If you have been at the Kirk for any a time at all, you have almost certainly heard us refer to ourselves as a “Reformed Church.”  What do we mean by that?  If one of your neighbors asked you for your thoughts on the matter, would you know what to say?  Most people, when they are put on the spot, mutter something about the five points of Calvinism or perhaps they might list the “Five Solas” of the Protestant Reformation.  These are, of course, part of the answer, but I think we really should be able to do better than that when we answer, and thus the purpose for this short piece.

What is the Reformed Faith?  The Reformed faith begins first of all with a Vision of God: His supremacy above all things, His centrality in all things, and His sovereignty over all things.

In the middle of the 8th Century BC, the prophet Isaiah was ministering quietly in the Temple.  I don’t know what he was thinking about that day, but he was living in a day very much like ours – a day of political insecurity, financial instability, and moral and spiritual decay.  A resurgent Assyrian Empire threatened Israel’s whole way of life.  And, indeed, before the century was out, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would be wiped off the map forever.  Whatever was going through the prophet’s mind, all of it was about to be forgotten.  In a moment,  he saw the heavens bursting open above Him.  He saw angels burning happily with the fire of God’s holiness (Seraphim – “buring ones”), he heard them proclaim God’s Thrice holiness.  He felt the Temple shaking thunder of their brodcast.  Far, far above the angels, in a different realm, Isaiah saw a Throne, high and lifted up.  On that throne, He saw the Lord (Heb. :Adonai – The sovereign One who rules heaven and earth with effortless and irresistable ease.)  He experienced a devastating moment of clarity when all of his treasured virtues fell away before the piercing gaze of the Enthroned Son of God.  He was no longer Isaiah the Priest.  Before God He was simply Isaiah the naked, helpless, filthy sinner, without hope, in desperate need of just mercy.  What He needs God gives, freely, graciously.  An atoning coal is taken off heavens altar.  It touches Him.  His many sins and all His uncleanness vanishes immediately.  He is now equipped for the service of God.  This vision left Isaiah’s soul beautifully scarred: There is a throne in heaven – Somewhere, somehow, Someone is in control of the mess we call life.  There is an altar in heaven – Somewhere, somehow, Someone has died to purchase a just-mercy for sinners!  In that vision, the things of the earth grew strangely dim in the light of God’s glory and grace.

This vision is the energizing principle of the Protestant Reformation – it defines everything we are; it drives everything we do.

It drives our view of Scripture.  Such a God will be dealt with on His own terms or not at all.  He is the Creator of all.  All facts are His facts.  Reality belongs to Him, He alone has the right to define it.  We believe, therefore, that the Bible is ‘most necessary.’  For in this book, it is here, and only here, that His mind is truly revealed, and His voice is truly heard.    Therefore, in all our approaches to the Divine majesty, our first duty is not to speak, but always to listen.  When men forget themselves and depart from this rule, they exchange reality for a fantasy world “measured by the yardstick of their own carnal stupidity (John Calvin).”

This vision of God also drives our view of Worship.  Because all of life comes from God and all of life is defined by God, all of life has to do with God.  His worship is, therefore, the first duty of every human being.  From life’s first cry, to life’s last breath, in our eating, our drinking, we are to do all to God’s glory.  This worship is something God commands in and regulates by His word.  Quite simply, we don’t have the right to chose how we approach the God we have offended.  Once again we approach Him on His terms, not ours.  Unauthorized innovation is dangerous, ask Nadab and Abihu.  I am reminded of a comment made by a Gentleman to the 16th Century Puritan, John Rogers, “Mr. Rogers, I like you well enough, but I find you to be too precise.”  “Ah, sir,” Mr. Rogers replied, “I serve a precise God!”  In all our public services of worship, we want such precision to characterize all our approaches to God.

This vision of God also drives our view of the Gospel.  This is why we embrace the historic “Calvinistic” expression of the gospel recovered at Dordt. The greatness, holiness, and goodness of God serves only to expose and magnify our own sense of filthiness, darkness, and deadness.  We stand in desperate need of a Savior – One who does more than help us save ourselves.  One who is able to save to the uttermost – because it is from the uttermost that we need to be saved.  The gospel finds us as dead in sins. Think of a fish floating upside down in polluted cess pool of depravity.  There is no spiritual life.  There is no struggle.  There is no desire to turn to God.  There is no ability to turn to God.  We are bound by shackles of our own making.  We can’t turn because we won’t turn, and because we won’t we can’t  turn.  We are locked in by our hatred of the God who stoops to offer us mercy!  Truly, our condition is desperate.  As such, we believe Jesus was not exaggerating when He said, “Unless a man is born again, he cannot see, and he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” “No man can come unto me  unless the Father who sent me draw (literally, drag) him.”  Only a great Savior can save such great Sinners.  In the Reformed Church, we believe the Lord Christ is just such a Savior – One who is willing to do everything necessary to save sinners. One who is willing to do more than just make salvation available.  One who is able and willing to make salvation unstoppable for any and all the ones given by the Father into His matchless care before the foundation of the world.This is also why we conceive of this gospel in Covenantal terms: the same logic that damned the world in Adam, redeems the world in Christ.  We are lost because Adam sinned.  We are saved because the Second Adam stood in perfect, unimpeachable obedience.

It is from these great ideas that the great solas of the Reformation flow.  Why are we saved?  Only because of Christ, only by grace, and only by faith.  In such a scheme, faith is not in any sense a contribution we make to the process of salvation.  No, faith is a passive and a receptive grace: it gives nothing to God; it receives everything from Him.  Faith is the empty, dirty, unworthy hand reaching for promised mercy, for just mercy, and for an accomplished mercy.  Faith is, as Pastor Albert N. Martin once said, “The desperate thrust of a helpless and hopeless soul into the arms of an all-sufficient Savior.”

This vision of God also drives our view of the Church.  We are made in the image of the Triune God: One eternal being with 3 eternally, distinct, personal, centers of self-consciousness.  Imaging this God can, therefore, never be a solo sport.  It takes more than one to fully image the Three.  This explaims the clanging “Not Good” about Adam’s initial experience in Paradise.  Here is the perfect man, in the perfect place, with the perfect relationship with God, and yet there is something not good about Him.  It is not good because he is alone.  Just like our God, we need to be in union with other persons.  Could it be, this is why our nearest and dearest relationships are characterized in the Bible by unity – The union of a husband with His bride.  The union of Father to His Seed.  The union of a christian with his Savior’s body.  Therefore, do you see, to live in  amputated individuality is to embrace the unthinkable horror of aloneness.  This is why the Reformed Faith lays such a stress on the centrality of the home and the priority of the church.  “Outside the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.”  Of course, God can do anything, but we should not presume He will act without and against the very means He has ordained to reconcile a lost world to Himself.  It is in union with the Church that the Christian experiences and enjoys His union to the Savior.

This vision of God also drives our view of life.  “From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things.” “In Him we live and move and have our being.”  “Whatever we do we are to do all for the glory of God.”  Such God is honored when His people dig deep for His Kingdom, engaging every ounce of grace, grit, and gumption He has given them for the honor of His Name.  As such we strive in our homes to bring our children up for Him.  No amount of sucess in the world can ever make up for failure in the home.  As such, we strive to fulfill the Great Commission preaching the word to make disciples of all nations.  As such, we strive in the common kingdom of a lost and dying world to do all that is within our sphere of influence to ensure that our Father’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

As I understand it, this is the Reformed Faith.  Now more than ever, in an age deceived, debased, and debauched in man centered hedonism, relativism, and consumerism, God’s church needs to rediscover this ancient boundary stone.  Once again, our dessicated, sin-sick hearts need to rediscover this soul enthralling vision of divine glory.

In enumerating these distinctives we must beware of pride – as if we, and we alone, were truly reformed.  Sadly, this is not the case.  We at the Kirk still have a very, very great deal of work to do in all these areas.  A cavernous gap still divides where we are from where we ought to be.  May God give us all grace to press on and fulill the one great distinctive of every Reformed Church worthy of its name: Ecclesia Semper Reformanda Est (The Church must always be Reforming.).  And, so little flock, in faith, by His grace, for His glory, according to His Word, and to this end, we press on.  “God help us!”)