REFORMED WITNESS
Volume VI, October 1998, Number 9
Reformed, Yet Always Reforming
by Prof. H. Hanko
From the written transcript of Prof. Hanko's Reformation Day Lecture, delivered in Hudsonville on October 30, 1980.
Reprinted from the May 1 to June 1, 1981 issues of The Standard Bearer
At least 99% of those present tonight go under the name of Reformed. That name has come directly from the mighty movement of the Sixteenth Century called the Reformation. By using the name Reformed we confess that we are spiritually descended from the fathers of the Reformation. And by tracing our spiritual ancestry back to the Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth Century we confess that we hold to the same truths which the Reformation held. We want to be identified with that movement; we want everyone to know that we stand for what the Reformers stood for; that we hold fast to the doctrines which they thought to be the truth of the Word of God; that we champion these truths as they did; that we confess them in the midst of the world as they confessed them; and that we are prepared to make the sacrifices for them which they made.
At this time of the year when the church of Jesus Christ commemorates the Reformation, she is not only called upon to recall that the Reformation is part of her own spiritual tradition, but the church is asked, yes, obligated before God to give honest answers to certain questions. Chief among these questions is the question of whether we are the faithful sons and daughters of the Reformation that we ought to be.
The Reformation was the name which was given to that movement of the Sixteenth Century because, through the work of the Reformers, God reformed His church. He made it anew. It needed renewing because, through the centuries in which Roman Catholicism had held sway, the church had lost her identity as the church of Christ. It had strayed so far from the doctrines of the Scriptures and had become so corrupt in morals and in life that, as the Reformers said, it was no longer recognizable as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. No one who understood from Scripture what the church was and what it was supposed to be could recognize the church any longer in the Roman Catholic institute. It had to be re-formed. It had to be re-formed after the pattern of the Scriptures and after the pattern of the church established by the apostles. God wrought that work. He re-formed the church; therefore we speak of the Reformation.
When we give to our churches the name Reformed, we mean that we want our spiritual lineage to be traced back to that mighty event. We want to claim Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers as our spiritual fathers. Once a year on Reformation Day we look back to that event which happened over 450 years ago and point to it with thankfulness to God and say to others and to ourselves, "That event belongs to our history as Reformed churches."
But there is surely more. When we call ourselves Reformed, we insist that we are re-formed. And we are not only re-formed because 450 years ago the church was re-formed by the hand of God, but we are re-formed and, therefore, Reformed because reformation is always, in every moment of the church's life, the calling of the church of Jesus Christ. That is why a motto of the Reformed Churches for the last 450 years has been: "Reformed, yet always reforming." By this motto our fathers meant to emphasize that it is the essential mark of being Reformed that the church is always reforming. The two go together and are inseparably connected. You cannot, says this motto, claim to be Reformed unless you are a church always reforming. The one mark, which clearly marks churches that belong to the Reformation is the mark of continuous reformation within her own ecclesiastical life.
That is the question; therefore, that faces us tonight. Are we as a church always reforming? This is a question which faces all of us. Denominations do not enter into the matter directly. What has to be said is something that has to be said to all of us. I speak with equal intensity, equal earnestness, and equal concern to my own fellow saints within our own denomination. It is neither proper nor correct to say that other churches need reforming but our own do not. If we say this, we forfeit our right to call ourselves sons and daughters of the Reformation. We can best celebrate this glorious event of God; therefore, by asking ourselves before the face of God: Are we a church reformed, yet always reforming?
Why is it necessary that a truly Reformed church be at the same time a church which is always reforming? The answer is that, as long as the church of our Lord Jesus Christ is here upon earth, the church is not perfect. And, because the church is never perfect, the church is constantly open to the danger of decay and deterioration. This was true of the Romish Church. For many centuries before the Reformation it had so corrupted doctrine that the doctrine of the Scriptures was no longer heard. The truth of Christ and Him crucified was completely obscured by all the ceremonies, false rituals, empty liturgy, and doctrinal heresies which prevailed. Even more, the Romish Church took the Scriptures out of the hands of the people of God so that they might not read for themselves of Christ Who died for the sins of His people and of salvation which comes only through His cross. Further, the church had become so corrupt that not only was every moral depravity practiced in the church at large but it had become the normal everyday practice of the clergy, from the Pope in Rome to the lowest parish priest. One could no longer recognize the church of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Romish institute.
But what was true of the Romish Church is always true. Because the church is not pure, its tendency is always towards decline. There are especially two reasons why the church is never pure. One reason is that the saints, from whom the church is formed, are themselves saints only in principle. They are still sinners who have only a small beginning of the new obedience. The other reason is that there is always present in the church a carnal element. Scripture often refers to this and points out that the carnal and unbelieving element is even often a majority. This very truth elicited from the heart of the prophet Isaiah the anxious cry that the church is a hut in a garden of cucumbers, a beseiged city. "Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah" (Isaiah 1:9). That truth is emphatically stated in Romans 9:6 where Paul states that it has never been true in all the history of the nation that all those who are of Israel are truly Israel. There are many who are of Israel but are not, in fact, Israel. This is always true of the church. As it was true in the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Christ, so it is always true in the church of Jesus Christ after Pentecost.
Nevertheless, it is also a fact that there are certain times in the church's history when, although there is a carnal element present in the church, the true people of God are so in control of the church that the doctrinal, ethical and moral direction of the church is determined by them. That was the case in Israel, for example, during the time of King David and King Solomon. As large as the wicked element was and as numerous as were the reprobate seed within the nation, the direction of the nation as a whole, the doctrinal, spiritual and moral direction of the nation, was determined by God-fearing people. When that happens the church fulfills her calling in the midst of the world and is blessed by God.
But there is always an opposite tendency in the church. So it happens sometimes that not the people of God are in those positions of power and control, so that the ecclesiastical, doctrinal, and ethical direction of the church is determined by them, but the wicked are in control. That happened too, in the nation of Israel, repeatedly, and it was because of this that there was in the nation the need for reform. When godless Ahaz was king, he imported an altar from Damascus to set up in the holy place of the temple so that the gods of the Syrians might be worshiped. Along with this, false prophets and false priests corrupted the sanctuary and the Word of God. So evil did the nation become that God raised Hezekiah to bring reformation in the nation. The direction of the nation was determined by ungodly men. There were people of God in that nation, but the control of the nation was out of their hands. The whole moral and spiritual direction of the nation was determined by those who were enemies of God and of His promise.
This is what happens also in the church of the New Dispensation. That the church is always composed of elect and reprobate seed, no one can deny. When the true people of God are ministers, elders and deacons, and when the office of believers under the preaching of the Word functions strongly in the church, then, although there is a carnal element present in the church, the entire direction of the church is determined by the people of God.
But sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes the wicked come into control. And when the wicked come into control then there are unregenerated men on the pulpit who do not preach the gospel of Christ and Him crucified. They hide the cross behind the words of men. There are unbelievers in the office of elders and deacons. The delegates to the ecclesiastic assemblies are unregenerated and unbelieving men, and the decisions that affect the life of the church are made by men who are enemies of the cause of Christ and enemies of the gospel of salvation. When this happens the entire direction of the church, even though the people of God may be present in it, is determined by men such as these.
Now, it is very striking and very important that we understand that what is true of the church at large is true also of the individual life of the child of God.
The child of God is, from a spiritual and moral viewpoint, two different people. He is on the one hand a saint in whom dwells the Spirit of Christ and in whom is operative the powerful work of regeneration. But there is in that same child of God, as long as he stands on this side of the grave and is a pilgrim in this present world, the old man of his sinful nature, which hates God and is opposed to all that belongs to the kingdom of God and is ridden with sin and guilt. Both are present in the Christian so that what is true of the church at large is true of the individual child of God as well.
It is for this very reason that the same thing which happens in the church at large can also happen in the life of the child of God. God has so given us His grace, His Spirit, and the life of Christ, that that grace, Spirit, and life of Christ can and must determine the entire direction of our life, even though our natures are wicked. Even though the life of Christ within us is a principle, a small beginning of the new obedience, it is a victorious principle. It is a conquering principle. It is a principle that is the very power of the life of Christ itself, and; therefore, is the principle which can and must determine the entire life of the child of God.
But there are times in the life of the child of God when the opposite happens and when the very powerful influences of sin that are rooted in his nature and are enemies of all that is holy become so strong in him that they determine the course of his life, his ethical and spiritual direction.
This can happen when the wicked are in control in the church. When Judah went into captivity and the elect of God went with the nation into captivity, we must not think that the elect in the nation were free of all the sins of the nation; they were not. The people of God as well as the wicked were bowing down before idols and were guilty of all the corruptions and sins of which the wicked in the nation were guilty, though they were the people of God.
It is exactly for this reason that it is possible for the wicked to gain the ascendancy in the church. This happens repeatedly in the history of the church. It happens in every church. No denomination is exempt from this. The history of the church, therefore, is always a history of gradual decay, gradual deterioration, gradual apostasy, and the desperate need for reformation. To be Reformed means to be always reforming.
It is useless and futile to try to come to some conclusions concerning whether the pulpit or the pew is to blame when decay sets in, in the life of the church. The two go together. The Scriptures tell us, in the letter of our Lord Jesus Christ to the church of Ephesus, that spiritual deterioration begins inevitably with the loss of the church's first love. There is good reason why the first of the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor is a letter to Ephesus. The reason is that the Lord means precisely to point out that all decay, no matter where it begins and no matter what form it takes, is decay which begins at that point where the church loses her first love. When a church loses her first love she loses her spiritual fervor, her spiritual warmth, her spiritual love for the truth of the Word of God and for the cause of Jesus Christ in the midst of the world. That warmth and fervor and love which characterized her in the early days of her existence she loses. That is the beginning which soon manifests itself in untold evils in the church of Jesus Christ.
When a church loses her first love, then, fundamental to that loss of her first love, there is loss of love for the Word of God, and therefore, loss of love for God Himself. That loss of love for the Word of God is a loss of love for the Word of God as that Word is proclaimed in the pulpit by the pastors. One hour and a half in church on Sunday is too much, more than it is possible for the congregation to take. If the minister exceeds his time by even a few minutes, he is long-winded, repetitious, and imposing upon the good graces of the congregation.
But though the congregation may assemble in church on the Lord's Day, this does not mean that the people give faithful and diligent attention to the preaching and to what is being said. There are too many other things to think about, and it is too warm in church, and there are too many problems in life which occupy our attention, to concentrate upon what the minister has to say. And if perchance the minister should be some kind of skilled orator so that he can compel, as it were, the congregation to listen, what they hear, even should they hear doctrines expounded and truth explained, they hear intellectually, coldly, abstractly, without the passion and warmth and fervor of a hearing, which, as described in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is a hearing mixed with faith.
That lack of interest in and concern for the Word of God, that lack of love for the Word of God, manifests itself in every area of life. It manifests itself in the decay of devotions in the home, where the Word of God is no longer central to the life of the family. All kinds of things have replaced that Word of God as the focal point of the life of the family. Perhaps the television set has become the focal point of the family's life. Perhaps it is the pursuit of fun and pleasure. Perhaps earning money directs all the home's activities and claims the attention and energies of the family. The Word of God may still be read, but it is read in a hurry, only when there is time; it is not read devotionally, prayerfully, carefully, worshipfully, because that love for the Word is gone.
Wherever anyone deals with and concentrates upon the exposition of Scripture, interest declines and wanes. That marks decay, and that has its effect upon the pulpit. Soon, because of that disinterest in the Word of God, the pulpit becomes weak. Ministers cater to what the congregation wants; they have one ear cocked to what the congregation is saying about their preaching, and are not concerned with what God is saying about how they preach. Ministers have their fingers in the wind to test the congregational breezes that blow, to be sure they are sailing along with the prevailing winds. They are more interested in the breezes that come from the congregation than they are in the winds of the Holy Spirit which rock and shake.
As the pulpit loses its fervor, its passion, its force, its doctrinal power, the whole matter begins to feed on itself. The congregation becomes yet weaker. And because something has to take the place of that terrible lack, the congregation gives itself over to the worship, not of God, but of idols: the idols of mammon, of sports, of pleasure, of houses and lands, of automobiles and snowmobiles. In this way worldliness and carnality creep into the church, and the church begins to lose her identity as the church, so that, when those who are outside look at the church, they say of the church, "What is different about her? We can see no difference between those people who claim to be the church and ourselves. There is no difference that is noticeable: they dress as we do, they speak as we do, their lives are precisely like ours in every respect. Oh, they go to church a couple of times on Sunday, but the extent of their involvement and interest in spiritual affairs seems to be limited to that couple of times they are in church, and they can barely stifle their yawns of boredom while they are there. What is so different?"
It is at that point that the church becomes ripe for heresy. If there should appear in our midst, which may God graciously forbid, a minister who began to preach false doctrine, would you and I have the spiritual sensitivity to detect it for what it is? Would we have the courage to see it for the threat that it is in the church of Jesus Christ and to combat it? Or would we rather say that we can not be fighting all the time; we can not be bothering our heads about such obscure and minute points of doctrine; we can not be tearing the churches apart with another split because someone happens to say something just a bit different from the traditional way of saying things? The result is not only that false doctrine begins to be taught in the church, but as false doctrine makes headway and becomes more and more accepted and the people continue to lose their courage to fight against it, those who come under the influence of false doctrine more and more begin to gain positions of power and leadership, so that the direction of the church is determined by them. In the ecclesiastical assemblies, whether consistories or classes or synod, the lie is openly approved. Whereas twenty or twenty-five years ago it would have taken a synod about five minutes to point out what was wrong with a given heresy, it now takes the church four years, three study committees, and eighty-page reports, which no one can understand, to settle a matter. It stands to reason that, when that happens, something, somewhere has gone badly wrong. And men who are of the carnal seed have determined the doctrinal and moral direction of the church.
Are the people of God simply outnumbered, outvoted, though they fight fiercely? No, not always. Things have come to such a pass in the church because people of God are spiritually lethargic. They are too spiritually weary to do what they know has to be done. And the very sins which are prevalent in the church become a part of their own lives, so that they too, go along with the crowds, and their voice of protest is no longer heard.
That is the history of the church. It has never been any different. It is for that reason that Reformed Churches have said that a truly Reformed church is the church which is always reforming. And the church that ceases to be a reforming church ceases to be a Reformed church.
How are reforms brought about?
In the first place, it is extraordinarily important to emphasize that reform is not brought about by way of mysticism and subjectivism. Someone said once that every heresy that rises in the church is the church paying her unpaid debts. That is true of the rise of Pentecostalism too. Pentecostalism has the power in the church which it does because of the unpaid bills of the Twentieth-Century church. Pentecostalism has rushed in to fill a vacuum which has been created by the declining spiritual character of the church of Jesus Christ. Pentecostalism says, "Look at the church: dead, guilty of world-conformity, perfectly capable of knowing and explaining her doctrine, but the life is gone; the church is a corpse; it looks nice, but there is no life."
But this is true of all mysticism. It finds the solution to the problem in an emphasis on godly life and Christian piety. The inner life must be emphasized. This is, in itself, true. But all mysticism, subjectivism, and pietism emphasize this to the exclusion of doctrine. Those who teach this become suspicious of doctrine. It is doctrine that has harmed and killed the church; and therefore, doctrine must go. Let us forget doctrine and emphasize the inner life, the life of piety, the life of fellowship, conscious, meditative fellowship with God. In this way the objective revelation of the Scriptures is deemphasized and even denied so that the individual is left to sink in the quicksands of spiritual subjectivism.
In connection with this, mysticism becomes suspicious not only of doctrine, but of the church itself as an institute. It thinks very little or nothing at all of the organizational aspect of the church as she is in the world to preach the gospel, to administer the sacraments, to exercise Christian discipline through her ordained and called ministry, her elders and deacons. Of that institutional church the mystic becomes suspicious, and he says that the true inner life cannot be found there; to attain to the true inner life you must have small groups of people who come together for devotional purposes, to edify one another, to encourage one another, to strengthen one another to study the Scriptures together, to cultivate spiritual life and to come to a true understanding of the Word of God. There was even that tendency at the time of the Reformation, and there was a segment of the Reformation which went in the direction of a distrust of the church institute. This was the Anabaptistic movement. To this the Reformers objected. They insisted that the church needs reforming after the pattern of the Holy Scriptures. The church must return to the Word of God, but it must remain Church.
How is reform brought about?
In the first place, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that all reform in the church of Jesus Christ is the work of God, through Christ, by the Spirit of Christ, in the hearts of God's people. When we confess our faith in one holy Catholic church, according to (The Heidelberg Catechism,) Lord's Day XXI, question and answer 54, we confess, among other things, that it is the Son of God Who preserves His church from the beginning to the end of time. God reforms the church. You do not reform it. I do not reform it. Nor can any consistory or classis or synod reform the church. God reforms His church because God has promised to preserve His church to the very end, and He will. Whatever happens to the church here in the city of Grand Rapids, or whatever happens to any particular denomination in the future, there is one thing of which we may be certain: God will preserve His church! If He does not do this through us, He will do it without us. But He will preserve it unto the very end. And because the work of reformation is God's work, he who is concerned with the reformation of the church is the one who, with all his heart and mind and soul and strength, looks to God for reformation!
Luther, shortly before he died, looking back over his life, made the startling remark that from that first moment when he pounded the nails in the paper which held his theses to the chapel door of the church at Wittenburg, he was carried along by forces greater than himself and against which he was helpless. He rode the crest of a wave over which he had no control. All the events of his life were a mighty force that carried him along. He in no sense determined the directions in which it went. That was his own confession concerning his life and work as a reformer.
Reformation always has two sides to it, a negative side and a positive side. To re-form the church one must get out of the church all that is bad, and put into it all that is good. Both are important. There are those who have tried to reform the church only by getting out of it that which is bad. What happens then is that after the room is swept and garnished, the devil, who was cast out, goes out and finds seven more devils, who take up their abode in that church, and the latter end of that church is worse than the former. You cannot just simply put the devils out of the church; you have to put God into it.
All reformation which is satisfied only with the negative aspect is not reformation.
Reformation begins in the heart of the child of God. That is the way it was with Luther. The Reformation did not really begin on October 31, 1517, when Luther nailed his theses to the chapel door of the church of Wittenburg. That is the date we commemorate. But the Reformation began when God came into Luther's heart and would not give Luther one moment of peace. God did that. Luther lived in mortal terror of the judgment, wrath, and fury of God against his sin. God led Luther to try every prescription which the Roman Catholic Church offered as the solution to this problem. God made Luther go on his knees on the Sancta Scala in Rome. God made Luther enter a monastery and obey all the rules of a monk. God wanted Luther to understand, in the depths of his soul, that all that the Roman Catholic Church prescribed as the antidote for such fear of wrath was useless and a perversion of Scripture. But it had to be thrown out. Only then could Luther see the cross, and the power of the blood of Jesus Christ once again, and understand that it was in the cross of Christ, and in that cross alone, that he had forgiveness and peace with God. When he learned that, the Reformation was genuinely begun in principle form. Everything that happened after that in Luther's work, in Calvin's work, and in the work of all the Reformers was a development of what had already fundamentally and principally taken place in the soul of Luther. God tore Luther out of the clutches of Rome and placed him firmly at the foot of Calvary. That is where Reformation began.
The relationship is this. It is impossible to rid the church of that which is wrong and bring back that which is according to the Scriptures until this very thing takes place in our own hearts. There must be the crucifixion of the old man and the putting on of the new man. In short, there must be conversion, which is really reformation, in the hearts of God's people. And this must take place through the cross of Jesus Christ.
This is what makes reformation so difficult. As much as we like to see reformation in the church, it is a big price to pay to reform our own wicked life. We do not particularly care to do this. Nevertheless, that is where it begins, because that is where the work of God begins: in conversion and repentance in the hearts of God's people. And it begins by repentance, which ruthlessly, but by the power of grace, roots out of our lives those idols before which we have chosen to bow; it means to put again into our lives the Word of God, in the position where it belongs, as the authority of all our life. Until that happens there will never be reformation.
That is what it means to be sons and daughters of the Reformation. It means to understand that the fundamental principle of the Reformation is this: to be Reformed is to be always reforming.
When the Word of God has been restored to its proper place in our life, then it can be restored to its proper place in the life of our families, so that it becomes, once again, the focal point of the life in our households. Then it can also become the Word of God which has its proper place in the church, in the life of the church, in the preaching, in the rule of the office bearers, in the distributions of the mercies of Christ, and the communion of the saints. Then the old fervor, the old excitement is restored in the church. Then the preaching comes alive and is once again filled with warmth and zeal. And doctrine is not cold, abstract doctrine, but the life of the child of God which he experiences in the depths of his own soul. It is not the preaching, then, of Jesus Christ Who died for the elect, but it is the preaching of Jesus Christ Who died for me! I am washed in the blood of Christ from all my sins now and forever. Every truth of the gospel has its echo and its response in the depths of our souls. Then doctrine becomes real and alive, and the Word of God becomes once again the focal point of all our life and of all the life of the church of Jesus Christ.
But all this means, just as it does in our life, that, in the church, discipline must be exercised, and those who will not bow before the Word of God must be put out. For the sake of the cause of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the truth of the gospel, for the sake of reformation, evil, wherever it appears, must be rooted out. Reformation will not result in a return to the Word of God until evil is taken out of the midst of the church.
But if the church has reached the point where it is impossible for the faithful remnant to restore the church, there is only one course of action that is left: reformation must come about through secession. The Reformers did this when the Roman Catholic Church proved herself beyond reform. There is only one course of action to pursue. It can happen in any church, even ours. But if we are not reformed and therefore always reforming, it will come to that, beyond doubt. As difficult as that may be, the cause of Christ and His Church is more important than anything else.
The Reformers were accused of the sin of schism, especially by Cardinal Sadolet, when he addressed the citizens of Geneva where Calvin had been, to try to win them back to the Romish fold. He accused Calvin and the other Reformers of leaving the church and rending the body of Christ, and of thus becoming guilty of schism. Calvin's answer, in what was a masterpiece in the defense of the Reformation, was in effect this: not those who leave the church are guilty of schism, but those who depart from the doctrines of Christ, they tear the church to pieces, because the unity of the church is the unity of her doctrine of Jesus Christ her Head. And to destroy and to deny her doctrine is to create schism. Not we, Calvin says, but you, Cardinals and Bishops and Popes, you have created schism in the body of Christ. Our hands are clean of that sin.
J.C. Ryle, a nineteenth century theologian, faced the same question in his own England. He wrote, "He who deliberately settles down under any ministry which is positively unsound is a very unwise man. I do believe when this false doctrine is unmistakably preached in a parish church, a parishioner who loves his soul is quite right in not going to that parish church. Divisions and separations are most objectionable in religion. They weaken the cause of true Christianity, they give occasion to the enemies of all godliness to blaspheme. But before we blame people for them we must be careful that we lay the blame where it is deserved. False doctrine and heresy are even worse than schism. In such cases separation is a virtue and not a sin. Controversy in religion is a hateful thing. It is hard enough to fight the devil, the world, and the flesh, without private differences in our own camp, but there is one thing which is even worse than controversy, and that is false doctrine tolerated, allowed, and permitted without protest or molestation. It was controversy that won the battle of the Protestant Reformation. Three things there are which men never ought to trifle with: a little poison, a little false doctrine, and a little sin."
It takes courage to say to mother, "You are no longer my mother, you have become unfaithful; you no longer feed me, I must leave you." But it is the courage of grace. It is the courage which begins in our own life when before God we cry out for forgiveness for all our sins and plead for grace to root them out that we may serve God in all our life according to the Scriptures. And if that courage of faith is there to restore the Word of God to its focal point in my life, then the courage will be there to do what has to be done, even to the point of separation, to restore the Word of God to its focal point in the life of the church.
Are we children of the Reformation? Do we have the right to call ourselves Reformed? Are we a people who are always reforming? This is the only true way to commemorate the Reformation.
| Back to top | Back to main Reformed Witness page |
The Reformed Witness newsletter is published monthly under the auspices of the Evangelism Committee of the Hope Protestant Reformed Church of Redlands. This newsletter is available to anyone who is interested in the Reformed Faith. If you would like your name added to our mailing list, please write to:The Reformed Witness
Hope Protestant Reformed Church
1307 E. Brockton Ave.
Redlands, CA 92374-3802
or email us: