by A. B. Simpson
We celebrate this year the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses, which is commonly accepted as the start of the Protestant Reformation.The principles of the Reformation are no less significant because centuries have passed. They capture the heart of the gospel Alliance messengers proclaim around the world.
There is no finer missionary lesson than the story of the Reformation—the most important event in the history of the Christian Church since Apostolic times. The hand of God is signally manifest in the preparation of men, the simultaneousness of the movement in all parts of Europe, and the marvelous Providences that marked each development. The personal commemoration of Martin Luther will have proved a sad failure if it does not lead us to forget the man in the grander movement of which he was only the central figure.
The Work of Luther
God needed just such a man for the hour that had come. In his own soul the battle of the Reformation must first be fought, and the preciousness of the Bible and the doctrine of justification by faith must be sealed upon his own heart by the Holy Ghost through his deep conflicts and bitter tears. His own eyes must see at Rome the utter hollowness of the Church and hear on the Lateran steps the message of God: “The just shall live by faith.”
His deep and positive convictions, mighty courage, sublime faith, and bright buoyant heartiness were all divine gifts for the great leadership Providence assigned him. His noble friend the Elector Frederick and his more invaluable co-worker, Philip Melanchthon, were among the marks of God’s mighty hand which stand out so vividly in this story of this strange century.
Above all else, we have to thank God for his utter abandonment of Rome, compelling decisive action on both sides, and saving the Reformation from the fate of a wretched compromise. The course of centuries was shaped when these words were fearlessly spoken: “Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other.”
The personal work of Luther was prodigious. He gave Germany the Bible—that was a colossal labor. He flooded Europe with tracts. His students were scattered over the continent and became the first evangelists of the new gospel in all countries. His correspondence and conferences embraced the leading minds of his day. His sermons and lectures were models of homely eloquence, and the common people heard him gladly.
His study of the Mystics may have given him a deeper religious experience than his countrymen have received from his hand. His life was not faultless, and his work left much to be added, but no man can well deny that since Paul finished his course, no human life has left so deep and lasting, so sound and wholesome, so formative and determining an influence on the history of the world and the Church of God as the street singer of Eisleben, the monk of Erfut, the theologian of Wittenburg, the hero of Worms, Martin Luther. . . .
Present State of the Churches of the Reformation
It must be sadly confessed, after 300 years of great opportunity, that the Reformation Churches have not fulfilled the full promise of their early and glorious beginning; if indeed, they have held at all, in many countries, what they gained in the first 50 years. The Churches of England, Scotland, and America are active and aggressive; those of Germany and Switzerland cold and formal; those of France, Spain, and Italy weak and struggling; and the very remnant of Protestantism almost extinct in other countries.
Undoubtedly these Churches control the leading nations of the world, and their principles are widely diffused and their missions rapidly evangelizing the whole world. But it need not be held back, and it cannot be excused that after 300 years of conflicts in which 100 million martyrs have died, there are scarcely more than 100 million Protestants—nominally even—in all the world, or one to every martyr, and to every 15 of the human race.
Is it a time to say, “I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing”? Is it not perhaps a time to listen to His solemn whisper, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot”? Is it not a time for solemn earnestness when even Protestants are subverting the very first principle of the Reformation, the literal inspiration and supreme authority of the Word of God? And is it not a time for earnest thought whether even that glorious Reformation did not lack some things which would have saved it from even partial failure, and whether it is yet too late for us to learn them; and learning them to find the secret of something better than even a Reformation, even the Restoration of the simplicity, purity, and power of Apostolic Christianity?
Shall we dare, perhaps, to hint what some of these things are?
- A Christianity as catholic as Romanism claims to be, but is not, a Christianity ignoring all sectarian divisions and human names, and uniting all true believers on the Word of God alone.
- An independence for each church and community of believers as full and free as that which the Council at Jerusalem gave to the churches of the Gentiles and Paul to the Corinthians.
- A Christian life as pure and separated from the world as Christ enjoined.
- A ministry as humble, disinterested, and free from mercenary gain, literary and social ambition, and ecclesiastical preferment or pride as the first humble followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
- A recognition and baptism of the Holy Ghost as the Life and Living Director of all the work of the Church, and a dependence upon Him for knowledge, utterance, and power as implicit as we find in the early Church.
- The restoration of the Special Gifts or Charismata of the Apostolic Church in all their fullness as the permanent endowment and equipment of the Church for the great conflict, and the perpetual evidence to an unbelieving age of the truth of Christianity, and the unceasing token of the Master’s living presence among His people, according to His promise.
- The possession of a thoroughly aggressive spirit of missionary evangelization on the part of the whole church of God, in a manner worthy of the awful trust left her by the Master for a dying world, in a measure commensurate with her immense and yet almost untouched resources, and in the hope and prospect of her Lord’s speedy and promised personal coming.
These are some of the lost things which even the Reformation did not restore, and which will yet, we trust, bring to us the power of early Christianity, the true answer to Romanism and infidelity, the rapid evangelization of the world, and may we not hope the speedy advent of our Lord.
A. B. Simpson was the founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. This adapted article was first published in The Word, Work and World in 1883.