Lindsay Brown
Foreword
Lindsay Brown
[Lindsay Brown served as IFES General Secretary from 1991 to 2007, and as International Director of the Lausanne Movement from 2008 to 2016. He is IFES Evangelist-at-Large.]
I warmly welcome this short book. We have much to learn from church history, and here we see how the events of six centuries ago set the stage for the ministry of the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century preachers like the Wesleys, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Simeon, C H Spurgeon—and how they gave us the gospel now. This is not to suggest that God had left himself without a witness until the Reformation. Before the 16th century we have not only the work of Wycliffe and his followers, early martyrs, and the leadership of Jan Hus, but other glimmers of light across Europe. For example the Italian mystic poet and Jesuat, Bianco de Siena, who passed down to us the beautiful hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’.
As we read Part I, looking back to the events of the Reformation, let us not miss four things.
First, in Luther, God used a very ordinary monk, who never lost his rough-hewn personality. His manner, and indeed his humour, could be coarse. If a church or seminary today advertised a vacancy, Luther might not make the shortlist. God is God, and he chooses servants as he will for special times.
Second, God used a movement with many strands, which stretched out over more than two hundred years, as we see in the Timeline. So while the evening of 31 October 1517 in Wittenberg is popularly regarded as ‘the start of the Reformation,’ it was more accurately the momentous start of its final long dénouement.
Third, it was necessary to stand against the doctrine and the authority of the church. This demanded immense courage, but the dust and grime which had accumulated over centuries in the medieval church had changed and obfuscated the message of the New Testament writers. It by now served only to obscure the truth that is in Christ Jesus; for Scripture alone is our final authority.
Fourth, the Reformation mounts a defence of the importance of doctrine. Clear understanding of biblical doctrine produces stable foundations, and gives a basis for confident belief in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. It refreshes us spiritually like ‘dew in the morning’ (Deuteronomy 32:1–2) by deepening our understanding of God.
As John Stott reminds us in Part II, the Reformers were simply reaffirming what the early church leaders, the apostles, had taught. For the evangelical faith (far from being a deviation) is simply a reaffirmation of apostolic truth, no more and no less. The Reformers were opening up the Scriptures to incredulous eyes and showing guilt-ridden and needy people how Scripture offered them the gift of salvation by God’s grace alone through faith alone.
It has become fashionable to debunk the word ‘evangelical.’ True, it has been appropriated—and abased—by some political parties. In addition, in certain countries it is synonymous with the word ‘Protestant.’ But rather than rejecting it because of this, perhaps it is time to reaffirm its meaning and value. I recall a conversation with John Stott, who was saddened by the misuse of the word. He told me he was not enthusiastic about terms such as ‘liberal evangelicals,’ ‘conservative evangelicals,’ ‘generous evangelicals,’ ‘open evangelical,’ or ‘essentially evangelical.’ For he believed that the word ‘evangelical’ was sufficient in itself. It is, as he explains ‘a noble word with a long and honourable history,’ stretching back as far as the second century.
John Stott gives us a fine exposition of the Reformers’ legacy, and of what it means for us now to stand in that same apostolic tradition. It is in this sense that the Lausanne Movement is an unashamedly evangelical movement. The term requires no particular political affiliation, nor indeed church tradition. Its root euangelion, the gospel, is used in the New Testament only in relation to the saving work of Christ.
The essence, then, of the gospel, is the apostolic doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. This, as we see, was to be central to the Reformation. In fact, Luther is said to have summed it up as ‘the article of a standing or falling church . . . it preserves and directs every doctrine of the church.’
That is why Alan Purser calls us to look again at Jesus’ prayer for the church. On the night Christ was betrayed, he prayed that believers would remain embedded in apostolic truth. This is what will keep us effective in mission.
It is the same power of God’s grace alone, calling people to faith, that we see time and again as we survey the centuries and look around the world. I trace it clearly through the records, here in my own country, of the Welsh revivals. It is by God’s grace alone that the Holy Spirit has moved in revivals in East and West Africa, and in the building of Christ’s church in China, and in the many conversions we hear of in the Islamic world.
The centrality of grace was important not only to the Reformers, but we see it in the writings of Augustine, Wesley, C S Lewis. A firm grasp of grace is the foundation of deep assurance. More than that, it is the source of that much sought-after but rarely attained experience of joy. Of this truth, Luther wrote ‘If you knew what you were saved from, you would die of fear, but if you knew what you are saved for, you would die of joy.’
That is why the Reformation is still not over. In our ‘post-truth’ generation, the message of Scripture’s authority needs to be proclaimed as clearly as ever; for Scripture is true, and must be believed, obeyed, and defended, and if necessary we must be prepared to die for it.
I finish with a personal story. Some years ago, I was speaking on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith at a student conference in Argentina. It was a starry night and after speaking I went out to appreciate the stars in the Southern Hemisphere. An older man followed me. He was an elderly Dutch missionary.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for speaking about this great truth tonight. I myself have spoken on the same theme many times, and I am always deeply moved when reminded of it by others.’
‘Why is that?’ I inquired.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘During the Second World War, I was a member of the Hitler Youth; I did and saw terrible things. Soon after the war, I tasted God’s saving grace and I became a Christian and followed Jesus Christ. Then God called me into Christian ministry and I was sent as a pioneer missionary to Irian Jaya. There God used me in revival. On one Sunday, I baptised two thousand new believers. So, do you see why this great truth is so important to me? Because it reminds me that no trough is so deep that God cannot raise us out of it by his grace and set our feet on dry land. I deserved to be judged and cast away, but because of God’s justifying grace, not only did he save me, and not only did he use me in ministry, but he saw fit to use me in revival.’
Such is the wonder of God’s justifying act through the work of Christ.
May this book be used in some small way to stir the hearts of many in our generation to proclaim this message as vigorously as did the sixteenth-century Reformers.
Notes
. We know of its use to refer to people of ‘the gospel’ and ‘the book’ at least as far back as 180 AD, in debates between the heretic Marcion and early Christian leaders.
. Balthasar Meisner described this expression as ‘a proverb of Luther’ (Anthropôlogia sacra disputation 24, [Wittenberg: Johannes Gormannus, 1615].