Knowing, Loving, and Living Our Reformation Heritage (3): Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria

This is the third of four installments of a lecture given on the five “pillar-watchwords” of the Reformation.

Fourthly, the Reformation bolsters its sola scriptura, its sola gratia, and its sola fide, with its grand central pillar of solus Christus—”Christ alone.” You see, my friends, we believe in faith alone, not because faith itself saves the elect. The true believer doesn’t have faith in his faith, but by grace he has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. All true faith focuses on Christ. Early in the Reformation this truth was emphasized and became a cardinal reality throughout the Reformers’ lives.

We often talk about the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther but did you know that Ulrich Zwingli also wrote Sixty-seven Theses only six years after Martin Luther? I want to read to you a few of Zwingli’s theses to show you the Christ-centeredness that had developed among the Reformers in six short years. Thesis number 2: “The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of His heavenly Father and redeemed us by His innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us unto God.” Number 3: “Therefore, Christ is the only way to salvation to all who were, who are, and who shall be saved.” Number 4: “Whosoever seeks or shows another door errs, yea, is a murderer of souls and a robber.” Number 7: “Christ is the Head of all believers who are His body and without Him the body is dead.” Number 19: “Christ is the only Mediator between God and us.” Number 22: “Christ is our righteousness.” Number 50: “God alone forgives sins through Jesus Christ, our Lord, alone.” Number 65: “All spiritual superiors should repent without delay and set up the cross of Christ alone or they will perish, for the axe is laid at the root of the tree.”

Our Reformed forebears unabashedly proclaimed: solus Christus (Christ alone). In Christ is life; outside of Christ is death. Without Him we can do nothing; through Him, everything. Outside of Christ, God cannot but be an everlasting fire and consuming burning; in Christ, He is a gracious Father. This is Reformation doctrine, for only in Christ can God’s justice be satisfied, i.e., by His active and passive obedience.

The very nerve center of Reformed Christology is an insistence on the necessity of Christ’s mediation. Yes, the whole plan of salvation is only possible in Jesus Christ. And why? Because there are two things that no matter how hard you try you can never do, but which must be done, shall you be saved. The first is to satisfy the justice of God through obedience of the law. We are all law-breakers; we have all come short of the glory of God. There must be Another who has satisfied the law for us, who obeyed the law perfectly in thought, word, and deed—and Jesus did precisely that for thirty-three years in this world as a Substitute for His people. That’s what we call His active obedience; He actively obeyed the law. The second great thing we can never do is pay the price of three-fold death for our sins. The wages of sin demand death—physical, spiritual, and eternal— and only Jesus could compress the eternity of death’s sufferings into time in His infinite satisfaction on Calvary’s cross. That’s what we call His passive obedience. By His active obedience to the law, and His passive obedience in paying for the punishment of sin with His own death, Christ has satisfied the justice of God for all His elect. There is no other way to come into the presence of God, holy and redeemed in His sight, than solus Christus.

Do you love and live solus Christus? Does Christ mean everything to you? Do you love Him in His states, in His benefits, in His offices, in His natures? Have you had room made for Him in your heart as Prophet, to teach you; as Priest, to intercede, to sacrifice, and to bless on your behalf; as King, to rule and guide you? Have you learned that Jesus Christ is everything for a sinner who is nothing? Has He become a white Bridegroom for you—a black bride in yourself?

Have you learned that Jesus Christ is everything for a sinner who is nothing?

You know, Arturo Toscanini once conducted Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony in a most remarkable manner. The audience gave him a seemingly endless standing ovation. Toscanini bowed and bowed, but the audience kept on applauding. They were moved by what they heard. Finally, Toscanini turned to his orchestra, and with a hoarse voice said, “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” The orchestra leaned forward— had someone missed their cue? What was wrong with Toscanini? “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am nothing. Gentlemen, you are nothing. But Beethoven— Beethoven is everything!” Dear friends, as you have walked in the midst of society, among your peers, amid praises and criticisms, have you ever been overwhelmed like Toscanini—not with Beethoven, but with the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you ever seen throughout trials and prosperities that Christ Jesus is composing the music of your lives in such divine harmony that you have turned to whisper to others with amazement, “Gentlemen, my dear friend, my dear brother, I am nothing and you are nothing, but Jesus Christ is everything—solus Christus!” Do you love, do you live, the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you say with Paul, “For me to live is Christ; to die is gain”? Are you ex-perientially included with that same apostle’s confessions, “Your life is hid with Christ in God”; “for all things are yours;...and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Tim. 2:12; 1 Cor. 3:21b, 23)?

Fifthly, all these pillars lead to a final pillar, soli Deo gloria—”glory to God alone.” Initially, Luther’s great question, you know, was, “How can I be saved?” But he turned, especially in later years, to the Calvinian question, “How can God be glorified?” Nevertheless, it was left largely to John Calvin to flesh out the fullness of this watchword—”glory to God alone.” It was especially Calvin who embodied this watchword in his writing, living, yes, in everything he did and said. When John Calvin came to die, many diseases were raging through his body. One biographer has counted eighty-three of them! Despite obvious exaggeration, Calvin was a sick man, but even in those last weeks he was completing the final draft of his renowned Institutes. At one point, his pain became so severe that even his dearest friends begged him to leave the final pages incomplete. But Calvin would not honor their request, for his Master’s honor was at stake. Subsequently, the true motto of Calvin’s life has been accurately summed in his most renowned confession: “My heart I offer to Thee, Lord, promptly and sincerely.”

Glory to God alone—this was the motto of the life of the Reformers and those in kinship movements. Often they gave their lives literally for the glory of God. They were men and women under the realization that their lives were not their own; they did not belong to themselves, but as our Heidelberg Catechism states so beautifully, their only comfort in life and death was that they belonged to their faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. The pulse of the Reformation registers its proper beat in this fifth watchword—glory to God alone. And Scripture climaxes this in the Pauline doxology of Romans 11 where the apostle reaches the very apex of all his thinking, crying out, “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen” (v. 37).

My dear friends, have you ever reached this apex in your own lives? Do you love, do you live, the glory of God? Can you say that the best moments of your life have been those moments when you, as it were, lost yourself and were carried up by the wings of faith to focus on the centrality of the glory of God? The great post-Reformer, Jonathan Edwards, once wrote: “The greatest moments of my life have not been those that have concerned my own salvation, but those when I have been carried into communion with God and beheld His beauty and desired His glory.” Can you say this, too? Have you ever risen above yourself? Could you ever say, soli Deo gloria?

If we may reach soli Deo gloria in our spiritual pilgrimage, we may confess that all that God does is well. You’ve heard, I trust, how Persian rugs are made. The one who sews the rugs climbs up on scaffolding seven to eight feet high, while his workmen are beneath him with strands of many colors of yarn. From the scaffolding he calls to them for yellow, brown, green, and white strands—and, yes, black strands too. He sews a pattern from above of which the workmen beneath are not aware. When the workmen look at the rug from beneath, all they see is a gnarled mess of intertwining strands which seem to make no sense. But they must keep on handing up strands simply at the rug-maker’s beckoning until the day comes when the rug-maker says to his workmen, “My friends, come up higher.” When they climb the ladder and walk onto the scaffolding, it is said of Persian workmen that they never cease to be amazed to see the beautiful pattern the rug-maker has sewn. Not one too many black strings and not one too few— everything in its right place!

Luther’s great question, you know, was, “How can I be saved?” But he turned, especially in later years, to the Calvinian question, “How can God be glorified?

And you see, my friends, when we by grace may live soli Deo gloria; when we live the five watchwords of the Reformation, then we trust God to be the divine Pattern-weaver of our lives. When He calls us to hand up even the black strings of affliction, we will do it by grace even though we don’t understand what He is doing. Even though we have to say, “Lord, what Thou doest now I know not, but I shall know hereafter,” we nevertheless believe—by faith alone, by grace alone, by Scripture alone, by Christ alone—that all things will work to the glory of God alone. We believe that all things will work together for good to those that love God (Rom. 8:28). We believe, we know, we love, we live, only by grace, our Reformation heritage. Then we may not only sing the doxology as the culmination of worship services, but may earnestly yearn to live doxological lives. May eternity itself be for us, by grace, nothing other than:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Chost.

Amen.

Dr. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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