This article is about the five great truths (solas) of the Reformation and the Reformed faith.

Source: The Banner of Truth, 1994. 3 pages.

Revising our Reformation Principles

What was the Reformation really about? What must we know? What must we love? How must we live? The Reformation has five grand watchwords around which we may cluster all the grand truths and heritage entrusted to us.

Scripture Alone🔗

The first is sola scriptura, meaning 'Scripture alone'. Scripture alone was the great hallmark that gave the Reformation its regulative principle. The cry for a return to Scripture, however, did not commence with Luther. Sporadic voices for sola scriptura, particularly those of John Wycliffe and John Huss, began to multiply rapidly throughout the late Middle Ages. Huss foreshad­owed Luther when he repeatedly answered his opponents: 'Show me from Scripture, and I will repent and recant'. Indeed, Huss' adherence to sola scriptura cost him his life, for it was this undergirding principle that com­pelled him to attack both curialism (supreme authority resting in one highest prelate) and conciliarism (supreme authority resting in gatherings of prelates).

In Hussite fashion, Martin Luther also received grace to place the infalli­ble Word above the fallible church. His renowned reply at the Diet of Worms under the threat of impending death grants ample proof of this assertion:

Since your lordships and majesty desire a simple reply I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason ... I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other ... my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.

In one year Martin Luther translated the entire Bible into German, penned his renowned Small Catechism on Scripture's basics, and confessed he had done so in order that an 'average European ploughboy armed with a Bible in one hand and a catechism in the other, would be able to put to flight all the arguments of priests, prelates and archbishops'.

Sola scriptura, as a principle of religious definition, spread rapidly throughout Europe. It trumpeted no uncertain sound in the lives and writings of the Reformers. The Reformers believed Scripture to be the hub from which radiates law, doctrine, preaching and guidance for every question of faith and morals. In all questions of faith and life, Scripture must be the preeminent touchstone and infallible norm. All doctrinal explanations of church fathers, decrees of councils and laws of churches should be in agreement with express statements or implications of Scripture; if not, such beliefs must be immedi­ately abandoned.

Scripture, the Reformers taught, is perfect, complete, clear, authoritative, inerrant and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Grace Alone🔗

Sola gratia — 'grace alone' — is the second great watchword of the Reforma­tion. Luther and his successors have all clustered around this great pillar.

The issue was clear-cut for Luther: Does man initiate and assist in divine forgiveness, or does God provide, initiate, effect and complete the full-orbed salvation of lost sinners so that glory must be attributed solely to sovereign grace? In response to Erasmus' Diatribe, Luther's Bondage of the Will cham­pioned the priority of divine grace. Luther insisted that a sinner was both unable to provide a saving remedy and unable to take hold of one provided. Luther saw vividly that the only approach that could shrivel the ponderous Roman Catholic system of indulgences, pilgrimages, penances and the like was to strike at the root of the controversy. It was a matter of free grace versus free will. Even Erasmus was compelled to confess: 'You and you alone have seen the hinge on which all turns and aimed for the vital spot: free will ver­sus the grace of God'.

Free grace is the church's crying need of the present hour. Grace alone needs to be the supreme call of the church in our day. Not a human decision, not a human manipulation, not the secular methods of modern man to gain man-made converts, but the old-fashioned gospel method of sovereign grace alone is the message that captures and transforms the hearts of sinners by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Faith Alone🔗

Thirdly, we must come to live sola fide — 'by faith alone'. The life and experience of Martin Luther is well-known. He went through struggles, fastings and agonies to find God's peace. He slept on cement, mortified himself, even sometimes drawing blood, so determined was he to find a way to God by human works. One day, however, God showed him in the simplicity of grace, that salvation is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the whole righteousness of his people. The righteousness of God is by faith alone. 'The just shall live by faith'. When Luther experienced this, he later wrote, 'Immediately I felt myself to have gone through open doors into Paradise'.

Luther saw that it was via the hand of faith, the pipeline of faith, the gift of faith that God enabled him to grasp the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is the instrument that unites with Christ, that lives out of Christ, that causes the soul to partake of Christ. Christ can be presented and preached, but if a veil is between our hearts and Christ, Christ becomes like a veiled statue.

Faith alone is the way to God. Faith means to touch the hem of Christ's garment and be made whole. Faith means to abandon human reasoning and human effort in the way of salvation and to cast ourselves naked at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith says, 'Lord, we have fished all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at thy word we will let down the net'. Faith means, as Luther once said, to go lost to the feet of Jesus.

The more Luther struggled and the more the Reformation progressed, the more he was built and based on this grand doctrine of 'by faith alone'. In his latter days he wrote these words:

I see that the devil is continually attacking this fundamental article and that in this respect he cannot stop or slow down his attacks. Well then I, Dr Martin Luther, unworthy heralder of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, do confess this article that faith alone without works justifies us in the sight of God and I declare that in spite of the emperor of the Romans, the emperor of the Turks, the Pope, all car­dinals, bishops, priests, monks, nuns, kings, princes, nobles, all the world and all devils, this truth shall stand forever.

This attitude needs to be ours today.

Christ Alone🔗

We often talk about the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther but do we recall that Zwingli also wrote Sixty-seven Theses only six years after Martin Luther? These Theses, or theological statements, exalt Christ:

The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of his heavenly Father and redeemed us by His innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us unto God.Thesis 2

Therefore, Christ is the only way to salvation to all who were, who are, and who shall be saved.Thesis 3

Whosoever seeks or shows another door errs, yea, is a murderer of souls and a robber.Thesis 4

Christ is the Head of all believers who are his body and without him the body is dead.Thesis 7

Christ is the only Mediator between God and us.Thesis 19

Christ is our righteousness.Thesis 22

Our Reformed forebears unabashedly proclaimed: solus Christus (Christ alone). In Christ is life; outside of Christ is death. Without him we can do nothing; through him, everything. Outside of Christ, God cannot but be an everlasting fire and consuming burning; in Christ, he is a gracious Father. This is Reformation doctrine, for only in Christ can God's justice be satis­fied, i.e. by his active and passive obedience.

The Glory of God🔗

The fifth great Reformation insistence was on: Deo gloria — glory to God alone. Luther's great question as a young man had been 'How can I be saved?' But he turned, especially in later years, to the still deeper question, 'How can God be glorified?' It was especially Calvin who embodied this watchword in his writing. When John Calvin came to die, many diseases were raging through his body. One biographer exaggeratedly counted eighty-three of them! But even in those last weeks he was completing the final draft of his renowned Institutes. At one point his pain became so severe that even his dearest friends begged him to leave the final pages incomplete. Calvin could not agree to their request. His Master's honour was at stake. Subse­quently, the true motto of Calvin's life has been accurately summed up in his most renowned confession: 'My heart I offer to thee, Lord, promptly and sincerely'.

Glory to God alone — this was also the motto of the life of the Reformers and those in kinship movements. Often they gave their lives literally for the glory of God. They were men and women moved under the realisation that their lives were not their own; they did not belong to themselves, but their comfort in life and death was that they belonged to the faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ. The pulse of the Reformation registers its proper beat in this fifth watchword — glory to God alone. Scripture itself climaxes this in a great Pauline doxology where the apostle reaches the very apex of all his thinking and exclaims:

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.Romans 11:37

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