Joel R. Beeke

In the last issue, we considered six ways that the sixteenth-century Reformation blessed our world—ways that still impact us today for good. This article considers four more Reformation blessings bequeathed to us.

7. VOCATIONS FOR THE COMMON GOOD

The Reformers recast the state as a commonwealth, promoting the dignity of labor, encouraging commerce, and increasing wealth among all classes while curbing the excesses of unregulated capitalism and providing for the care of the sick and the poor. In the view of the Reformers, a well-regulated state ought to provide for the common good. All should thrive together, walking agreeably in decency and good order. Everyone has a stake in the life and well-being of the nation. No man is granted freedom to do as he pleases without regard to the laws of God and the state. Such is the idea of the state as a commonwealth.

Reformed Christianity played a major role in the eradication of serfdom and the abolition of slavery, though for some Reformed Christians these measures seemed too radical to be endorsed. Sadly, historians today delight to recall such resistance to change and fail to record the work done by many Calvinists to achieve these reforms at home and abroad in the world.

According to the Reformed idea of vocation or calling, the common laborer came into his own as an image-bearing servant of God. Reformed doctrine sanctifies all of life and resists both ancient and modern attempts to draw a line between the sacred and the secular. Men of wealth are called to use their wealth for the good of others and for the cause of Christ. The restoration of the office of deacon meant that measures were taken in hand to care for the sick and lighten the burden of poverty on the poor. The communion of saints, each one employing his gifts for the advantage and salvation of the others, welded Reformed communities together as forces for benevolence, civic improvement, and social progress.

Serve God according to your gifts, calling, and providential circumstances. Although the calling of the gospel ministry is a noble work, it is by no means the only way to glorify God in the world. Whether you are an electrician, a government official, or a stay-at-home mom, never see yourself as second-class or your calling as unspiritual. Instead, take up your calling as a service that you render directly to Jesus Christ for the sake of His name. “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Col. 3:23). Be a person of integrity and justice. He will judge us all for our faithfulness where He put us, and He will reward obedience wherever He finds it.

8. MARRIAGE AND CHILD-REARING

The Reformers established the Christian home on the principles of Scripture, in which marriage is understood as a reflection of the Christ/church relationship—where husband and wife covenant with each other to walk in God’s ways, and parents are to rear their children, who are loaned to them by God, as He would have them reared covenantally, ethically, and experientially.

Casting out the medieval cult of celibacy, the Reformers embraced and exalted marriage in the Lord as the norm for the Christian life. The Christian family is counted as the basic unit of the church and the foundation of society. In no better way can the mystery of Christ and His church be honored and enacted before the world. The children of believers once more became the heritage of the Lord, loved and nurtured, called to faith and repentance, confronted with Christ’s claims upon their faith and obedience, and schooled in the “true and perfect doctrine of salvation” taught in the Reformed churches.

This view of marriage is rooted in the idea of covenant that pervades all of Scripture and unites all of its doctrines, promises, commandments, and warnings into one systematic whole. God and His people, Christ and His church, are bound together in the covenant of grace. “From Him His saints’ redemption came; His covenant sure no change can know; Let all revere His holy Name in heaven above and earth below” (Psalm 111, Psalter 304 v. 6).

While no one should rush irresponsibly into marriage without being duly prepared for the role of husband-father or wife-mother and receiving godly counsel, we should not be skittish about marriage. Many people today put off marriage and family too long, sometimes out of fear or selfish desires to avoid inconvenience. Marriage is what you and your spouse make it. Enter the marital state with a God-fearing spouse and you will find the Christian household to be a workshop of the Holy Spirit where He fulfills his covenantal purposes.

The ethics we teach to our children are the ethics of the covenant, as revealed or summarized in the Ten Commandments. “Sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). Good works are “only those which proceed from a true faith, are performed according to the law of God, and to His glory; and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men” (HC Q. 91).

We also teach our children about Christian experience —how the Holy Spirit saves sinners through a way of personal acquaintance with our sins and miseries, our deliverance in Christ, and our yearning to exercise gratitude to God and man with our entire way of life. We need to teach them about how the Christian should walk in an ideal sense, as Paul does in Romans 8, even as we acknowledge to them what Christian experience is like in a real sense in our battles with indwelling, as Paul does in Romans 7. We must teach them with words and show them with our lives that our Christian experience is the outworking and fulfillment of God’s gracious, saving, covenant work in our hearts and lives.

9. ARTS AND SCIENCES

The Reformers rekindled the spirit of inquiry by founding schools, academies, and universities; disseminating knowledge; encouraging research and exploration; enabling many discoveries; and producing many valuable inventions.

Exalting God as Maker of heaven and earth, believing that man was created in God’s image, and valuing the creation as God’s handiwork, Reformed Christians have been stirred to seek out the laws of the universe and to realize much of the great potential built into the world as God created it. Believing that knowledge is essential to life and happiness, Reformed Christianity fostered the development of universal education. The local schoolmaster labored alongside the local minister and the local catechist.

A large chapter in the history of Reformed Christianity in the United States is the history of the founding of schools, school systems, and institutions of higher learning wherever Presbyterian and Reformed immigrants and settlers established their new homes and churches. The need for a well-educated ministry lay at the heart of this enterprise, but beside this concern, lay the concern for an educated laity that all might profit from the ministry of the Word.

The Reformers inspired creative endeavors in the form of literature, music, art, and architecture, consecrating the powers of man to the service and glory of God. The Reformation was a catalyst for cultural development and improvement in every land where it took root. One has only to mention the music of J. S. Bach, the poems of John Donne, or the paintings of Rembrandt, to name only a few examples. These creative geniuses flourished in a milieu that owed much to the Reformation.

The concern to provide education for all promoted learning, research, exploration, discovery, and invention. Much of the basic research and many important tools of discovery that enabled the great nineteenth- and twentieth-century forward strides in medicine, astronomy, navigation, communication, transportation, and many other arts and sciences were given to the world by Reformed Christians.

All these developments sprang from the Reformed conviction that God is to be loved and served with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; likewise, as the Westminster divines declared, “The two great pillars upon which the kingdom of Satan is erected, and by which it is upheld, are ignorance and error” (“To the Christian Reader,” Preface to the Westminster Standards).

Value good Christian education. If you are a student, view your schooling not just as a requirement to get a job, but a calling to glorify God in your studies. Be a life-long learner. Whether your interests are in theology, politics, visual arts, mechanics, engineering, science, medicine, philosophy, history, music, languages, or some other field of study, keep reading, practicing, and learning throughout your life. Seek a good education for your children, remembering that the worldview and personal character of their teachers will profoundly shape their future. As God blesses you, support Christian schools and seminaries with your money, time, and prayers. Christian education is the cultivation of the image of God.

10. THE TRUE WORSHIP OF GOD

Perhaps, above all, the Reformation promoted true worship. For the Reformers, to worship God, whether privately or publicly, was to bow down before His majestic glory and, in spirit and in truth, to bring Him, in and through Jesus Christ and in accordance with Scripture, the honor and praise that belong to Him alone.

Calvin said that the Christian faith turns on two main hinges: how we are saved and how we should worship God. Worship is central to both; in a word, it is biblical Christianity. The Reformers invested massive efforts into the restoration of Christian worship from manmade idolatry to the glorification of God according to the will of God. Medieval worship services were a feast for the senses but a famine for the soul, especially for the common people who did not understand Latin.

Reformation worship turns away from the saints as heavenly mediators and encourages people to draw near to God the Father through the sole mediation of God the Son by the power of God the Holy Spirit. It simplifies the sacraments (from seven to two), purges the service of unbiblical rituals and imagined sacred objects, and restores the people to their function as a holy priesthood. It makes the Holy Scriptures both the rule and the content of worship as the church reads the Word, prays the Word, sings the Word, preaches the Word, and sees the Word in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. What a joy it is to worship in spirit and truth!

As heirs of the Reformation in the modern world, we must carry on this legacy of the worship of God alone through Christ alone by Scripture alone. This calls us, especially those who are pastors and elders, to a watchful zeal for purity of worship. However, the worship of God must be more to us than a matter of outward purity, or we will be Pharisees who damage Christ’s church. Our zeal for worship must begin with an inward fear of God, brokenness over our sins, meekness toward others, and love for His glory. Is your heart tender for the glory of God? Do you worship Him with gladness and holy fear?

The most insidious challenge to worship in the present day is secularism. Modern secularism is just as worshipful as any world religion, but it directs its worship and obedience to humanity. To say the least, the fruits of secular humanism are bittersweet at best. Humanism and materialism have produced hordes of consumers—gadget-crazed and self-indulgent to a fault, prizing personal liberty and self-expression above the common good, and calling evil good and deriding goodness as evil. We are beset with goods and services, but have nothing better to do with them than spend and be spent. Modernity has bred selfworshipers. As to God, it ignores Him, belittles him, is embarrassed to mention Him in the public square, and deems Him irrelevant to real life. People with this mindset find a worship service boring unless it tickles their senses, which is the broad road to idol-worship

How about you? Are you a true worshipper of God? Are you spiritually acquainted with what real worship is in a personal way, namely, to worship God by bowing down before His majestic glory and, in spirit and in truth, to bring Him, in and through Jesus Christ and in accordance with Scripture, the honor and praise that belong to Him alone?

CONCLUSION: SOLI DEO GLORIA

Here then, we have ten crucial ways that the Reformation —contra Roman Catholicism—has blessed our world over the last five hundred years: the Word of God, the gospel of grace, experiential piety, old paths, Christ, the head of the church, Christian freedom, vocations for the common good, marriage and child-rearing, arts and sciences, and the true worship of God. They are like ten sparkling facets on a single diamond. But I want you to do more than look at the facets. I want you to take the diamond. What is that? What is the one great reality that all these things reflect? The diamond of the Reformation is the glory of God. The Reformation was about the centrality of God—the supremacy, sovereignty, holiness, goodness, and mercy of God in His triune being. The spirit of the Reformation, if you boil it down to its distilled essence, is to love God by faith in the grace of Christ as He is revealed in the Scriptures.

The word “glory” in Hebrew derives from a word that means “weighty.” The idea of God’s glory is that God’s inherent worth is weighty. His glory is the beauty of His manifold perfections. His weighty moral excellence shines forth in greatness and worth in His acts of creation, providence, and redemption (Isa. 44:23; John 12:28; 13:31–32).

It is easy to say the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “Man’s chief end [or great purpose] is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” It is far harder to live those words. How can we glorify God? By confessing our sins to Him and fleeing to Christ for forgiveness and for having God’s nature restored to us. By praising, worshiping, and delighting in the triune God as Creator, Provider, and Redeemer. By trusting God and surrendering all things into His hands. By being fervently zealous for the triune God’s glory. By walking humbly, thankfully, and cheerfully before God and becoming increasingly conformed to the image of His Son. By knowing, loving, and living the commands of God’s Word. By being heavenly minded and cherishing the desire to be with God forever

Thomas Watson said that to glorify God means four things: (1) Appreciation: Do you admire God’s attributes —His infinite, eternal, and unchangeable power, wisdom, and love? (2) Adoration: Do you worship God, reverently bringing to Him the honor that He commands? (3) Affection: Do you delight in God, desiring Him as your portion and life and treasuring Him with an intense and ardent love? (4) Subjection: Do you obey God with selfrenunciation, holy action, and eager service?

The Reformation is now more than five hundred years old. So what? The bottom line is this: God’s grace in Jesus Christ brings us to God (1 Peter 3:18). The triune God is the diamond. Will you receive him as your God and be His child forever? Will you embrace the glory of God as your highest goal, purpose, and joy in life?

Dr. Joel R. Beeke is president and professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and a pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.