In the month of October we recall especially the great event of the Reformation in Western Europe. It is important that we remember this great work of the Lord. Some people may wonder why we should do this. Of what interest or benefit is that for us today, more than 450 years later? Don't we live in an entirely different age, and in a constantly chang­ing world? The truth is that certain things and needs do not change. The nature of man does not change; nor do many weaknesses of the church. Many failures and sins that were found in Israel in the days of Christ, were also prevalent in the church in the days preceding the Reformation, and are still with us today. Perhaps one big difference is that today the devil is more deceptive; we now find the weaknesses of the old church in church members who call themselves children of the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation and throughout the Mid­dle Ages was steeped in formalism, and mere liturgical wor­ship of God. The Bible was hardly known to the masses of lay people. The church's ignorance of the Scriptures was ap­palling. Mere external membership of the church and the "magic" use of the sacraments was all that mattered. Don't we find similar conditions in the church today? And often also in our own lives? Without any question, we must say that today the greatest faults of the church are lethargy, for­mal church membership, lack of interest in God's Word and lack of true spirituality.

At God's time and in His way the great Reformation was brought about. The Lord did not forget His church. The Lord raised up great men at His time to bring about this great change in the church. There were also many forerunners of the Reformation. We know the names of some, such as Hus and Savonarola. No doubt there were hundreds of whom we have never heard, but who were used in some way by the Lord to prepare the church for this great event. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli would never have been able to be as "successful" as they were without the work of these forerunners. Luther and Calvin are best known to us. Both set forth and left with us great principles taught in the Scriptures. In this meditation we want to notice briefly just two of them, one which Luther gave us from the Word and one which Calvin emphasized as the teaching of the Word.

These two thoughts we also find in Psalm 130. The psalmist evidently finds himself in spiritual and emotional depths. God seems far away. Why, we don't know. He deeply feels the need of the Lord. Out of these depths He cries to the Lord for mercy, the mercy of forgiving grace. He knows that God is righteous. If the Lord would keep a record of wrongs done, no one could stand before Him. But God is also merciful; He forgives sins. For that forgiving mercy, the psalmist pleads. And the result of this marvelous forgiveness is the fear of the Lord, a love expressed in Christian living and service. These two truths we often find in the Scriptures. They are basic. The teaching is that our faithful covenant God graciously forgives our sins again and again, and that, as a result, the Christian is called upon to show his gratitude in serving and glorifying this great God. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches the same thing. The result of our gracious redemption from our lost condition of sin must be a life of Christian gratitude.

We find these two teachings of Psalm 130:4 in the careers of Luther and Calvin. For Luther the big question was, "How can I be or become right with God?" Realizing that he was a sinner, he tried all the remedies taught by the Roman Catholic Church of that day, such as meritorious good works, deeds of penance, and self-denial, even inflicting pain on his own body. But all were of no avail. None of these brought him any assurance of being right with God. The answer he finally found in the Scriptures. "The just shall live by faith" (Romans 5 and Galatians 2). Faith in the payment of Jesus Christ was the only way to God. Not faith and works, but faith alone in the complete atonement of Jesus Christ is the only way of becoming right with the Judge of heaven and earth. This became for him one of the great truths of the Reformation.

It may seem somewhat foolish to say, that we still need this emphasis today. But it is necessary in our complacent and satisfied way of living. Sin has become even to many church people an ugly and unused word. Mere external church membership and formal worship seem to satisfy many of them.

Don't the Scriptures teach clearly and emphatically the need of personal knowledge of sin and our confession of it every day? The Lord Jesus teaches us the parable of the Pharisee and Publican. Which Christian who is at all ac­quainted with the Bible, does not repeat again and again with Paul in Romans 7, "What I would I do not, but what I hate I do"? And what Christian doesn't know that Jesus Christ's forgiveness and deliverance is the only remedy? It is the reality of sin, of personal sins that our young people must learn, already as younger boys and girls. They must be taught to pray daily for the forgiveness of their sins, and that their only hope is the forgiving grace of God in Jesus Christ. God's mercies are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23). These beautiful words take on added meaning for people who dai­ly are aware of their shortcomings and sins and of their need of forgiving grace. And the Scriptures teach again and again the faithful love of our great covenant God!

These are basic truths of the Reformation. They are still essential because they are taught in the inerrant Scriptures. If we and our children are going to be true children of the Reformation we have to be people who feel and confess the need of this great forgiving mercy in Jesus Christ our Savior.

The result of the experience of being forgiven by the mercy of God in Christ is that people will and should serve Him. In Psalm130 as well as in many other places in Scripture this service is called "the fear of God." This is the subject taught in the third part of the Heidelberg Catechism. It is the "fear" of love. The Bible also speaks of "the fear of God" in another sense, the fear of God's wrath and judgment. "Fear" as it is used here has an entirely different meaning. This is the "fear" of adoration, of serving God in the consciousness of His great glory and majesty, of thankfulness because of his great redemption from our sins through the Lord Jesus Christ. This kind of fear glorifies God.

John Calvin emphasized the glory of our sovereign God. With him this was not a doctrine to be merely confessed with the lips, and held by the church in creeds kept in the back of a hymnal. He taught it as something that motivates and guides our daily living in a life of godliness. Coupled with it, as also necessary for true Christian living, was his teaching of self-denial. Of this we also see much in his own life, a life of self-denial, despite a weak body, serving the Lord with all his capacities until his dying day.

It is this kind of living that glorifies God. It was necessary to teach this in the days of the Reformation. It is necessary today. We see that also church people are swept along by the spirit of secularism, (the spirit of the world) worship­ping the gods of materialism, and pleasure. May these truths of the Reformation be taught and lived, also in our day. And may the Lord give us grace to hold them high, in our con­fessions, but also in our living.