Our two Scriptures this morning encompass all three part of the slogan of the Protestant Reformation. Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone – sola gratia – grace alone – and sola fide – faith alone. These three ideas continue to inform our understanding of religion and God and faith some 500 plus years after the Protestant Reformation. And with these ideas, taken from Scripture, the Reformers really did get it right.
Today is, of course, Reformation Sunday. It is a day when we are encouraged to look back at the beginnings of our religion in an effort not only to celebrate what brought us to this point but also to remember the foundations of our faith. The slogan that was the revolutionary cry so long ago is a good place to start.
“The Word of God endures forever.” Our faith is based first on Scripture – the Word of the Lord – and what it reveals about God and God’s will for us. Our passage from Isaiah speaks to the idea that all things that are of human origin are temporary, but how God’s Word is forever. The things of human origin include sometimes closely held beliefs about how to be the church. In the days of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, the Church was the Catholic Church – capital C. There weren’t other Christian denominations in the Western World, and so everyone who professed to believe in Christ Jesus was Catholic. Reading was not common in those days and Bibles weren’t in the night stand of every hotel, so most people did not read the Bible themselves. Instead, they depended on interpretation from priests and church leaders. In fact, it was the law of the church for people to be dependent on the teachings of the church leaders – even most priests were forbidden from reading the Bible. While there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of these leaders were very faithful men, there were a few bad apples in the bunch. And, not surprisingly, those few bad apples managed to spoil a whole bunch of stuff. They made rules and traditions that did not fit with the Scriptures, leading the people astray. People were not following the Word of God, but human traditions, human interpretations, human ideas. It was like the church had put a wall between God and God’s people, a wall that kept God’s Word and the power that it holds away from the ordinary believer.
Along came Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and the rest of the crowd. Subversives that they were, they ignored the edicts not to read the Bible for themselves and secretly not only read Scripture, but also translated it into language the masses of common people could understand. Though people still could not read, the preaching became more focused on God’s Word and worship became centered around the Word instead of focused almost solely on the Sacraments. As the people heard, read and studied, they came to believe that what was being taught was not right, that something needed to change. They became aware of the places where the teachings of the Church split off from the Scriptures and they set out to mend these breaches, to correct these errors, to do what they were able to make sure that what was passed down was not human wisdom that would fade like a flower or like grass, but the eternal Word of God that would go on forever.
The cry Sola Scriptura did not mean that we should throw out all traditions or ignore all human wisdom, but that our faith should be formed by what we learn from the Word of God when we study it together rather than blindly accepting what we are told. We are supposed to make sure we are going directly to the source, not allowing walls to be built between us and God, not allowing what is as temporary as grass to keep us from the eternal Word of God. Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone should be our foundation for faith, our guide to God’s self-revelation, and our handbook for living.
Our second Scripture passage talks about the relationship between faith and grace, encompassing both sola fide and sola gratia. Back at the time of the Reformation, it was widely taught that in order to gain entrance to heaven, people had to earn their way by doing good works, including paying the church for masses and indulgences and prayers. This is contradicted by what is found in Scripture, but it served the purposes of the growing church that wanted to build great Cathedrals and gain political power. Pressure to give money to the church was brought to bear upon those who the church should have been helping with daily bread. Little attention was paid to the words of Christ that said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”(John 11:25-26) Instead, attention was focused on making sure that the church was well appointed, lavishly decorated, and powerful, as if that were more important to God than the care of His children. People were taught that they must count up good works, that priests had the authority to tell them what they had to do to atone for their sins, that entry to heaven had to be earned.
But the coming of Christ was opposed to all of that. Jesus made the perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins because He was the only One who could. Once Jesus came and gave His life for our sins, our salvation was no longer about being able to follow the rules, but was about believing and living out our beliefs. Jesus decentralized the power, opposing the powerful religious leaders of His day and pointing out that doing what God’s Word said was more important than following human rules. Jesus, going against all the teachings, tradition, and history of the church said that people did not gain entry to heaven by following laws, but by believing in Him. Everything else He taught was about how we will live if we believe in Him and accept the gift of salvation. Jesus didn’t focus on teaching in beautiful synagogues, but out among the people. He didn’t remind people of their obligation to do as church leaders taught, but of the gift they had received and how that should influence their lives, issuing in good works.
We see the contrast between what the church was teaching at the time of the Reformation and what Jesus taught in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul points out that we were once like those who have never heard the name Jesus, those who had to earn their way to heaven by good works and following the law, and that we all fell short of the mark. “1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” But then Paul goes on to say, “4But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” We are no longer subject to salvation earned by good works and following the rules, but have been given a great gift – the gift of grace. And it is God’s grace alone – sola gratia – by which we are saved. We cannot do anything to earn God’s love, nor can we do anything to destroy God’s love for us. Instead, we must simply accept God’s grace in Jesus Christ and we are assured of salvation. Heaven’s entry is not guarded by those who would tally our good deeds; seats at the heavenly table do not require us to buy tickets with worldly money. Instead, we are welcomed by Christ and the heavenly realm when our time on earth is done. We haven’t and can’t do anything worthy of this reward; it is only by God’s grace that we receive it. That’s what sola gratia means. We are saved only by God’s own grace freely given. And Scripture proves that over and over.
But what of faith? If the third part of the slogan is faith alone, don’t we have to have faith in order to be saved? The short answer is yes, but…. Yes, we must have faith, but we do not gain it by works. Yes, we must have faith, but even that faith is a gift from God. Our very faith is not of our own doing. Paul says it, “8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9not by works, so that no one can boast.” We cannot be reasoned into faith. We cannot be tricked into it, purchased into it, or badgered into it. Faith is a gift we receive from the hand of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And this faith we claim is, in many ways, not even our own faith, but that of Christ. It is Christ’s faith that put him on the cross. It is Christ’s faith that allowed His resurrection from the dead. It is Christ’s faith, His belief in and love for us, that allowed Him to pay our way. If we claim faith as something we must do, must acquire, then we turn faith into a work. But if we accept that faith comes from God through Jesus as a gift freely given, then we come to see that all of salvation – Scripture, grace, and faith – are the work and gift of God.
So, if everything about our faith is from God, then does that mean we bear no responsibility for how we live in the world? That was one of the arguments used against the Reformers. But it is a false argument. Instead, knowing that we have received so great a gift makes us beholden to the Lord even more. We already owed our existence to His creating hand, but now we can see we owe also our salvation and even our faith itself to Him who gives so generously to us. The Reformers looked at the amazing gifts of God and could not imagine how a person could be anything less than overwhelmed with gratitude for the gifts received. They knew that the gratitude of believers would lead them to do good works, not out of obligation to earn, but out of salvation because these good works are what we were created for. It is backed up by Paul’s words, “10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The good works we do should be as natural as breathing – as much a part of our daily life as the sunrise. The good works we do are what we were created for.
God made us specifically to do good, thus increasing His Kingdom. God gifted us with faith by His own grace that we might live lives of gratitude, sharing with others the amazing grace we have found in the One who died for our sins, freely giving His very life for us. God made us to praise Him in word and in deed.
As we celebrate Reformation Sunday, I’d like us to focus on living out the slogan of the Reformers – to be guided by Scripture and to live as if we truly accept and understand that we owe everything, even our faith, to God who gave us such overwhelming grace as to save us from ourselves. I’d like us to be so overcome by gratitude that we feel compelled to thank Go every day in ways that make a difference for His Kingdom. I’d like us to be so grateful that we give not only what is left of the abundance God has blessed us with, but out of the need to show our appreciation for all that God has given us and done for us. I’d like to see us, every single one of us, doing good for others rather than focusing on accumulating wealth for ourselves. For all wealth is of human origin – it, too, is like grass that will wither and fade. But the good we do in the world when we give to others, and even to the church so that it may continue to be a place that God’s people gather and from which they go out into the world to spread God’s Word, this good helps the Word of God live on. Amen.