REFORMATION 500 WEEK 6: HEIDELBERG CATECHISM, QUESTIONS 16-19

Reformation 500 WEEK 6: Heidelberg Catechism, QUESTIONS 16-19

Question 16: Why must he be a true and righteous man? Because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should make satisfaction for sin; but one who is himself a sinner cannot satisfy for others.

Our Mediator must be a real man, because he that would make satisfaction for man should himself be very man, having sprung from the posterity of Adam, which had sinned (1 Cor. 15:21). And our Mediator must be a perfectly righteous man, for if he himself had been a sinner, he could not have escaped the wrath of God (Isa. 53:11).

Question 17: Why must he also be true God? That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath, and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life.

If our Mediator had been only a man, even a sinless man, he would have been crushed under the heavy weight of God’s wrath. It was necessary therefore that our Mediator should possess infinite strength that he might endure in his manhood an infinite punishment. But this he could not have done had he not been God (Acts 20:28).

Question 18: But who now is that Mediator, who in one person is true God and also a true and righteous man? Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is freely given unto us for complete redemption and righteousness.

The only Mediator between God and man is the God-Man – the LORD Jesus Christ – the eternal Son of God who became a man to reconcile God and man (1 Tim. 2:5; 3:16). The second creation, whereby sinners are made new creatures (1 Cor. 5:17), “was to be effected by the same person through whom the first creation was made [John 1:3]” (Ursinus). In Christ alone we have complete redemption and righteousness. He obeyed God’s law perfectly and He satisfied God’s wrath for our disobedience (1 Cor. 1:29).

Question 19: From where do you know this? From the Holy Gospel, which God Himself first revealed in Paradise, afterwards proclaimed by the holy patriarchs [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob] and prophets, and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law, and finally fulfilled by His Well-Beloved Son.

From the holy law, we come to know our sin and misery; from the holy Gospel, we come to know our salvation from sin and misery through the Mediator Jesus Christ. The gospel (good news) was first revealed immediately after the Fall: God promised salvation through the Seed, who would be “bruised” (Gen. 3:15). God “preached the gospel to Abraham” (Gal. 3:8), saying: “in your Seed all the nations shall be blessed” (Gen. 22:18). All the blood shed on Jewish altars was a prophecy of the Son of God (the Lamb of God!) offering Himself to God as a sacrifice to be killed in our place. “He was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). OT believers were saved by faith in the Messiah who would come in the flesh. NT believers are saved by faith in the Messiah who has already “given Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2).

NOTE: These Posts were written and  designed as bulletin inserts by Pastor David Fagrey of the Grace Reformed Church of Rapid City, SD .  

Link to this blog entry as a bulletin insert:  Reformation500 Heidelberg Catechism QAs 16-19

For a double-sided PDF for easy printing: Reformation 500 Week 6

Official Seal of  the RCUS

This is the seal of the Reformed Church of the United States (RCUS).  As you can see its history goes back to 1748, when the RCUS began.  We celebrate with the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation we praise God for what is probably the most amazing spiritual revival in the history of the world.

Page on Omaha Reformed Church's Website: Links to all Bulletin Inserts.

REFORMATION 500 WEEK 6: HERE I STAND

Reformation 500 WEEK 6: Here I Stand

When a copy of Luther’s 95 Theses reached Pope Leo X, he “dismissed the document as nothing more than the ramblings of a drunken German who, he believed, would think differently when sober” (Nichols, Martin Luther, 34).

    Eight months later, in July 1518, the pope “issued a summons to Luther to appear before him in Rome. If Luther had gone to Rome it would have meant his certain death” (Kuiper, Church in History, 170). But Luther’s prince, Frederick the Wise, intervened to protect his most famous and popular professor at the University of Wittenberg. “Frederick did not too well comprehend Luther but was concerned that a German subject should not be taken to trial outside of Germany, and should receive an impartial hearing” (Roland Bainton, The Reformation, 55).

     In the meantime, at Leipzig in 1519, Luther debated Dr. Johann Eck, a trained theologian, who had already written a tract against the 95 Theses. Eck maintained that the Pope was the successor of Peter, and the vicar of Christ by divine right. Luther said this “was contrary to the Scriptures, to the ancient church, to the Council of Nicea, …and rests only on the frigid decrees of the Roman pontiffs” (Schaff, 7:181). But when Eck had gotten Luther “to say that some of the teachings of Hus had been unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance,” he “had made Luther take his stand openly on the side of a man officially condemned by the Church as a heretic” (Kuiper, 172). The Leipzig debate strengthened Luther’s followers and won many new followers, one of whom was Martin Bucer, who later helped to shape the views of John Calvin.

     On June 15, 1520, Leo X issued a papal bull, calling for the immediate restraint of the “wild boar in God’s vineyard.” Luther had 60 days after receiving the bull to recant or be excommunicated. After the 60 days expired, Luther burned “the Detestable Bull of the Antichrist” in Wittenberg. 

     “Yet, because of political considerations, excommunication did not immediately follow; and Frederick the Wise arranged that Luther should have a hearing before the diet [imperial meeting] of the German nation about to meet early in 1521 in the city of Worms with the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles of Hapsburg [Charles V], the King of Spain” (Bainton, 58-59).

     “Luther arrived to a hero’s welcome at Worms…. When it was time for him to appear before the Diet, he was simply asked two questions: Are these your writings? Do you recant? Luther stood stunned before the assembly. How could they expect him to recant? His writings contained the words of Scripture, the words of the councils, and even the words of the popes.... Luther requested one day to think things over, and Charles V granted this request” (Nichols, 41).

     The next day, April 18, 1521, Luther once again stood before the diet of Worms. He then delivered his famous speech. “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand. May God help me.” 

NOTE: These Posts were written and  designed as bulletin inserts by Pastor David Fagrey of the Grace Reformed Church of Rapid City, SD .  

Here is a link to this blog entry as a bulletin insert:  Reformation500 Martin Luther Here I Stand

For a double-sided PDF for easy printing: Reformation 500 Week 6

Official Seal of  the RCUS

This is the seal of the Reformed Church of the United States (RCUS).  As you can see its history goes back to 1748, when the RCUS began.  We celebrate with the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation we praise God for what is probably the most amazing spiritual revival in the history of the world.

Page on Omaha Reformed Church's Website: Links to all Bulletin Inserts.

REFORMATION 500 WEEK 3: THE NEED FOR REFORMATION

Reformation 500 WEEK 3: The Need for Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a reformation of the Western Roman Catholic Church, not the Eastern Orthodox Church (the Western and Eastern Churches have been divided since the year 1054).

The Reformers were all born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience (Schaff, History, 7:13).

                “At the beginning of the sixteenth century everyone that mattered in the Western Church was crying out for reformation” (Chadwick, The Reformation, 11).

The Roman Catholic Church desperately needed reform. Tradition had replaced Scripture as the church’s supreme authority; and the church’s leadership was corrupt. “The papacy was secularized [more interested in Renaissance than religion], and changed into a selfish tyranny [seen especially in the crusades] whose yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been removed, but papal morals…became worse than ever during the years 1492-1521.” The writings of contemporary scholars “are full of complaints and exposures of the ignorance, vulgarity and immorality of priest and monks. Simony [the practice of buying and selling ecclesiastical positions] and nepotism were shamefully practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of un-chastity and uncleanness [the popes had their own prostitutes and some flaunted their illegitimate children] …. Whole monastic establishments and orders had become nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and dissipation…. Education was confined to priests and nobles. The mass of the laity could neither read nor write, and had no access to the word of God except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit [which taught that salvation is communicated through the priesthood]. The priest’s chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle of transubstantiation [the Latin phrase Hoc est meum corpum, “This is my body,” was used as a magic formula and shortened to “Hocus Pocus”], and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead in a foreign tongue (Latin)…. Saint-worship and image worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed the direct worship of God in spirit and in truth. Piety which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ and a consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a round of mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters and Ave-Marias, fastings, almsgiving, confession to a priest, and pilgrimage to a holy shrine [part of doing penance]. Good works were measured by the quantity rather than the quality, and polluted by the principle of meritorious-ness which appealed to the selfish motive of reward. Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in indulgences (the selling of forgiveness to remove the temporal penalties of sin especially those suffered in purgatory] was carried on under the Pope’s sanction for filthy lucre as well as for the building of St. Peter’s Dome” (Schaff, 8-10).

The most famous peddler of indulgences, Tetzel, unashamedly claimed, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

Enter Martin Luther. “Erasmus says that when Luther published his Theses [against indulgences] all the world applauded him” (Schaff, 7:98). 

NOTE: These Posts were written and  designed as bulletin inserts by Pastor David Fagrey of the Grace Reformed Church of Rapid City, SD .  

Here is a link to this blog entry as a bulletin insert:  Reformation500 Heidelberg QAs 6-8

This is the seal of the Reformed Church of the United States (RCUS).  As you can see its history goes back to 1748, when the RCUS began.  We celebrate with the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation we praise God for what is probably the most amazing spiritual revival in the history of the world. 

Reformation 500 WEEK 3: Heidelberg Catechism, QUESTIONS 6-8

Question 6: Did God create man thus wicked and perverse? No, but God created man good and after His own image, that is, in righteousness and true holiness, that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness, to praise and glorify Him.

Question 5 told us that mankind has a natural tendency to hate God and neighbor. Question 6 tells us that God did not create man in this sinful condition. Rather, on the sixth day of creation, God created man good, without any sin at all. “Then God saw everything that He had made and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). God created man’s body out of the dust of the ground [Adam means ground]. “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). “God created man in His own image… male and female” (Gen. 1:27). Mankind is as much like God as a creature can be – which makes man different from animals and angels. We were created with a mind to rightly know God (John 17:3), affections to heartily love God (1 Peter 1:8), and a will to praise and glorify God in “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24) – to imitate God in all of life (Eph. 5:1), to work six days for His glory and to rest one day for His glory just like He did (Exodus 20:8-11).

Question 7: From where, then, does this depraved nature of man come? From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, whereby our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin.

Though God created Adam and Eve good, He created them changeably good, which means they could fall from goodness if they disobeyed God’s command not to eat from the forbidden tree (Gen. 2:16-17). By their fall and disobedience, they separated themselves from God, who was their true life, having corrupted their whole nature. This corruption of the whole nature [original sin] is a hereditary disease which extends to all mankind. We are all conceived and born in sin (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12).

Question 8: But are we so depraved that we are completely incapable of any good and prone to all evil? Yes, unless we are born again by the Spirit of God.

The corruption of our whole nature is totally depraved, completely incapable of any good in the eyes of God. “There is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:12); “every intent of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5; cf. Jeremiah 17:9; Eph. 2:1). Fallen man is still made in God’s image. A shattered mirror is still a mirror: a corrupt and distorted image is still an image. Fallen man still has a mind, affections, and a will; but his mind is darkened, his affections hate God and his neighbor, and his will is not free to obey God but is “a slave of sin” (Rom. 3:22); he can give money to the poor, but not of love for God (1 Cor. 13:3). Only God can cause us to be born again (regenerated), making us spiritually alive, so that our eyes are open to believe the truth, our hearts are clean to love the truth, and our wills are set free to practice the truth (Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 36:26-27). 

NOTE: These Posts were written and  designed as bulletin inserts by Pastor David Fagrey of the Grace Reformed Church of Rapid City, SD .  

Here is a link to this blog entry as a bulletin insert:  Reformation500 Heidelberg QAs 6-8

This is the seal of the Reformed Church of the United States (RCUS).  As you can see its history goes back to 1748, when the RCUS began.  We celebrate with the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation we praise God for what is probably the most amazing spiritual revival in the history of the world.