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For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. They demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and they take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And they will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
When the Reformers contended that the Bible is clear and easy to understand, they did not mean that it is uniformly so. Obviously, there are difficulties about certain parts of the Bible that may never become clear in this life. Neither did the Reformers close their eyes to the fact that men of scholarship and mental acumen had failed to understand the Bible. But what they did mean was that the Bible is clear when seen in the light of the great Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone.
The first principle of the Reformation--the Bible alone--and its corollary--justification by faith alone in Christ alone--stand together. If one is lost, so is the other. Said Luther:
If the article of justification is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost at the same time.... It alone makes a person a theologian.... For with it comes the Holy Spirit, who enlightens the heart by it and keeps it in the true certain understanding so that it is able precisely and plainly to distinguish and judge all other articles of faith, and forcefully to sustain them (What Luther Says, ed. E. Plass [St. Louis: Concordia, 1959] Vol. 2, 702-714, 715-718).
If these statements by Luther are correct, this means that there is one main reason why the Bible is not clear in today's church. We have lost sight of the truth of justification by faith alone. Let this central Biblical message be restored to its right place, and the Bible will become essentially clear.
This saving purpose of God carried out by Jesus Christ is what the Bible calls "the righteousness of God" (Romans 1:17). It is efficacious for all God chose to be saved, just as God's Old Testament acts of temporal salvation were effective for those chosen to be saved.
That is what the entire Bible is about. When the Bible is read and understood in this framework, its message is as clear as the noonday. But if the theme of Christ and justification by faith alone slips out of sight or is even moved from the center, the Bible is no longer clear. It becomes pulled about as if it were a fantastic jigsaw puzzle, or mutilated into a manual of self-improvement, or wrested to sanction any number of bizarre religious experiences, or exploited by those who imagine that they have God's information about forthcoming events in international politics.
Even doctrines which are true in themselves become false when they are removed from the Biblical framework and put into an un-Biblical context.
In the first tract written to the English people on behalf of the Reformation, John Bugenhagen declared, "We have only one doctrine: Christ is our righteousness." That expressed the spirit of the Reformation. The "only one doctrine" emphasis of the Reformers did not mean that they ignored other essential doctrines, but they saw the truth of justification by faith in Christ as embracing every other doctrine. It is not good enough to relegate the article of justification by grace alone, for Christ's sake alone, through faith alone, to merely one article of fundamental belief among about six others. It must become the center of all other doctrines. For the doctrine of justification by faith alone, rightly considered, presupposes or implies every other Biblical doctrine. For example:
Here we are brought to contemplate the source of salvation in the mind of God the holy Father.
". . . through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... his blood...."
This points us to the ground of our acceptance in the doing and dying of the God-man, the holy Son.
"... through faith...."
Since the Bible everywhere testifies that we cannot of ourselves come to God or believe in Jesus Christ, this points us to the way in which salvation is applied to our hearts by the work of God the Holy Spirit.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
The electing love of God the Father, the life and death of Jesus Christ, the God-man, and the faith placed in our hearts by God the Holy Spirit teach the truth of the Trinity. The Trinity accomplishes our salvation.
Sin cost Adam and Eve their home in Paradise and a son torn from them by the murderer's hand. It cost the Jews their beloved city and their children who were carried away by rapacious armies. But even that could but dimly portray the cost of sin. It cost God a sacrifice so great that it contained all the accumulated treasure of eternity. He gave his Son over to the murderer's hand. This is the only context--the Biblical context--in which to deal with the doctrine of human depravity.
Upon a life I could not live
And upon a death I did not die
I stake my whole eternity.
While he who believes is justified unto life eternal, he who believes not is condemned already. The wrath of God abides on him (John 3:36). we are not left to speculate about all the fantastic and unbiblical ideas that some people propound in the doctrine of the hereafter. God has shown us the nature of Hell and death, for in the cross of Christ "the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Romans 1:18). Christ's cry of dereliction, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was his descent into Hell. He did not descend into Hell after his death; rather, he went, with the thief, to Paradise. As we follow the bruised and lifeless body of the Savior to the tomb, we see clearly what are the wages of sin--death. Death is no phantom, but it is God's judgment on sinful man. It is as concrete and as real as the execution and burial of Jesus Christ. No one spoke more of the final judgment and horribleness of Hell than Jesus Christ.
Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda* is a confession that the Reformation was not completed with Luther and Calvin. The sanctuary of truth must yet be cleansed from all the errors that were smuggled in during the Dark Ages. We have no reason to suppose the restoration was completed by the Reformers.
Error is like an octopus. It has many tentacles, but one heart. Most of the books written to expose the errors of certain cults or false systems tediously fight with all the tentacles of the doctrinal octopus. Few effectively slay it at the heart with the sharp sword of justification by faith alone.
Look how Luther dealt with the papacy. Others before and after him spent their energies crying out against the abuses of Rome. Said Luther:
Doubtless this one article [justification], by little and little, as it began, had overthrown the whole papacy, with all her brotherhoods, pardons, religious orders, relics, ceremonies, invocation of saints, purgatory, masses, watchings, vows, and infinite other like abominations.... We moreover did teach and urge nothing but this article of justification, which alone at that time did threaten the authority of the Pope and lay waste his kingdom.... Images and other abuses in the church would have fallen down of themselves, if they [the sectsl had but diligently taught the article of justification (Commentary on Galatians, Middleton ed., 218, 219).
Luther cut through the complicated maze of medieval theology and reduced all theology to the principle of sola fide. The Christian church today is inundated with isms of every stripe and hue. We could spend forever and aye fighting the tentacles of error, but we need to get to the heart. All error is united in its common opposition to the principle of justification by faith alone. All error obscures the bright light of the Gospel. What the church and the world desperately need is the truth of justification by faith alone without the encumbrance of the popular errors which have obscured it.
While Roman theologians may sometimes use the words of the Reformation or the Bible, this does not means that the words have the same content. According to the Romanists, "justification by grace" means to be righteous in the sight of God because the soul is inwardly adorned with grace (gratia infusa). "Justification by Christ" means to be made righteous by the actual indwelling of Christ's pure life which is substituted (internally) for the impure life of the sinner. "Justification by faith" means that faith itself as a qualitas makes the believer righteous in the sight of God.
While ignorant Protestants may applaud the changes taking place in Rome, in reality nothing has changed at all. The organization which has proved itself capable of adopting the institutions of paganism and adapting them to its own use can also adopt the slogans of Protestantism and adapt them to its own use.
The Reformation principle of justification by faith alone always points to the saving realities which are completely outside of man. Grace is pure mercy which is outside of man in the heart of God. The righteousness which justifies is outside of man, for it is the obedience which Jesus Christ performed two thousand years ago. In justification this righteousness is not infused, but imputed. It is not in man, who is on Earth, but in Christ, who is in Heaven. Faith justifies, not because it has any intrinsic merit, but solely because it is the instrument which accepts the imputed gift. Justification by faith alone means that I live in the favor of God by the righteousness which is found in another. It means to be accepted as righteous because another is righteous. In every way it leads me "to the Rock which is higher than I."
What happens in Romanism is that everything is internalized. The words grace, righteousness, justification, substitution may remain, but they no longer have the objective meaning. The work of the Holy Spirit in us is substituted for the work of Christ for us as the cause of pardon and acceptance. The inward renewal of the believer is put in the place of the imputed righteousness of Christ. God's transforming act in man displaces God's redemptive act for man. The focus of attention is not outward, but inward; not in Heaven at the right hand of God, but "in the cave of the heart" and in "the new interior life." What remains objective in Romanism is not the work of Christ, but the work of the Antichrist and his priests, which Rome calls the church.
We deal with Rome at the head of all the religious isms because she is the "mother" of "the abominations of the Earth" (see Revelation 17:5). It is this system which most perfectly epitomizes all false religions. Every devious ism can find its true home here, for the common denominator of all false religion is its preoccupation with the interior life of the worshiper.
*This is a Reformation slogan which means the church reformed and always reforming. It implies that the church is not truly reformed unless it continues to reform. (Return to document)
(Continued in Part Two)
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