This talk was given at Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, OR on Oct. 29, 2017, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
Was the Reformation a success?
That probably seems like a strange question for us to think about. After all, here we are 500 years after Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Tracing our history through the events of the Reformation down through history, we come to this night where kids are having a Reformation party upstairs. How is that not a success?
But more seriously, here on this historic Reformation Sunday, this is a question worth considering. How do we know the Reformation was a success? Megachurches? Political church alliances? Rapid church multiplication? New York Times bestsellers? What could we point to?
Perhaps one approach might be to consider that question through the lives of the Reformers themselves. There’s no way I can do a survey of all the Reformers, but I can highlight two, Luther and Calvin. Towards the end of their lives, how would they have answered such a question? That’s what we’re going to try to think about.
Luther
And so we begin with Martin Luther.
Many of you are familiar with the broad outlines of Martin Luther’s life. Born in 1483 in Eisleben, Germany, he was the son of a successful miner and grew up also a son of the Catholic Church. In 1505, he was on his way to becoming a lawyer when he was caught in a thunderstorm. There, in the face of death, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the judgment of God came to life, and Luther knew he wasn’t ready. Thrown to the ground by lightning, he cried out, “Help me, St. Anne; I will become a monk.” After all, Luther had seen the ascetic, disciplined lives of monks growing up, and he understood this was the way to prepare for eternity.
And yet, at the monastery, rather than becoming more spiritual, he discovered his own sin more deeply. It turns out, whatever good works he did, Luther found sin and pride within himself, and he knew he had not done enough. Reflecting on his first Mass, Luther wrote:
I thought to myself, “With what tongues shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround him. At his nod the earth trembles. And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say ‘I want this, I ask for that’? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God.”
Luther eventually was transferred to Wittenberg and by the encouragement of his supervisors, became a Doctor of Theology and began to teach at the University of Wittenberg. His first lectures were on the book of Psalms and Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and there he found a completely different picture of Christ. Rather than a God of pure wrath and judgment, Luther encountered a Savior who bore the wrath of God upon himself so that sinners might be declared righteous, justified by God through faith alone. Here, in this discovery of Paul’s teaching of “justification by faith,” Luther found the gate of heaven.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressible sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate of heaven.
This message of justification by faith alone in Christ alone was at the heart of Luther’s transformation. Having re-discovered the Gospel, Luther began to see the contradiction between Paul’s teaching and the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. This would come to a head in 1517 when Pope Leo X granted a plenary indulgence in the surrounding areas of Luther’s parish. For all who would purchase this indulgence, they gained a perfect remission of all sins, for themselves or their loved ones in purgatory. And this could be had without any contrition or confession.
This was too much for Luther. On October 31, 1517, seeking to begin a debate, Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenburg. According to Luther’s Theses, the proper response to the Gospel was not the purchase of indulgences, but repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The 95 Theses was translated into German and, through the printing press, widely distributed throughout the region.
The Church, however, refused to put up with Luther. Rather than responding to the Theses or addressing their abuses, they demanded that he submit to their authority and recant. However, as Luther debated Roman Catholic representatives, he found himself more convinced of the authority of Scripture. For all this, in 1520, Luther was excommunicated by the pope and summoned to the Diet of Worms. There, Luther was once again called to repudiate his books and writings, and with trembling, Luther gave his famous reply, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Here I stand. Amen.”
For this reply, Luther should have been executed as a heretic by the authorities. But instead, Luther was kidnapped by his allies and hidden away at the Wartburg Castle. There, Luther translated the Scriptures into German, making them available for the common person.
In 1522, Luther would return to Wittenberg to find the reformation in disarray. For the rest of his ministry, Luther would throw himself into combating the false doctrines of Rome on the one hand, and the spiritualized teaching and violence of radicals on the other. Through preaching, writing, conferences, catechizing, and more, Luther worked tirelessly to establish the Protestant church and advance the message of justification by faith, in spite of persecution, sickness, and intense spiritual anguish. For his efforts, the German Protestant movement would spread beyond its borders throughout the rest of Europe. And yet, despite his many accomplishments, Luther never lost sight of his desperate need for mercy. As he lay dying in Eisleben in 1546, he would write his final words, “We are beggars. This is true.”
And towards the end of his life, would Luther have thought that his Reformation was a success? There’s no question that in the re-discovery of justification by faith alone, Luther finally found the comfort and hope for which he had been desperately and fruitlessly searching for so many years. And certainly, he would have found great joy in so many other Reformers picking up his teaching and discovering that message for themselves in the Scriptures.
But we must also remember that Luther never intended to launch a “Protestant Reformation.” His goal from the beginning was not to break off from Rome but to call the church back to her founding truths, to prepare the church for the return of Christ, knowing that Christ would be the only one who can bring true Reformation. Even though the Protestant movement would go on to be called by his name, Luther would say this:
“The first thing I ask is that people should not make use of my name, and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone… How did I, a poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my name?”
Luther devoted himself to preaching the gospel, writing, training, and equipping pastors. And yet in the last few years of his life, Luther traveled throughout the regions of Germany conducting church visitations, and this experience profoundly discouraged him. He reported on those visits saying:
Dear God, what misery I beheld! The ordinary person, especially in the villages, knows absolutely nothing about the Christian faith, and unfortunately many pastors are completely unskilled and incompetent teachers.
Even if there was no whole-scale reformation, he had a hard time finding solid advances in ministerial faithfulness and church health. What was worse, the German princes and rulers that he had worked so closely with were using the movement to advance their own political ends, and this angered Luther, who saw it as misappropriation of his teaching.
Luther’s final years were marked by a caustic bitterness and edginess, especially in regard to what was taking place in German society and the church. After his death, Luther’s disciples would go on to carry his mantle, and yet they would inherit his latter rigidity and edginess so that anyone who dared to contradict their understanding of Luther’s teaching would be vilified and rejected, and this even included Melanchthon who was Luther’s closest associate. When Melanchthon died in 1560, he said he welcomed death, because it would free him from the rage of the Lutheran theologians. Whether Melancthon or Luther, both would have hardly considered the reformation a resounding success.
Calvin
Besides Luther, the other main Reformer was John Calvin. Born on July 10, 1509 (Luther was 25 and already teaching in Wittenberg), Calvin grew up in France and studied theology in Paris, which at that time was staunchly Catholic. When Calvin was 19, his father ran afoul of the church, so he pulled Calvin out of theology and had him begin studying law. During those years, Calvin mastered Greek and was immersed in his studies. At 21, his father died, and so Calvin left law and returned to his first love, which was a study of the classics. But around this time, Calvin also began to encounter the teaching of the Reformation, and by 1533, he had become a Protestant. We actually don’t have a clear account of Calvin’s conversion, but he talks about how during his study of the Scriptures,
God, by a sudden conversion, subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame. . . . Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with [an] intense desire to make progress.
That year, a friend of Calvin was brought in to the authorities for teaching Protestant doctrine, and he and Calvin flee France. Calvin fled for Basel, Switzerland, and there he began to study Hebrew, and he published his first edition of the Institutes, his most famous work (If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it). Back in France, Protestants were being accused of being heretics and traitors and were being burned at the stake, so Calvin wrote the Institutes in order to defend the Christian faith to the king and vindicate the Protestants. In 1536, the king of France granted a temporary amnesty for French refugees, so Calvin returned to France to set his house in order, and then he left again, never to return to his homeland.
He was planning on spending the rest of his life in study and writing, but on his way to Strasbourg, their military action had blocked the road, so he had to detour through the city of Geneva. He was there for only one night, and when Farel, the leader of the reformation in that city heard that he was in town, he sought him out, and Calvin describes what happened:
Farel, who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel, immediately learned that my heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies, for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits, and finding that he gained nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation that God would curse my retirement, and the tranquillity of the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance, when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror, that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken
And so Calvin stays, and he is appointed pastor of St. Peter’s church, one of the three parishes in the 10,000 person town of Geneva. And as a young pastor, Calvin is fiery and rigid and unyielding, and there’s so much opposition that by April 1538 (2 years later!), he’s fired! The city council banishes him, and Calvin breathes a sigh of relief and goes on to Strasbourg, where he hopes to settle in to study and write. But there, in Strasbourg, the reformer Martin Bucer basically does what Farel did, and warns Calvin not to be like Jonah and run away from God’s calling, so Calvin agrees to be the pastor to about 500 French refugees in Strasbourg, as well as teaching the NT at the school. It’s there that Calvin meets his wife, Idelette De Bure, and by all accounts, they had a happy marriage. It’s also under Bucer’s discipleship that Calvin comes to see how you pastor a church, how you navigate difficulties, how you respond to opposition, and work to promote unity.
Back in Geneva, things are a mess, so in 1541, the City Council votes to call Calvin back, and Calvin was mortified. He said he would rather be crucified 1000 times a day than go back to Geneva! But once again, Martin Bucer prevails on him to return, and Calvin agrees to go back. And so for the next 23 years, Calvin would give himself to the church in Geneva. Laboring through the death of his son and his wife, through painful health ailments, through constant opposition from his congregation, from the city council, from Lutherans, Catholics, and Radicals, Calvin persevered. He established a famous preaching ministry, often preaching twice a day, every day of the week, working through hundreds of sermons in almost every book of the Bible. His Institutes were published in Latin and French and went through multiple editions and in the end, were a magisterial work of theology that continues to impact the world today. In addition, he worked tirelessly in correspondence, in conferences, to try to work for unity within the Protestant world, to pull together the Lutheran and Reformed Christians because of their unity in the gospel. In Geneva, he would look for ways to train and equip pastors theologically and send them out to pastor churches. Between 1555 and 1562, he would train and send over 150 ministers out of the safety of Geneva back into France, many of them to face imprisonment, torture, and death. When John Knox came to Geneva, he pronounced the city as “the most perfect school of Christ on earth since the time of the apostles.”
And yet would Calvin had said this about his own city and his own efforts at reformation?
Some historians portray Calvin’s time at Geneva as him being some kind of theocratic tyrant of the city. But actually, that is far from the truth. Calvin knew only a handful of years when his supporters held the majority in the city council. Throughout his second tenure, there were various times when he thought he would be fired and banished once again, only for things to change at the last minute. People regularly protested against Calvin to the city council, and the council often dealt with those complaints in a vague, complacent way, leaving everyone frustrated. Stories abound of how the citizens of Geneva would name their dogs “Calvin” so they could kick at him, and how chamber pots would often be emptied from the second floor often right as Calvin was walking on the street below.
As Calvin sought to care for French refugees coming into the city, the established families opposed his efforts and would often make it difficult for those refugees to gain citizenship or even to find jobs. Calvin fought for many years to have the right of church discipline within the church, and even though the council had promised that in 1541 when he returned, they only granted it to him in 1555. And it wasn’t until 1559 that the Academy of Geneva was established, again, another part of his agreement to return, but something that wasn’t established until five years before his death. And towards his death, even though he devoted himself to working for unity among Protestants, he found himself increasingly attacked and slandered by Luther’s heirs, who began to hate the Reformed Protestants even more than the Catholics. As he faced death in 1564, he knew that all the gains made in Geneva were fragile and needed a lot of consolidation in the coming years. Roman Catholicism was making a comeback after the Council of Trent, and her attack on Protestantism was already having an impact. As Calvin lay dying, he may well have questioned whether the Protestant reformation would endure.
Lessons
We could very well go on to discuss the legacy and ends of the other Reformers. Zwingli killed by Catholic forces on the battlefield. Martin Bucer fleeing to England, and dying in Cambridge right as Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, is returning England back to Catholicism. Melanchthon embittered by the opposition from within his own Lutheran tradition. Perhaps, as one historian notes, the most successful “reformers” were the non-militant Anabaptists, because, in one sense, they never expected anything except to be persecuted, and no question, they certainly were persecuted fiercely. [1]
What is the legacy of the Reformation?
Is it megachurches? Savvy political alliances? Rapid church multiplication? Is that what we’re remembering and celebrating here after 500 years?
When I think of the legacy of reformers, I think of one word: Faithfulness – Not glory, not victory, but faithfulness.
Faithfulness to the church
Luther never wanted to leave the Roman Catholic Church. The thought of being a schismatic was abhorrent to him. How can anyone think they can just leave or even worse, divide the church without facing any serious consequences? And yet, as he preached the gospel, he realized that he was not so much leaving the church, as the Roman Catholic Church had abandoned the apostolic teaching. And therefore, in doing so, they were no longer a true church.
And so as Luther and Calvin set about in re-establishing the Protestant church under the right preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments, they realized, Christ has not abandoned the church. No, he continues to preserve his people, just as he did during the time of Wyclif and Huss and many others before them. Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail. And now it was their turn to carry on with their work.
And yet as we just heard, that work is never finished. I like how Charles Spurgeon put it:
Every period is, on some account or other, a crisis. The conflict between the powers of darkness and the Spirit of truth concerns such vital interests, and is conducted with such unceasing energy, that each moment is big with importance, and every instant is the hinge of destiny
At every point in history, the work is precarious. The gospel is always at the risk of being compromised. Every generation needs to be taught the gospel all over again and equipped to proclaim it faithfully. There is no “set it and forget it” when it comes to the church. There are always people to be discipled, sin to be combated, truth to be taught, heresy to be confronted. This was true back then, and it remains true today.
Faithfulness to the Word
One of the most effective ways the Roman Catholic Church countered the Protestant Reformation was through their newly appointed order of Jesuits. Through their endeavors, they spread Roman Catholic teaching throughout the Far East and in the Americas, far before any Protestant efforts began in those places. But also throughout Europe, they established reputable schools at secondary and pre-secondary levels and assured Protestant parents that their children would be fine. And yet, in those schools, these children were inoculated against Protestant teaching so that by the 1600s entire regions in southern Germany, Poland, Hungary, other Eastern European countries had reverted almost entirely back to Catholicism. Not only were they shrewd, but Jesuits were particularly skillful at dramatic preaching, majestic processions, religious conferences, and performances, using the arts and music to engage the senses, to attract large crowds, and to draw the populace back to the Roman Catholic Church.
And yet, for Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers, they were wary of all that. They knew the tendency of the human heart to stray from God’s Word. There was a simplicity to the reformers’ strategy: Their goal was to preach the Word. When Luther encountered the ignorance of the German people, he set about writing a catechism that would equip the pastors to teach the people God’s Word. We heard the quote this morning about the Luther would teach the Word and then go sleep and drink beer with his friend Philip, knowing that it was the Word doing the work – “I did nothing. The Word did it all”. Calvin committed himself to preach God’s Word week in and week out.
One of the clearest illustrations that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvin’s part was the fact that on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peter’s, banished by the City Council. He returned September 13, 1541 — over three years later — and picked up the exposition in the next verse. [2]
The reformers knew that if there would be a reformation, it would not come through the arts, or through politics, or through social reform. No, it would come through God’s Word. And so they committed themselves to the proclamation of God’s Word and training of God’s Word, as slow and undramatic as that work might seem.
Faithfulness to Christ
Luther always saw himself as living before the return of Christ. There would come a day when Jesus Christ would return and bring about true Reformation. On that day, the church would be purified, sin would be defeated, the gospel would be vindicated, and God’s people would shine like the sun. That is where Luther placed his hope, in the midst of all his sicknesses and battles and defeats.
In light of that Reformation, the Christian is to labor for reformation; that is, we are to repent and believe the gospel. The German princes wanted to make the Reformation about German nationalism and independence from Catholic interference. The peasants who started a revolution wanted to make the reformation about social equality and overthrowing the nobility. Centuries later, the Nazis would come along and turn Luther’s reformation into a justification for their racist and nationalistic ideology. But that was never what Luther intended. Those people misappropriated Luther for their own ends. No, from beginning to end, Luther’s reformation was fundamentally a theological event, rooted in the gospel of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. And therefore, the proper response to that message was and continues to be repentance and faith in Christ. And the good news to hold on to is our union with Christ. Luther-
Faith must be taught correctly, namely, that by it you are so cemented to Christ that He and you are as one person, which cannot be separated but remains attached to Him forever and declares: “I am as Christ.” And Christ, in turn, says: “I am as that sinner who is attached ot Me, and I to him. For by faith we are joined together into one flesh and one body.”
Calvin would remind us that we have not been united to Christ in order to get some other reward: heaven, righteousness, salvation, or whatever. We do not, as Calvin put it, seek “in Christ something else than Christ himself.” The great reward of the Christian life is Christ, knowing Him, enjoying Him for all of eternity. The legacy of the Reformers is faithfulness to Christ.
Conclusion
When we consider the lives of the reformers, what should stand out is not the amazing results and world-changing effects of their ministries. No, what should stand out is their quiet, even trembling, step-by-step faithfulness, and God’s grace to use their imperfect efforts. When Luther nailed those 95 Theses, that wasn’t a heroic, earth-shattering event in Luther’s mind. He was provoked by the false teaching going on down the street, and he just doing what scholars did in his day to start a debate. When Calvin came into Geneva, he didn’t ride in like some conquering preacher. Rather it was with great fear and compelled simply by the desire to be faithful to God’s call on his life. And so it goes today. The legacy of the Reformers is simply faithfulness: faithfulness to the church, to the Word, to Christ, in our generation. And that’s how we carry on in their footsteps. Not by the size of our churches, or the statistics of our endeavor, or by the number of books we have published. No, it’s by our faithfulness to Christ and to His Word and to His church. We persevere in faithfulness. And we rejoice in the hope of the gospel.
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[1] James R. Payton Jr. Getting the Reformation Wrong. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.)
[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-divine-majesty-of-the-word