Imagine walking into a church where the service is held in
a language which no one understands. Imagine a pastor who taught that you could
go to heaven if you just gave him more money. Imagine being asked to kneel
before an object and worship it.
You
do not have to be a Christian to know that something is not right here. This
church is corrupt. This church needs to change.
If
you agree with that, then you are on the side of the Reformers who found
themselves in that exact situation five hundred years ago, and who sought to
reform the church and bring it closer to what it ought to be. Tragically, each
of the situations described above could still as easily be said about churches
today. I doubt that anyone who is aware of the state of the church does not
think that it needs a lot of reformation.
The Oxford English
Dictionary defines the verb reform as “to make changes in
(something, especially an institution or practice) in order to improve
it.” Change has been a big buzzword of our generation and is a particular
favourite of politicians. Of course, we all recognize that change can go in two
directions, for better or worse, but you would agree that change for the better
is something we could all use. I’ve not met anyone who thinks that there is
absolutely nothing about his church that could be improved.
The real problem, however, is that we
tend to focus on the things that others
need to change. We often console ourselves by saying, ”See, we are not as bad as these other people!” This is true whether in a marriage
or in politics, and this is certainly true about churches as well. It is easy
to look at another church or person and say, “This is what is wrong with you,”
and come up with a long list of problems. It is much harder to listen to
someone else say that to us.
Realizing
that such a tendency applies similarly to myself, it is with much reluctance
that I write these words. I pray that you too would agree that such a call to
reformation is necessitated by the seriousness of our situation, and that you
would forgive any presumption on my part to sound it. If you are not a
Christian, I pray that you would read on anyway.
Why Reform?
In
the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle writes that
Christ ascended into heaven to give gifts (apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic,
pastoral, etc.) to build up the church. The end point and goal of these gifts
is given in verse 13, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ.”
This verse is both challenging and comforting. It is
challenging because of the dire state of the church today; fragmented into
thousands of parts, plagued with error and ungodliness, and far from the unity,
maturity or fullness of Christ that we are called to be. But it is also
comforting because this task of uniting and maturing us is something that the
Lord Jesus has not left us to figure out on our own, but has taken upon himself
to accomplish. It is the reason he could not stay on the earth after the
resurrection. It is what he went to heaven to do, and what he has, in fact,
been doing the last two thousand years, and that he will not stop doing until
we all — all of his church — arrive at that unity and maturity. This is
God’s entire purpose for our age until Christ comes again in glory. But until
then, even the purest and best formed of churches must keep re-forming.
How to Reform?
Among
Christians, the word “edify” (which simply means “to build”) is often used
without considering the edifice that is to be “edified.” Earlier in chapter two of the same epistle to
the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes the church as a temple fitted
together and built up as a house for God’s Spirit. This building is to be
“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself
being the chief corner stone” (verse 20). This foundation is none other than
the Scriptures of Christ, and the Christ of Scripture. This foundation, Paul
insists, may not be replaced. No other foundation is to be laid (1 Cor 3:11).
It
is by God’s design that this question of authority is the most basic one behind
any and every decision for change. How do we decide whether to change, what to
change, and what to change into? How do we know? Who gets the final say? To
each of these questions, Scripture claims its own place as the only infallible
rule of faith and life. It alone is foundational, and it is irreplaceably so.
Not
all change is good. Reformation which departs from this principle of Scripture alone is no longer
reformation, but deformation. Paul gives a stern warning that everyone is to
“take heed how he builds” lest he defile the temple of God which is the church.
In order to build up, we must keep looking down to the
foundation to make sure that what we build is aligned to it. Nevertheless, the
assumption is that we will not simply sit on and stare at this foundation, but
that we will build upon it. Both conservatism for the sake of conservatism or
progressivism for the sake of progressivism are betrayals of the principle of
Scripture alone. To properly reform, we must give no place for either nostalgia
(it’s always been done this way!) or novelty (it’s never been done
this way!). If God is maturing the church into the fullness of Christ’s
stature, then to either refuse to reform according to God’s revealed will or to
deform the church in a way contrary to God’s word, is to reject God’s purpose
and thus to exclude oneself from it.
In
the face of the death penalty, Martin Luther made the bold statement, “My
conscience is captive to the Word of God.” His concern was not pragmatism –
neither what would be most popular nor what would save his neck – but obedience
to God. He was willing to stake his life on and to go wherever God led him
through his written word. Are you?
What to Reform?
Worship
The
most lasting and prominent contribution of the Reformation which began five
hundred years ago has been its doctrine of salvation: the teaching that one is
saved by grace through faith alone and not by works (Eph 2:8-9). In the classic
defense of The Necessity of Reforming the
Church, the French Reformer John Calvin began, however, not with the
doctrine of salvation, but with worship.
The importance of
this order should not be overlooked, as it tragically has been in many
churches. God’s worship is more important than man’s salvation simply because
God is more important than man. God saves us so that we can worship him. Over
and over in the Bible we learn that God deals kindly with us for his own sake,
not ours (Ps 106:8; Isa 48:9, 11; Ezk 36:22; Rom 9:22-23). God commanded
Pharaoh over and over again, “Let my
people go,” not so that they could be freed from being Pharaoh’s slaves to live
their own lives, but so that they may worship God and serve him as his slaves (Ex 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13;
10:3). God has claimed us as his own, for his own sake, because he is worthy of
our worship.
Sometimes,
the way salvation is preached today, it almost seems as though God saves us
because he worships us; because we are worthy, because we deserve better. This
is nothing less than blasphemy (insulting God), but how often do we see
churches willing to compromise on the worship service in order to attract more
people? How often do we hear sermons that are about how man can have a better
life with less guilt and less problems, instead of how man ought to be obeying
and glorifying God even if it means more pain and more problems (Ps 119:143)?
It
is easy to say that God is bigger than man, but our worship reflects what we
truly believe about God and about ourselves. The god we are not afraid to
worship according to our own inventions is a god of our own imaginations. And
if the Bible and history has proved anything about us, it is undoubtedly that
our minds are idol-factories, churning out gods after our own image.
Still
today, the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches continue to venerate idols and
images. Sadly, even the Lutheran and other Protestant churches still include a
large crucifix in their worship places. Have we forgotten how severely Israel
and Judah were punished for their idolatry? Have we too become as blind as our
idols, unable to see such blatant idolatry for what it is but instead finding
all sorts of excuses for it (Ps 115:5-8; Isa 44:9-20)? Do we despise the Lord’s
many and patient warnings throughout the Bible, and think that we are somehow
immune from this pervasive sin?
We need to be careful, however, to not restrict the sin of
idolatry simply to physical idols and images. All methods of worship not
commanded by God are equally forbidden. Nadab and Abihu, two sons of Aaron the
priest, were consumed by fire because they offered incense that the Lord “had not
commanded them” (Lev 10:1-2; cf. Ex 30:9), and which they presumed to do upon
their own understanding.
This principle of “what is not commanded in worship is
forbidden,” or what has been called the Regulative
Principle of Worship, led
the Reformed church historically to the practice of the singing of the Psalms
exclusively without accompaniment by instruments. A more detailed explanation
of this position on worship which can be accessed freely on the internet is
John McNaugher’s The Psalms in Worship
(1907).
What
is regrettable, at least in this author’s experience, is that the vast majority
of churches not only do not sing the Psalms at all, but have never even heard
of Psalm-singing. Others prefer the compositions of men to the word of God
simply for sentimental, man-centred reasons.
If
we believe that God is infinitely greater, wiser, and more holy than we are, we
will let him tell us how he wants to be worshipped, rather than thinking that
we know better. Let us worship God acceptably with reverence and godly fear,
for our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29; Dt 4:24).
Doctrine
If
our worship should reflect the holiness and transcendence of God as well as the
humility and dependence of men, then our understanding of salvation should be
no different. God does not need our worship, and neither does he need to save
us. He does not owe us anything. We owe him everything. We depend on him to
tell us how to worship him, and we depend on him to tell us how we are to be
saved.
The
Reformation began with the struggle against an elaborate and imaginative
tradition of what needs to be done for one to be saved. Part of it included
paying for the Pope’s renovation of his Roman church/palace to get yourself or
your relatives out of purgatory (basically a temporary hell for Christians).
This abuse of the conscience was what first led the
Reformers to the principle of Scripture
alone, and there they found the freedom of the Gospel that the Lord Jesus
Christ had promised (Jn 8:32). This freedom was found in the principle of faith alone.
If one had to keep the law in order to be made right with
God, then none could be saved, for all have broken God’s law and are thus under
his penalty of death. If you actually understand the law, you will know that it
makes nobody righteous before God. Instead, the law only makes one more
conscious of his sin (Rom 3:20)! The more you realize what kind of perfection
God requires, the more you understand how irreparably deep in trouble you are.
There will be no balancing the scales of justice with your good works. It has
an offended and infinitely holy God on one side, and your pathetic, sinful self
on the other. You have been weighed and found wanting.
The
only way out is for God to satisfy the demands of his own justice for us, and
he has! God will provide his own righteousness apart from the deeds of the law
to all who believe in Christ (Rom 3:22). The perfect righteousness of the Son
of God, which alone can balance the scales of God’s perfect justice, will be
counted to those who simply accept it by faith.
And
because it is by faith alone, it is
also by grace alone. Grace means an
unearned kindness. It is provided gratis,
free of charge. There will be no payment accepted. There will be no boasting in
one’s own efforts or worthiness (Rom 3:27). There will be no talk of merit
whatsoever. Our salvation is a gift from beginning to end, and never a wage or
debt owed to us. The only thing we did to qualify for salvation is that we have
sinned and continue sinning.
This is why Protestants do not make “saints” even of the
best Christians. In Christ, we are all already saints (we are, in fact, as
righteous as Christ himself!), but so are we also all sinners until the day we
die.
This way of
salvation is not by accident. God designed it such for a purpose, and that
purpose, you might have guessed by now, is not for the glory of man, but for
the glory of God through Christ (Eph 1:6, 12, 14). This is the centre of all of
God’s work, and all of Scripture, and thus of all the Christian faith: in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. These are non-negotiable. The other
principles of Scripture alone, faith alone, and grace alone are there because it is inevitable that, when we start
coming up with our own ideas of how salvation should work, we will mess with
the alones, and take away glory from God alone and give some of
it to ourselves. We start praying to saints (and to idols of saints!) instead
of to God alone through Christ alone. We start making much of our own decisions
and deeds instead of God’s free choice to love and be gracious to us.
Life
But
just because salvation is not by keeping the law, it does not mean therefore
that one should not keep the law. The Reformation strongly rejected that kind
of faulty and dangerous thinking. The law was meant to show us our sin so that
we may turn away from our sin, not from the law. We do not keep the law so that
we might be saved, but we were saved so that we might keep the law (Eph 2:10;
Tit 2:14)! Again, the focus is not on us but on God. We don’t keep the law
primarily for our own good, even though it is certainly good for us. It is
important that God’s people keep God’s law, because it brings glory to God (Mt
5:16).
As
such, much attention must be given to the law, especially to the Ten
Commandments, which are God’s own summary of his law. They reflect the holiness
of God. They show us the beauty of Christ. And those who love him and hope to
see him must purify themselves according to the law (Jn 14:15, 21; 15:10; 1 Jn
2:3; 3:2-3).
Let
us just pick one of the Ten. Without turning the page, do you know which is the
Third Commandment?
You shall not take the name of the
Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His
name in vain (Ex 20:7).
We
are told that we will have to account for every careless word that we speak (Mt
12:36), and yet so many Christians use God’s name and Jesus’ name like an
exclamation mark. Do you see how little we make of God when we do that, or when
we allow someone else to do that in front of us and we say nothing about it
because we are afraid to offend that little person, but we are not afraid that
he has offended the great God?
What about the Fourth Commandment?
Remember
the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your
work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God, in it you shall
not do any work.
Keeping the Lord’s Day (Sunday) holy
unto the Lord also includes not doing and talking as we please on that day (Isa
58:13). It is how we recognize that it is his day, not just our own day that we
may or may not set aside some time to go to church as we like or as we don’t.
And yet how many Christians do just the “bare minimum” of attending one worship
service in the morning, if at all, and then spending the rest of that day on
themselves? All our time is given to us by God and so he has the right to
require us to do what he wants with it. In fact, we ought to worship God all
seven days of the week, and we should desire it to be so (it will in heaven!),
but God has allowed us six days to use for other activities, work and play. How
we rob God of his glory when we do not think him worthy of even one day in
seven for his worship!
Do
you habitually break the Seventh Commandment? The Ninth? Do you even know what
they are? It is easy to say that God is big and we are small. It is right and
good to have a worship service that reflects that and a theological system that
is built upon that. But it is all a show if we are not interested to live it
out in our lives.
Ultimately, Reformation depends simply
on whether we love God enough to deny ourselves and to change the things we
like to the things he likes. Do you choose to attend a church (if you do at
all) based on whether it worships, believes, and lives according to God’s Word,
or how it serves you and makes you feel? Do you plan your week around God's
worship, or do you fit him in where it is most convenient for you? Do you fix
your prayer times and then plan the rest of the day (including sleep!) so that
it will not interfere with those most precious meetings with God? Do you live
as one who exists to serve him, or do you live as though God exists to serve
you? Is God more important or are you more important? I pray the Lord will lead
you not only to confess, but to live the truth.
Conclusion:
Where to Reform?
Reformation
involves individuals, families, churches, and even nations. However, as we read
in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, Christ gives the gifts necessary for
reformation to the church, and so that is where it must begin. The task
of reforming our individual, family, and national lives begins with the task of
learning and living the Scriptures as the church.
The reformation of the church comes first also because it
is more important. It is the body of Christ, the only institution for which
Christ died, and the only one which will endure forever, because the church is
where God has chosen to be glorified for all eternity (Eph 3:21)!
If you are looking for a church that
seeks to keep getting better at loving God, worshipping God, learning of God,
and living for God according to his Word and for his glory, then we invite you
to join us at Pilgrim Covenant Church. If you would like to know more about how
to reform your church, you will find many helpful articles as well as
information on how to contact us at our web address:
www.pilgrim-covenant.com.