Reformed...and Always Reforming
Reformed and Always Reforming by Rev. L. John Gable
September 22, 2019
We are continuing this morning in what has become an expanding series of sermons I am loosely calling “About Being Presbyterian”. We have been discussing, not just who we are as a denomination or how we govern ourselves as a church, but those principles which shape and inform our understanding not only of our faith and the way we practice it, but also of the way we do life together, such as “God alone is Lord of the conscience”, “truth is in order to goodness”, and “persons of character and principle may differ”. These are distinctively Presbyterian concepts. We also looked at the three questions we ask when we receive new members as they affirm their faith in the One, Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the God uniquely made known to us in Jesus Christ, and their commitment to live as Christ’s faithful disciples to their life’s end.
The aspect of “being Presbyterian” I’d like to discuss with you today is the oft-repeated phrase which states that we are “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.” That statement has historic precedent, but it also has very contemporary application to the way we live our lives and practice our faith as Christians in the Presbyterian tradition. This phrase was made popular by the 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, but it is originally attributed to St. Augustine in the 4th century, which is somewhat surprising because that means it refers not simply to the movement in the church we know as the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, but pre-dates it by many centuries. What then does it mean to say that we are “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God”?
If we go back to the first century we could rightly say that the first disciples and early followers of Jesus were “reformed” in the way they read the sacred writings, what we now call the Old Testament. For centuries people of faith had read and heard the prophecies regarding the “one day” coming of the Messiah, so when these first Christians recognized Jesus as the Messiah they were reading the ancient texts in a whole new way! Their eyes were opened as they realized that the promise of God had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ and that new awareness changed everything! In that same period, the Apostle Paul argues persuasively that Jesus is the One about whom the prophets spoke and he uses those same ancient Scriptures as his supporting evidence. In this sense, the first believers were “reformed…according to the Word of God.”
Fast forward to the time of the Protestant Reformation, the monk Martin Luther read a passage of Scripture from Paul’s letter to the Romans, a passage he had surely read numerous times before, but he heard its truth in a radically new way. “The righteous shall live by faith…the righteous shall live by faith”, which means we are made right with God, not by our obedience to a stringent and unattainable Law or by the dictates of an over-bearing church, but by faith and faith alone. This was his “aha!” moment! A light came on which touched off the Protestant Reformation and the birth of a whole new way of understanding and practicing the faith. “Reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.”
Bear in mind, the Reformation was not a stand-alone event; it was part of a much larger intellectual revolution called the Renaissance which proposed a fresh look at well-established ideas and offered new ways of understanding the world and relating to it. The Renaissance was a time of radical change during which Luther translated the Bible from Latin into German, the language of the people, making it accessible to all people – a radical concept, and just prior a fellow name Gutenberg invented a machine called the printing press which put it in to their hands; but with those changes also came struggles and conflict. Scientific inquiry and discovery put the academic world at odds with traditional church teaching, such as when Galileo came up with the radical idea that the earth is round and that it, and an entire solar system, revolve around the sun! Church leaders of the day dug in their theological heels, threatening excommunication and worse to anyone who adopted this new way of thinking, rather than living by their own motto, “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.”
Friends, we know that science and Scripture do not need to be at odds with one another, then or now, but rather each should be allowed to speak to and inform the other. Scientific inquiry seeks to answer the “what, when and how” questions, while Scripture gives answer to the greater, more important, “Who and why” questions. Too often young people find themselves having to choose between what they are being taught in the laboratory at school and what they think they are being taught by the tenets of their faith and it is an unfair, unnecessary and unwinnable argument. As people of faith we must allow our understanding of Scripture to inform how we view the world and our understanding of the world to inform the truths revealed in Scripture. This too is part of what it means to be “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.”
Let me put it this way. Do you think we know more or less about the world we live in now than we did 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 10 years ago? Of course we know more. I have visited patients in the hospital who have told me that they couldn’t have had the treatment or procedure they are receiving five years ago, even one year ago, because it hadn’t been invented yet! So, fast forward, isn’t it reasonable to think that we will know more 5 years, 50 years, 100 years from now than we do now? Undeniably!
Buckminster Fuller invented what he called the “Knowledge Doubling Curve.” Until the year 1900 he determined that the collective body of human knowledge doubled approximately every century, every 100 years. By the end of World War II, it doubled every 25 years. Today it is doubling every 13 months, and many speculate with the expansive growth of the internet the body of human knowledge is doubling every 12 hours. That is staggering!
So how can we as people of faith ever attempt to keep up with trying to interpret these radical and rapid new discoveries through the lens of faith? It gets confusing, doesn’t it? The medical community has been dealing with this issue for decades as medical advances have out-paced our ability to think about the moral and ethical consequences of some of the decisions we are being asked to make. So it requires that our understanding of faith and our practice of it must be “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.” Our faith gives us “a place to stand” as we spoke last week as we find ourselves in a world of transformation and change.
In our Scripture lesson this morning Paul offers these words of encouragement to his young companion in the faith, Timothy. He writes, “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” This is good advice, both for Timothy and for us. In the midst of rapid and radical change, we must “remember what we have learned (head knowledge, God has given us good minds/intellects so we must put them to good use) and firmly believed (heart knowledge; faith/trust in the promises of God), knowing from whom we have learned it.” Recall in your own life who it was that first introduced you to Jesus, who encouraged you to take His claims seriously and follow in His way? Invariably, you believed what they were telling you because you knew them and trusted them. The way they lived their lives bore witness to the words they were saying. Paul says the same to Timothy, “Look at my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness.” As we try to process our faith in a changing world we are instructed to turn to those we know and trust to help us think through the issues we are faced with. This again is a good reminder that we are not intended to do this life of faith alone, but together. We need each other to support and encourage, to inform and instruct us, in our ways of walking with Jesus, particularly when we are walking in to paths unknown.
So Paul’s first word of advice is to remember and return to those who first led you in the faith, as well as those who are walking along side you now. And secondly, he instructs us to rely on “the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” Scripture isn’t intended to tell us everything about everything and it is unfair and unfortunate and frustrating when we think it should; but it is intended to tell us everything we need to know about the way of salvation and a right relationship with God by faith in Jesus Christ. No other writings are comparable to the Word of God; it is unique and authoritative, so we must use it as it was intended to be used: to elicit faith and provide the basis for all Christian teaching which then must be studied, obeyed and applied.
Paul goes on to write that “All Scripture is inspired” or we might say “God breathed”. Recall, God breathed the creation into being and then enlivened the Church by filling believers with the breath, the wind, of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. To say that Scripture is “inspired” is to say that God spoke to and through the writers of these sacred texts and then those who transcribed and transmitted them through the centuries. And not them alone, we too are inspired by that same Holy Spirit as we open these texts and breathe in these words of truth.
I know you have had this experience of reading a passage of Scripture, a passage you know you’ve read numerous times before just as Luther had Romans 1:17 and suddenly a light comes on for you and you say, “I’ve never read that before!” Surely you have, but in that moment you are given new eyes, new ears, an open heart – you too, are being “inspired.” Interpreting this passage John Wesley writes, “The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer.” The Bible is not a stale dusty book that belongs only on a bookshelf or a coffee table display but is the living and active, dynamic not static, Word of God, spoken and breathed to us.
This Word, “inspired by God, is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work”. As Matthew Henry put it, “Scripture instructs us in that which is true, reproves us for that which is amiss, and directs us in that which is good.”
When we, individually and a Church, turn to Scripture in this way, seeking its guidance in the way of faith and salvation, and its instruction in the truth and the ways of right living, we are returning to the roots, to the bedrock and basics of our faith. We are being “reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God” and that is a very good place to be.