The Bible Speaks:The Church in Search of Itself - AFC 1996

Reformation

Romans 1:17

In changing times, God may, by grace, re-form his church.

Change was in the air
There were sweeping economic and intellectual changes afoot.
A new merchant class emerging in Europe.
The "New World" was being explored.
Renaissance thinkers and artists had turned the human vision from heaven to earth. There was fresh interest in old texts in their original languages.
Movable type changed everything - speed and reach of communication, growing fraction of the populous could participate in the written word.
The church knew that it needed a thorough cleansing‹appeared in-bred, self serving, and sometimes blatantly corrupt.

Identity of the church (1500-1550)
Martin Luther
"Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith."

Salvation, then is not an earned reward. We can do nothing to achieve it. salvation is purely a gift. We receive it not by penitence or by acts of piety, but only by faith‹Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone.
The two marks of the true church:
preaching of the Word and celebration of the Sacraments
The first is more than a 3-point + poem homily, but rather, the present, expressed and shared living Word addressed to the gathered congregation.
John Calvin
added to Luther's two marks, one more:
self-disciplined community
Calvin and the Reformed churches took great care in the construction of church polity so that the church would reflect not only the presence of Christ, but the leading of the Spirit. As a result, the churches grew solidly independent of state control and centralized authority. This resonated well with the nationalistic winds blowing in the Netherlands and Scotland‹whence our roots.

What do you think?
€ If one of the founding principles of the Reformed tradition is that the church is always in the process of being reformed by the Spirit, why is it so difficult to accomplish any significant change within the institution? Why are the words so common: "We've always done it this way"?

We stand on the shoulders of those who have worked out their faith with pain, joy, confusion, blood, sweat, tears, careful thought, and grace.