LEARNING FROM HISTORY
This year marks the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland. This was a very important event not just for that nation but for the United Kingdom as a whole. Much of what happened in Scotland influenced in a dramatic way events in England. Whilst there have been many celebrations of this north of the border, it has been almost totally ignored in England and by English evangelicals. It would be very remiss of me to allow the year to end without making some reference to those great events.
The Reformation in general receives a poor press in the national media and even evangelicals are rather shy of proclaiming its value and the glorious truths that were rediscovered and preached at that time. Indeed the Reformation is often regarded as a tragedy and some, including many who claim to be evangelical, would call it a sin. Unity is the important thing and division over doctrine is always to be deplored. So to recall those days of division is an unacceptable thing.
Before accepting that premise we need to recall what was at stake at the time of the Reformation. It was the Gospel itself. It was nothing less than the whole truth about how a sinner may become right with God. Those great truths had been hidden by the Roman Catholic Church for centuries and then they began to be rediscovered and publicly preached. But the men and women who espoused those soul saving truths faced horrendous deaths and terrible persecution in order to bring them into the open. Certainly our knowledge of the way of salvation, our access to a Bible in our own language and the widespread preaching of the Gospel across the globe all come from the Reformation.
To put a merely organisational unity before such tremendous matters is to devalue the work of Christ and the value of the eternal well-being of men and women around us. There should be unity in the truth. But that will mean espousing the truths for which the Reformers stood and for which many of them died.
Fifty years ago Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones gave a memorable address in Edinburgh to commemorate the Scottish Reformation. It has been suggested that it would be good to look at some of the issues he raised and apply them to ourselves. So over the next few weeks we will do that.
At the outset of his address Dr. Lloyd-Jones spoke about how to deal with history. Here is what he said:
“There is a right and wrong way of viewing a great event like the Reformation and the great men who took part in it. The first, the right way, we are told of in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 13, verses 7 and 8: ‘Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.’ {I am quoting from the NIV whereas he used the AV}.
“But there is a wrong way of doing this, and we find it in Matthew, chapter 23, verses 29-32. These are terrible and terrifying words: ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!”
Dr. Lloyd-Jones goes on to show that what the Lord was showing in this passage is that the religious leaders of His day were just like their forefathers because they were persecuting and pursuing to death the Lord Jesus Himself. The value then of looking back is first of all to expose ourselves to the deepest scrutiny. What priority do we give to the truths that came to the forefront at the Reformation? Do they matter to us? Do we see their absolute necessity for the eternal well-being of men today? Are we ready to stand up and be distinctive for the sake of truth and the honour of God, or do we prefer acceptance by others even though they devalue and compromise the saving message of Christ crucified? Are we closer to the Reformers or their persecutors?
Dr. Lloyd-Jones then sights a further reason for looking back to these past events. “I am concerned about the present state of affairs which is approximating to the state of affairs that obtained before the Protestant Reformation. You are aware of the state of the morals of this country and of Great Britain in general, before the reformation: Vice, immorality and sin were rampant. My friends, it is rapidly becoming the same again! There is a woeful moral and social declension. We are being surrounded by the very problems that were most obvious before the Reformation took place.”
Having dealt with the moral decline he then raised the issue of the state of the church and the small number of people who attended. So it had been at the time of the Reformation. Ceremonies and ritual increasingly predominate while as Dr. Lloyd-Jones puts it “the Word of God is being preached less and less, sermons are becoming shorter and shorter.” So he highlights further parallels between pre-Reformation days and his day. Well we might notice that things have declined even more over the fifty years since he gave this address. Preaching takes second place not only to ceremonies and ritual, but also to music and entertaining presentations. And the influence of the Church of Rome to which Dr. Lloyd-Jones also alluded is even greater in our nation today. The parallels are enormous. Indeed a number of conservative evangelical commentators, like David Wells and Cart Truman, have called attention to this pre-Reformation drift within the church, including the evangelical church.
Now the point of all this is not simply to bemoan the state of the nation and be negative, but to recall that God did a tremendous thing. In the Reformation he changed the “whole course of history, not only the history of the church but secular history too.” This is surely a very good reason to recall these events. To remember what God has done, so that we may be stirred to believe He is able to do it again; work to achieve this end and more especially be provoked to prayer that He may indeed do it again. We truly can, and should, learn from history. The Scriptures instruct us that we should do so and it is incumbent upon us to apply ourselves in this vital activity.
(All quotations from ‘Knowing the Times’ by D.M. Lloyd-Jones published by the Banner of Truth Trust – 1989).
Roger Hitchings 01/12/10