Author: David McKay

Posted on

Take heed!

The death on 21st February of Billy Graham was, by any standard, an historic event. Ninety-nine years old – just short of the century. The responses from the media, both religious and secular, flooded in, many no doubt prepared a considerable time ago. The wide variety of sources testified to Graham’s significance, not just in America, but also on the world stage. Nobody could dispute that a man of stature had departed. Very few preachers leave the world to such public notice. Perhaps none will again. That in itself says much about the role Graham played in twentieth century religious life, and not just within the Evangelical community.

There are, of course, legitimate criticisms that can be levelled against Billy Graham. The first thought for some will be his willingness to include liberal Protestants as well as Roman Catholics among the sponsors of his crusades. The nature of his evangelistic approach – the mass crusades, for example – raised questions for some conservative Evangelical and Reformed observers. His closeness to numerous American Presidents also caused concern, particularly when characters like Lyndon Johnston and Richard Nixon were involved (something which Graham himself seems to have acknowledged). The negatives are certainly there, and we would not close our eyes to them. We would not have any sympathy with those who speak of his death as having ‘prophetic significance’ for the approach of ‘the end times’, as even some family members have stated. And yet there is more to be said.

It is remarkable that in a life of 99 years, much of that time in the glare of publicity, Billy Graham was untouched by even a whiff of scandal – financial, sexual, or of any other kind. That is remarkable, and surely a testimony to the grace of God. Even the most hostile secular critics could get nothing on him, and if they could have, they would have. We can be sure of that. Not only that – nowadays the Internet hosts numerous zealous characters who claim biblical justification for ‘digging the dirt’ on prominent preachers and church leaders in the most scurrilous manner. Perhaps in the earlier years the scrutiny was less intense, the culture more respectful, but with the explosion of the electronic media in more recent times, no corner of the life of a public figure is truly private. Wise precautions were taken, good procedures put in place, all activities were open to scrutiny. Billy Graham passed all the tests. Some whose theology was apparently ‘sounder’ have not.

Whilst there may be legitimate questions about some of his methods of evangelism, no-one can dispute Billy Graham’s zeal for the spread of the gospel for the salvation of sinners. That was undoubtedly his great passion. If we think our understanding of the gospel is more fully biblical, we need to ask ourselves how zealous we are in proclaiming that message. Sometimes the honest answer would be, ‘Not very.’ We don’t have a lot to be proud of.

And why did the Lord allow Billy Graham to preach to hundreds of thousands while we preach to handfuls? Perhaps one reason is that he could trust Graham to handle the temptations and pressures of such a prominent position, and we have all we can cope with. Not too flattering, but perhaps not too far from the truth.

We live in an age that delights to pull down the prominent and successful, and show that they have feet of clay. Sometimes it is fully warranted and even necessary. The exposure of ‘cover-ups’ in many areas of public life has had justification, but it can become a dangerous hobby. Christians are not immune from the cultural tide, as if somehow finding others’ feet of clay made our feet sounder. Not for nothing did the apostle Paul warn the church, ‘Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12).

We are not to idealise, much less idolise, any human being, but we are to praise God for the good we see in his servants and seek by grace to imitate them. Billy Graham gives us more than a little food for thought.

Posted on

One Sure Thing

If there is one word that characterises events on the world stage at the moment it is surely ‘uncertainty’. Wherever we look, there seems to be confusion as to what is really happening, confusion as to what is the best solution to complex crises (if there is one) and fear as to what the future holds. Where will American foreign policy go next? Does even the President know? What will North Korea do beyond belligerent sabre-rattling? Will Angela Merkel survive as German Prime Minister? (You will probably know the answer by the time you read this). Where would anyone start to unravel the complexities of the Middle East? What will Brexit look like and what will the consequences be? Your guess is as good as mine, if not better.

Of course few of us can bring any influence to bear on the ‘big picture’. It is the small picture that poses the most pressing problems. Maybe it’s declining health, concern for a young person showing no sign of spiritual life, anxiety about care provision for an elderly relative, or any one of a multitude of other issues. In so many respects the way ahead seems very uncertain, full of the ‘maybe’ and the ‘what if?’

One thing is certain – the future is not in our hands, and the longer we live, the clearer that becomes. We plan, we anticipate, we worry, yet events take entirely unexpected turns and often leave us amazed or baffled. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, much less next week or next month.

That could be depressing or frightening, but as Christians we know that we do not face the unknown future alone. Psalm 138:8 reminds us, ‘The LORD will fulfil his purpose for me’. There is a word of hope for God’s people to hold on to in the uncertainties of living in a fallen world. Literally the psalmist says, ‘The LORD will perfect what concerns me’. The words are a reminder that our Lord is a sovereign God. He is in ultimate control of ‘all that concerns me’, even the smallest detail. If, as Jesus reminds us, he supervises the fall of the sparrow, he surely oversees all aspects of the lives of his children. The reference to his ‘purpose’ in many of the translations reflects that. There is nothing random in his universe.

Of course control in the wrong hands is a dangerous and frightening thing. World events underline that fact. The psalmist goes on to reassure us, however, when he says, ‘your love, O LORD, endures for ever’. The word for ‘love’ is that wonderful Hebrew word hesed which means eternal, unchanging covenant love, reflecting the Lord’s commitment to his people that results in the salvation provided in Christ crucified and risen. Control could not be in better hands. The Father loves us, the Son loves us and the Holy Spirit loves us. This is the Triune God who will perfect what concerns us.

That is not a guarantee of an easy passage through life. Far from it. There may be trials that we have never imagined or sorrows we have feared, along, we trust, with joys we could not have anticipated. The hard experiences will not break the Lord’s people, however, but will serve his glory and our growth in grace. And even in the hard times, we will by his grace be able to ‘count it all joy’ (James 1:2). Only those who are children of God through faith in Christ have such hope and confidence.

Posted on

Taking Responsibility

A government minister taking responsibility? Resigning without being forced out? Hard to believe! Not exactly unprecedented, but very rare. On 31 January Lord Bates, the international development minister, resigned when he arrived late for work in the House of Lords. The Conservative peer sparked confusion when he gave an apology for not being on time to answer questions from the dispatch box, having missed a question from a Labour peer. According to press reports, Lord Bates commented, ‘I have always believed we should rise to the highest possible standards of courtesy and respect in responding on behalf of the Government to the legitimate questions of the legislature. I am thoroughly ashamed of not being in my place and therefore I shall be offering my resignation to the Prime Minister with immediate effect.’ His reaction was met with amazement and cries of ‘No!’ One Labour peer suggested that an apology would have been adequate to address the issue. Most present agreed.

We have no mandate to comment on the motivation for Lord Bates’ action. He resigned dramatically in 2016 to undertake a solo 2,000 mile walk from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, so perhaps it’s something in the blood. Not our business. But a minister taking responsibility for failing to reach what he believes are the proper standards for a minister most certainly is.

We do not live in a society where taking responsibility is common. More often we meet with blame-shifting, prevarication, finger-pointing, flat-out denial. At school it starts with ‘It wasn’t me, sir’ and goes on from there. Whatever goes wrong, it is somebody else’s fault, or something else’s fault – my environment, my education, my parents, the government, the stars – you name it, someone claims it. One thing is sure – it’s not my fault.

Not new is it? Ancient, in fact. ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate’ (Genesis 3:12). When confronted by God regarding the first human sin, Adam’s response was to try (in vain) to shift blame onto Eve and, implicitly, onto God himself. If he had done a better job, it seems, Adam would not have ended up in the predicament he now faced. Eve learned fast and tried to dump blame entirely on the serpent. None of it fooled the Lord as the succeeding verses show. Every guilty party was called to account and received a just sentence.

We are in no better position. Refusing to take responsibility for our sins simply does not work. God is not fooled and still calls us to account. Worse still, refusing to take responsibility actually closes off the one route to a solution. If we will not face up to the reality of the disease, we will never seek or accept the cure. Most of us have met people who, although seriously ill, insist that ‘I’m fine’ and act accordingly. They will never seek the necessary treatment since they do not believe there is anything wrong with them. People die proclaiming, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

For sinners, in fact, the situation is even worse. The sinner asserts ‘I am alive’ when in fact he is dead. How much worse, and how much more foolish, could it be? Denying responsibility for sin precludes seeking the salvation God has provided in Christ crucified and risen. That was David’s experience in Psalm 32. He recalls, ‘For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long’ (verse 3). Even his body was severely affected. The solution? Instead of ‘covering’ his sin, he confessed it to the Lord. ‘I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity’ (verse 5). The result was cleansing and forgiveness – ‘you forgave the iniquity of my sin’.

That is the heart of the gospel. True repentance – taking responsibility for our sin as an offence against God – opens the way to the lifting of the burden of guilt and healing of the whole person. Rightly David sang, ‘Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered’ (verse 1). Until we take responsibility, that door remains firmly closed.

Posted on

Bruised Reeds

Quality control is vitally important in any business. In the production of any item – from cars to cakes (Top Gear to Bake Off), perfection is required, or as close to perfection as can be achieved. Woe betide any supplier if a customer receives something he considers to be substandard. It will be returned quick smart, complaints will be aired and, in these days of social media, there may well be negative postings on the firm’s web site to ensure that the failure is as widely publicised as possible.

We might have no quarrel with quality control in business, but increasingly the same attitude is being applied to people. So, we are told, only those who fully measure up should be allowed to be born, and the substandard, for their own and everybody else’s benefit, should be disposed of. After all, they will consume scarce resources and require extra care, they may well contribute little to society, families and carers will be worn down, and they themselves will probably be unhappy. All good reasons to exercise the kind of quality control that advances in medicine now make possible and ensure that the imperfect are quietly disposed of. Inevitably the ‘imperfect’ are devalued, and who is imperfect depends on society’s current standards for a valuable life.

The attitude of the church of Jesus Christ ought to be entirely different, because the attitude of the Saviour she follows is entirely different. In imitating him, the church will increasingly stand out from the surrounding culture. Rather than disposing of those who do not measure up, Christ provides grace for the struggling. His ministry is vividly depicted in the words of Matthew 12:20 (quoting Isaiah 42): ‘a bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory’.

The word-pictures are striking and would have been very familiar to Matthew’s readers. Reeds, used for everything from pens and flutes to measuring rods and floor coverings, are fragile and easily damaged. Wicks, made of linen, allowed oil lamps to produce some light but were often of poor quality and produced more smoke than light. Bruised reeds and smoking wicks were readily viewed as useless and more bother than they were worth.

The lesson, of course, is not one regarding reeds and wicks. The passage from Isaiah describes ‘my servant whom I have chosen’ – God’s Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The context here is of Jesus healing the sick (verse 15) and so clearly bruised reeds and smouldering flaxes are people, fragile and vulnerable people, damaged and struggling people. And in one way or another we are all strugglers – for physical reasons (illness, declining faculties), for psychological reasons (anxiety, grief, depression, mental health problems), for spiritual reasons (doubt, temptation, failure). Often all three are mixed together to weigh us down. It can seem hopeless.

The verse, however, is a message of good news. In a world where bruised reeds and smouldering wicks would usually be thrown out and replaced, we are assured that the Saviour will minister graciously to his people and the bruised reed will not be broken, the smouldering wick not extinguished. The Lord cares for his people body and soul, for the whole person. Whatever the cause of bruising or smouldering, the Lord is concerned and is able to deal graciously with the need. No struggle we experience is met with indifference.

Remember that the one described in Isaiah 42 shares our human nature, with the sole exception of sin. He ‘had to be made like his brothers in every way’ (Hebrews 2:17). He ‘was tempted in every way just as we are’ and so is not ‘unable to sympathise with our weaknesses’ (Hebrews 4:15). The saviour can sympathise in ways that no-one else can. He was bruised and he smouldered to a degree beyond what we will ever experience.

Sympathy, however, is not enough. Christ does not leave his people bruise or smouldering: he restores and heals. Our struggles come because we live in a fallen world (though our struggles are often not the result of specific personal sin – the mistake of Job’s friends). The saviour has dealt with the root cause in his atoning death in the place of his people (2 Corinthians 5:21) and as a result those in Christ are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The work of the saviour cannot fail – that is the significance of ‘until he brings justice to victory’. Evil will not have the last word. All causes of bruising and smouldering will ultimately be removed in the new creation after his return. In the meantime he preserves his beloved people, assuring them that ‘no-one can snatch them out of my hand’ (John 10:28). He may well not remove from us some of the things that bruise and cause smouldering (such as the experience of death), but he will give all the grace necessary for us to pass through trails and hard experiences and finally reach glory. By his grace bruised reeds are straightened and smouldering wicks burn brightly.

A pattern for Christ’s church. Reed breakers and wick snuffers need not apply.

Posted on

God’s Glory Alone

As we mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Europe, we are considering five of the great principles that lie at the heart of the Reformation. These are the five ‘solas’ – the five ‘alones’ – that sum up some of the central emphases of this great time of theological and spiritual revival. In June we considered ‘Faith Alone’. This month we turn to the final ‘sola’ – ‘God’s Glory Alone’, ‘Soli Deo Gloria’.

When we think about salvation, one of the hardest ideas to clear out of our minds is the conviction that ‘it’s all about us’. Why has God gone to such lengths in order to provide salvation for unworthy sinners like us? We know that in eternity he set his love upon us, choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world, as Ephesians 1:4 reminds us. That is an uplifting and at the same time a humbling truth, precious to every child of God. It’s easy then to conclude that the ultimate purpose of the work of Christ is our wellbeing, our enjoyment of the blessings in store for us in the new creation. Not so – it isn’t all about us, and we need to remember that.

Salvation, like everything else in God’s universe, ultimately serves God’s glory. He is the one who says, with reference to the refining of his people, ‘For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another’ (Isaiah 48:11). Although we rightly delight in the blessings of salvation that are and will be bestowed on us, we know that the final goal is not our glory or pleasure or happiness, but the glory of God.

Sin robs God of his glory. Sinners have ‘exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images’ (Romans 1:23) and thus ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). The chief goal of the work of Christ in his life, death and resurrection is the restoration of the glory of God. It is not that somehow God receives additional glory from salvation: he is and always will be infinitely glorious. In Christ, however, sinners are placed in a position where they may glorify God. Paul makes this clear in 2 Corinthians 4:6 by stating that, when a sinner is saved, God is shining into his heart ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’. Saved sinners may now reflect, albeit imperfectly, the glory of God into a dark world. Thus God is glorified in the fruit of evangelism, and in this we have the supreme motivation for evangelism.

The biblical truths that we have considered so far in the ‘solas’ present a God-centred and God-glorifying view of salvation and indeed of all of life. How could any child of God want it to be otherwise? The framers of the Shorter Catechism got it exactly right when they wrote that ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever’ (Q1). We will not be able to do the latter unless by grace we do the former.

Salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone will inevitably issue in a life of increasing holiness and God-centred good works. Notice how Paul’s prayer for the Philippians ends with the desire that they will be ‘filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God’ (Philippians 1:11). Good works, as the Reformers understood clearly, flow from salvation: we do good works because we have been saved, not in order to be saved (as Ephesians 2:10 reminds us). These are works done as a result of the gracious enabling of the Holy Spirit and are evidence of the grace of God that is at work in us. As a result the redeemed are ‘God’s temple and…God’s Spirit dwells in you’ (1 Corinthians 3:16).

The resulting lifestyle has as its focus and goal the glory of God. This is a profoundly transformative understanding of our Christian calling. All of life is embraced in this perspective. As 1 Corinthians 10:31 expresses it, our Christian calling is centred on the pursuit of the glory of God: ‘So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God’. Even the most apparently mundane activities are to have in view the glory of God, done with an awareness of him and, in must be said, performed by his enabling grace. Grace does not bring us to the point of entrance to the kingdom of God and then leave us to go on in our own strength. Salvation is by grace from beginning to end.

At the last day it will be seen by every creature that all things glorify God alone. On that wonderful Day of consummation ‘every tongue [will] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Philippians 2:11). The Son and the Holy Spirit will share equally in that glory, as our Trinitarian theology reminds us. It will be Christians’ joy and privilege willingly to give all glory to God as they begin to experience the full fruits of God’s grace in Christ. God’s eternal plan of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone, all to God’s glory alone, cannot fail. Having begun a good work in us ‘will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 1:6). There we have a firm foundation for assurance, thanksgiving and service for the glory of God.

Posted on

Faith Alone

As we mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Europe, we are considering five of the great principles that lie at the heart of the Reformation. These are the five ‘solas’ – the five ‘alones’ – that sum up some of the central emphases of this great time of theological and spiritual revival. Last month we considered ‘Grace Alone’. This month we turn to ‘Faith Alone’ – ‘Sola Fide’.

It might be thought that the order in which we are considering these principles is a matter of indifference – could the five not be taken in any order as long as they are all included? The answer in fact is a resounding ‘No!’ The order is not random. It matters very much where each principle fits into the sequence. This is especially clear when we consider grace and faith.

The placing of ‘Faith Alone’ after ‘Grace Alone’ is a recognition of the order of the elements of salvation revealed in the Bible. There is an order – an ordo salutis as it is sometimes termed – which is not the product of human ingenuity but a reflection of the way in which God in his sovereign mercy provides salvation. Thus when ‘Faith Alone’ follows ‘Grace Alone’ we acknowledge that sinners believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation because of the grace that the Lord has shown to them. To reverse the order would suggest that sinners receive grace because they have believed, a thoroughly unbiblical idea.

This crucial fact is set out in a text such as Ephesians 2:8, where Paul is expressing something of the wonder of the salvation that God has provided in Christ. The Apostle writes, ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that is not your own doing, it is the gift of God’. Notice how Paul includes even our faith under the idea of a ‘gift’, given by the grace of God. Scripture everywhere emphasises the ‘gift’ nature of salvation, and that is because grace precedes faith in the order of salvation.

This principle in no way detracts from the fact that sinners must believe in order to be saved. When asked by the jailer in Philippi, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Paul’s answer was, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved and your household’ (Acts 16:31). The necessity for believing in Christ must always be impressed upon sinners. They cannot avoid that responsibility. But the reason why any sinner responds to that exhortation and actually believes in the Lord Jesus is that God has graciously enabled him or her to do so. Behind the sinner’s response is the gracious action of God. A specific example of this is provided by the conversion of Lydia recorded earlier in Acts 16. In verse 14 we read that ‘The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.’ That ‘paying attention’ was not a merely outward listening to the message: Lydia clearly responded in saving faith, as a result of the grace of God she experienced.

The preservation of the biblical order of grace and faith is vitally important. Not least it protects against the ever-present danger of turning faith into a kind of ‘work’, subverting the truly gracious nature of salvation. We may reject the idea of works contributing to salvation, just as the Reformers did, yet think of faith in such a way that it becomes something we contribute to our salvation, something that God accepts in the place of the ‘good works’ we are unable to perform. Unwittingly we then allow works to enter again through the back door, a fatal mistake. We have nothing to offer God that has any merit, not even our faith.

As the Reformers recognised when they insisted on ‘Faith Alone’, there is always a danger of allowing something else to creep in alongside faith in relation to salvation. Medieval theologians were perfectly ready to speak of faith as necessary for salvation, but Luther and his spiritual descendants recognised that when any kind of good work was thought to play a meritorious role in salvation, the biblical order was corrupted and the grace of God fatally undermined. Faith plus anything destroys the gospel. The same battle has had to be fought many times since the days of the apostles who refused to yield to the pressure of the ‘Judaizing’ faction in the church which wanted to assert the necessity of law-keeping alongside faith for salvation. There is always a temptation to believe that, even in some tiny way, our efforts contribute something to our salvation. ‘Faith Alone’ humbles our pride.

The Reformers were absolutely correct to insist that all of salvation is ‘by faith alone’. Thus they taught the great biblical truth of justification by faith alone, emphasising that our right standing in the sight of God is granted freely to us when the righteousness of Christ is counted as ours. That blessing is received by faith alone, in harmony with Paul’s statement in Romans 3:28 that ‘one is justified by faith apart from works of the law’, and Luther was theologically correct to add ‘alone’ to his German translation of the verse, even though the word is not present in the Greek text.

Salvation by faith alone is a liberating truth that ensures we do not try to carry an impossible burden of earning that salvation by our works. Salvation, however, is not by a faith that remains alone – it inevitably leads to a life devoted to our gracious God, doing the good works he has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10). It is a life lived to the glory of God alone, the last of our five ‘solas’.

Posted on

Christ Alone

As we mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Europe, when on 31st October, 1517, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, we are considering five of the great principles that lie at the heart of the Reformation. These are the five ‘solas’ – the five ‘alones’ – that sum up some of the central emphases of this great time of theological and spiritual revival. Last month we considered ‘Scripture Alone’. This month we turn to ‘Christ Alone’ – ‘Solus Christus’.

To say that salvation is by ‘Christ Alone’ reminds us that in Christ we have a unique Saviour. It is at this point, perhaps more than at any other, that we are also made aware of the difference between the world of the Reformers and our world. The Reformers wrestled mainly with conflicting understandings of precisely how Christ saves sinners. In our context we face a pluralism in which any assertion of a unique way to God is met with amazement, horror or even, increasingly, hostility. ‘How,’ it is asked, ‘could anybody in this day and age believe that there is only one way to be right with God and, worse still, that they have a monopoly of it?’

The ‘politically correct’ view is that, if there is a God at all, there are many ways to him. Indeed it is possible that every way is valid for someone. Thus Christ may be fine for you, yet entirely inappropriate for others. No-one can be told he is wrong and needs to change. The very suggestion is taken as a sign of our bigotry.

If we are to be faithful to God and to Scripture, however, we must assert with Pater that ‘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). Jesus Christ as God incarnate is not one among many saviours. In John 14:6 he makes the absolute and unequivocal claim, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.’ We must not be ashamed to assert Christ’s uniqueness, although increasingly we will face pressure to be silent.

‘Christ Alone’ also speaks of a unique salvation. The uniqueness of Christ relates not only to who he is but equally to what he has done. As we read the biblical account of the life, death and resurrection of Christ it is evident that this is the only and the God-given way for the plight of sinners to be addressed.

Consider the natural state of sinners like us: we are ‘dead in…transgressions and sins…by nature children of wrath’ (Ephesians 2:1,3). We are under the just wrath of God and unable to change ourselves. Christ addresses every aspect of that terrible plight. As man he atones for man’s sin; as God he is able to save a vast multitude. The Reformers understood how comprehensive Christ’s work needs to be and indeed is, and as the Reformation progressed that understanding became richer and deeper.

Christ’s life of perfect obedience supplied what we lack – the keeping of God’s law in its entirety. His death pays the price for our sin – ‘God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). This unique saviour is ‘the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10), taking the punishment for the sins of his people, thus turning aside God’s righteous wrath. His resurrection as ‘the first fruits’ (1 Corinthians 15:20) guarantees the resurrection of his people.

Every dimension of the sinner’s need is addressed by Christ’s redeeming work. The more we understand the true nature of our situation as sinners, deserving only condemnation and punishment, the more we will appreciate the necessity for the rich saving work of our Saviour. If we are mildly unwell, an aspirin may be all we need to put us back on top form. If, however, we are dead, a miraculous work of Almighty God is the only way of restoring the life that has gone.

‘Christ Alone’ testifies to a unique Saviour who has secured a unique salvation. The Reformation understanding of the person and work of Christ recaptured the essence of the biblical gospel which medieval Catholicism had done so much to obscure. Under the blessing of God the Reformers’ preaching of this Saviour and this salvation brought new life and spiritual freedom to multitudes. In the intervening centuries such preaching has continued to have the same effect. Although we live in a very different culture from that of the Reformers, the heart need of every man and woman remains the same, and the proclamation of ‘Christ Alone’ still can and still does bring life and freedom.

Posted on

Scripture Alone

We noted last month that 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Europe – on 31st October Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg and sparked such a revolution as he could never have envisaged. God was mightily at work.

But what is the heart of the Reformation? What were the great truths rediscovered during those momentous years? The fact is that the Reformation touched on every significant area of Christian doctrine. A great deal of attention was given, for example, to the biblical doctrine of the sacraments, especially the Lord’s Supper. The latter, sadly, was a cause of division among the Reformers themselves. The Reformation cannot be reduced to one issue, such as ‘justification by faith alone’, although that was a crucial doctrine much debated at the time. A useful way of approaching the core of the Reformation is through what have come to be known as the ‘Five Solas’ – ‘sola’ being the Latin word for ‘alone’. They are Scripture Alone, Christ Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone and God’s Glory Alone. These five truths do bring us close to the heart of the Reformation theologically and for the next few months Another Voice will be considering them briefly.

The foundation of the Reformation was ‘Scripture Alone’. What is the source of Christian theology? Rome relied on a combination of written Scripture and unwritten tradition, interpreted by the ‘magisterium’ of the Church. The Reformers realised that this positon was in fact profoundly unbiblical and in response asserted that we must base all theology on ‘Scripture Alone’. Without denying the value of centuries of study by scholars and preachers, the Reformers recognised that Scripture is the Church’s only infallible rule of faith and practice.

The Reformers understood that in the Bible we have a unique revelation. In the context of the Europe of their day the fact that the Bible was to be regarded as the Word of God was a largely unchallenged view. Theologians might differ as to how to interpret the Bible and as to what the text meant, but they generally agreed that what they were handling was God’s Word.

We face a rather different challenge today with regard to the place of the Bible. We live in a pluralist culture where other religions are on our doorstep, not in the far-flung regions of the world as they usually were in Reformation days. They too make claims to have divine revelations, sometimes in addition to the Bible. We also face the challenge of philosophers and theologians who assert that the very idea of ‘words from God’ is incoherent and incredible. In response we cannot allow ourselves to be moved from the position of 2 Timothy 3:16 – ‘All Scripture is God-breathed’. All Scripture – the Old Testament and also the New Testament then in process of production. In the Bible alone we have the Word of God written, given by the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

In the Bible we also have a unique authority. This follows from the God-breathed nature of the book. If God speaks uniquely in these pages, then they have absolute authority in all they teach. Submission to God’s Word is evidence of submission to God himself. As Christ said, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’ (John 14:15).

Many of the great Reformation debates came back to the issue of the authority of the Bible. In response to Rome’s appeal to unwritten apostolic tradition and the Anabaptists’ appeal to the ‘inner light’, the Reformers were convinced that the Bible did not need to be supplemented and could not be replaced by any other source of authority.

We too need to keep asserting the unique authority of the Bible. Rome still appeals to tradition and to papal authority. Charismatics appeal to new revelations of the Spirit and ‘words from the Lord’. Many Christians in practice depend on their feelings as their authoritative guide. In the wider world all kinds of authorities are cited, often centred on human reason, science and ‘experts’. One major danger posed by our digital culture is the ease with which anyone can set himself up as an ‘authority’, subject to no checks of any kind. The very idea of authority crumbles in a Wikipedia world and the response we often have to contend with is ‘Who says so?’ with the implication that my view is as good as anyone else’s.

We must heartily defend ‘Scripture Alone’. In this book God has given us all we need to know (although not all we would like to know). No other source of authority must be allowed to usurp its place in theory or practice. Our love for the Lord must be demonstrated in obedience to his authoritative Word.

Posted on

500 – A Big Anniversary

Anniversaries can be very important – ask any husband who has forgotten his wedding anniversary! They usually mark significant events, sometimes life-changing events, that ought to be remembered. The annual return of anniversaries such as Remembrance Day serves to keep the lessons of the past before our attention. Happy anniversaries can bring renewed joy in the recollection of good times, especially when they are viewed in the light of God’s providence in our lives. Some things ought never to be forgotten.

There is certainly the danger of living in the past – of letting what is now over govern our lives to an unhealthy extent. Old hurts, old grievances, old failures, old sorrows can shape us in ways that hinder our growth in grace. We need to learn when to remember and when to let go. Churches too can live in the past, keeping the focus always on past glories and successes, conveniently overlooking the weaknesses and failures that might suggest the past was not quite as glorious as we like to think. At times we as a denomination have fallen into that trap, idealising the Scottish Covenanters in ways that made it difficult to learn from them for the challenges of our own day. To forget history, however, cuts us off from the valuable lessons regarding the providence and purpose of God that it could teach us.

2017 marks an anniversary that should be – and no doubt will be – marked in a variety of ways. On 31 October, 1517, the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, the accepted way of raising issues for academic debate. These ‘Ninety-five Theses’ however were profoundly radical and marked the beginning of what came to be known as the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Luther was by no means the only theologian raising vital questions about gospel truth – Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, for example, also played a significant role in the reforming movement – but Luther was certainly used powerfully by God to shake the foundations of established theology and ecclesiastical life in Germany and much further afield.

Luther’s 95 propositions go to the heart of the gospel message and so demand our continued attention. Many historians offer explanations for the rise of the Reformation in terms of the historical and sociological circumstances of the time and some of these do have value, but we have not understood the Reformation unless we see it as a mighty work of God. In the Reformation the Holy Spirit transformed people and communities through the saving application of the Word of God. Whatever else the Reformation was, it was primarily spiritual.

The Reformation was a revolution that took the Church backwards – it was a rediscovery of great biblical truths that had been obscured by the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Reformers went back to the biblical roots of the Christian faith and, on the basis of Scripture alone, proclaimed a message of salvation by grace alone, through Christ alone and received by faith alone, all to the glory of God alone. Multitudes experienced the true spiritual liberation that comes through an undiluted gospel. This was not just an intellectual movement – lives were transformed.

Now Luther was not perfect. Nobody knew that than Luther himself. He had his weaknesses and, like most things to do with Luther, they were on a fairly large scale. On some issues, such as his view of the Lord’s Supper, he was beyond listening to contrary opinions. There was in some of his writing a streak of crudity (shared with Erasmus, among others) that forbids quotation. His positon on a variety of matters represented a kind of half-way house between Roman Catholicism and biblical truth. We are, after all, not Lutherans, and with good reason. Nevertheless he was – by grace – a mighty man of God who was instrumental in revolutionising the spiritual life of a significant part of Europe and ultimately the world. A lesser man, a smaller man, would not have been up to the job.

The 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting the Ninety-five Theses ought to be commemorated enthusiastically by the people of God everywhere. We will be doing so at the Shaftesbury Reformed Conference on 15th February. Why not take the opportunities that 2017 will bring to deepen your knowledge of your spiritual heritage and to thank God for these wonderful events?

Posted on

God is our fortress

I received an e-mail the other day. No – it’s not really that unusual. I do occasionally slink out of digital purdah to check on how the twenty-first century is getting on. I do read e-mails now and again. Just don’t get me started about social media.

Anyway, back to the e-mail. The message that I received came from a company specialising in security doors which they were seeking to market to churches. Unlike many such messages, this appeared to be perfectly genuine – if your church building needs extra security, here are folk willing and able to provide it. They indicated that their products could be purchased with funds provided by the Government’s ‘No Place for Hate’ initiative. This initiative runs alongside the ‘hate crime action plan’ developed by the Home Office. Further research (i.e. clicking a link) revealed that this scheme, which applies to England and Wales, offers help to places of worship with security measures such as CCTV cameras, intruder alarms, perimeter fencing and security doors. Anything, in fact, needed to make your place of worship secure from attack.

The ‘hate crime’ label indicates that one of the concerns behind the project is the possibility of attacks on Christian places of worship by Islamic extremists who regard such buildings with revulsion. That of course is not the only issue since mosques, synagogues and various temples would also be eligible for protection, and the recent resurgence of violent antisemitism in Europe is a reminder that it is not only Christians who may face a threat. Statistics from the International Society for Human Rights, however, indicate that 80% of instances of religious discrimination are directed against Christians, and among those instances are acts of violence.

It is, of course, a sign of the times. Once there was generally a high degree of respect for church buildings and other places of worship, though vandalism did occur and in some places was something of a rite of passage for youngsters. There was broadly, however, respect for the property of those who pursued religious activities, even when their beliefs were written off as incredible. That is changing rapidly in the UK. The ‘No Place for Hate’ initiative is a straw in the wind.

Recent arson attacks on church buildings in Northern Ireland show that the problem is not safely confined to ‘the mainland’. The Government’s concerns no doubt include the threat from Islamic groups, but here we probably have more to fear from local ‘home grown’ hoodlums. The issues aren’t easy – we must be wise stewards of our property, yet we do not want to turn our places of worship into fortresses. ‘Come and join the scared stiff’ is probably not going to be a fruitful evangelistic strategy. A massive package of security measures is hardly a testimony to faith in a sovereign God. A church located in the centre of a city has to take certain basic steps – like remembering to lock doors! – but there have to be limits.

The root problem, of course, is a loss of respect for the God who is worshipped in these buildings. Whether it’s petty vandalism or full-scale onslaught, the message is that of the voices we hear in Luke 19:14 ‘We do not want this man to reign over us’. Although they might never think of it in these terms, they are in fact expressing rebellion against God – any God, given that other religions than Christianity are sometimes the target. They are in fact small-scale examples of the rebellion of the nations so vividly depicted in Psalm 2:2 ‘The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us.”’ To describe attacks on churches in such terms may seem to be dignifying petty criminality – ‘pure badness’ as some would describe it – with a grand explanation. Nevertheless when we track the evil actions back to source, that is the poisoned spring from which they flow. Sinners, of whatever kind, are rebels against God, rejecters of Christ, and in one way or another that rebellion will show itself. A brick through a church window comes from a fist shaken in the face of God. As the Saviour warned his disciples in the Upper Room, ‘If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.’ The ‘if’ is not an ‘if’ of doubt but of certainty.

So we take sensible precautions which do not contradict the message we proclaim, but we do so in the assurance that in the face of rebellion ‘He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision’ (Psalm 2:4). In relation to Christ, the hatred of the world served to advance the fulfilment of God’s plan of salvation: It will be no different today. The enemy would be happy to have us cower in fortresses, but he will not succeed. The Word of Life will still sound out for the salvation of sinners and the vanquishing of the opponents of King Jesus.