KASUMIGAOKA
2017/11/05
SERMON: “Reformation and the Bible” 「宗教改革と聖書」
TEXT: マタイの福音書4:1—11; ペテロの手紙第一1:22-25
I. INTRODUCTION: The Source of Reformed Doctrine
Recently we have been thinking about the religious Reformation that began in Europe in 1517, especially through the work of Martin Luther. First we considered why Luther posted his “95 Theses” in Wittenberg 500 years ago. Next, we thought about Luther’s rediscovery of the doctrine of “salvation by God’s grace alone.” Then, last week, we thought about the teaching that for Luther was most central—the doctrine of “justification by faith in Christ alone.” For each of these matters Luther relied upon one source of authority—not the Pope, or the ancient Roman Catholic Church, but the Bible. The Reformation could not have happened without Luther’s radical decision to trust the words of the Bible. Today, I want to think more about Luther’s decision and why the Bible is our only completely dependable guide for faith and life.
II. MARTIN LUTHER AND THE BIBLE
For Christians who were raised in evangelical or reformed churches, it may seem natural to accept the authority of the Bible. The very first vow of the RPC Covenant of Church Membership asks, “Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule for faith and life?” Faith in the Bible’s teaching is a fundamental element of Christian faith, isn’t it? In fact, although the authority of the Bible had been assumed for almost 1500 years, in Martin Luther’s day the exact role of the Bible in guiding man’s doctrine and morals had never been formally explained by any Church council. At the beginning of the 16th century most church members would have said that it is the Pope who holds ultimate authority in matters of religious faith and morality. The symbol of the Pope’s authority was the “keys of the kingdom” which the Lord Jesus had promised to give to the apostle Peter. And, according to Church tradition, Peter was the first bishop of Rome—that is, the first “Pope.” Since Peter’s day, the right to rule the Church on earth had passed successively to each bishop of Rome. The Pope was the “Vicar of Christ” and his word must be obeyed, as if Christ Himself had spoken. According to Roman Catholic teaching, the only possible challenger to the Pope’s ultimate authority was the authority of the ancient church Councils. When he was criticized for his religious opinions, Martin Luther appealed first to the authority of the Pope. When the Pope refused to endorse Luther’s views, Luther appealed next to the Ecumenical Councils. But even the Church Councils had rendered inconsistent judgments. Luther could find support for his views in only one place—in the Scriptures themselves. In a sense, he appealed to the “Highest Court” of God Himself. So Luther defended his position on the basis of the Bible directly, rather than appealing to rulings by Councils or Popes. In his day Luther was the first to successfully defend his views on the basis of the ultimate authority of the Bible alone. He brought his argument not just to the courts of the Church, but to the secular rulers and to the common citizens of Germany, as well. In order to show the grounds of his arguments, Luther first had to provide a translation of the Bible in the language of the German people. For 1100 years the Roman Church had used only one Bible—the Latin Vulgate version. So Luther began to translate the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek languages. He completed his New Testament translation in 1522 and the entire Bible in 1534. Luther’s translation was not the first German language Bible, but it was the first translated from the original languages rather than from the Latin Vulgate. And it was translated into German that the common people could understand. His German Bible immediately became a “best-seller.” One printer in Wittenberg sold about 100,000 copies of Luther’s Bible between 1534 and 1574. And these were read by millions of people. [Philip Schaff, Hist. of the Christian Church, Scribner’s & Sons, NY, 1910] The new popularity of the Bible raised new questions which had to be answered. For example, what writings are to be included in the Bible? Luther’s Bible included a number of “Apocryphal” books, but these were separated from the Old Testament books with a note that they were “books not equal to the Holy Scriptures, yet useful and good to read.” Luther himself examined all the New Testament Scriptures in order to judge their appropriateness for inclusion in the Bible. His primary criterion seems to have been the presence (or absence) of the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” He thought the epistle of James lacked this important doctrine, so he described James as an “epistle of straw,” that is, “not very valuable.” The translation of the Bible from the original languages raised the serious question of “canonicity” for the first time in a thousand years. Because the authority of the Bible was the foundation of the reforming movement, the leaders of the Reformation gave careful attention to this subject. Creeds such as the Westminster Confession of Faith and even the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent provided lists of the specific books which should be considered “Holy Scripture.” The Catholic Council of Trent based its judgment on the authority of the Roman Church to select the “appropriate” books to include in the Bible (including, in their judgment, the Apocrypha). But the Reformers emphasized the “internal witness” of the Scriptures themselves and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Westminster Confession of Faith, written near the end of the Reformation (1648), states this principle: “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not on the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God” (WCF, I:4). Ultimately, the Reformation churches took their stand upon the Bible as God’s “self-authenticating Word”, and not on any human authority or church tradition.
III. JESUS’ TESTIMONY TO THE AUTHORITY OF GOD’S WORD
Before the Latin Vulgate became the Church’s official Bible, the early Christian Church had already come to a clear, though not 100% unanimous, agreement about the content and authority of the Bible. The Church of the first century accepted the teaching of Jesus and His apostles that these writings (which we have in our Bibles today) are the inspired Word of God. The early Church understood that God has revealed His will to man in human words. Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” Through the people of Israel God has given to us the Scriptures of the Old Testament; and all of these testify to the person and work of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Just after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples and reminded them of the authority of the Bible. He quoted the OT and said this Word of God “must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44-46). “Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” Jesus clearly taught that the Scriptures should be accepted and believed because they are “the Word of God.” We can see proof of this in many places, but let’s consider how Jesus used the Scriptures when He was tested by Satan before beginning His public ministry. Please look at Matthew 4:1-11. All three synoptic Gospels record the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness. This event shows us Jesus’ attitude toward the Scriptures at the outset of His ministry. He consistently relies on the Word of God to answer questions of truth and morality. Three times the devil tempts Jesus to “prove” His divine Sonship by doing what the devil demands. Three times Jesus responds by quoting the OT Scriptures. Jesus not only uses the words of God to answer the tempter; He Himself lives by the words He quotes. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (v. 4; Deut. 8: 3). Just as a man will fortify his body with physical nourishment, Jesus fortifies His soul with the word of God to resist the tempter. When the devil tries to tempt Jesus by applying a Scripture text in a wrong way, Jesus sees the deception and once again replies with the authority of God’s Law: (v. 7) “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’” (Deut. 6:16). Finally, the tempter promises to give Jesus all the power and glory of earthly kingdoms, if Jesus will abandon His messianic mission and “fall down and worship” the devil. For the third time, Jesus avoids the temptation by relying on the words of Scripture: “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only’” (v. 10). Three times in this episode Jesus uses the perfect tense of the verb, “it is written” to introduce the quotation of God’s OT Law. This tense form in Greek indicates that an action completed in the past has continuing effect. Jesus means, “This is God’s final word on the subject; it will never change!” Jesus shows how we, too, should rely on the unchanging Word of God in order to overcome the daily temptations we face in the world. No one should miss the fact that Jesus trusts the OT Scriptures because they are the “word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Those who belong to Jesus must hold the same view of the Scriptures, as Jesus tells His audience in Lk. 8:21: “My mother and brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.”
But Jesus did not only establish the authority of the OT Scriptures for His NT Church. He also authorized His apostles to proclaim His word with equal authority. He commissioned them as His “spokesmen” in Matthew 28:18-20. “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The Lord Jesus promised to be with His disciples, to encourage and to empower their work—especially their teaching. The early Church received this apostolic teaching, which was finally recorded in the Gospels, epistles, and other NT writings, as “the Word of God.” Throughout the NT we see evidence of the Church’s respect for the authority the apostles’ witness. Hebrews 2:1-4, for example, says, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will.” We are reminded here of how God Himself attested the truth of the apostolic witness by “signs, wonders, and miracles.” The apostles were the bearers of God’s Word to the world, and they were aware of this amazing mission that Christ had bestowed upon them. Peter, for example, in 1 Peter 1:23 speaks of “the living and enduring word of God” by which those who heard were “born again.” Then, after quoting from the prophet Isaiah, “the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever,” he says, “And this was the word that was preached to you.” Likewise in 1 Thessalonians 2: 13 Paul writes, “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.” Even these few examples show that the New Testament writers were aware that their primary mission was to bring the “living and active” word of God to the people living in this New Covenant age. From the earliest days the Christian Church acknowledged the authority of “the Scriptures” of both the Old and the New Testaments as the “word of God.” They gratefully received and treasured the entire collection of these writings as God’s inspired word.
The more Martin Luther and the other Reformers examined the Bible, the more they understood the unique authority of God’s word for Christ’s Church. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:20, the Church is “God’s household,” “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets”—that is, the foundation of God’s word in both Old and New Testaments—“with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.” Armed with this conviction, the Reformers faced and overcame the opposition of the established Roman Church and its ancient traditions.
IV. CONCLUSION
As we think about the Reformation and the work of Martin Luther, we should not forget that the Christian Church today—and in every age—faces the same challenge. We must be sure of what we believe and why we believe it. We must be sure of the foundation of our faith and life. The trends and fashions of our society change from year to year. People disagree and fight over countless matters—some important, and others trivial. But in the midst of all the cultural uncertainty and moral malaise, we can be sure of one thing: God’s unchanging word. It must be the foundation of our personal lives, just as it is the foundation of Christ’s Church. This foundation will never collapse. It will stand firm, regardless of the “storms” that blow around us. The word of God—this Bible–is true and reliable; he who builds upon this word will not be swept away by the winds of moral relativism. “All people are like grass,” says the prophet Isaiah (40:6, 8), “and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. . . The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”