Reformation Heritage IV: John Owen, Pursuing Holiness

The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). The apostle Paul says that the church has been chosen before the foundations of the earth to be holy and blameless in the Son (Ephesians 1:3). Therefore holiness that displays the glory of God in Jesus Christ is the aim of God in the life of His church, and the aim of the church is the pursuit of that holiness in the grace of God. When we look to the reformation of God’s church in history we see God pursuing this aim in His servant John Owen, and His servant pursuing this aim in His and our God.

John Owen was not a magisterial reformer of the 16^th century but an English puritan of the 17^th century. The puritan era lasted from1560 to1660 and Owen was born into the heart of this movement in 1616, the same year Shakespeare died, and died at its end in 1683. J.I.Packer says, “Puritanism was at heart a spiritual movement, passionately concerned with God and godliness. It began in England with William Tyndale the Bible translator, Luther's contemporary, a generation before the word "Puritan" was coined, and it continued till the latter years of the seventeenth century, some decades after "Puritan" had fallen out of use ... Puritanism was essentially a movement for church reform, pastoral renewal and evangelism, and spiritual revival.” (Quest for Godliness). Owen was a puritan theologian, statesman, Oxford leader, pastor, husband and father. He was married to Mary Rooke for 31 years and fathered eleven children all of whom died before he died. Mary died in 1675 and ten of the eleven children she bore died in childhood and one died at 23 years of age. He was a chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, Dean and Vice Chancellor to Christ Church Oxford until Charles II came to power and then he spent 23 years as a fugitive pastor and leader of the independent Congregationalist in England. He wrote extensively beginning with his first work against Arminianism and continued writing many other works until a month before he died in 1683. But his afflictions and accomplishments are not what highlight his life. It is the life of holiness he pursued in the midst of those afflictions and accomplishments.

David Clakson, who spoke at John Owens funeral, said, “A great light is fallen; one of eminency for holiness, learning, parts and abilities; a pastor, a scholar, a divine of the first magnitude; holiness gave a divine lustre to his other accomplishments, it shined in his whole course, and was diffused through his whole conversation.” God’s aim in his life was holiness, and Owens aim in his life in God through Christ and by the Spirit was holiness: “I hope I may own in sincerity that my heart's desire unto God, and the chief design of my life ... are, that mortification and universal holiness may be promoted in my own and in the hearts and ways of others, to the glory of God, that so the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be adorned in all things.” The aim of holiness for Owen was not his own glory which is pursued through legalism, but a grace filled life that adorns the gospel of God in Jesus Christ. He pursued holiness in communion with God in the Son and by the fellowship of the Spirit. He had not the ability or desire for holiness in himself. Therefore the luster of his life was holiness that came from God in Christ. He says, “To suppose that whatever God requireth of us [holiness] that we have the power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.” The man who dies to sin in the death of Christ is the man who lives to holiness in the life of Christ. This was the pace and aim that Owen sets for us in the certainty of who Christians are as the redeemed yet indwelt with sin, and who God is for us in Christ toward holiness. He says, “It is our duty to be “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2Cor.7:1); to be “growing in grace” everyday (1Pe.2:2; 2Pe.3:18); to be “renewing our inward man day by day” (2Cor.4:16). Now, this cannot be done without the daily mortifying of sin. Sin sets its strength against every act of holiness and against every degree we grow to. Let not the man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks over the belly of his lusts. He who does not kill sin in his way takes no steps toward his journey’s end…sin does so remain, so act and work in the best believers, while they live in this world, that the constant daily mortification of it is all their days incumbent on them.” He did not wait for holiness through grace, he pursued holiness through grace and he exhorts us to the same, “Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.” We must hear Owen echoing out of the depths of God’s glorious promise to his church, “If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body you shall live.”(Romans 8:13).

John Owen lived toward holiness in communion with God by His grace. May God give His church grace for holiness through the Son and by the Spirit, and may His church live in communion with Him through the Son and by the Spirit in pursuit of God’s delights, His own glory in holiness.

Sola Christus

All men are sons of Adam banished from the garden and the kingdom by God’s flaming wrath taking up residence as sons of disobedience in our father’s kingdom of sin and death. In this kingdom we obey the flesh and it’s lusts, we are enslaved to passions leading to eternal death, we follow the prince of this world in his pride and rebellion, and our inheritance is one of fire, gloom and the worm. And then a dying man in his weakness proclaims a foolish message of the man Christ Jesus who can sympathize with our weaknesses, who suffered the very pangs of hell in his body suffering and dying as the Prince of Peace. And not by might or power of the dying man, but by the Power of the Spirit, this foolish message becomes a sweet savor unto life. We here his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, as our cry, the cry of those who deserve eternal death and judgment from the God whom we have shunned and rebelled against. And we know that His judgment has been poured out upon him, that he has taken our chastisement, bore our grief and sorrows, taken our blows and suffered our death, and that somehow in the wisdom of God, by his wounds we are healed. We see his hands and his side and we see our life is in him who died in our place rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and death bringing us, in himself, out to eternal life in the salvation of our God. And suddenly, not because of anything that we have done, there is peace with God. We have the gift of life eternal as children of the living God and a promised inheritance in the kingdom of his beloved Son. What have we done? Nothing! It is free grace, salvation in the Son, the Mediator of a new covenant where there is life, righteousness and holiness in Christ, and the knowledge of the truth. Is there faith? Yes! Is their repentance? Yes! It is there as a gifted expression of joyful submission to the God of glorious holy grace.

Ms. Smith, The Lord is Her Shepherd

The Lord's Day is His for our delightful rest in His presence in the context of worship, rest and mercy. It is a blessing to call the Lord's Day a delight when He comes near and speaks to us from His throne of grace by His Word, and what a delight it was to hear His word spoken from the mouth of Ms. Smith on this Lord's Day.

Ms. Smith is in her late forties or early fifties living in an assisted living home since suffering a severe stroke. She is no longer able to carry out her vocation as a nurse and is now confined to living in her hometown under someone else's nurse care. Each week we visit with her and the other residents and hold a worship service with them in the living room of their assisted living home. Ms. Smith is a regular to the worship services. She cannot speak many words but her countenance glows as we sing hymns together and she smiles or is sometimes expressive of sorrow when the Word is read and preached. We often ask her questions hoping to get information from her so that we can better understand her life and minister to her, but we are usually met with a shake of her head because of her inability to communicate. She will nod in agreement, shake her head in disagreement or say, "I tell you man", but this is usually the limits of her communication. However, that all changed on this Lord's Day.

We were turning in our hymnals to "Great is Thy Faithfulness" as our musician was readying herself to lead us in singing when I asked, "Who can tell me of a Psalm from the Scriptures that proclaims to us the faithfulness of God?" No one spoke up, so I continued, "I have one in mind I am sure some of you know. Do you know Psalm 23?" As I looked up Ms. Smith was beaming. Then I began, "The Lord is my..." and I was interrupted by a booming, "Shepherd" from Ms. Smith. And with that she and I continued through the Psalm word for word from the beginning to the end. She was beaming with joy and bouncing in her chair like a child before her father as though she knew she was going to receive a great reward. She has not spoken but a few words and has been unable to remember and bring to speech what she thinks in her mind up to this point. But the Word of God that is written on her heart and is her life came bursting forth. Needless to say I rejoiced in the Lord with her.

I had gone to the assisted living center to preach the gospel and be a conduit of God's grace and mercy to those residents. And the Lord of the Sabbath who made this day for man to find his rest in the presence of His glory shinned the light of His glory in my face in Christ. I visited with a lady who has suffered the loss of many things in this earth but who possesses an eternal inheritance in Jesus Christ and God is satisfying her heart with Himself revealed to her in His Word of Truth. The Word is her life and I shared in the joy of her life in Christ through His Word. She did not say anything else the rest of our time with her. She was unable, but her joy was full and so was mine.

Reformation Heritage III: John Calvin, Man of God's Word

If you were to paint a picture of John Calvin in your mind and he was holding a book in his lap what would that book be? If you have learned about Calvin through a public system of education it may be a book many are sure he wrote, but none can find “Predestination; Crushing Man’s Freedom”. If you have been taught some church history by the media or read an encyclopedic entry on Calvin it may be a book many are sure he wrote but none can find, “The Church’s Guide to the Burning of Heretics”. Or if you are reformed you may picture him with his “I Am a Calvinist and Your Not” t-shirt on holding the “Institutes of the Christian Religion” in his lap which he did write and many can find. My examples may be narrow but so are many of our views of the humble 16^th century French pastor – theologian.

Though his reading was extensive, I would picture John Calvin holding a Bible in his lap. Everything that John Calvin wrote that we have in our hands today to read bleeds the Bible as his primary source. He said, “We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God, because it proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with it.” He believed that the great proof of the Scripture lay in the fact that God Himself speaks in it. Therefore Calvin would teach us to know and enjoy God we must seek Him where He has revealed Himself primarily in His Word.

He began his studies of the Scriptures while a student in France. His father first employed him as a student of the church but soon his father insisted he study law. But it was during this time that the teachings of the reformers began to reach France and God called Calvin to himself. He said of this time in his life, “My father had intended me for theology from my early childhood…then, changing his mind, he sent me to learning law…until God at last turned my course in another direction by the secret rein of his providence. By a sudden conversion he tamed to teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years, for I was so strongly devoted to the superstitions of the papacy that nothing less could draw me from such depths of mire.” God had brought about his conversion while still in France but because of persecution he fled France for Switzerland. Upon his coming to Basel in 1534 he assisted Peter Robert in his French translation of the Scriptures, studied Hebrew and finished his first edition of the Institutes or the Instruction in the Christian Religion. This work was written to instruct the persecuted French church and also as a defense of the protestant Christians before the King of France. He then sought to go to Strasbourg as a place of peace where he could study and write, but by God’s providence he was routed southward on his journey and passed through Geneva. There in Geneva he was confronted by William Farel, whom Calvin said was “a Frenchman who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel”. He pressed Calvin to stay in Geneva and even insisted that if Calvin went on to Strasbourg for peace and study that “God would curse [his] retirement and the peace of study that [he] sought.” At the age of 27 Calvin began his ministry in Geneva as a professor, preacher and theologian. After only a year and a half in Geneva Calvin and Farel were run out of town by the city fathers and they fled to Strasbourg. There Calvin became a pastor to French refugees and a teacher of New Testament for three years. It was during this time he met his wife Idellete. They later had three children all whom died shortly after birth. Idellete became ill after the birth of her children and died in 1549, Calvin never remarried. Calvin returned to Geneva in September of 1541 and remained there serving until his death in 1564.

John Calvin devoted his life to the study, teaching and preaching of God’s Word. His Institutes have over 7,000 references to Scripture. He wrote a commentary on most every book of the Old and New Testaments. He was writing a commentary on Ezekiel when he died. He preached expositional sermons from the Scriptures ten times every two weeks. He was exiled from Geneva on Easter Sunday, 1538 after preaching at St. Peter’s, he returned in September 1541 and began preaching on the very next verse he had left off at three years before. He studied and taught Hebrew and Greek and taught many others who became pastors preaching the Word of God. Why was John Calvin so devoted to the spread of God’s Word?

He was devoted to God’s Word because God is devoted to the spread of the glory of His name in the earth through His Spirit and by His Word. He lived in a time where God’s glory in Christ had slipped from the center of the churches teaching and he knew the only way to recover was in the reclamation of the Word of God. The glory of God in Christ was being extinguished by false doctrines and the Word of God preached and taught would reform doctrine and lead men to perceive the glory of God in Christ. He said, “Thy Word, which ought to have shone on all thy people like a lamp, was taken away, or at least suppressed as to us.” Today man is at the center of the church and the glory of God in Christ is supplanted by man’s desire to make a god of his own liking and experienc. But God is not interested in man being titillated by His existence, He is interested in man being overcome by His majesty. God is not interested in being an addendum to man’s life, He is interested in His glory in Christ being savored at the center and spreading out through all of man’s life. God is not interested in being man’s lover who satisfies him for a breathless moment, He is interested in being his covenantal Head who is praised, thanked, trusted and obeyed. Let us return and do all according to God’s Word. Semper Reformanda…Always Reforming let us be.

Reformation Heritage II: Ulrich Zwingli, The Reforming Patriot

Religious, political and cultural change is necessary; however, we do not always like change. Though God is unchanging the unfolding of His providence brings about change. All that he has created has been subjected to the futility of the fall and is being restored through His work of redemption by the reigning Son. Therefore God’s government and preservation of all creation in the process of restoration necessitates change. Change is something we all experience everyday as the sun rises and sets, the stock market rises and falls, newly elected officials of the civil realm take office, new technology breaks into the marketplace, or Johnny goes off to school. The question is, “How do we handle the unfolding of God’s providence in the context of change?”

Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther were contemporaries. Zwingli was born several weeks after Luther on January 1, 1484, and lived in his shadow in the German speaking cantons of Switzerland. While Luther was raised up by God for the reforming of the church in Germany, Zwingli was used of God in Switzerland as a pastor, theologian and patriot in the context of change.

Switzerland was technically a part of the Holy Roman Empire but in the 16^th century had become a confederacy of independent states. These independent states or cantons were continually struggling in the times of the reformation with their identity as Catholics or Protestants. We have a hard time understanding this in our nation of religious pluralism. We have a Catholic church on one corner and a Baptist church on the opposite and neither one of them have seemingly anything to do with the “state”. But in the days of Zwingli the civil and ecclesiastical realms were very closely related. The state was ordered by the Holy Roman Empire and her ecclesiastical officials. Therefore, the “protestors” or those disagreeing with the doctrines of the church were often brought into direct conflict with the leaders of the state as they lead the people of the Empire with their reformed teachings. This was the changing times in which Ulrich Zwingli lived as a reforming pastor, theologian and patriot.

He came to Zurich at the age of 35 and began preaching in the great Grossmunster. There he took up preaching the New Testament in the gospel and it was his practice until he died 12 years later. This was an unusual experience for a preacher to teach the people through the Bible verse by verse. As Zwingli studied and preached Biblical theology it shaped and influenced all of life. He was an accomplished musician but he did not practice music in worship because he believed the Bible did not command music to be used in worship. He was a pastor that remained in Zurich during a plague to shepherd the people of God in death, while all other clergy left the city for health. He wrote an important work concerning the authority of the Scripture. He stood against the Romish teachings of the Mass. But his Biblical reforming principles not only affected his thoughts and practices in regard to preaching, worship, the sacraments, and pastoral ministry they affected his thought and life in the civil realm.

In the 16^th century the Swiss people lost 200,000 men in mercenary service for the sake of the Holy Roman Empire. Zwingli believed in a just war, but he did not believe that the men of Switzerland should have been paid to leave their land and fight in battles in France in the service of the Pope. This brought him in sharp dispute against the empire. The city fathers in the canton of Zurich were pressed whether they would be Catholic or Protestant. The catholic clergy thought this not a matter for the city fathers to decide, but Zwingli thought it was proper. In 1523 Zwingli wrote his 77 articles for a disputation that would lead to their decision. In those articles he clearly articulated the Biblical reformed faith that affected life and clearly renounced Catholic abuses in the church and state. On the day of the disputation no one showed up to debate with Zwingli, and Zurich became a protestant canton. Zwingli said, “Custom must yield to truth”. He was a man reformed in his thought and life by God’s Word and he believed the truth of God revealed in His Word should affect all of life.

Zwingli is remembered in Switzerland by a statue. In that statue he has a Bible under one arm and a sword in his hand. And for this many in the history of the church have been critical of him. Zwingli died at the age of 46 in a battle defending Zurich’s freedom. He went into battle as a chaplain bearing a sword and was killed there. He fought for his country’s freedom for he believed that through that freedom the gospel of Jesus Christ would go freely to reform all of Switzerland. Zwingli believed Christ was the transformer of culture. Therefore he involved himself in political, economic and military affairs in his short tenure as a pastor-teacher-theologian. He was once asked what economics had to do with the gospel, and his reply was, “Much in every way.”. Ulrich Zwingli lived in the midst of change, and he did not respond to that change with indifference, but with faith in an unchanging God whose steadfast truth reformed and directed his thought and life so that he could live responsibly for the glory of God in his several vocations.

A Reformation Heritage

Reformation is a reclamation, “a rescuing from error and returning to a rightful course”. The 16^th century Protestant Reformation was God’s rescuing of his church from error by the power of the Holy Spirit through the instrument of His Word and sinful yet redeemed grace filled servants of the gospel. Each year as a church we desire to remember, learn from and respond to what God has accomplished in our reformation heritage. Our church is Reformed in that we are connected to the teachings of the historical church and doctrinal beliefs recovered by the Protestant Reformation. Therefore it is important that we remain connected, but not for the purpose of becoming what these people or churches once were, but so that we are vigilant and diligent to be always reforming, semper reformanda, to the rightful course set down for us by the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

This week we will look back at Martin Luther and his theology of the cross. To get to his theology of the cross we must first step into his understanding of the gospel. Martin Luther wrote, “By the one solid rock we call the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we mean that we are redeemed from sin, death and the devil, and are made partakers of life eternal, not by self-help but by outside help, namely by the work of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ alone.” He arrived at this truth through his illumined study of the Scriptures. And, this doctrine of justification by faith alone, that salvation is not man’s achievement but a gift from God, is the bedrock of the church and the centerpiece of her proclamation. Therefore, the reclamation of this truth was for Luther and others a joy and a standard that would mark them as the protestors in their day. Through not only the understanding of this truth but living in this truth Martin Luther would discover the theology of the cross.

The grace of God in Jesus Christ seen at the cross was at the center of all that Luther thought, preached, wrote and acted upon. God lead him to understand all things as they were revealed to him at the cross. This idea brought him into conflict with the scholastic method of theology he had been taught. The scholastics of the middle ages were proud philosophical and speculative thinkers about God and reality. They studied God in light of their own understanding and speculated about his revelation on the basis of their own human categories. Luther called their theology a theology of glory. He said, “That theology which seeks for God in His glory and majesty is to be replaced by a theology of the cross, which is satisfied with knowing God as He has given Himself to us in His shame and humiliation.”. The theologians of glory were building their theology upon what they expected God to be like, themselves. But Luther’s theology of the cross was built upon the revelation of God in Christ hanging on the cross. Luther wrote, “It is not sufficient for anyone, and it does him no good, to recognize God in His glory and majesty unless he recognizes Him in the humility and shame of the cross.”

Therefore when Luther practiced the theology of the cross in thought he put all revealed knowledge of God through the sieve of the cross. When he thought about the power of God he did not think of some great power of man and multiply it infinitely to reach an understanding of God’s power. Rather he understood God’s power as revealed in weakness at the cross. There power is hidden in the form of weakness where Christ suffers under the power of sin and death and then displays his power in rising from the dead and putting all his enemies under his feet. So, for Luther power is hidden in the appearance of weakness. When Luther practiced the theology of the cross in conduct he lived in the light of the cross. If Christ came to earth as the King and acted as a suffering servant to all then Luther lived in his callings as a servant of the gospel of grace in suffering that he may one day be exalted with Christ in glory. The theology of the cross teaches us that the way to glory is the way of the cross, so serving and suffering by grace is glory. For Luther the theology of the cross directed his thought and his life as it should the church today.

May the light of the glory of God in Christ shine in the face of the church so that she may know and delight in him in worship with greater knowledge and affection and suffer as servants of the gospel of grace toward all in the earth by the grace that God gives.