Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Posts Tagged ‘ninety five theses’

As the sun set on this day in 1517, the unity of the Western Church shattered as the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther were nailed to the door of the Collegiate Church at Wittenberg, Germany. This was not, however, the first division within the Church.

Disregarding various heretical movements, the Church was first divided in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon, giving rise to the so-called Oriental Orthodox Churches. Political and theological forces divided the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches in the middle of the eleventh century, and the Church in the West has been torn asunder repeatedly, both before and after the Reformation, by many varying movements.

Nobody will deny that the Church, as an assembly of frail, fallible human beings, is imperfect, and today is a day set aside for prayer for the unity and renewal of the Church Catholic. By what means, however, is this unity and renewal to come?

If we surrender ourselves to strange doctrines which find no root in the Scriptures, then our unity is one in which we have given place to human desire instead of God’s precepts. The unity which God desires for his Church is based on the truth revealed in his Word and preserved by the Holy Spirit, who is faithful in every generation. We receive with great joy and with a deep-seeded sense of responsibility the witness, not only of the ancient Fathers, but also the leaders of the Reformation who sought to advocate for a return to the Biblical faith which, sadly, had become buried beneath the excesses of the Roman Church of the sixteenth century.

While this means that we must remain steadfast in our confession of the ‘Five Solas’ of the Reformation, we must also be vigilant against modernism which has, sadly, turned much of contemporary Christianity into a form of Humanism with an object of affection. Just as we cannot turn our backs on the doctrine of justification by faith through grace to achieve unity with the Churches of Rome or Constantinople, so too we cannot turn our backs on the moral and ethical teachings of God’s Word in order to find unity with those Protestant Christians who have elected to revise Scripture along humanistic lines.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a New Reformation. The Church is being called back to her roots, her God-breathed faith, by the power of the Spirit. The calling is one which is rooted in the absolute necessity of conforming ourselves as individuals and as the Body of Christ to the example of the one who died and shed his blood that we might be one, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

COLLECT
Gracious Father, we pray for your holy catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; and where it is divided, reunite it in all truth. This we ask for the sake of him who died and rose again, and ever lives to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.

READINGS
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3: 19-28 or Revelation 14: 6-7
John 8: 31-36 or Matthew 11: 12-19