Joel R. Beeke

There is a mysterious power hidden in the Word of God, like a great oak is hidden in a small acorn or bushels of apples hidden in a tiny apple seed. When God unleashes that power, He transforms people, families, communities, and even entire nations. Yet, it happens in ways we cannot fully understand or trace, but only receive with joy. Christ said, “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how” (Mark 4:26–27).

God sent forth the power of His Word in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and even the Reformers marveled at it. The Reformation, which we commemorate on October 31 again, served as a dynamic motivation and catalyst for change and progress wherever its influence reached. Many would credit Martin Luther as the driving engine that propelled the Reformation, but Luther said, “I did nothing; the Word did everything.” John Knox said, “God did so multiply our number that it appeared as if men had rained from the clouds.”

How did the Reformation change the church and the world? What are its lasting fruits or results? Here are ten of the fruits which the Reformation produced.

1. THE WORD OF GOD

The Reformers recognized the Bible as God’s written Word and the supreme rule of faith and life for both the individual believer and the life of the church—indeed, for all of life. Here is the great starting point for understanding the aims, dynamism, and achievements of the Protestant Reformation. As part of the revival of learning connected with the Renaissance, the Western church recovered the knowledge of the original languages of the Bible (chiefly Hebrew and Greek). For the first time in many centuries, her scholars and teachers were able to read the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament as well as examine the extant Latin translations of the Bible in the light of the original.

The Reformers emphasized Scripture in five important ways:

• Authority. Scripture is the very Word of God and the voice of God (verbum Dei), and is therefore supremely authoritative. All other kinds of authority—civil, creedal, papal, ecclesiastical, etc.—must be subordinate to Scripture. Contrary to Roman Catholicism, the Reformers believed that Scripture’s authority is absolute, not derivative. The church does not declare Scripture authoritative but only recognizes its inherent authority.

• Infallibility and inerrancy. The Reformers taught that the Bible’s infallibility is exhaustive, for every word of every sentence, as 2 Timothy 3:16–17 says, is the breath of the living God. Nor can Scripture err. “I have learned to hold only the Holy Scripture inerrant,” Martin Luther said, quoting Augustine’s letter to Jerome.

• Self-interpretation and self-authentication. Reformed theologians also stress the harmony between Scripture and the Holy Spirit. They taught that the Holy Spirit is the true expositor of the Bible, which enables the church to recognize that Scripture interprets and validates Scripture. While tradition may aid interpretation, the true meaning of Scripture is its natural, literal sense, not an allegorical one—unless the particular Scripture passage being studied is allegorical in nature. Scripture’s self-authentication means that the Bible’s witness is confirmed, as Calvin said, by the internal testimony of the Spirit in the believer’s heart (Institutes, 1.7.2–4; cf. Westminster Confession, 1.5).

• Liberation. The Reformers liberated the Bible from the Roman Catholic hierarchy in at least three ways. (1) By vernacular translation, such as Luther’s German Bible. As a matter of first importance, the Reformers saw that the Bible had to be translated into the languages of those lands into which it comes, because “the people of God…have a right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them” (WCF 1.8). (2) By expository preaching, as recommenced by Zwingli. The Reformers insisted that the pulpit must be given pride of place in the church, since “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). (3) By straightforward grammatical-historical exegesis, best exemplified by Calvin’s commentaries. Through Scripture read, preached, and expounded in Bible-based books, God speaks to us as a father speaks to his children, Calvin said—and what can be more liberating than that!

• Power. The Reformers taught that God gave us Scripture as His word of power that transforms and renews our minds by His Spirit. That power must be manifested in our lives, our homes, our churches, and our communities. While other books may inform or even reform us, only one book can transform us and conform us to the image of Christ.

So the light of Scripture began to dispel all darkness, and men like Luther were compelled to examine the very foundations of their faith and practice as Christians. What Luther found in the Greek New Testament shook him to his core, and soon he lifted up his protest against the accumulated errors of the preceding ages. Pointing to the Scriptures, Luther said, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”

From that time onward, it has been the glory of the Reformed faith to be faithful to Scripture in all that it teaches, concerning what we are to believe concerning God or what duty God requires of us. The value of the Reformed creeds and confessions lies chiefly in their faithfulness as summaries and expositions of the system of doctrine taught in God’s Word. Reformed Christians cherish the Bible as the living and active “sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17) by which God speaks to us today and works in our hearts and lives, imparting faith, leading us to Christ, sealing us for salvation, and leading us onward to the city of God.

If you want to call yourself an heir of the Reformation, then you must be a student of the Bible. Read the Word of God and meditate on it daily. Cultivate a systematic understanding of the Bible’s teachings. Compare Scripture with Scripture. Use cross-references like those found in John Brown’s Systematic Theology. Take advantage of study resources like the Reformation Heritage Study Bible. Never walk away from private devotions, family worship, or a sermon without taking hold of some particular truth and applying it to your soul. When you lack wisdom, pray for it and search the Scriptures, for in them is eternal life and the knowledge of Christ.

2. THE GOSPEL OF GRACE

The Reformers recovered the authentic gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone to the glory of God alone, and proclaimed it to the ends of the earth through zealous evangelism. What Luther and the other Reformers discovered in the light of the New Testament was that Roman Catholicism had exchanged the true gospel for a false one. According to Roman Catholicism, salvation was achieved by slow degrees and hard work—by receiving the sacraments and by doing such good works as the church required or directed. The Roman Catholic church taught that sinners must atone for their sins by doing penance in this life, suffering the fires of purgatory in the next, calling on saints and angels for help, and cherishing the hope of full salvation only in the far distant future.

Some degree of comfort was afforded to the faithful by the sale of “indulgences,” promissory notes issued by the church forgiving or “indulging” some part of the debt of sin owed to God. This “gospel according to Rome” was a message that inspired fear of wrath, not faith in Christ; encouraged dependence upon our own works, not the grace of God; and deepened human misery, while affording little comfort. Christ was crucified afresh and sacrificed daily in the Mass, His mother was entreated perpetually, and prayers were constantly offered for the dead in the hope that, by the joint effort of all concerned, some might be saved at long last.

Discovering from Scripture that this false Roman Catholic road to salvation was a poor substitute for the authentic gospel of Christ and the apostles, the Reformers abandoned it. They taught that sinners are saved as Christ graciously works in them by His Word and Holy Spirit, convincing them of their sin and misery and leading them to faith in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, offered once for all, as the only ground of their salvation. Justification from the guilt of sin is not the distant goal, but the beginning of life in Christ. Good works are fruits that accompany justification, and only serve to confirm it. Justification is by faith alone through Christ alone. Salvation is the gracious, free gift of God, “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:9).

The Reformers understood that God’s gospel grace is and does everything for a sinner who deserves nothing but hell. Our entire salvation is grounded and marinated in grace. Grace calls us (Gal. 1:15), regenerates us (Titus 3:5), justifies us (Rom. 3:24), sanctifies us (Heb. 13:20–21), and preserves us (1 Peter 1:3–5). We need grace to apply God’s forgiveness to us, to return us to God, to heal our broken hearts, and to strengthen us in times of trouble and spiritual warfare.

With the drama of conversion and justification by faith alone in the foreground, we must not miss the backdrop: the eternal will and decrees of the sovereign God electing sinners to salvation and eternal life through the merits and redemptive work of the incarnate Son of God applied by the Holy Spirit to their minds and hearts. This great God is to be sought, called upon, trusted, loved, and gratefully served by His redeemed people.

This biblical gospel truly is good news for sinners and worthy to be preached in all the world, indeed, to be shouted from the housetops! The Reformation not only revived the church in Europe, but effected its extension into the new world from the old, and inspired centuries of missionary work, evangelism, and church planting throughout the world. This mission is an extension of Pentecost, as Reformed Christians have gone everywhere, preaching the gospel to all nations.

Are you depending on your good works to make you righteous before God? Self-righteousness is subtle; we can turn even our misery and grief over sin into a kind of righteousness such as when we think we cannot be accepted by God until we feel bad enough. What do you think you deserve from God? If God is a righteous Judge who must punish sin, then why would He let you into heaven? Any answer except Christ alone is a false gospel. If we could be saved by our good works, then Christ died for nothing.

God’s sovereign gospel grace crushes our pride. It shames and humbles us. We want to be the subjects, not the objects of salvation. By nature, we rebel against gospel grace, but God knows how to break our rebellion and make us friends of this grand doctrine. When God teaches us that our very core is depraved, sovereign grace becomes the most encouraging doctrine possible.

How precious is gospel grace to you? When visiting an elderly friend in a nursing home some years ago, I noticed that she had nothing on her walls except a small index card, upon which she had typed:

God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense

“That means everything to me, because I live only by grace,” she said.

Is that true of us as well? Are we genuine sons and daughters of the Reformation?

3. EXPERIENTIAL PIETY

The Reformers enlivened the church worldwide with a deep conviction of the fatherly sovereignty of God through Christ, which results in a deep, warm, sanctifying, experiential piety or godliness that moves believers to commit their entire lives to His praise.

One of the most compelling proofs of this assertion is the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, renowned for its personal way of summarizing and applying the truths of the Christian faith. Nothing is stated in an abstract or purely theoretical way. The very first question is intensely personal and experiential: “What is thy only comfort in life and in death?” Time and again the practical use or personal benefit is pressed: “What doth it profit thee now that thou believest all this?” (Q. 59). This pressure persists to the last sentence of the Catechism: “Amen”—that is, the “Amen” of the Lord’s Prayer—“signifies that it shall truly and certainly be, for my prayer is more assuredly heard of God than I feel in my heart that I desire these things of Him” (Q. 129).

The Heidelberg Catechism reflects an approach to doctrine that was present in the Reformation from earliest times, in Luther and Calvin, and many of their peers. Intellectually brilliant, Calvin manifested an equally profound piety in his writings, commentaries, and sermons. Famously, Calvin described the Book of Psalms as “an anatomy of all parts of the soul,” that is, addressing all aspects of Christian faith and experience.

Subsequent generations of Reformed pastors and teachers took up this concern and developed it into the experiential theology of English Puritanism, Scottish Presbyterianism, and the Dutch Further Reformation as Christian experience and the strengths and weaknesses connected with it received close scrutiny, careful analysis, and thorough exposition. To the Reformers and their successors we owe much still today in learning how to apply God’s Word to the mind, the conscience, and the will as well as how to discriminate between believers and unbelievers. They have also taught how to preach to different kinds of hearers among the saved and the unsaved.

Make sure that your faith engages your head, heart, and hands. It starts in the head, for you must know the truth in order for it to set you free. However, the truth must penetrate your heart like a seed in good soil where it can send down deep roots. It is not enough to know about the Lord; you must know the Lord personally and experientially—that is, in the experience of your heart and life in a meaningful, relational way, for to know God and Jesus Christ is to know eternal life (John 17:3). The proof that the seed has roots in good soil is the fruit it produces, and true heart-knowledge of the Lord produces the practical fruit of love, holiness, and good works.

4. OLD PATHS

The Reformers preserved, exposited, and defended the ancient Christian faith through preaching and sound literature as the system of doctrine taught in God’s Word. Their orthodox Christian belief that salvation in the Trinity manifests itself in what would later be called the five points of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, definite atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.

The Reformers found support for their formulations of the Christian faith in the writings of the ancient church fathers. They saw themselves as the true heirs of historic Christianity. The Roman Catholic church had added to the biblical faith and obscured the gospel of justification, but there remained many essential truths of true Christianity as summarized in the Ecumenical Creeds. Though mired in layers of corruption, the gold of apostolic Christianity had not been utterly lost. The Reformed faith was given to the world not as something new, but only a return of the faith, worship, and order of the apostolic church.

As such, the Reformers valued sound exegesis of Scripture over all speculations and innovations of the academic world of their day. When that exegesis was called in question or opposed in subsequent times, the heirs of the Reformers returned to the sources once more and redoubled their commitment to the biblical gospel of faith in the electing love of a sovereign God who freely justifies sinners that believe in Christ as the only Savior and who, having begun His good work in them, continues to perform it until the day of Christ’s appearing. Without God’s grace, mankind is utterly lost, corrupt, enslaved, and helpless—doomed to perish because of sin. The great task of the Synod of Dort was to reexamine the exegesis of the Reformers, to vindicate it over against the errors of Arminianism, and to reaffirm the Reformed faith as holding forth the authentic gospel of Christ and His apostles.

It is popular today to cast off all tradition, confessions of faith, and history in order to cultivate a religion based on “me and my Bible.” Much contemporary Christianity is thus superficial and without deep foundations, and so, it is very unstable. This view of just “me and my Bible” is not the Reformation principle of Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), but a corruption of it. We do not reject tradition in itself, but we do reject tradition that is not subordinate to the Bible. I encourage you to seek the old paths (Jer. 6:16). Read old books, especially the books of the Reformers, the Puritans, and the Dutch Further Reformation. Be a Christian grounded in historic, orthodox, Reformed Christianity.

5. THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH

The Reformers reasserted the crown rights of Christ as King over the nations and the only Head of the church, which is His body. This resulted in reforming the church in her worship and preaching so that all is done in subjection to God’s Word and in relation to the triune God rather than in subjection to man’s desires.

The Reformers soon found themselves at odds with the hierarchy of the church and, in particular, with the Pope or Bishop of Rome. Over the centuries, the Papacy had advanced its claim to dominion over the worldwide church and, likewise, over the kings and princes of Christian Europe. In a similar way, these kings and princes often claimed dominion over the church within their realms. Not infrequently, these divergent views led to fierce and bloody conflicts between the armed forces of the Pope and the armies of the kings.

The Reformers found themselves fighting a two-front war as the Pope used all his power to suppress the Reformation and as hostile kings and princes resisted and punished attempts to reform the church in their territories. Against both, the Reformers exalted Christ as the only Head of the church in heaven and on earth. Where they prevailed, the church was delivered from the twofold tyranny of the Papacy and the state. In matters of doctrine, liturgy, and church order, the Reformers sought to bring the witness, worship, and life of the church into subjection to Holy Scripture as the expression of Christ’s will for His church.

We need to walk the tightrope of truth regarding leaders and authority. We must not fall off to the right by rejecting all human authority and embracing total anarchy and individualism. God calls us to honor authority in the home (Ex. 20:12), the church (Heb. 13:17), and the civil government (Rom. 13:1). We must cultivate a heart of submissiveness. However, we must also not fall off to the left by elevating human authority as if man had God’s absolute authority. Human leaders are subject to God, and when they oppose God, we must obey God, not men. Civil magistrates in the political sphere cannot dictate what the church teaches or practices. Pastors and elders in the ecclesiastical sphere may not use physical force to punish sin like the civil government, they may not take dictatorial control of family life, nor may they bind the individual conscience apart from the Word of God. Let us each exercise our authority, respond to other authorities as people who fear the Lord, and subject ourselves to God’s Son.

6. CHRISTIAN FREEDOM

The Reformers established the freedom of the Christian from tyranny in the church and the rights of citizens under the rule of law, curbing the powers of kings and nobles and enabling the rise of representative democracy in the form of constitutional monarchies and republics.

Upholding the supreme authority of Scripture, the Reformed faith dealt the death blow to the medieval theory of the divine right of kings. All estates of the nation, including the king, are subject to the law of God and the laws of the state. Each citizen lives under the law’s protection, enjoying the liberty secured by subjection to God and to Christ. No one but God has power over the conscience, and the calling of magistrates is to “do justice for the helpless, the orphan’s cause maintain; defend the poor and needy, oppressed and wronged for gain.” Unjust, corrupt, and uncaring magistrates are warned, “The Most High God has called you and set you up on high, but ye to Him must answer, for ye like men must die” (Psalm 82, Psalter 223:2, 3).

This idea of kingship is as old as the Old Testament, but it broke upon sixteenth century Europe as a revolutionary thunderbolt. A long struggle ensued to curb the excesses and abuses of kings, free the church from interference by the state, and establish the rule of law in Protestant Europe. Representative democracy flourished best in lands and nations where the Reformed faith was most deeply rooted. The habits of democratic self-government were acquired by many citizens in meetings of congregations, consistories, classes, sessions, presbyteries, and synods. The modern deliberative assembly is the brainchild of Presbyterianism.

We should cherish our political freedoms and use all lawful means to preserve them. The rule of law, rights of all human beings, and covenantal accountability of leaders to God and the people are precious biblical principles. However, we should also remember that no political freedom has a stable foundation unless the church remains grounded in its freedom in Christ. Christians are the salt of the earth, preserving it from its natural decay. Unless Christians walk in our blood-bought freedom from the dominion of sin, we cannot expect society around us to preserve civil liberty. Moral degeneration corrupts political freedom into a mask for any tyranny that promises to gratify a people’s passions.

(to be concluded)

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.