There were two main causes for the Reformation, the formal cause was the issue of Sola Scriptura, the material cause was the issue of Sola Fide. I have discussed in brief and in part what was the Reformation, wherein the main issues revolve around the authority of Scripture and how sinful man can be justified. It is in understanding the implications of these two Latin terms that we can understand what it is to be a Christian.

Well, what is a Christian? In this day and age everybody confesses to be Christian. Roman Catholics do it, the Mormons do it, the Jehovah’s Witnesses do it; in fact every group, heretical, cultic or not confesses themselves as “Christian.” But you and I know that just because someone pays homage to the label “Christian”, it doesn’t instantly make them one.

1. What is a Christian? A Christian is a person that believes that man is created in the image of God. And as man has this unquenchable desire to express and relate himself to others, so too does God have the desire to relate Himself to His creation. A Christian is a person who believes that God has spoken.

God has spoken. God has made Himself knowable to His creatures. It’s not as if the knowledge of God is hidden in the world and only a select few enlightened ones can discover this truth of God, as the gnostics suggest. A Christian is one who believes that matters of truth and eternity are clearly revealed by God, and that, revealed clearly and sufficiently in His Word. Truth and reality is not to be explained by mere opinion, feelings or human experience, but it is defined by God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture.

The Roman Church believes that both Tradition and the Bible are the authorities given men that binds the conscience. Rome teaches that matters of faith and practice are dictated not only by God’s Word but also by Tradition. This of course is totally untrue. In the time of the Reformation, the Reformers believed that it is the expressed teaching of Scripture that the Word of God is the only infallible source in regards to faith, practice and salvation.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

—2 Timothy 3:16-17

This is Sola Scriptura, “Scripture Alone.”

This is an amazing thing. But sadly, most of us who do profess to be Christians are not amazed at this fact. God was in no obligation at all to reveal Himself to man. Why would He? What ever is it in man that deserves such a condescension from God? Man, an abomination before the sight of God, continually and perpetually living in moral rebellion against his Creator. An utter ingrate, basking in his lust. Yet, nevertheless, in God’s sheer mercy and grace He condescends Himself to make Himself known to His creation. And not only did He reveal Himself in His holiness, His wrath and justice that we rightfully deserve, in His grace He has made known a way for salvation. This is an amazing thing.

An amazing thing, yes, very much so, yet how dare we, even among those who profess themselves to be Christian, take for granted this amazing self-revelation of God, in His Word, in the Bible? God has revealed Himself to sinful man, yet even Christian professors themselves would say things like “I have more important things to do”, “This Bible does not deserve an importance in my time and affections.”

A Christian is a person who believes that God has spoken. Are you a Christian?

2. A Christian is a person who believes in Christ. The very reason why a Christian calls himself a Christian is because of the person and work of One named Jesus. “Christ” means “Messiah”, or more contextually accurate, “the Jewish Messiah.” A Christian is not someone who just pays mental assent to the existence of Jesus in History, for anyone can confess and profess agreement to that and yet not be a Christian. It’s not so hard to pay lip-service to a couple of points of Christian doctrine. In fact, a person can be thoroughly Orthodox in His theology and doctrine, and yet, not be Christian.

A Christian then is a person who sees His absolute need and dependency on that Christ, Jesus the Lord. He believes in Jesus, the God-man, not Jesus as only man or only God, but Jesus as being both fully God and fully man.

A Christian is one who believes that there is only one and true God, the Lord is God and the Lord is one. And in that one Being, God, dwells three co-equal and co-eternal persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. A Christian is one who believes this triunity of the God-head as it is clearly expressed in Scripture. And he believes that the second Person of the trinity, the Son, willingly and freely took up flesh in the form of sinful man and entered His creation to live a perfectly righteous life, and die on a Cross to pay full atonement for the sins of His people.

As Martin Luther discovered, a Christian is that person who believes the teaching of that same revelation of God that it is only by faith and faith alone in this Christ (Romans 5:1), in the perfect and finished work of the God-man, can anyone be saved.

This is Sola Fide, Justification by “Faith Alone.”

This too is an amazing thing. Undeserved grace and mercy was lavished in God’s revealing Himself to His creation. That in itself is a tremendously amazing thing, an amazing condescension on God’s part. But not only does God reveal Himself in His Word, He went so far as to reveal Himself in His Son? This act of infinite humility staggers my imagination! This infinite, eternal, holy and wholly transcendent, Creator God chose to humble and condescend so much as to enter His own creation?

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

—Philippians 2:5-11

This is an amazing thing. No obligation was upon God to reveal Himself to abominable sinners. No obligation was upon God to enter into His creation. In fact, the only thing that all these workers of iniquity, heaps of sin, deserve is the unmitigated fury of the wrath of God, that is what we all deserve. Yet in His mercy and grace, God spoke and revealed Himself. God took up the form of a servant, born in the likeness of men, lived a perfectly righteous life, died on a Cross bearing the shame, the repugnant sins of His people, and the fury of wrath in the place of others. This is an amazing thing.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

—2 Corinthians 5:21

An amazing thing, yes, yet even this we as Christians take it so much for granted. We scarcely see the inexpressible scene of grace that God, in the person of His Son, would become a man to die for undeserving sinners. This fact is actually so amazing that Muslims treat is as a joke. They can’t understand it, they can’t accept it. How can an infinitely holy and transcendent God go so far in humbling Himself, and be born as a babe? Not only that, to be born like men, frail and feeble, to die on a Cross on behalf of His people? This is an amazing thing.

A Christian is a person who believes in this Christ. Are you a Christian?

3. A Christian is a person who believes in his absolute need of a Savior in the person and work of Jesus. He is a person who sees himself clearly and plainly described in Scripture.

1. God created man in His image. (Gen 1:16)

2. In the fall of Adam, those born of him inherit the fallen image of Adam. Thus when Eve begot a son it wasn’t told of being in the image of God per se, but in the image of Adam which is a fallen and shattered nature of the image of God. (Gen 5:3)

3. As we are fallen creatures, the Bible speaks now of is in such ways:

That every intention of our hearts are evil continually. (Gen 6:5)

Our intentions are evil from youth. (Gen 8:21)

That we are born in sin. (Psalm 51:5)

That we go out from the womb speaking lies. (Psalm 58:3)

4. As a fallen people we are of our father the devil, and our will is to do as he desires. (John 8:44)

5. As a fallen people we are slaves to sin. (Rom.6:16)

6. As a fallen people we are Dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air of which are at work in the sons of disobedience—we all live in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desire of the body and mind, and are by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Is this you? Is this how we esteem ourselves to be? Or do we like all men esteem ourselves to be better than what we actually are? We boast in our egos, our pride and the great intellect in human achievement. We delude ourselves of our greatness.

Like Hamlet we would say:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason? How infinite in faculty? In form and moving? How express and admirable? In action, how like an angel? In apprehension, how like a God? The beauty of the world, the paragon of Animals!

—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene ii)

But of course, this is not true. What are we but wicked men, slaves to sin? Murderous? Lying? Thieving? Blasphemous? Lustful? What is in man but sin? From his head to his foot, down to the deepest recesses of his own heart, sin has penetrated every part of his being. Yet in his pride and arrogance he would say, “I am a good person. I deserve the blessing of God. God is unjust if he doesn’t let me enter Heaven.”

What an amazing thing. Why? Because it is for this radically sinful man that God, in His mercy and grace alone, chose to reveal Himself for, chose to enter His creation for, chose to die on a Cross for. This is an amazing thing.

A Christian is a person who believes that he is a sinner. Are you a Christian?

4. A Christian then is a person who sees God for who He has revealed Himself to be in His Word, as absolutely holy, absolutely just, absolutely righteous, and demands perfect obedience from His creation. Yet as the person looks at this absolutely holy God, he realizes something, he is not holy. Like Luther he is brought to agony and utter despair with the fact that he is absolutely sinful, and sinful man like him absolutely deserves the justice, anger, hatred, and wrath of a just and holy God.

He sees and realizes that the only reason he still lives at that moment and is not immediately cast into Hell is because of the sheer mercy of God. He hears and takes heed the declaration of Scripture, “For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23). He sees himself as undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving. He realizes that he did not offend a mere company president. He realizes that the offense he has committed was not against a government official, or even against the most noble monarch in this world, but he realizes that he has offended the holy God, the holy Creator of the heavens and the earth.

He realizes himself to be as an abominable worm, drenched and born in sin, spitting in the face of the infinite Creator in his every act and in his very being.

A Christian is a person who sees himself as utterly helpless and submits himself to the mercy of this just and holy God. A Christian is a person who esteems himself not before the King of glory. A Christian is an utterly abased and humbled man before this infinitely holy God. Are you a Christian?

5. It is he who knows and believes all these things, that God has clearly and sufficiently revealed Himself in His Word, that we are mere creatures created in His image, and He the creator, that we are totally sinful and He is infinitely holy, and that God in the person and work of Jesus is a perfect Savior; it is this man who is a Christian. Are you a Christian?

Coram Deo

As we live before the face of God this day, as we so often take for granted what it means to be a Christian, may the Lord help us. May the Lord crush our hearts, the pride of our soul, that we may see in greater clarity what it is that God has truly done to make such hell-deserving sinners, Christian.

And if perhaps you realize that indeed, you are not a Christian, I am gripped by the Word of God to command you this day to repent from your sins and by faith and faith alone believe in Christ Jesus the Lord, He is a perfect Savior. Though your sins are as red as scarlet, He can save even one such as you are. Repent and believe the Gospel!

Dear heavenly, gracious Father, we entreat You in Your grace and mercy to grant us a renewed appreciation of the wonders you have done in History. For what are we, but failing cracked clay pots, falling each moment into sin, yet still you hold us up in your love? Grant us greater faith and grace that we may be able to live before your face as we ought, that we may be able to please you and honor you all our days. Please do this in the effacacious power of the Holy Spirit, in the name of our dear Beloved, Amen.

Relevance of the Reformation for the 21st Century Christian

I. What is the Reformation?
II. What is a Christian?
III. Relevance of the Reformation for the 21st Century Christian