Reformation Day Message 2025

All right, well, let me open in a word of prayer as we settle down now. Father, thank you for this time,

Lord. Thank you again for this day, Lord. This is a wonderful way to commemorate and celebrate the

Reformation, Lord. And though we've had some fun and games and some laughter, we do desire to be serious now,

Lord, as we consider perhaps the gravity and weight of the Protestant Reformation, Lord, and especially the five truths that really summarize and capture what the

Reformation was about, Lord. For these truths are simply found in the word of God. We pray, Lord, that that word would be set forth and that as your word always does, it would be effectual,

Lord, for you say your word will never return to you empty. It's always accomplishing the reason you send it forth.

We pray that would be true even this evening, Lord. I pray especially for those who perhaps don't know anything about the

Reformation. Perhaps they haven't really heard the terms that we're about to describe. And Lord, I pray you'd open their eyes and their hearts to receive it.

Help them to see not just the truth, but as that book title said, the beauty and the glory of the

Reformation, Lord. And may we, as the reformers desired, always be reforming, Lord, that is always seeking to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, our

Lord, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors, we're gathered this evening to celebrate the

Reformation. I know a lot about the Reformation because I've loved the Reformation for a lot of years, but I don't take that for granted that perhaps there's some here, not even just young, but even old, that don't really know what the

Reformation is. So what is the Reformation? Well, the Reformation is the dawn and the legacy really of a protest movement.

That's where we get that word Protestant, protest. And it's a Protestant movement, a protest movement in the

Western church. In the Western church, of course, as you come away from the early centuries, you have this medieval period.

And the church in the West during this medieval period is very unlike the church as it was in the first few centuries.

Those of you who have attended our church and come to Sunday night study, we've been learning about those early centuries.

Well, we understand that that medieval church, what we know as the Roman Catholic church, a system of Roman Catholicism, as it became to known, was rejected by the

Protestants. And the Protestant Reformation was essentially the protest, the reform of the church in the

West, in Europe. And all forms in the West of Christianity outside of that European stretch of medieval

Catholicism owe their lineage, their heritage, their birthright to the

Protestants. And so that's what the Reformation is. Now, to understand the Reformation, to understand its cause, to understand the concerns that drove it, we can turn to five things.

And these five things we're gonna look at this evening. These things we call the five solas, five solas.

Can I be the annoying teacher of the classroom and have everyone repeat with me? Five solas, five solas.

You're gonna get quizzed on this later. Five solas. Well, what are the five solas? Sola is a

Latin word meaning only or alone. And the five solas are essentially the points, the theological points of the

Reformation. What did the Protestants care about? Well, you could boil it all down to these. Here's the first sola, the first point.

Sola scriptura, repeat after me. Sola scriptura, that is scripture alone.

2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17 reads, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Well, leading up to the Reformation, Luther and other reformers found that the tradition of the church in several places did not follow what scripture taught.

The further they went into scripture, the further away from the practices of the church they were going.

And the views and the traditions of the early church that they were studying were very different than the views and the traditions of the medieval church.

Luther told an opponent this, the truth of scripture comes first. After that truth is accepted, one can determine the meanings of men.

So Luther desired not to shut his ears to tradition, but to examine tradition in light of the highest authority over tradition, which is the word of God.

This is sola scriptura, scripture alone. Insofar as creeds, councils, traditions of the church faithfully expressed the teaching of scripture, all the reformers regarded those traditions, creeds, and councils as authoritative, true, right.

But if they went against the clear meaning of scripture, they rejected them entirely. Scripture was to be seen as the only authority for all matters of faith and practice.

Now, some of the reporters opponents, like the very wise Erasmus of Rotterdam, they agreed with Luther to a degree.

Erasmus was perhaps the brightest bulb in the adornments of luminaries in the 16th century, but Luther bested him when it came to some of these points of theology.

Well, Erasmus said, Luther, the authority of scripture is not under dispute. We agree about that. Our battle is about the meaning of scripture.

That's because at the time, the Catholic church had believed that tradition was on par as an authoritative source with scripture.

The church's traditions, the magisterium's interpretation carried the same weight and force as scripture itself.

Erasmus says, we're just debating about the meaning, not the authority. Luther said, no, we're debating about the authority because you're putting tradition and councils on par with scripture.

I want to subject them to scripture. To put it in another way, Catholics taught that the church establishes the meaning of the gospel.

Let me say that again. Catholics taught that the church establishes the meaning of the gospel.

The reformers said, no, the gospel establishes, or the gospel establishes the meaning of the church.

It's the other way around. Churches are established by the gospel rather than the other way around.

So Luther said this to paraphrase. A simple peasant armed with one verse of scripture has more authority than the mightiest of popes without it.

Scripture is the highest authority. Again, this does not deny the role of creeds, councils, and traditions.

All forms of Christianity have them, bear them, use them. What it does do is it forces the knees of those creeds and councils to the truth and authority of God's word, the final authority for all matters of faith and practice.

That's sola scriptura. So again, repeat, sola scriptura. Sola scriptura.

Secondly, sola gratia. That is by grace, by grace.

Sola gratia. Ephesians 2, eight and nine. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And that, not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, so that no one can boast.

Oh, something perhaps you didn't know about Augustine. Augustine was a monk, but he was a particular kind of monk. He was an

Augustinian monk. Now Augustine was an early church figure from the fifth century. And Augustine was a very important theologian.

A lot of what medieval Catholicism had become has its roots in Augustine. But a lot of the

Protestant Reformation has its roots in Augustine as well. He's a watershed figure in a lot of different ways.

Well, one of the battles that Augustine faced in the 400s was putting down the views of a heretic named

Pelagius. Pelagius had this view that when mankind fell in Genesis 3, it was just Adam and Eve that fell into sin.

Their children, their offspring weren't condemned. They weren't born into that guilt. They were actually born innocent, just like Adam had been created.

It was up to them to keep the commandments of God. And if they could keep them, they were righteous and would be blessed by God.

So everyone is born with, as it were, a clean slate, a fair shot. Well, Augustine said to this, absolutely not.

The testimony of scripture is that in Adam, all mankind fell. Human beings are born into the guilt of Adam.

Adam was their covenant head, their representative. And as it were, when Adam fell, we fell in him.

We are in the place of Adam, not born upright to be able to keep God's commandment, but born in trespass in sin, born into a fallen world, born into a fallen condition, born, as Augustine taught so well, into the bondage of Adam's guilt, into the tyranny of that corruption ever since the fall.

That is what Christians call the bad news. We're born guilty. And all we do are the works of our father, who's guilty, condemned before God.

Now, as an Augustinian, Luther followed that same argument. And as he followed that same argument and saw it everywhere in scripture, he realized, yes, we are in bondage to a sinful nature.

If we're in bondage to a sinful nature and we're born guilty, then we're not able to free ourselves.

We're already guilty, so we don't even have a shot from the beginning. But when he looked at the church and the tradition around him, he felt that doesn't seem to be what the church teaches.

The church seems to have what he called a form of semi -Pelagianism. Not quite Pelagianism, as if everyone's born with a clean slate, but a view that went something like this.

A believer's right standing with God was the result of cooperating between God's grace and that believer's own will, that believer's own willpower.

So there was a cooperation, or another really fancy word for that would be a synergism. God gives grace and you bring your will and desire, and between those two things, you arrive at a right standing before God.

You can be accepted as righteous before him because you have cooperated with his grace. Well, the reformers rejected this view entirely, and they rejected it by saying sinners are saved by grace alone, sola gratia.

Grace is a gift, as Ephesians 2 .9 says. It's the gift of God, not of work, so that no man can boast.

A gift is something given. A gift is not something owed. A gift is given. A gift is not something earned.

It's not something worked out or worked toward. A gift is simply freely received because a gift is simply freely forgiven, freely given.

Now, just like Augustine had argued against Pelagius, the reformers saw that we are not saved by our own works or by our own efforts.

It's not our willpower that can save us. We're not merely sick in need of some health.

We're not merely about to drown, and we need to kind of climb our way up. We're not in a pit that if we try hard enough and God gives us some helping grace, we can eventually make it out.

The scriptures teach that we're dead in trespass and sin. We're not climbing out of a pit.

We're dead in the bottom of it. We're not trying to tread water. We're at the bottom of the sea and the floor.

We're born dead in trespass and sin. There is no spiritual life. So lifeless, unable to save ourselves, the reformers understood salvation is always an act of pure grace.

It's all of grace. It's by grace alone, sola gratia. Say it with me, sola gratia.

Then sola fide, this is by faith alone. Galatians 3 .11, no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident because the just lives by faith.

Well, the Catholic Church sought to respond to the Reformation. They formed a council at Trent, and they devised a number of articles that were meant to react or push against the

Reformation and defeat it. One of the canons that the Council of Trent developed was aimed at perhaps the most important doctrine of all during the

Reformation, the doctrine of justification. And Protestants taught that we are justified by faith alone, not by works, but by faith alone.

The just shall live by faith. This was the linchpin, the pivot, the cardinal zenith crowning achievement of the

Reformation to clarify what the doctrine of justification means for the people of God.

Now, what is justification? Justification is simply a right standing before a holy

God. How are we right? How are we just before a God who is perfectly holy, perfectly just?

Well, the Catholic answer from the Council of Trent was this, and this is a quote of Canon 9 from the

Council of Trent. If anyone says that by faith alone, the ungodly are justified in such a way as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to receive the justification, and that it's not necessary for man to be prepared or disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema, that is, accursed.

You see, that was their counter to the argument of Luther and the

Reformers. They said, how could it be that the ungodly are justified simply by faith alone?

No, you need to have faith plus a cooperation, and if you cooperate, then you can receive that justification, and then that justification is maintained and carried out as God gives you grace, and you cooperate with your own will.

That's how you'll maintain that right standing before God. Well, in this view, in the

Catholic view, which by the way, that's still canon for Catholicism, that the Council of Trent is not something that's been overturned.

This is what Roman Catholics believe it if they don't know that they believe it. In this view, justification, right standing with God, was initiated by an infusion of God's grace.

Here you are, a guilty sinner, and God's gonna give you a boost. God's gonna give you an adrenaline shot of grace.

He's gonna get the motor going. He's gonna meet you halfway. It's an infusion of grace, and you cooperatively receive that grace and maintain it according to your will.

In other words, a person cooperates with this infused grace, and that's how they maintain their right standing or their justification with God.

But for the Reformers, this was a big problem, because the holiness of God, the

God who dwells in unapproachable light, the holiness of a thrice holy God that even the peerless, sinless angels, the seraphs and the cherubs have to hide their faces from as they cry out in response, holy.

Well, this God is so holy that his standard of justice, in other words, the way that he judges must also be holy.

And Luther understood this. That's why Luther cried, I'll become a monk.

I'll do anything to try to survive that holy judgment from a holy God. And rather than loving this holy

God, Luther said in later years, I look back in that time and I realize I hated God. I dreaded his holiness.

I hated him for that standard. The standard of God's judgment accords with his perfect righteousness.

He is perfectly right in all that he does. That means he cannot abide. He cannot wink. He cannot grate on a curve, not without losing something of his own holiness.

And so rather than denying himself, he must judge righteously with a righteous judgment.

What does that mean for sinners who are born in Adam's guilt and for that reason cannot help themselves or even with a boost of grace, cannot maintain their way toward God or justification?

In other words, how can a sinner be right before a holy God? How can a guilty person with a conscience condemning them with the life that they know is broken and riddled with sin and corruption, how can they possibly withstand the judgment of this righteous

God? They need a perfect righteousness to withstand a perfect judgment. Who can offer that perfect righteousness?

Well, that was the bad news that kept Luther awake at night, kept him whipping his back in the monastery, crawling on his knees as our contestants did, going to confession sometimes every five, 10, 15 minutes a day, doing anything he could to maintain this penance, this right standing before God.

Then he came in the midst of that bad news to the glorious good news. He recognized that in the fall,

God had given a promise. And even though Adam and Eve had fallen, God clothed them with a sacrificial covering.

And he promised them something, that from the woman, one would come who would deliver his people from their sins.

And this one, as Luther understood, was born of a virgin, born, in other words, without sin. And this one lived that perfectly righteous life and therefore had a perfect standing before God.

But instead of receiving the blessing and the reward of eternal life, he took upon himself the curse of sin.

He took death to himself, the death of the cross, that shameful, humiliating death, and he was buried.

But because our God is the God of all grace and mercy and Christ died for our sins, as Paul says, he was raised out of that grave on the third day for our justification.

And so Luther, discovering these things, recognized that's the answer. That's how

I can have a perfect standing in the midst of a perfect God.

That's how I can go from rather dreading the holiness of God to loving the holiness of God because this holy

God sent his own son to die for my sins, to clothe me with a sacrificial covering so that he counts me righteous in his beloved son.

So that's what the scriptures teach. And this essentially is the spark and the fireworks of the

Reformation, justification by faith alone, apart from works, apart from penance, apart from convents and monasteries, apart from rosary beads and confessions.

It's justification by faith alone. So this righteousness of God received by faith and by faith alone, not infused, but reckoned, imputed, counted to those who trust in Christ by faith alone.

And then fourthly, solus Christus, solus Christus.

1 Timothy 2 flies, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man,

Christ Jesus. Well, this faith that justifies alone is a faith in Christ alone.

Now, what does that mean? Solus Christus, faith in Christ alone. Well, the reformers and the

Catholic theologians had no debates over the person of Christ. They all likewise believed that the person of Christ was the eternally begotten son of God, that he was sent from the father through the incarnation for the salvation of his people.

On both sides of the debate, they agreed on this. The problem, the debate was over the work of Christ.

So not the person of Christ, but the work of Christ. In other words, by the time of Luther, medieval

Christendom had constructed a very elaborate system where the grace that could be found alone in Christ was actually distributed and mediated and to be accessed through this elaborate system of priesthood as well as sacraments.

So if you want grace, you need to come to the church. They have the channels and the means to distribute it.

And that's why you can have golden coins put into chests. If you want grace, if you want help, you need to use the channels that are provided by priests and sacraments.

Well, Luther and the reformers realized this system of sacraments, this system of priestcraft was eclipsing the work of Christ.

This work of Christ is a finished work. There's only, as we said, one mediator between God and men, and that is not the priest and not the

Catholic church, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So the reformers argued that the Pope, by utilizing this sacramental system of the medieval era, was usurping the finished work of Christ and making themselves the mediator of grace.

They understood that it's Christ alone, not Christ mediated and distributed through the church that brings salvation to sinners, that the church or the

Pope is not a mediator, but only Christ and Christ alone. Now that is the confession that all of Scripture draws us toward, even as our hearts burn within us as we read in Acts.

For the reformers and all of the heritage they left behind, Christ always shines forth glorious,

Christ alone. And so their books were Christ -centered. Some of you received some books tonight. Those are

Christ -centered books. Their sermons were Christ -centered. Away went the table for mass.

Here, rather, the pulpit became central to the worship of God, and from that pulpit, the word of God, which shares the gospel of Jesus Christ our

Lord. And so their devotion, their worship was Christ -centered. And so the Reformation radically reoriented the worship and devotion of God's people to Christ and Him crucified.

This is what took place. All the barnacles of centuries that had encrusted the understanding of the gospel were scraped away during the

Reformation. Finally, Christ -finished work could be seen and proclaimed. That's what it means to confess solus

Christus, Christ alone. And then lastly, soli

Deo gloria, 1 Peter 4 .11. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.

If anyone ministers, let him do it with the ability which God supplies, that in all things, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever, amen.

The Reformers understood that the whole world is full of God's glory. In fact, all of God's creation is meant to reflect

His glory and cause us to reflect upon God's glory. The fact that God has created us as places and placed us in a relationship with Him means that we owe

Him our very being. As image bearers, we realize it's in Him that we live and move and have our being.

Put simply, human beings exist for the glory of God. Put simpler, all things exist for the glory of God.

The Reformation recovered this truth. The truth of the Reformation of which summarized them in these five solas proclaimed to us the following.

These are, this is a summary from Tim Chester. We are more helpless than we realize.

Can I get a amen to that? We are more helpless than we realize. But here's the beautiful gospel.

Christ is more sufficient than we realize. God is more glorious than we realize.

And therefore, by embracing the gospel, all of life can be embraced to the glory of God alone.

There is simply no room in Reformation theology for human boasting.

It is not the glory of man. It is not the glory of the believer. It is not the glory of the priest, nor the church, nor the pope.

It is the glory of Christ and His salvation to God alone. It's all of grace, in other words, from start to finish.

And that becomes our hope and our stay. The salvation of sinners is founded on the promises of God given in His word, manifest to us in the work of Christ, received by faith, bestowed by grace, and that's all to His glory.

The glory of God alone is essentially the beginning and the end of all these solas. May God make it the beginning and end of our lives as well.

So what are we here to celebrate, brothers and sisters? We're here to celebrate the Reformation. And what does the Reformation boil down to?

Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and the glory of God alone.

If you want a one -sentence summary of why we're celebrating October 31st in this way, it's simply this.

Scripture teaches that we are saved by grace, through faith in Christ, to the glory of God alone.

Amen? These are the central truths of the Reformation. And may we ever celebrate these truths as we live them out to the glory of God.

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this word. Thank You for these truths,

Lord. They're truths not of the Reformers. They're truths not of the 16th century. They're truths from Your precious

Word. Truths that have come from Your own mouth. And therefore, Lord, truths that will endure to the very end of time.

For all flesh is as grass, but Your Word endures forever. May this Word endure in our hearts,

Lord. May we carry on the torch that's been passed to us and from the faithful legacy of our

Reformed past. May we embark further as we seek to advance

Your kingdom with the truth of Your Word and the grace of the Gospel by which alone sinners can be saved in the finished work of Christ received by faith.

May that be true in this room. May that be true for ears young and old alike. Lord, give us the glory.

Give us the joy. Help us to distill the beauty of these things in Your Word. May we be a