In the year 1415 the Council of Constance ordered the bones
of John Wycliff dug up from their grave, later to be burned and the ashes
scattered over the River Swift in England. The reason for the bizarre fury of the
church leaders was the pioneering work of translating Scripture into English,
the common tongue, which John Wycliff had done the previous century.
The refocusing of attention on the Word of God had its
powerful effect in the years that followed. For example, on the European
continent the writings of Wycliff were read by John Huss who also longed to see
the Church purified of its wicked practices. Two cartoons impressed Huss as
well. In one, Christ was shown wearing a crown of thorns and the Pope wearing a
crown of gold with clothing of purple and silk. In the second, Jesus is saying
to the woman, "Thy sins are forgiven thee", and on the reverse side,
the Pope is shown selling indulgences.[1]
Huss exposed many of the foolish superstitions that were
promoted in the church and preached Christ's death and resurrection in the
"Bethlehem Chapel" in Prague. The Pope eventually excommunicated him
and declared his writings to be heretical. The Archbishop of Milan was
appointed to take the office of priest from Huss and to burn him at the stake
for blasphemy in 1414. His ashes were spread on the waters of the Rhine River.
Martin Luther was born in 1483. An excellent student at the
University of Erfurt, he one day came across a copy of the Bible and was
greatly stirred. He especially mentions the story of Hannah and Samuel and of
Samuel's calling. Later in life he made a vow to become a monk and in his
studies became increasingly disturbed over how to have peace with God. He did
everything that the church called for and tried to do more but could not find
the reconciliation that he knew was needed.
His story is profound and intensely interesting and it can
be summarized by telling how he eventually discovered the truth. He was always
terribly impressed with the righteousness of God and felt that his own sin was
so very great. The Holy Spirit revealed to Luther that the answer to everything
he sought and needed so earnestly was contained in the word grace. Romans 1:17,
where the Apostle Paul is quoting Habakkuk 2:4 was rediscovered. Luther was a
man energized by God to proclaim again the Gospel that had been so obscured and
distorted by the Roman Church. Man is saved by grace alone, not by his own good
deeds or payments of money.
Luther grasped the fact that God had revealed His perfect
and absolute righteousness in the life, death and resurrection of His Son,
Jesus Christ. The basic theme of the Reformation thus became the wonderful
truth, the Just shall live by his faith, quoting Romans 1:17 and Hab.2:4.
John Calvin was brought into the world in 1509 at Noyon in
Picardy, France. While studying law in Paris he became interested in the works
of the German reformers. After a conversion that Calvin describes as sudden or,
possibly "unexpected", he was thrust into a career that would have
the most far-reaching effect on the world.
Building on the foundational truths of the earlier reformers
Calvin wrote and taught on the wonderful sovereignty of God in salvation and
showed how all creation and all history are ruled by Him and for the revealing
of His great glory and majesty. Calvin showed men how to be fascinated with the
love and grace of God and how God was interested in every facet of our lives
and being.
For John Calvin, even the daily work of the most simple
peasant or tradesman, mother or milk maid, was to be presented as an offering
to God. In theology, he built on the solid base laid down by Saint Augustine,
recalling that our salvation is not left up to foolish man who is "dead in
trespasses and sins", [Eph.2:1-10] but rather, is based on the sovereign
grace of God who knew and loved His people, in Christ, "before the
foundation of the world" [Eph.1:4]. Man's eternal life was not in the
hands of fickle priests or selfish Popes who wanted to manipulate and profiteer
on the Gospel, but rather was secured in the eternal Covenant of Grace.
The Frenchman, Calvin, more decisively than any other,
consistently presented the core issue of the Reformation, with regard to man's
salvation, that man's very nature was utterly opposed to God, his will enslaved
to disobedience. He and Luther were in full agreement over against those such
as Erasmus, that man was not only incapable of receiving grace but was at
enmity and at war with his Creator and in desperate need of sovereign mercy in
regeneration. [See Erasmus' Diatribe de Libero Arbitrio in which he emphasized
the importance of human free-will against Luther. See also Luther's reply, De
Servo Arbitrio, 1525.]
By the year of Luther's death, 1546, Calvin had become a
dominant figure of guidance and instruction in the Scripture. Other significant
men, such as John Knox, of Scotland, studied with him and benefited from his
insight and articulation of God's Word. Their influence, in turn, was felt
throughout the world, before kings and legislatures, in universities and the
world of enterprise.
One thing that characterized all of these
"reformers" was their total dependence on the Holy Scriptures only .
They rejected the many layers of tradition that had such a stultifying effect
on the Church. They denied the unlimited and naked authority the Pope and the
church hierarchy took to itself.
An example of the excesses of the Roman Church is in its
worship of the Virgin Mary. This had "entered into the very soul of
mediaeval piety and reached its height in the doctrine of her immaculate
conception ",. . . titles given her "were more numerous than the
titles given to Christ and every one of them is extra-biblical except the word
virgin."[2]
From the Scriptures the reformers taught that man is to
submit to God in faith, and that his faith must be in Jesus Christ and His
perfect work, not in the church, in Mary, various saints or in his own good
works or noble intentions.
All the reformers called men back to the worship of the
Triune God and faith in Christ. Most were persecuted by and excommunicated by
the Roman Catholic Church after they had attempted to stand for the truth. We
believe that the life-giving, freedom producing doctrine they expounded made
possible the countless blessings and unparalleled prosperity that the Western
nations have enjoyed since. "The Reformation restored to our belief the
solid foundation of the word of God; for the sand it substituted the
rock."[3]
Later characteristics that went along with being reformed were
things like Psalm singing, use of the great creeds of the reformation era and
great confessions of the early New Testament Church.[4]
We believe that the Psalms were given to us by God for
worship. They contain all of the truths we need to come to God and reflect the
beauty and glory of His Name. All of them speak to us about the Messiah, the
Lord Jesus Christ and of His work of living a perfect life, dying a sacrificial
death and saving us from our sin.
All Christians have a creed even if it's only written by the
local minister and printed on the back of the bulletin. Some churches make us
guess what they believe. Others try to sound especially pious by claiming to
take the Bible literally, which leaves us suspecting that they teach our Lord
was actually a "door", that He has a real sword protruding from His
mouth [Rev.1:16], or wondering how they know when to interpret what God is
saying to us.
Reformed Christians admit that they need the help of the men
of old that God has given His people over the centuries, the great men who
hammered out the tough, hard to understand doctrines like the Trinity, and
defining the Person of Christ.
We are talking about the Councils of Nicaea in 325 A.D.,
Ephesus in 431 A.D., and Chalcedon in 451 A.D., to name a few. For creeds we
mean the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed which all
were written to emphasize the truth of the Trinity and the Deity of our Lord.
For confessions of faith, that is, letting you know what we
believe the Bible says, we have to have some help too. For this we are
powerfully moved by the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1648, the authors of
which had the benefit of many earlier confessions on which to draw. To help us
better organize and remember Biblical truth we memorize a lot of its verses and
we use catechisms which divide everything up into simple little questions and
answers. For this we make use of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which, it
says, "was written for young children", but which we find awesome
enough.
So, in all of this we hope you will appreciate what it means
to be called reformed. We are not a place that bad people are sent to have
their behavior improved, although that is also true of our purpose. Instead,
the term stems from that period of Church history when the teaching and
practices of the Church had become so wicked and misleading that God had to
raise up strong leaders and careful students of the Bible to re-direct or
reform it from the bottom up.
* * *
A summary of what it means to be called
"reformed" would include:
Other names that are generally synonymous with
"reformed" are, Calvinist and Presbyterian.
What is in a name? What has been your impression of our
name? What have you been told?
[1] S. M. Houghton, Sketches From Church History, Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1980, p.69.
[3] Philip Schaff, History Of The Christian Church, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1907, vol.V., pp.352-353.
[4] J. H. Merle d'Aubigne, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, [Reprinted from the London Ed.1846] p.834.