light of such a Saviour, we cannot hunker down and cower at the secularisation of the culture or its anti-Christian armoury. Rather, let’s seize this anniversary of Luther’s stand to press in once more to study and herald God’s word, to know and be ever more captivated by his glory, to enjoy his all-sufficiency so that, like Luther, we no longer tremble at the rustling of a wind-blown leaf, but laugh at thunder and jagged bolts from out the storm. So that, like him, we stand before the world and say “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”