Beloved Children of the Reformation!
I address you as such because it is exactly my
purpose to appeal to you in your capacity as heirs of the glorious
heritage of the gospel, the faith once delivered to the saints, as
preserved and passed on along the line of the Reformation of the
sixteenth century. I do so, too, because by the grace of God I count
myself a son of the Reformation, and count the churches who have called
this rally as Reformation churches in the full and pure sense of that
term. I am Protestant! And I am Reformed! And therein lies the point of
contact between you and me.
We celebrate this year the 448th anniversary of an
event that constituted the outburst of the Reformation-flame that set
the whole Christian world ablaze. That event was the nailing of the
ninety-five theses to the door of the castle-church in Wittenberg by Dr.
Martin Luther, who had been roused to righteous indignation at the
shameful selling of indulgences for the purpose of raising money for the
pope's treasury. That event was but the outburst of the
Reformation-flame that had first been kindled in Luther's own heart when
he came to know, by way of the Scriptures, the blessedness and the
peace of one who is justified by faith only—justified by a wonder of
pure, sovereign grace. But that outburst of the Reformation-flame
kindled the blaze of faith and fervour, of love and obedience to the
Scriptures, of self-denial and cross-bearing, that has warmed one
generation after another in many lands down to the present time.
No, we do not believe in hero worship. The world may
have its heroes, and worship them. If we would do the same, we would
thereby become unfaithful sons and daughters of that very Reformation
that marked the end of the church's bondage in the sixteenth century.
For neither Luther, nor Zwingli, nor Calvin, nor any of the lesser
lights that shone in the firmament of church history at that time, or
since that time, were the prime movers of the movement that has meant
the church's liberty. On the, contrary, we all know that they were
merely instruments. They were instruments prepared and called by Jesus
Christ, the King of His church, by Him who walks in the midst of the
golden candlesticks and keeps the seven stars in His right hand.
Hence, we commemorate with thankfulness and with the
purpose of renewed dedication the work of God, the God of our salvation,
in preserving and enriching and revealing anew the glorious heritage of
the faith once delivered to the saints, the faith of the gospel. And
therefore I can do no better than to call your attention to:
Let us consider, first of all, wherein that heritage
consists. I cannot describe it for you in full in this pamphlet. For it
is so rich and so great that one could write a book on that heritage and
not be finished. And therefore, for lack of time, I must limit myself
and try to describe for you the main aspects of that heritage briefly.
The first and most basic aspect of that heritage is the Bible.
The two great reformers, Luther and Calvin,
undoubtedly differed in various respects. But on this most basic aspect
of our heritage they were certainly agreed.
They agreed, in the first place, on the absolute
authority of Holy Scripture. This is the principle that there is no
other authority ultimately for doctrine or for life, for faith or for
practice, than Holy Scripture, and that too, because Holy Scripture is
the infallibly inspired Word of God. Hence, it is characteristic of
children of the Reformation, as one of our creeds has it, to 'believe
without any doubt all things contained in' the sixty-six books of the
Old and New Testaments. In the second place, this implies the truth of
the necessity of Holy Scripture, the principle that without Scripture
and apart from Scripture the truth concerning the God of our salvation
can neither be known nor maintained. And, in the third place, the
Reformers were agreed on the truth of the clarity, or perspicuity, of
Holy Scripture. This principle implies that the text of the Bible is
clearly understandable as far as the truth of God's revelation is
concerned, so that any child of God, any believer, can read and
understand the Bible in its clear and unequivocal meaning. Moreover,
this implies that the text of Holy Scripture has but one meaning
fundamentally. Besides, it implies that in the reading and
interpretation of Scripture every believer is independent of any
institution, that he may even oppose that institute, because all
believers have the Spirit of Christ.
On these matters, I say, the Reformers were thoroughly agreed.
And in this sense, therefore, the Reformation restored the Bible to the people of God.
This is basic! For, as is plain from the last part of
Ephesians 2, the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. Take
that Bible away, therefore, or distort it, or deny its absolute and
complete authority or its infallibility, and you attack the very basis,
the very foundation, of the church's heritage!
The second and most central aspect of the contents of our Reformed heritage is the truth of sovereign, particular grace.
Again, Luther and Calvin may have differed in various
aspects. They may have differed in their approach. They undoubtedly
differed in their personal history. But let us clearly understand that
Martin Luther with his 'by faith only' and John Calvin with his 'by
grace only' were essentially agreed. That is very plain from Ephesians
2. I refer especially to verses 8 and 9: 'For by grace are ye saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of
works, lest any man should boast.'
Sometimes this central aspect of our Reformation
heritage is remembered under the figure of a tulip, the TULIP of the
Five Points of Calvinism, which I shall call the FLOWER OF THE
REFORMATION. Let us look at that flower.
It has five petals, which spell the name T-U-L-I-P. Those petals are:
1) TOTAL DEPRAVITY. This is the truth that man, apart
from the regenerating grace of God, is by nature incapable of doing any
good and prone to all evil. It is the truth that the natural man
cannot, and will not, and cannot will to do anything but sin.
2) UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION (and with it, necessarily, the truth of sovereign, righteous reprobation).This
is the truth that God from eternity and in absolute sovereignty chose
certain definite persons unto everlasting life and glory in Christ
Jesus, and that He chose, in fact, an entire church in Christ Jesus. But
along with this truth, inseparably connected with it, is the truth that
God in absolute sovereignty destined the others, those whom He did not
choose, unto eternal damnation in the way of their own sin and unbelief.
3) LIMITED ATONEMENT. This is the truth that our Lord
Jesus Christ laid down His life for His sheep, thereby bringing the
sacrifice of infinite value that made complete satisfaction of the
justice of God with respect to all the sins of His people, and thereby
obtaining for them all, and for them only, all the blessings of
salvation.
4) IRRESISTIBLE GRACE. This fourth petal is the truth
that God through the Spirit of Christ regenerates and by the Word of
the gospel sovereignly and unconditionally and effectually bestows the
gift of saving faith, of repentance and conversion, together with all
the benefits of salvation, upon His elect people by a wonder of grace, a
wonder that is in no sense dependent upon the will of man.
5) PRESERVATION AND PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. This
fifth petal of the Reformation Tulip is the truth that God surely
preserves all His people, so that there is no falling away from grace,
and so that His people persevere unto the end, endure temptation,
overcome it, fight the battle of faith, and obtain the final victory in
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Such is the beautiful Flower of the Reformation!
Let us take careful note of this beautiful flower, and notice that it is a flower; it is one. If
you pluck one petal off, or injure it, you do not only spoil that one
petal and destroy its beauty. But by plucking off a petal, that is, by
denying one of these truths, or by damaging a petal, that is, by
compromising one of these truths, you spoil the entire flower! You spoil
its beauty. You leave the flower incomplete. The whole flower will
surely wilt and die!
Our Reformed fathers—let me say in parentheses—saw
this very clearly, particularly with respect to the petal of
Unconditional Election. They expressed this somewhat differently, by
saying that election is the heart of the church. They meant by
this that in all the life of the church and in all the structure of the
faith, of the truth, the pulse of election must beat strong! If it does
not, you may be sure that there is heart trouble! And heart trouble is
serious: it can be fatal!
But permit me to carry that figure of a flower
farther for a moment. For, after all, there is something rather tragic
about a mere cut flower. Let us note that the stem on which that flower
is borne is the Word of God. And the bulb, or root, which produces that
flower is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, the Christ
of the Scriptures, in all His fullness. And the ground out of which it
is produced is the eternal, sovereign good pleasure of the Triune God.
Finally, let me stretch that figure of a flower one
bit farther, in order to picture to you the third aspect of our precious
heritage. Out of that flower develops fruit, fruit that redounds to the glory of the God of our salvation.
For the Reformation emphasized anew and further
developed the truth that is also taught in Ephesians 2: 'For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them' (v. 10). It emphasized anew
the calling of God's people unto spiritual separation, the calling to
be pilgrims and strangers in the world, the calling to be and to shine
as lights in the midst of darkness. It stressed and taught anew the
calling of God's people to put on no unequal yoke with unbelievers. It
called upon God's people to fulfil their part of the covenant of grace,
as being of the party of the living God in the midst of the world. In a
word, it stressed the calling of God's people to live and to walk in
every sphere of life as those who have all things in common with the
wicked, except grace.
And the purpose of this emphasis on the peculiar
calling of God's people in the midst of the world is exactly that they
might show forth the praises of Him that called them out of darkness
into His marvellous light!
Such is our Reformation heritage!
Let me briefly emphasize the preciousness of that heritage.
That heritage is precious because it means, as our Reformed fathers often said, that God is
the Beginning, the Middle, and the End of all our salvation. It is
precious, too, because for the people of God that pure, unadulterated
faith once delivered to the saints means solid, immovable assurance and
comfort, comfort that is founded on the Rock of our salvation.
That heritage is precious because it is the very essence of that only
comfort in life and death of which our famous comfort-book, the Heidelberg Catechism, speaks.
That, then, is our heritage.
It has come down to us in the Scriptures.
It was preserved and emphasized anew in the Reformation.
It was transmitted at the expense of reproach and
persecution, loss of goods and of wealth, of name and place and of very
life, transmitted in the face of fierce enemies, from the Reformation,
along the line of the famous Synod of Dordrecht in 1618-1619, through
the Secession of 1834 in the Netherlands, and again through the
separation known as the Doleantie in 1886.
And I tell you that I, that we, of the Protestant
Reformed Churches, having and loving that heritage, as a gift of God, in
all its purity, without reservation and without adulteration, count it a
high privilege and responsible calling of God to remind you, as
children of the Reformation, of the preciousness of that Reformation
heritage!
Today, when one looks about him on the ecclesiastical
scene, he is inclined to lament with the prophet of old, 'How is the
gold become dim!'
Why?
Indeed, dating back to the time of the Reformation
there are many, many churches. Historically, there are many would-be
sons of the Reformation. But there is very, very little esteem any
longer for that precious heritage!
Moreover, it is plain to see that there are grave
dangers threatening. No, the cause of God is not threatened! God will
certainly maintain His own cause. Whether He maintains His cause through
us, or through others, He will surely maintain it. Of that you may be
sure. Never fear! But there are dangers threatening us and threatening
our generations in the possession of that heritage, dangers against
which we, by the grace of God, must fight!
Let me briefly mention some of those dangers which
threaten. They are easily recognized, and you will know from their very
mention whether or not they are threatening.
There is, in the first place, the danger of ecumenicalism, which
has all regard for outward unity, but no regard for the real unity of
the church in Christ, namely, unity in the truth and unity in
confession.
Secondly, there is the danger of the denial of Scripture. In
our pseudo-scientific age this threatening danger becomes manifest, for
example, in various attempts to deny or to compromise the Genesis
record. Or it becomes manifest in an outright denial of the
infallibility of the Scriptures. Another manifestation of this
threatening denial of the authority of Scripture is the astounding
degree of doctrinal tolerance that is prevalent today—a tolerance that
can recognize as 'Christian' the most blatant contradictions of the
truth as it is revealed in Scripture.
In the third place, there is a very real danger of anticonfessionalism. This
danger becomes manifest in the attitude that calls our confessions, the
very embodiment of our heritage, archaic documents, good for another
age but out-of-date today. It becomes manifest in the attitude that
refuses to abide by those confessions, that calls for new formulations,
and that sometimes engages in the most open contradiction of those
confessions.
There is, in the fourth place, the deadly danger of Arminian free-willism. From
this quarter have always come the most consistent and the most
dangerous attacks. This has been true everywhere, but especially on the
American ecclesiastical scene. Arminianism always aims at the
destruction of the truth of sovereign grace and sovereign
predestination. It always takes the form of a generalizing of the
gospel. It proclaims a grace of God for all men and a Christ for all
men. I warn you that it seeks to cut off every one of the petals of the
beautiful flower of the Reformation! Our Reformed fathers considered it
so dangerous that they composed an entire creed, the Canons of Dordrecht,
against this heresy; and they pledged every Reformed minister of the
gospel to exert himself to expose these errors of Arminianism and to
warn the children of the Reformation against them.
A fifth threatening danger is that of apathy. This
apathy among those who are historically the children of the Reformation
assumes in our day especially three forms. There is the apathy that
arises from and becomes manifest in total ignorance and indifference
with respect to the truths of our heritage and the preciousness of that
heritage. A second form of ecclesiastical and doctrinal apathy finds
expression in the slogan, 'My church, right or wrong!' And yet another
form of that same apathy finds expression in the motto, 'Peace at any
price!'
Finally, I would warn against the danger of world-conformity. We
live in an age when it seems that Christians are very loathe to be a
spiritually separate people and very eager to make common cause with the
world, to imitate the world, in almost every sphere and relationship of
life. One wonders how it will be with such Christians in the age of the
final manifestation of the Antichrist, when men shall not be able to
buy or to sell unless they have the mark of the beast in their right
hands or in their foreheads. And remember: Scripture tells us that the
end of all things is at hand!
With regard to these things, what, we may ask, is our calling? In general, I would state that calling as follows.
First of all, as far as the churches of the
Reformation are concerned, their only salvation ecclesiastically is not
to compromise when that heritage is concerned. They must actually be
what they are, that is, Reformed!
Secondly, as far as the children of the Reformation
are concerned (the members of those churches of the Reformation), their
solemn calling in the midst of the world and in the midst of the
church—and, if need be, over against the church—is to manifest
themselves as faithful sons and daughters of the Reformation. And how
shall they so manifest themselves? If they are indeed sons and daughters
of the Reformation, they will count their Reformation heritage precious
above all else; and as a result they will hold fast to it, hold fast to
the faith once delivered to the saints—again, without compromise!
In particular, this implies several elements.
In the first place, it is the sole calling of the
church to preach the Word and to expound the Scriptures, and that too,
without any human admixture and adulteration, and in full harmony with
our Reformation (our Reformed) confessions.
The children of the Reformation, in the second place,
have a very personal responsibility and calling in this respect. They
are called, for one thing, to know, to be convinced of, and to be
thoroughly founded in and to stand in the truth of our heritage. They
are called, too, to preserve and to maintain that truth of our heritage,
the only truth of the Word of God and of our confessions, over against
every attack that is made upon it.
Moreover, as children of the Reformation you are
obligated to call the whole church—and particularly your own church, if
need be—to repent and to return to the truth. And in this respect the
children of the Reformation must be willing to be militant, to fight,
and, if need be, to exercise their God-given right of reformation in the
church.
I know: such a course is not easy, and it is not
pleasant, and it is not popular today. There is far too much of the
attitude which would leave these matters to certain 'leaders' or to
leave differences involving our heritage at the level of mere
discussion and propaganda. But the sons and daughters of the Reformation
must do more than that. They must let their voices be heard ecclesiastically!They
must not fall victim to the pessimism that gives up and that says it is
hopeless to maintain and to fight for that heritage. I tell you that if
that had been the attitude of Luther or of Calvin or of our Reformed
fathers of the past, there would never have been a Reformation! And if
that attitude continues to prevail today, and sons and daughters of the
Reformation are fearful to speak out ecclesiastically, then that
heritage will soon be gone and forgotten. It will be forfeited!
And, finally, it is the calling of the children of
the Reformation to seal all this by a spiritually separate walk in the
midst of the world. They must be willing to walk as strangers and
pilgrims in the earth.
CONCLUSION
There are three things I wish to mention in conclusion.
In the first place, our Protestant Reformed Churches
stand ready to give to any who will stand foursquare on and for the
heritage support, counsel, and, if need be, ecclesiastical shelter. We
will exercise fellowship with you in the unity of the faith. We have and
we love that heritage of the Reformation in all its purity. I say this
not in pride, not in boasting. For what we are and what we have as
churches is by the grace of God! We have nothing of which to boast,
except in the Lord.
In the second place, let me sound a word of caution.
Your actions as sons and daughters of the Reformation affect not only
yourselves, but they affect your generations. They affect your children
and your children's children! And remember, the church in its
generations has never yet stood still, either in the line of the truth
or in the line of error.
Finally, let me sound a word of encouragement in the
struggle, the encouragement of our Lord Himself. That word is this: 'In
the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world!'
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord: forasmuch as ye
know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
May God grant this! Amen.
Prof. Homer C. Hoeksema
